Michimalonco

Michimalonco (circa 1500-1550) was a Toqui Picunche native of the Aconcagua Valley, who put up a tenacious resistance to the conquest of his territories by the Spanish.

Onomastics

Your name may come from:

• of the Mapudungun müchüy 'tizón' and longko 'head, boss', that's torch head.'
• of the Quechua mitmay and Mapudungun longko, that is to say 'master of mitimaes'.
• of the Quechua-mapuche michi 'gato' and Mapudungun longko.
• of the Mapudungun minchelongko, minche 'below' and longko.
• of the Mapudungun mütrümün 'Call' and longko.

Early Years

He was born around the year 1500, probably in the Aconcagua valley. According to the chronicles, he received his education in the city of Cuzco, at that time the capital of the Inca Empire. He was invested as curaca along with his brother Trangolonco. Both ruled a good part of the Aconcagua valley as local chiefs, together with the apunchic (Inca governor) Quilicanta.

It also welcomed the first Spaniard to arrive in the central zone of current Chilean territory, Gonzalo Calvo de Barrientos, who had abandoned the Viceroyalty of Peru insulted by Francisco Pizarro, who had him whipped and de-eared as punishment for theft. After receiving confirmation of the fall of the empire from him, Michimalonco confronted the loncos who continued to serve the Inca empire, thus seizing Naglonco's lands in Maipo. Later, after the arrival and departure of the Spanish Diego de Almagro, Michimalonco confronts and expels Quilicanta, who escapes to the south until he settles in Mapocho.

Pedro de Valdivia Expedition

After having been sent by Francisco Pizarro from Peru and making a long journey from Cuzco, the Extremaduran conquistador Pedro de Valdivia arrived in the Mapocho valley on December 13, 1540. Valdivia's hosts camped next to the waters of the river, on the slopes of the Tupahue hill and slowly began to establish relations with the Picunche aborigines who inhabited the area, after which Valdivia summoned the curacas of the area to a parliament where he explained his intention to found a city in the name of the king Carlos I of Spain, which would be the capital of his governorate of Nueva Extremadura. The natives accepted and even recommended the founding of the city on a small island located between the two arms of the Mapocho River next to a small hill called Huelén, on which an Inca administrative center was based.

On February 12, 1541, Valdivia officially founded the city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo (Santiago de Nueva Extremadura) in honor of the Apostle Santiago, patron saint of Spain, in the vicinity of the Huelén hill, renamed by the conqueror as "Santa Lucía". Following colonial rules, Valdivia entrusted the layout of the new city to the master builder Pedro de Gamboa, who designed the city in the form of a checkerboard. In the center of the city he designed a Plaza Mayor, around which various sites were selected for the Cathedral, the jail and the governor's house. In total, eight blocks were built from north to south, and ten from east to west, and each lot (a quarter of a block) was given to the settlers, who built mud and straw houses.

As soon as he founded Santiago, he headed against Michimalonco, conquering its fortress of Paidahuén.— As a ransom to regain freedom, he offered the Inca gold pans of Marga-Marga.

Organization of the Marga-Marga washing places

Aguirre and Villagrán visit the ancient Inca gold pans and establish their importance. Michimalonco, forcibly, supplies workers to work them. The very poor conditions in which this work is carried out, in addition to the insatiable thirst for gold of the Spaniards, generates severe discontent among the Picunches.

The Picunche Uprising

Trangolonco revolted in Quillota and killed the Spanish, blacks and Peruvian Indians, only Gonzalo de los Ríos escaping with a black slave. He also burned a brig under construction at the mouth of the Estero Marga-Marga in Viña del Mar. A general uprising broke out that included the valleys of Aconcagua and Cachapoal.

