Tehuelches

Approximate language distribution at the southern end of South America in times of Spanish conquest.

Caciques tehuelches, located in the province of Santa Cruz in southern Argentina.

The tehuelches, aonikenk or patagones are an indigenous people of Patagonia in South America, whose current exponents live in Argentina.

The name Tehuelche complex has been used by researchers in a broad sense to group together a group of Amerindian peoples from Patagonia and the Pampas region. Various specialists, missionaries and travelers have made proposals to group them taking into account the similarity of their cultural traits, their geographical proximity and their languages, although languages that were not related to each other were spoken among them, and their geographical distribution was extensive.

Name

According to the chronicler Antonio Pigafetta of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1520, he called the indigenous people he encountered in San Julián Bay “patagoni”. In his General and natural history of the Indies, in 1535 the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo explained that ...our Spaniards call them patagones because of their large feet, which means according to the historian Francisco López de Gómara in 1552. Thus, the first name used by the Spanish to refer to the Tehuelches was Patagones. However, some researchers without verifiable grounds speculated that Magellan might have been inspired by the dog-headed monster in the 1512 novel Primaleon, called "Pathagon".

According to the most widespread opinion, the word Tehuelche comes from the Mapudungun chewel che, whose meaning would be "bravous people", "surly people" or "people of sterile land". Another version suggests that it could derive from the name of one of their groups, the Teushen, plus the Mapuche word "che", which means 'people' or 'town'.

The term "aonikenk" is a hispanicization of the name they give themselves, aonek'enk, "sureño".

Classifications

Peckett port star. 1832 drawing made during the trip of Jules Dumont d'Urville.

The classification of the indigenous peoples that inhabited the Pampas region and Patagonia is confusing due to the different terms that were used to name the native population groups of those regions of southern South America. There are several reasons that make it difficult to establish a single and complete classification. Among these circumstances it is worth mentioning the extinction of some of these peoples, added to the vast extensions that prevented the Spanish explorers who recognized them from making contact with all the groups or, in other cases, that the seasonal migrations that they used to practice traveling long distances made that those who observed them overestimated the number of individuals in a town or the range of distribution of a language. Together with all these causes, the irruption of the Mapuches or Araucanians from the west profoundly transformed their cultural reality, mixing and absorbing the ethnic groups of the pampas and central and northern Patagonia, producing the Araucanization of a large part of the ancient inhabitants. Finally, the subsequent Conquest of the Desert carried out by the Argentine Army led to the near extinction of these indigenous communities. Added to all this panorama is the disagreement between researchers.

At the end of the 19th century, explorers such as Ramón Lista and George Chaworth Musters called them “tsóneka”, “tsónik” or “chonik”. Most specialists agree that the Chubut River separated two large subdivisions: the "Meridional Tehuelches" and "Northern Tehuelches", and that the former extended south to the Strait of Magellan, while the latter reached north to the Colorado and Negro rivers. The presence or not of Tehuelches in the Pampas region is a reason for disagreement among researchers, who have also disagreed on the existence of a separate subdivision called "pampas", and what is the relationship and limits they had with the Mapuches..

Languages

Manto tehuelche. La Plata Museum.

Classification of tshon languages, according to Roberto Lehmann-Nitsche.

The different ethnic groups known by the broad term “tehuelches” spoke languages whose number and relationship have been the subject of different opinions. For Roberto Lehmann Nitsche, the languages of the Pampas and Patagonia were divided into two groups, the Tshon languages and the Het languages. The available evidence distinguishes between six languages in the complex: those of the Chon family (Teushen, Aoenek'enk, Selknam, and Haush), the language of the Gününa Küne, and the language of the Querandí.

The language of the Aonekkenk would seem to be more closely related to that of the Teushen (central-eastern Tshon), who in turn are more closely related to the languages of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego (southern Tshon). It has been proposed that there is a relationship between these four languages and the language of the Gününa Küne. Escalada considered that the entire Tehuelche complex had a common linguistic trunk, which he called ken ('people').

Until the XIX century, the following languages were recognized:

• the gününa küne They were talking. gününa yajüch (or günün a'ajech, or puelche, or gününa küne), whose relationship with the other languages of the group is discussed and is often considered an isolated language in the absence of further information;
• the central “tshoneka”, that is, those located in the current provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and the north of the Chubut (between the gennakenk to the north and the aonekenk to the south), spoke the language called pän-ki-kin (peénkenk).

