Pehuenche
The Pehuenche (also in the German spelling Pewenchen ) are an indigenous people of South America who are often counted among the Mapuche . They originally belonged to the Tehuelche ethnic group and lived on both sides of the Andes. The main settlement area on the east side of the Cordillera was in northwest Patagonia , especially in what is now the Argentine province of Neuquén . On the western side of the Andes, their traditional settlement area comprised the mountain and foothills, for example from the Llaima volcano in the south to the Maule River as the extreme northern limit.
The name is derived from the Indian name of the Chilean araucaria ("Andean fir"), which in Mapudungun , the Mapuche language, means pewen , in Hispanic spelling Pehuén . Pehuenche means “fir people” or “Araucans”, as they often nourished themselves on the seeds of the Andean fir.
Since the beginning of the 17th century it was mixed with the Mapuche, who moved more and more frequently across the Andes to breed cattle and horses in the eastern foothills (see also: Araucanization ) . In addition to the language, the Pehuenche also took over horse breeding and the equestrian culture of the Mapuche. Around 1725 the Pehuenche also moved into the Argentine pampas as warlike horsemen . Remnants of the Puelche Indians, who were also Araucanized, were absorbed into the Pehuenchen at this time.
Mapuche peoples ruled southern Chile and Patagonia for a long time and prevented the Spanish conquistadors and later the Chilean and Argentine colonizers from settling in the area south of the Biobío and Río Colorado rivers for several hundred years in tough and sometimes very hard armed conflicts ( Arauco War ) . In 1769 the so-called Pehuenche uprising broke out, in which Pehuenche groups from the area east of the Andes advanced into the area on the Río de La Laja in Chile, where an agreement between Pehuenche and the governor of the General Capitanate of Chile had been concluded 13 years earlier . Even during the South American wars of independence , there were changing alliances of individual Pehuenche groups with the independent Andean army or with the troops of the Spanish viceroy of Peru and the royalist irregulars operating in Chile in the 1820s. In 1861 the area on the west side of the mountain ridge was annexed by Chile and subjugated militarily until 1883 and then massively settled by European immigrants, who came to a large extent from German-speaking countries and pushed back the indigenous population relatively quickly. Eastern Patagonia was finally incorporated into the Argentine state between 1878 and 1881 in the so-called Conquista del Desierto . In the final phase of this Argentine Indian War, in 1882/83, the Andean and Andean regions in Neuquén and in the south of the province of Mendoza with the Pehuenche Indians living there were also subjected to European settlers.
Today, in addition to other Mapuche, smaller parts of the population of the Pehuenche live in the southern part of central Chile.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang Lindig et al. Mark Münzel (Ed.): The Indians. Volume 2: Mark Münzel: Central and South America , 3rd revised and expanded edition of the 1st edition from 1978, dtv, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-423-04435-7 . P. 119.
- ^ Entry pewen ( memento of October 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Alberto Trivero: Diccionario Mapudungun-Español. Mondovì 1998 (Mapudungun-Spanish dictionary).
- ↑ Michael Riekenberg : Small history of Argentina. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-58516-6 . Pp. 13-14.
- ↑ Hartmut Motz: Languages and Peoples of the Earth - Linguistic-Ethnographic Lexicon. 1st edition, Volume 1, Projekt-Verlag Cornelius, Halle 2007, ISBN 978-3-86634-368-9 . P. 231.
- ↑ Willi Stegner (Ed.): Pocket Atlas Völker und Sprachen. 1st edition, Klett-Perthes, Gotha 2006, ISBN 978-3-12-828123-0 . P. 261.