Against the Spanish

Michimalonco, as caudillo (toqui) general of the Picunches, led an assault on the recently founded city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo on September 11, 1541 that ended in the destruction of most of the houses in Santiago del Nuevo Extreme. However, the destruction was incomplete, since the Picunches ended up withdrawing at the mercy of the sustained resistance of the Spaniards who garrisoned the plaza. In the defense of the city, Doña Inés de Suárez was particularly noted for not hesitating to kill Quilicanta and seven picunche curacas, including the curaca de Apoquindo, prisoners of the Spaniards that the indigenous army was fighting to free. The number of combatants was about 5,000-10,000 by the picunches and 55 soldiers, plus 5,000 auxiliary yanaconas, by the Spanish.

Valdivia conquers a Trangolonco fortress on the Zapata slope.

[...] was Michimalonco of good stature, very strong and anointing; he had a happy face, and thankful so much that even the Spanish mesmos was kind

Indian Chronist Pedro Mariño de Lobera.

He was, along with Lautaro and Caupolicán, one of the Mapuche leaders who distinguished himself the most in the fight against the conquerors. He bravely fought Pedro de Valdivia in a war that would last for many years.

[...] has been the most feared lord that in all the valleys has been found [... ]

Jerónimo de Vivar, 1558

Alliance with the Diaguitas

The records indicate that, one year after the founding of Santiago, the Spanish identified the indigenous contingents that participated in the assault on the city in 1541 as forces from Michimalonco and the Diaguitas. This is what Captain Rodrigo de Quiroga points out in the proof of merits and services of Santiago de Azocar, carried out on October 17, 1562, «[...] all the soldiers of this province (Santiago) and a large part of the Indians Diaguitas, whom they (Michimalonco and other curacas) had sent to call to help them destroy this city, were coming upon it». The alliance between Mapuches and Diaguitas apparently obeys the existence of political relations between both peoples. At the territorial level, they shared settlements. These political relations, and the interest in expelling the invader, we assume are explaining why the Diaguitas joined forces with the Mapuches to materialize the assault on Santiago.

For most historians, archaeologists, and researchers in the history of Chile, these "Diaguitas" they would be populations from the east of Santiago, current Argentine territory, and not from populations of the so-called Norte Chico (Atacama-Coquimbo), since the ethnonym "Diaguita Chileno" It is a proposal by Ricardo Latcham in 1928, without further arguments. Latcham himself is in charge of clarifying that he will use that name until another appears. In other words, there is no evidence that the towns north of the Choapa River called themselves "diaguitas" at the time of the arrival of the Inca and later Spanish conquerors.

Leave Chile

However, in 1542, dejected by the continuous setbacks his cause was experiencing, he left the country and, crossing the Andes, sought refuge in Cuyo, still held by the Incas. Poor and without resources, he lamented saying: «Yesterday I saw myself as a lord and respected and today I see myself as poor and serving, despised in a foreign land; It would have been better for me to have obeyed the Spanish and be lord than to see myself in this low fortune.” Moved by these thoughts, he returned to Chile in 1549 ready to make peace with his enemies.

Sign the peace

He gathered his former comrades in arms and ordered them to lay down their arms and live in peace with the Spaniards, "in the end," he told them, "we already know that as brave and brave they are in war, they are meek and affable in peace." He then paid obeisance and obedience to Governor Pedro de Valdivia, offering himself at his service, and asked his forgiveness for past alterations. He accompanied these words with some 200 pounds of very fine gold and "quantity of cattle and other things". Valdivia gratefully reciprocated the gifts and good intentions of Michimalonco, willingly accepting his offer as long as the Picunche people did not oppose the evangelizing action of the missionaries, submitted to the regime of the encomiendas and contributed with labor to the exploitation of the mines and gold placers. The toqui picunche agreed to everything, thus sealing peace between the two peoples.

Chief of "auxiliary Indians"

At the end of 1549, he joined the Valdivia expedition to Arauco, as commander of a Chilean Picunche or chincha corps. He participated in the battle of Andalién, where the city of Concepción stands today, contributing decisively to the victory over the toqui Ainavillo.

Death

In the year 1550, Michimalonco was assassinated by Jerónimo de Alderete, after suspicions of treason by the caudillo, during the course of an expedition to reconnoiter the lands south of the Biobío river.

References and notes