In central Patagonia there was also an ancient transition language between Penkkenk and Aonekkenk, called Tehuesh (tewsün, téushenkenk or Teushen) and it was gradually supplanted by the words Aonekenk. However, much of the current toponymy of the central plateau still retains its tewsün roots, such as the word “chupat” from which the name of the province, Chubut, comes.

Finally, the Aonekenk ("southerners") speak the language commonly known as Tehuelche or Tshoneka or Aonekenk, which is currently the most studied language of the group and the only one that continues to be used. There is a group of people trying to recover their language through the program "Kkomshkn e wine awkkoi 'a'ien (I am not ashamed to speak Tehuelche). They deal with the dissemination of the language and its culture through the organization Wenai sh e pekk, which has a dissemination blog.

Gününa yajüch studies

In 1864 Hunziker recorded a vocabulary and phrasebook of the language that he called genakenn in the Viedma area. In 1865 the explorer Jorge Claraz traveled from the south of the Province of Buenos Aires to Chubut being guided by some guides speaking Gününa iajëch, collecting place names, vocabulary and phrases in his Diary of Exploration Trip to Chubut (1865- 1866).

In 1913, Lehmann Nitsche used the data collected by Hunziker and Claraz to create a comparative vocabulary of Tehuelche languages: The Tschon linguistic group of the Magellanic territories.

In 1925 Harrington collected some words from bilingual Tehuelche speakers that he published in 1946 in his Contribution to the study of the Indian gününa küne, stating that they called their language gününa yájitch or pampa. In the fifties, Rodolfo Casamiquela collected a vocabulary, songs and sentences from several old people, outlining a morphosyntactic analysis.

In 1960 Ana Gerzenstein made a phonetic-phonological classification in her Phonology of the gününa-këna language.

In 1991, José Pedro Viegas Barros outlined a morphosyntactic projection in Linguistic clarification of intercultural and interethnic relations in the Pampas-Patagonian region, and in 2005 he developed a phonological description in Voices in the wind.

Puelche is a dead language. Casamiquela gives the name and surname of the last speaker of this language: Mr. José María Cual, who died in 1960 at the age of 90.

Social organization

In the Tehuelches, although mobile, their group movements used to be circuits, predominantly from west to east and vice versa. During each season they had sites where they set up their camps, called aik or aiken by them and tolderías by the Spanish and Creoles.

Each of their groups was made up of kinship ties and had a specific hunting and gathering territory; the limits used to be defined ancestrally by accidents often not very noticeable: a hill, a trough, a hollow, an important tree. In the event that a group could not satisfy its needs in its own territory, it had to request permission from neighboring groups of the same ethnic group to take advantage of the resources of their territories; a transgression of this rule used to imply war.

Similarly, being highly exogamous, males were forced to seek matrimonial partners in other groups and used to barter women. This norm reinforced the ties of ethnic unity. Not infrequently, instead of barter, the kidnapping of women was practiced, a conduct that almost always led to intra-ethnic wars.

Religion

As in the case of many other ethnic groups that did not develop a state structure, the Tehuelches did not have an organized religious system (liturgy and vertical structure). However, like all the pámpidos, they had a body of beliefs based on their own myths and rites, which were narrated and updated by the shamans who also practiced medicine with the help of the spirits evoked in them, playing the San Gregorio quena..

The Tehuelches believed in various telluric spirits, as well as a supreme deity that created the world but did not intervene in it. One of the cosmogonic versions of the creation myth is that according to which the deity called Kóoch ordered chaos by creating differentiated elements. Similarly, the Selknam of Tierra del Fuego narrated an analogous myth according to which the Creator of the world, a deity known as Kénos (a variant of Kóoch through a common root), would have sent present-day Patagonia, through Temáukel; to El-lal, son of the giant Nosjthej, who created humans, and taught them the use of the bow and arrows.

In this culture, the existence of an evil spirit, called Gualicho, was accepted.

In the XXI century, most Tehuelches consider themselves Christians.

History

Pre-Hispanic period

6000 years ago the Toldense industry arose, characterized by bifacial sub-triangular projectile points and lateral and terminal rasps, bifacial knives and bone tools. Later, between 4,000 and 3,000 years B.C. C., the Casapedrense industry appears, characterized by a greater proportion of lithic instruments made on sheets, probably as a sample of the specialization in guanaco hunting, which is also present in the later cultural developments of the Tehuelches.

From that moment until the arrival of the Europeans (beginning of the XVI century) the Tehuelches had a way of life hunter-gatherer in which they made use of seasonal mobility, moving after herds of guanacos; during the winters they were in the lowlands (plains, mallines, coasts, lake shores, etc.) and during the summer they ascended to the central plateaus of Patagonia or the Andes mountain range where they had, among other sacred sites, the Chalten hill.

