Chungichnish

Chungichnish is the supreme deity of the religious system that spread among the Luiseno, Acjachemen and neighbouring peoples in the centuries before Spanish contact. He appeared after the death of the first captain Wiyot to give the people their laws, dances and sacred objects, and to institute the toloache initiation through which boys received their moral instruction. He is invisible and omnipresent: he sees and hears every act, and punishes those who violate his ordinances through his animal avengers, chief among them the rattlesnake, together with the bear, stingray, spider, tarantula and raven. His worship is bound up with the feather-costume dancers, the ground painting, and the visionary Datura drink. Boscana, writing at Mission San Juan Capistrano, records that the god was known under a graded series of secret names, and that a Serrano tradition made him the son of Tacu and Auzar, born at Pubuna. Sources differ on whether Chungichnish was originally distinct from Wiyot or a transformed continuation of him, the name Ouiamot linking the two.

Domains

• law and morality
• judgment and punishment
• initiation

Powers

• sees and hears every hidden act
• sends animals to punish the guilty

Epithets

• Saor
• Tobet
• Quaguar

Sources

• Geronimo Boscana, 'Chinigchinich' (c. 1822), annotated ed. John P. Harrington, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 92:4 (1934).
• Constance Goddard DuBois, 'The Religion of the Luiseno Indians of Southern California,' UC Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 8:3 (1908).
• Geronimo Boscana, 'Chinigchinich' (c. 1822), annotated ed. Harrington (1934).