A variety of native societies inhabit what…
1528 CE to 1539 CE
A variety of native societies inhabit what is now Chile at the time the Spanish arrive.
No elaborate, centralized, sedentary civilization reigns supreme, even though the Inca Empire has penetrated the northern land of the future state.
As the Spaniards will after them, the Incas have encountered fierce resistance from the indigenous Araucanians, particularly the Mapuche tribe, and so do not exert control in the south.
During their attempts at conquest in 1460 and 1491, the Incas establish forts in the Central Valley of Chile, but they cannot colonize the region.
In the north, the Incas are able to collect tribute from small groups of fishermen and oasis farmers but are not able to establish a strong cultural presence.
The Mapuche, who the Spaniards will call Araucanians, a fragmented society of hunters, gatherers, and farmers, constitute the largest native American group in Chile.
A mobile people who engaged in trade and warfare with other indigenous groups, they live in scattered family clusters and small villages.
Although the Araucanians have no written language, they do use a common language.
Those in what will become central Chile are more settled and more likely to use irrigation.
Those in the south combine slash-and-burn agriculture with hunting.
The Araucanians, especially those in the south, will become famous for their staunch resistance to the seizure of their territory.
Scholars speculate that their total population may have numbered one million at most when the Spaniards arrive in the 1530s; a century of European conquest and disease will reduce that number by at least half.
During the conquest, the Araucanians quickly add horses and European weaponry to their arsenal of clubs and bows and arrows.
They become adept at raiding Spanish settlements and, albeit in declining numbers, manage to hold off the Spaniards and their descendants until the late nineteenth century.
The Araucanians' valor will inspire the future Chileans to mythologize them as the nation's first national heroes, a status that will do nothing, however, to elevate the wretched living standard of their descendants.
Of the three Araucanian groups, the one that mounts the most resistance to the Spanish is the Mapuche, meaning "people of the land."
Chile's first known European discoverer, Ferdinand Magellan, stops here during his voyage on October 21, 1520.
A concerted attempt at colonization begins when Diego de Almagro, a companion of conqueror Francisco Pizarro, heads south from Peru in 1535.
Disappointed at the dearth of mineral wealth and deterred by the pugnacity of the native population in Chile, Almagro returns to Peru in 1537, where he dies in the civil wars that take place among the conquistadors.
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