Chullachaki
legendary devil of the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazonian jungle
The Chullachaki (Quechua, "one-footed", from chulla or ch'ulla = single, odd, unpaired, asymmetric, chaki = foot; spelling sometimes also used in Spanish) or Chullachaqui (Hispanicized spelling), also known as the Shapishico, is a mythical forest creature of the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazonian jungle.
Description
He is generally described as short and ugly, with one leg shorter than the other and one foot either larger than the other, pointed backward or in the form of a hoof.
He is said to persuade his victims to follow him deep into the jungle where even experienced trackers cannot find their way back. He does this by taking the form of a family member or a loved one long not seen, or disguising himself as a prey animal. His uncanny ability to replicate others makes him impossible to tell apart, except for his mismatched feet.
Others say that he appears in the shape of a very short man dressed in rags, waving his closed fists in the air looking for a fight. In this case, the indigenous people believe a man must accept his challenge and beat him until he uncovers all the richness he has hidden in the jungle. He who declines this challenge is cursed with the inability to hunt and with foul luck: family and friends turn into enemies, wives leave with other men, etc.
Chullachaqui is said to have the ability to turn into any animal of the rainforest. He is a kind of forest spirit who guards the lands and the animals and punishes a man if he breaks a taboo or otherwise acts unwisely in the forest.
“Chullachaki” enters the record as legendary devil of the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazonian jungle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chullachaki, legendary and devil can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chullachaki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.