Tehuelche people

The Tehuelche (Aonikenk) are the Indigenous people of eastern Patagonia, once nomadic guanaco hunters of legendary stature whom early Europeans called Patagones, giants. Moving with the seasons between coast and cordillera in toldos of guanaco hide, they hunted with bolas and raised the great quillango cloaks sewn from dozens of skins. In the 18th and 19th centuries Mapuche influence and the horse transformed them: mounted Tehuelche bands ranged the whole south, trading feathers, skins and horses at Welsh and Argentine frontier posts. Sheep estancias then fenced the hunting grounds, and epidemics to which they had no immunity cut the bands down through the 19th century. Most Tehuelche today live in the cities and towns of Argentine Patagonia, keeping the Tehuelche language classes, the cloak-sewing and the memory of the free wonderland of guanaco herds. Feather, skin and horse fairs at the frontier posts lasted into the railway age, binding the whole Patagonian-Pampas world the researchers call the Tehuelche complex.