1712 Huilliche rebellion The 1712 Huilliche rebellion was an indigenous uprising against the Spanish encomenderos of Chiloé Archipelago , which was then a part of the Captaincy General of Chile . The rebellion took place in the central part of the archipelago . Background . The Huilliche s of Chiloé had already in 1600 taken action against their Spanish lords . In that year a group helped the Dutch corsair Baltazar de Cordes attack the Spanish settlement of Castro . Contrary to continental Chile the indigenous population of Chiloé grew from 1700 onwards . By 1712 indigenous peoples made up around 50 % of the population of the archipelago . The encomienda s of Chiloé were the largest of Chile and the administration of this form of labour more abusive than in the mainland . More on the encomenderos did not fulfil their obligations ; they did not registered tributes nor salaries . Encomenderos did often not paid legal salaries or salaries at all and did not observed the " free time " of Indians in the encomienda laws . The encomienda activities in Chiloé included the Indians to travel to the continental coast to logge for alerce wood . In retrospective Huilliches considered the abuses of José de Andrade detonant of the rebellion and one of his abuses in particular : the whipping of Martín Antucan an Indian he tied to an apple tree and to then flog his genitals with nettle s to be then covered in tow and set afire . According to testimonies gathered in 1725 José de Andrade judged wrongdoings himself , did not paid salaries and tortured those that did not worked because of illness . His son is reported to have had similar behaviours and his majordomo kidnapped children to send them to continental Chile . During a meeting on the on January 26 of 1712 Huilliches set February 10 as the date of their uprising . The objective of the rebellion was not the end of Spanish rule but vengeance for perceived injusticies . The rebellion . The strategy of the rebellion focused on attacking Castro , the political and economic centre of the islands that was also located in the place most Spaniards lived and most encomiendas were . The night of February 10 houses and hacienda s of Spaniards in central Chiloé were attacked ; Spaniards were killed and buildings set afire . Some Spaniards managed to fortify themselves in Castro while they were surrounded by rebels . Spanish women and children were taken as prisoners . In the first night of rebellion only notable Spaniards died , not so Spaniards of low social standing or mestizo s , friars or priests . Other Spaniards survived hiden in the forests . The same day Spanish captains Juan de Aguilar and Diego Telles de Barrientos begun to crush the rebellion . They subsequently fought in different places of Chiloé for 8 days . Also on February 10 a Spanish militia begun to kill Huilliches and were only stopped by the intervention of Jesuits . Aftermath . Marín de Velasco , the Royal Governor of Chiloé , was suspended from his duties after the rebellion . However he later obtained the approval of the King of Spain and returned to rule Chiloé in 1715 aiming to put the encomienda system under the rule of law . Indigenous complains to the Spanish authorities begun a period of increase after the rebellion . The encomienda system was abolished in 1782 in Chiloé and in 1789 in the rest of Chile and in 1791 in the whole Spanish Empire .