Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
equipment and had mastered warfare from horseback. These expert
cavalrymen adopted the use of the long spear armored with tips fash-
ioned from metal captured from the settlers. The spear even became
something of a religious relic to the Mapuche.
The Mapuche first became interested in Argentina as a source of
horses, and the first Mapuche arrived on the Pampas in 1708 at a meet-
ing of war chiefs on the Quinto River. Their reputation for fighting the
Spaniards impressed all the chiefs in attendance. Groups of Chilean
traders and warriors stayed on, incorporating themselves into exist-
ing clans on the plains as warriors, husbands, and fathers. They first
infiltrated the original Pehuenche and enabled this group to expand
northward into central Mendoza. By 1725, Spanish officials in Buenos
Aires began to notice them because Araucanian warriors were raiding
outlying Spanish haciendas and stealing cattle. Within the next several
decades, the Puelche of Mendoza became Mapuche speakers. By 1750,
no one remembered the old language. By the 1770s, the Mapuche
language had become the lingua franca among all the Indians of the
Pampas region.
After Araucanization, powerful hereditary chieftains emerged, for
the first time, to lead confederated bands of mounted warriors in
During the 18th century, speakers of the Mapuche language from southern Chile, known as
Araucanians, moved onto the Argentine Pampas, where their culture changed the behavior and
habits of the native tribes—a process called the Araucanization of the Pampas. The most obvi-
ous change was the widespread adoption of aggressive cavalry warfare, as exemplified by these
mounted warriors.
(León Pallière, 1858)
