Picunche

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The Picunche , also Pikunches , are an indigenous people in Chile and Argentina , which belongs to the group of Mapuche Indians.

The Picunche live mainly between the Río Choapa and Río Itata . They are also known as the people of the north .

history

Around 1535 there were around 220,000 picunches in the area between the Río Choapa and Río Itata . Even the Incas enslaved the Picunche as slave labor .

As they were used to foreign rule, the Picunche did little to oppose Spanish colonization, in contrast to the more successful Mapuche. The Spaniards use many picunche in the mines, the mestization of a large part of the picunche took place relatively quickly, so that they were considered assimilated by the end of the 17th century.

The area around Santiago de Chile was also inhabited by Picunche and colonized from 1540 by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia against fierce resistance.

Distribution of the pre-Hispanic peoples of Chile

Social structure

The Picunche lived in small villages with an average of 300 people, based on the family. The highest authority in the family was the father, followed by the eldest son, etc. In the event of war, the villages were run by a cacique . The villages consisted of wooden houses. Their language is a dialect of Mapudungun or Chilidengu .

The picunche grew corn , potatoes and pumpkins . However, agriculture was not very intensive. Since the Picunche were not militant, they bartered with cities in their area.

In addition to vegetable food, they ate llamas and guanacos , whose skins were used as clothing.

literature

  • Louis C. Faron: Effects of Conquest on the Araucanian Picunche during the Spanish Colonization of Chile: 1536-1635. In: Ethnohistory , Volume 7, No. 3 (Summer, 1960), pp. 239-307 ( JSTOR 480824 )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Historia de los pueblos indígenas de Chile y su relación con el estado: Los pueblos de Chile central al momento de la invasión europea. Retrieved August 28, 2014 (Spanish).
  2. ↑ a b c Los picunches. Icarito, date: June 15, 2010. Retrieved August 28, 2014.
  3. ↑ Pueblos aborígenes chilenos: Los Picunches 35 . Retrieved August 28, 2014.
  4. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica: Araucanian . Retrieved August 28, 2014.
  5. ↑ Armando de Ramón : Santiago de Chile (1541-1991). Historia de una sociedad urbana . Editorial Sudamericana, Santiago de Chile 2000, ISBN 956-262-118-9 , p. 15th ff . ( Memoria Chilena documents [accessed August 28, 2014]).
  6. ^ Ethnologue, Languages ​​of the World: Mapudungun