Question: How long ago did Native Americans settle in the area where Chile would eventually be located?
About the article "Chile", section "Early history".

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Native Americans.
Long before the Spanish settlers arrived to settle near the banks of the Los Angeles River, Native Americans were the only inhabitants.
The Native Americans established villages known as rancherias throughout the countryside.
One of these settlements was located within the boundaries of what was to become Rancho Los Feliz.
Archeological surveys have found evidence of a substantial rancheria that existed in the mouth of Fern Dell Canyon in Griffith Park.
It is estimated that the Native Americans first came to this area approximately 10,000 years ago.
The traditional name of this village is not known but the inhabitants were Gabrielinos.
This name was given by the Spanish because of the Native Americans' association with the San Gabriel Mission.
When Gaspar de Portola traveled through the vicinity in 1769, his expedition encountered members of this village. 
About 10,000 years ago, migrating Native Americans settled in the fertile valleys and coastal areas of what is present day Chile.
Pre-Hispanic Chile was home to over a dozen different Amerindian societies.
The current prevalent theories are that the initial arrival of humans to the continent took place either along the Pacific coast southwards in a rather rapid expansion long preceding the Clovis culture, or even trans-Pacific migration.
These theories are backed by findings in the Monte Verde archaeological site, which predates the Clovis site by thousands of years.
Specific early human settlement sites from the very early human habitation in Chile include the Cueva del Milodon and the Pali Aike Crater's lava tube.
Despite such diversity, it is possible to classify the indigenous people into three major cultural groups: the northern people, who developed rich handicrafts and were influenced by pre-Incan cultures; the Araucanian culture, who inhabited the area between the river Choapa and the island of Chiloé, and lived primarily off agriculture; and the Patagonian culture Patagonia composed of various nomadic tribes, who supported themselves through fishing and hunting (and who in Pacific/Pacific Coast immigration scenario would be descended partly from the most ancient settlers).
No elaborate, centralized, sedentary civilization reigned supreme.
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 tongue.
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.
Of the three Araucanian groups, the one that mounted the fiercest resistance to the attempts at seizure of their territory were the Mapuche, meaning "people of the land.
"The Inca Empire briefly extended their empire into what is now northern Chile, where they collected tribute from small groups of fishermen and oasis farmers but were not able to establish a strong cultural presence in the area.
As the Spaniards would after them, the Incas encountered fierce resistance and so were unable to exert control in the south.
During their attempts at conquest in 1460 and again in 1491, the Incas established forts in the Central Valley of Chile, but they could not colonize the region.
The Mapuche fought against the Sapa Tupac Inca Yupanqui (c. 1471–1493) and his army.
The result of the bloody three-day confrontation known as the Battle of the Maule was that the Inca conquest of the territories of Chile ended at the Maule river, which subsequently became the boundary between the Incan empire and the Mapuche lands until the arrival of the Spaniards.
Scholars speculate that the total Araucanian 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 19th 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.
The Chilean Patagonia located south of the river "calle calle" in Valdivia was composed of many tribes, mainly Tehuelches that were consider giants by Spaniards during Magellan voyage of 1520.
The name Patagonia comes from the word "patagón" used by Magellan to describe the native people whom his expedition thought to be giants.
It is now believed the Patagons were actually Tehuelches with an average height of 1.80 m (~5′11″) compared to the 1.55 m (~5′1″) average for Spaniards of the time.
The Argentine portion of Patagonia includes the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, as well as the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego archipelago .
The Argentine politico-economic Patagonic Region includes the Province of La Pampa.
The Chilean part of Patagonia embraces the southern part of Valdivia, Los Lagos in Lake Llanquihue, Chiloé, Puerto Montt and the Archaeological site of Monte Verde, also the fiords and islands south to the regions of Aisén and Magallanes, including the west side of Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. 
The first non Native Americans to settle in the area what would become Las Vegas were a group of Mormons who arrived from Utah in 1855.
They constructed a fort located in the current downtown area but abandoned it a few years later.
Eventually, other settlers arrived, taking advantage of the nearby springs as a source of water for agriculture.
This water made the area an important water stop and was instrumental in the building of a railroad through the area around 1905.
On May 15, 1905, the city of Las Vegas was founded on about 110 acres of land comprising what is now downtown. 
Human habitation or use of the stream's lower reaches has been recorded as far back as 4,000 years ago.
As with many other streams in Ulster County, the Native Americans used the flat flood plains of the lower Esopus for cornfields, and there are accounts of the area around Olive, today inundated by the reservoir, planted as an apple orchard.
The Natives did not settle the area permanently, and only ventured into the higher reaches of the valley to hunt as there was less arable land there.
The Esopus would be important to the area's early European colonization.
It took its name from the Lenape band that inhabited its banks, some of whom entertained Henry Hudson on his voyage up the river in 1609 after possible earlier contact with fur traders.
European traders began plying the river in greater numbers, eventually establishing permanent settlements for the purpose.
Dutch settlers established Wiltwyck, today's Kingston, on the high ground between the Esopus and the Rondout in 1649.
After the Esopus drove them out of the settlement in two wars, colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant ordered that it be enclosed in a stockade so it would be safer from raids by Indians and the other contending colonial power in the area, the English.
The latter took over the New Netherland colony in 1664, taking a more nuanced approach to the native peoples of the area.
The settlement's location above the point where the Esopus came out of the Catskills made it an ideal trading post for Indians responding to the European demand for beaver pelts to make the beaver hats then in vogue.
In the later 17th century, with European settlement well established around the eastern Catskills, land replaced fur as the Indian-held commodity most desired by the new arrivals.
The English government in London charged local officials with granting large chunks of land on the colonial frontier so that it might be better protected from the French to the north and west, but those officials dallied, only making such grants when they could enrich themselves and their friends in the process.
The Catskills and the Esopus Valley, with little land that could be cleared for farming, were not suitable to that end. 
Before 1900.
There is a lack of evidence of Native American activity in the Bethany Beach area.
Prior to the arrival of European settlers in North America, Native American settlements appear to have been limited to the area north of the Indian River, north of what is now Bethany Beach; even after Europeans pushed the Native Americans—mostly Nanticokes—out of their coastal settlements in the mid-17th century, the Native Americans moved west to settle around Oak Orchard, Delaware, and in the Millsboro, Delaware, area rather than south toward what would become Bethany Beach.
Caucasians also did not settle the area prior to 1900, probably because Indian River Inlet cut the area off from their settlements to the north and because the town of Ocean View, founded in 1889 and now Bethany Beachs neighbor to the west, did not expand its boundaries eastward toward the coast.