Huilliche (Amerind tribe)

The Portuguese establish the cities of Santos, Recife and the colonial capital, Salvador da Bahia, in this era.

The Spanish have begun to establish settlements at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, or River Plate, and beyond in the area that falls on the Spanish side of the boundary between Spanish and Portuguese territories.

The Spaniards in Colombia establish the cities of Buenaventura and Pamplona; in Bolivia, La Paz, the capital, and the silver-fueled Potosí, perhaps the world’s highest city and soon to become one of the largest; and in Lima, capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, the first university in the New World, today one of the world’s oldest.

The conquistadors in Chile meanwhile establish their capital, Santiago.

German colonization of the New World, on the other hand, halts entirely with the withdrawal of the banking houses of Welser and Fugger.

As in New Spain, the conquistadors marry native women, elevating their sons to leadership positions.

The Spaniards in South America make their first attempt at the conquest and colonization of southern Chile, founding Concepción as the region’s first city in the face of strong resistance from the native populations, with whom hostilities are to continue, if intermittently, for more than three centuries.

Spanish conquistador and explorer Pedro de Valdivia, having received Francisco Pizarro’s permission to establish a colony in Chile, had left Cuzco in January 1540 with one hundred and fifty Spaniards and about one thousand native allies from Peru, heading south across the coastal desert later called the Atacama.

After negotiating the desert with difficulty, the invaders successfully fight a succession of battles with the hostile Araucanians, the original inhabitants of Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina.

The Quechua word arauco (rebel) is not the root of araucano: it is more likely derived from the place name Arauco, meaning "clayey water.”

The Spanish conquest of Chile, which begins in earnest in 1540, causes large numbers of Araucanians—both a cultural and linguistic classification of the Picunche, Mapuche, and Huilliche Indians—to remove to the Argentine Andes.

The Mapuche are a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups that share a common social, religious and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage.

The polytheistic Mapuche determine descent and residence according to male ancestry.

Patterns of alliance, bride price, and dowry are based on female descent and involve ritual obligations such as participation in large-scale funeral rites and agricultural fertility ceremonies.

The Mapuche have an economy based on agriculture; their social organization consists of extended families, under the direction of a "lonko" or chief, although in times of war they would unite in larger groupings and elect a "toqui" ('axe-bearer') to lead them.

Their influence extends between the Aconcagua River and the Argentine pampas.

They can be divided into the Picunches who live in the central valleys of Chile — these integrated with the Inca Empire (and eventually with the Spaniards)—the Mapuches who inhabit the Valleys between the Itata and Toltén Rivers, and the Huilliches, the Lafkenches, and the Pehuenches.

The northern Aonikenk, called Patagons by Ferdinand Magellan, are an ethnic group of the pampa regions that made contact with some Mapuche groups, adopting their language and some culture; they are the Tehuelches.

Pedro de Valdivia and the beleaguered settlers of the destroyed new town of Santiago have meanwhile held out on their small island for two years against the Araucanians.

A Spanish relief force finally arrives in 1543 from Peru.

Valdivia sends a naval expedition consisting of the barks San Pedro and Santiaguillo, under the command of Juan Bautista Pastene, to reconnoiter the southwestern coast of South America in 1544, ordering him to reach the Strait of Magellan.

The expedition had set sail from Valparaíso and although Pastene does not reach this goal, he explores much of the coast.

He enters the bay of San Pedro, and makes landings at what are now known as Concepción and at Valdivia, which is later named in honor of the commander.

Encountering severe storms further south, he then returns to Valparaiso.

Valdivia himself sets out in February 1546, crossing the Itata River with sixty horsemen, plus native guides and porters.

He reaches the Bío-Bío River, where he plans to found another town.

Mapuche warriors attack the party, however, in the Battle of Quilacura.

Realizing that it will be impossible to proceed in such hostile territory with so limited a force, Valdivia wisely elects to return to Santiago shortly thereafter, after finding a site for a new city at what is now Penco and is to become the first site of Concepción.

Valdivia still manages to subdue the country between Santiago and the Maule River.

After Valdivia arrives back in Santiago from Peru, he again undertakes the conquest of southern Chile, but faces heavy resistance from the indigenous population.

Clashing with the warlike Araucanians beyond the Bio-Bio River in 1550, he defeats them but by no means breaks their will to resist, a will that grows stronger when the conquistador establishes settlements in their territory.

In spite of the fierce resistance at the Battle of Penco, he founds Concepción in 1550 on the site of the Araucanian village of Penco on the Rio Biobío.

Today, as the capital of Concepción Province and of the Biobío Region, Gran Concepción (Greater Concepción, including Talcahuano, San Pedro de La Paz, Hualpén, Chiguayante and Penco) is the second most important city-conurbation in Chile.

The Huilliches of the Chiloé Archipelago had already in 1600 taken action against their Spanish lords.

In that year, a group had helped the Dutch corsair Baltazar de Cordes attack the Spanish settlement of Castro.

In contrast with continental Chile, the indigenous population of Chiloé has grown from 1700 onwards.

Indigenous peoples by 1712 make up around fifty percent of the population of the archipelago.

The encomiendas of Chiloé are the largest of Chile and the administration of this form of labor more abusive than in the mainland.

Moreover, the encomenderos do not fulfill their obligations, registering neither tributes nor salaries.

Encomenderos often so not pay legal salaries or salaries at all and do not observe the "free time" of Indians mandated by the encomienda laws.

The encomienda activities in Chiloé require the Indians to travel to the continental coast to log for Fitzroya, or alerce, a type of cypress.

The abuses perpetrated on the Huiliche by José de Andrade, in particular the whipping of Martín Antucan, a Huilliche who Andrade had tied to tree, flogged his genitals with nettles, then covered in tow and set afire.

According to testimony gathered in 1725, Andrade judged wrongdoings himself, paid no salaries, and tortured those who did not work because of illness.

His son is reported to have behaved similarly and his majordomo is known to have kidnapped Huilliche children to send them to continental Chile.

The Huilliches, during a meeting on January 26, 1712, set February 10 as the date of their uprising.

The objective of the rebellion is not the end of Spanish rule but vengeance for perceived injustices.

The strategy of the rebellion focuses on attacking Castro, the political and economic center of the islands, where most Spaniards live and most encomiendas are located.

Houses and haciendas of Spaniards in central Chiloé are attacked on the night of February 10; Spaniards are killed and buildings set afire.

Some Spaniards manage to fortify themselves in Castro while they are surrounded by rebels.

Spanish women and children are taken as prisoners.

Only notable Spaniards die in the first night of rebellion  not Spaniards of low social standing or mestizos, friars or priests.

Other Spaniards survive by hiding in the forests.

Spanish captains Juan de Aguilar and Diego Telles de Barrientos begin the next day to crush the rebellion.

Also on February 10, a Spanish militia begins to kill Huilliches in reprisal and are stopped only by the intervention of Jesuit priests.

They Spaniards subsequently fight the Huiliiches in various parts of Chiloé for eight days.

Marín de Velasco, the Royal Governor of Chiloé, is suspended from his duties after the rebellion.

However, he will later obtain the approval of the King of Spain and return to rule Chiloé in 1715 with the aim of placing the encomienda system under the rule of law.