Chikón Tokoxo

Mazatec · deity · Mazatec traditional religion; continuing · deity

Chikón Tokoxo (also Chikón Nindo Tokoxo) is the foremost of the chikon, the fair-skinned earth-lords of the Sierra Mazateca in northern Oaxaca. He owns Nindo Tokoxo, the limestone Cerro de la Adoración that rises above Huautla de Jiménez, and is reckoned the master and lord of all the other earth-owners and of the dwarfish La'a. Ethnographers describe him as a wealthy güero, fair of skin and hair, dressed in fine clothes and mounted on a white horse, who lives inside the mountain amid fields of maize and coffee, pastures and cattle, in the image of an idealised Mazatec farmer. Thunder at the opening of the rains is his axe striking the sky. Mazatecs climb the hill to petition him for rain, harvest and wealth and to avoid rousing his anger, which is said to bring disaster and death; offerings secure his favour but, in cave-lore recorded by Feinberg, bind the favoured to labour in his underworld after death. He is paired in the water cycle with the female water-owner Chon'ndá vee, who in the most widespread Huautla narrative marries into his household and names the region's springs.

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