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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
At the time the Spanish arrived, a variety of
Amerindian
societies inhabited what is now Chile. No elaborate,
centralized,
sedentary civilization reigned supreme, even though the
Inca Empire
had penetrated the northern land of the future state. As
the
Spaniards would after them, the Incas encountered fierce
resistance
from the indigenous Araucanians, particularly the Mapuche
tribe,
and so did not exert control in the south. During their
attempts at
conquest in 1460 and 1491, the Incas established forts in
the
Central Valley of Chile, but they could not colonize the
region. In
the north, the Incas were able to collect tribute from
small groups
of fishermen and oasis farmers but were not able to
establish a
strong cultural presence.
The Araucanians, a fragmented society of hunters,
gatherers,
and farmers, constituted the largest native American group
in
Chile. A mobile people who engaged in trade and warfare
with other
indigenous groups, they lived in scattered family clusters
and
small villages. Although the Araucanians had no written
language,
they did use a common language. Those in what became
central Chile
were more settled and more likely to use irrigation. Those
in the
south combined slash-and-burn agriculture with hunting.
The Araucanians, especially those in the south, became
famous
for their staunch resistance to the seizure of their
territory.
Scholars speculate that their total population may have
numbered 1
million at most when the Spaniards arrived in the 1530s; a
century
of European conquest and disease reduced that number by at
least
half. During the conquest, the Araucanians quickly added
horses and
European weaponry to their arsenal of clubs and bows and
arrows.
They became adept at raiding Spanish settlements and,
albeit in
declining numbers, managed to hold off the Spaniards and
their
descendants until the late nineteenth century.
The Araucanians' valor inspired the Chileans to
mythologize
them as the nation's first national heroes, a status that
did
nothing, however, to elevate the wretched living standard
of their
descendants. Of the three Araucanian groups, the one that
mounted
the most resistance to the Spanish was the Mapuche,
meaning "people
of the land."
Data as of March 1994
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