page_title: Mapuche history
section_title: First contacts (1536–1550)
hierarchical_section_title: Mapuche history / Early Hispanic period (1536–1598) / First contacts (1536–1550)
caption_attribution_description: Lautaro
context_page_description: The Mapuche people of southern Chile and Argentina have a long history dating back as an archaeological culture to 600–500 BC. The Mapuche society had great transformations after Spanish contact in the mid–16th century. These changes included the adoption of Old World crops and animals and the onset of a rich Spanish–Mapuche trade in La Frontera and Valdivia. Despite these contacts Mapuche were never completely subjugated by the Spanish Empire. Between the 18th and 19th century Mapuche culture and people spread eastwards into the Pampas and the Patagonian plains. This vast new territory allowed Mapuche groups to control a substantial part of the salt and cattle trade in the Southern Cone.
  Between 1861 and 1883 the Republic of Chile conducted a series of campaigns that ended Mapuche independence causing the death of thousands of Mapuche through combat, pillaging, starvation and smallpox epidemics. Argentina conducted similar campaigns on the eastern side of the Andes in the 1870s. In large parts of the Mapuche lands the traditional economy collapsed forcing thousands to seek themselves to the large cities and live in impoverished conditions as housemaids, hawkers or labourers.
context_section_description: The Spanish expansion into Chile was an offshoot of the conquest of Peru. Diego de Almagro amased a large expedition of about 500 Spaniards and thousands of yanaconas and arrived at the Aconcagua Valley in 1536. From there he sent Gómez de Alvarado south in charge of a scouting troop. Alvarado reached the Itata River where he engaged in the Battle of Reynogüelén with local Mapuches. Alvarado then returned north and Diego de Almagro's expedition returned to Peru since they had not found the riches they expected.
  Another conquistador, Pedro de Valdivia, arrived in Chile from Cuzco in 1541 and founded Santiago that year. In 1544 captain Juan Bautista Pastene explored the coast of Chile to latitude 41° S. The northern Mapuche, better known as Promaucaes or Picunches, unsuccessfully tried to resist the Spanish conquest. Northern Mapuche groups appear to have responded to the Spanish conquest abandoning their best agricultural lands and moving to remote localities away from the Spanish. In this context one of the reasons the Spanish had to establish the city of La Serena in 1544 was to control Mapuche groups that had begun to migrate north following the Spanish founding of Santiago. The Spanish understood this abandonment as an attempt to have them leave Chile much in the way Diego de Almagro did in his failed expedition of 1535–1537. According to chronicler Francisco de Riberos northern Mapuche put cultivation on hold for more than five years. 17th century Jesuit Diego de Rosales wrote that this was a coordinated strategy that was decided by a large assembly of many tribes. The Spanish found themselves in great distress as a result of a lack of supplies, but ultimately this strategy was unsuccessful in forcing Spanish conquerors out of Central Chile.
caption: Toki Lautaro, an early Mapuche military leader. Painting by Pedro Subercaseaux.
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