Ancestral peoples
In 14,000 BC, when the Earth was in its last Ice Age, Beringia formed a land corridor linking Asia to America. Nomadic populations entered this corridor and spread across the American continent. At first living by gathering, fishing and hunting, these populations gradually began to organize themselves. Around 6000 BC, the first cultures appeared and, with the domestication of the llama, populations became sedentary. It wasn't until 4000 BC that the Yámanas reached the southern limit of the continent and settled in Tierra del Fuego. For millennia, Chile was home to populations of exceptional adaptability: harsh climatic conditions, limited resources, external invasions... From the arid desert to the hostile Patagonia, the country was home to some twenty indigenous nations before the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century.
These included the Chinchorros, who settled in the Azapa and Camarones valleys in Chile's far north. Between 1100 and 1536, the Chinchorros lived in large villages, some with over a thousand enclosures. Cultivated land was extended by the construction of terraces and irrigation canals. On the coast, the "balsa de tres palos" (three-masted raft) was a technique used to catch deep-sea fish such as sea eels and dogfish. They also worked copper to make pins and hooks, and gold and silver to make ornaments. Particularly remarkable, the Chinchorro mummies are considered to be the oldest in the world (some 2,000 years older than those in Egypt!) and were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in July 2021.
The Atacameño culture developed in the Salar d'Atacama basin between 400 and 700 AD and in the Loa river basin. They lived around salt flats and oases, in large villages surrounded by farmland and cemeteries. The economy was based on agriculture and livestock breeding, supplemented by fruit harvesting. To obtain supplies, they made long-distance migrations across the desert in large llama caravans. This was also a way of opening up trade routes.
The Diaguitas, whose culture reached its apogee between 900 and 1536, lived in the present-day Elqui valley (east of the present-day city of La Serena). They lived in small villages built with simple huts of mud, wood and straw, scattered along the valleys and near cultivated fields. The construction of irrigation systems enabled them to grow a wide variety of crops, but the Diaguitas were also good fishermen. Molluscs, sea lions, whales, they used rafts to reach the open sea. Great masters of ceramics, their pottery, characterized by geometric motifs applied in three colors, remains highly reputed today.
The Mapuche, People of the Earth
The Tehuelches, now completely extinct, inspired the first accounts by European navigators, who named them "Patagons" ("great men"). The development of their culture was hampered by the difficult climate: violent winds, harsh winters. As a result, they were unable to cultivate the land, which was poor in organic matter; in fact, they led a nomadic life, setting up encampments.
The Mapuche originally occupied the Chilean Andes. Their name means "people of the earth", Mapu meaning "earth" and Che meaning "man". The conquistadors named them Araucans and their land Araucania. They mixed with the Tehuelches and even imposed their customs and language on them. The Mapuches had a more complex and developed society, notably because they were hunters, but also farmers, and lived sedentary lives on their land. They knew how to make cloth and pottery and had their own calendar, which still governs some of their festivities today. Their god was called Nguenechen; he created all that exists, dominating the earth and enabling life and fertility. However, they had no written expression; legends and history were passed down orally. Ironically, Mapuche writing was born with the expansion of the Spanish and the subsequent evangelization. The massacre of the economic conquest in the 19th century did not, however, eradicate the Mapuche presence in the area. Renowned as fearless warriors, the Mapuche still often claim to have resisted two great waves of colonization: the Incas and the conquistadors. Today, some 600,000 Mapuches are thought to still live in Chile. Their descendants have kept their culture and language alive, and still work daily to maintain them. Today, they are demanding restitution of their lands and respect for their way of life: demands that have gone unanswered by the Chilean government, despite the fact that the Indigenous Law of October 5, 1993 recognizes the existence of indigenous peoples as "an essential part of the roots of the Chilean Nation". They would appear to be the only exception - or almost the only exception - to Chilean miscegenation. Confrontations between the Mapuche and landowners, supported by the government and the army, have been raging for several years, particularly in the Araucania region. In 2023, Mapuche hit-and-run operations (such as the sabotage of agricultural machinery) were on the increase and qualified as terrorist acts by the state. A situation that is far from being resolved.
