page_title: Tehuelche people
section_title: Spanish arrival
hierarchical_section_title: Tehuelche people / History / Spanish arrival
caption_attribution_description: English: The Cacique, Junchar
context_page_description: The Aónikenk people, also referred to by the exonym Tehuelche, are an indigenous people from Patagonia in South America, with existing members of the group currently residing in the southern Argentina-Chile borders.
  The name "Tehuelche complex" has been used by researchers in a broad sense to group together indigenous peoples from Patagonia and the Pampas. Several specialists, missionaries and travelers have proposed grouping them together on account of the similarities in their cultural traits, geographic vicinity and languages, even though the languages they spoke amongst themselves were not related to each other and their geographic distributions were extensive
context_section_description: On 31 March 1520 the Spanish expedition, under the command of Fernando de Magallanes, landed in San Julián Bay to spend the winter there. Here, they made contact with Tehuelche indigenous groups, who they referred to as "Patagones", as told by the scribe, Antonio Pigafetta. Pigaffetta described these people as a mythical tribe of Patagonian giants.
  Prior to meeting the Tehuelche groups in person, the explorers had been amazed by the size of their footprints. Enlarged by the animal furs they used as footwear, their feet were much larger than those of the Europeans at the time. During the 16th century, the average male height of Europeans at 5 feet, 5 inches would have been shorter than the Patagonian men whose height reportedly averaged above 2 meters (by some accounts, 6 feet, 7 inches). Thus the Europeans may have considered them to be "Patones" (‘large footed’) or the Patagonians may have reminded the explorers of the giant Pathoagón from the knighthood novel Primaleón. The Patagonians' large craniometry made them famous in European literature from the 16th to the 19th centuries due to their large stature and physical strength.
  It is important to take into account that between the 16th and 18th centuries the name "Patagonia" was given to all territory to the South of the Río de la Plata estuary. This reinforces hypotheses made by anthropologists like Rodolfo Casamiquela, according to whom, the 'Het' from Falkner's work, were also Patagones.
  The Spanish arrival implicated a change in the cultures of the native peoples and the Tehuelche people were not strangers to that. Plagues (measles, smallpox, flu) were unleashed among the groups which decimated their populations, particularly the northern Gennakenk group.
caption: Portrait of Chief Junchar by José del Pozo in Puerto Deseado, in 1789, during the Malaspina Expedition (1789–1794).
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