Mapuche

The Mapuche, once called Araucanians, are the great Indigenous nation of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, speakers of Mapudungun sharing one social, religious and economic fabric across many local groups. Their old country ran from the Choapa Valley to the Chiloé Archipelago, then spread east over the Andes into Puelmapu, the Argentine pampa and Patagonia. Extended families under lonko chiefs farmed wheat, beans and potatoes and herded sheep; in war the lineages united to elect a toki, axe-bearer, for command. Alone among American peoples they stopped the Spanish Empire: the Arauco War burned three centuries, and the 1641 Parliament of Quillin recognised a free Mapuche frontier. Chilean and Argentine occupation in the 19th century took most of the land, but 8.8 percent of Chileans today are Mapuche, 77 percent of the country's Indigenous peoples. Rural communities, Santiago migrants, weavers, silverworkers and machi healers keep Wallmapu alive. Lonko-led extended families still sow the same wheat valleys of Araucania.