The peoples of Patagonia
The Fuegians numbered 7,000 in the 19th century, 600 in 1924 and only 100 in 1940. Today, they have completely disappeared. Three tiny peoples of around twenty thousand shared the hostile vastness of southern Chile: the Alakalufs (or Kaweskars), the Yamanas (or Yagans) and the Onas (or Selk'nam). Constantly battling the elements of a powerful nature, they lived on Tierra del Fuego and around the Strait of Magellan. Despite geographical and ethnological descriptions and studies, little is known about their history and customs.
The Alakalufs moved with the seasons and their diet, which included cholgas (giant mussels), hence their name, taken from the Yaghan halakwulup, meaning "mussel eater". Nomads of the sea, they possessed 30 words to define the winds and an exceptional maritime vocabulary to designate tides, currents and climatic changes. Seafarers and seal hunters, they travelled by canal. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Alakalufs were in total perdition: turned beggars, torn from their traditions, they wrongly inherited a reputation as cannibals and the contempt of the whole of Western society. The government eventually took in the last Alakalufs at Puerto Eden, in the Messier Channel. Deprived of their land and their freedom, there are now barely a dozen of them who are direct descendants of their ancestors.
The Yamanas were also "sea nomads" and excellent craftsmen. Their baskets, made of rushes, were used to collect shellfish and fruit. On the water, the men used crude harpoons (3 m long, the tip of which was formed from the inshore bone of a whale) to hunt sea wolves, penguins or cormorants. Constantly on board their canoes, they moved along the coast, spending half the year at sea. Finally, these populations didn't really dress themselves; their bodies were coated with fish oil and sea mammal fat to protect the skin from the harsh climate. Today, a few mestizos (mixed with Chilotes, mainly inhabitants of Chiloé) still live in Villa Ukika, near Puerto Williams on Navarino Island.
The Selknams roamed the steppe in search of ñandús (the Patagonian ostrich) and guanacos , which they caught on the run! No permanent leader ruled the tribes, but a certain hierarchy cemented social ties: shamans were invested with the power to heal; sages were the repositories of mythological traditions; and warriors were respected for their experience: in fact, their position sometimes resembled that of a chief. In the mid-19th century, gold-seekers (notably Julio Popper) settled in the region and drove them out, then the arrival of missionaries contaminated them with terrible diseases: the last of the Onas, Lola Kiepja, died in the 1950s.
Rapa Nui culture
Isolated more than 3,000 km from the coast of Chile, the island of Rapa Nui (more commonly known as Easter Island) was home to a prosperous and enigmatic civilization at its peak. With no real resources and no mastery of metallurgy, the Rapa Nui were able to build the Moai, megalithic statues representing their ancestors. Originally from Polynesia, they crossed the waters of the Pacific Ocean before discovering the island in 500 AD. They began erecting their first Moai as early as the 7th century, and their activity continued for over 1,000 years. Divided into six tribes, or mata, the island boasted over 50 villages and more than 880 Moai. But how did this civilization disappear? Tribal conflicts? Contrary to popular belief, Rapa Nui people were not inclined to kill each other. Ecocide? They escaped deforestation unscathed. Unfortunately, the cause of their disappearance is fairly traditional: the encounter with the outside world. When European settlers discovered the island in 1722, they brought with them diseases to which the inhabitants had no immunity. It should also be noted that the Rapa Nui people were uprooted from their homeland to serve as laborers on the American continent. Today, the number of descendants of the Rapa Nui people is estimated at just over 5,000.
A multicultural identity
Following the indigenous genocide, the Chilean lands were successively occupied by immigrants dreaming of the New World. The strong wave of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries populated the country with men and women who were foreign to these latitudes. They were mainly Europeans and there were a large number of Spaniards, Italians, French, Germans, Croatians and Irish. But not only! Today, Chile has the largest Palestinian community in the world with more than half a million direct descendants. There are also tens of thousands of descendants of African slaves, forced into exile during the colonial era (Valparaíso was an important slave port during the 18th century before slavery was banned in 1811). Chilean society is also, in part, the result of the mixing of different immigrant and local populations. Over the decades, this long-isolated country has become a land of welcome and roots where mixed identities have been built.