Arrival of the Spanish

Portrait of the Junchar cacique by José del Pozo in Puerto Deseado, in 1789, during the expedition of Malaspina (1789-1794).

On March 31, 1520, the Spanish expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan landed in San Julián Bay to spend the winter there, where they made contact with the Tehuelche Indians, whom they called "Patagones", which was reported by the cartographer and chronicler of the expedition Antonio Pigafetta in Relation of the first trip around the world; town that would end up evolving into what is known as the mythical tribe of giant Patagones.

According to what Maximiliano Transilvano also recounted, the first encounter between the Tehuelche and the Spaniards who were part of the expedition of what would become the Spanish colonial empire took place in this bay. After several days of contact and exchange of merchandise, Magellan gave the order to kidnap two locals and several women to take them as a gift for King Carlos I. Finally, one of them managed to escape and the other died in prison for refusing to eat; as well as a Spanish sailor died from being poisoned by an arrow.

Even before meeting them in person, those explorers were amazed by their footprints. Enlarged by the skins that served as footwear, their feet were much larger than those of the Europeans of that time —for the 16th century the average size of Europeans was much lower than it is today. In fact, the European average height until 1800 was around 1.50 meters. Meanwhile, the Patagonians reached 2 m (6' 7") —men had an average height of more than 2 m (6' 7")— for which they were considered "patones" ('big feet'); and they evoked the giant Pathoagon from the chivalric novel Primaleon. With a dolichocephalic cranial structure like other pampids, they became famous in European literature from the 16th to the 19th centuries for their great stature and physical strength.

It should be taken into account that between the 16th and 18th centuries the place name "Patagonia" was given to the entire territory from the south of the estuary of the Río de la Plata. This reinforces the hypothesis of anthropologists such as Rodolfo Casamiquela, according to which Falkner's het were also Patagonians.

The arrival of the Spanish implied a set of changes in the culture of the native peoples and the Tehuelches were no strangers to that; plagues broke out among them (measles, smallpox, flu) that decimated them, particularly the northern gennakenk.

Influence of the Mapuche

Since before the XVIII century there was an important commercial activity and exchange of products between the native inhabitants of the Pampean plains and the mountains of the current province of Buenos Aires, those of northern Patagonia and those of both sides of the Andes Mountains. There were two very important fairs in Cayrú and Chapaleofú. In these fairs, called "poncho fairs" For the Jesuits of the time who registered them (such as Thomas Falkner), various types of products were exchanged: from livestock and agricultural products to clothing such as ponchos. El Cayrú was in the westernmost part of the Tandilia System (in the territory of the current Partido de Olavarría) and Chapaleofú refers to the vicinity of the homonymous stream, located in the current Partido de Tandil, both municipalities or parties are located in the interior of the current province of Buenos Aires. This is how, from these movements of people for the exchange of products, a certain cultural exchange took place between different peoples who inhabited from the humid pampa, passing through northern Patagonia and up to the immediate area of the Andes mountain range (both in its eastern and western margin) to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. This is the beginning of cultural exchange and migratory movements, among the different peoples, among which it is worth mentioning the Tehuelches, the Ranqueles and the Mapuches.

The Mapuche influence has its origin in the aforementioned, since starting from the purposes of trade and alliances, it ended up producing a great cultural influence on the Tehuelches and other peoples, to the point that it is called "mapuchization&# 3. 4; or "araucanization" of the Pampas and Patagonia. A good part of the Tehuelches and the Ranqueles adopted many of the Mapuche customs and language, while the Mapuches adopted part of the Tehuelche way of life (such as living in tolderías) and with this the differences between both groups blurred, point that their descendants refer to themselves as Mapuche-Tehuelches.

The caciques Cacapol and his son Cangapol, during the first half of the XVIII century were the most important chiefs of the region, which stretched from the Andes Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Negro River to the Salado River. Cangapol had its seat of government in the Sierra de la Ventana area, which is why they were known as "Pampas Serranos". The pampas knew how to ally with the mapuches from the west to attack the Buenos Aires campaign in 1740.

Tehuelches in Río Gallegos.

In this process, there were also inter-ethnic struggles and around 1820 combats were fought between Patagonians and Pehuenches on the banks of the Senguerr River, other combats took place in Barrancas Blancas and Shótel Káike. Around 1828, Pincheira's Royalist army attacked the Tehuelches in the areas of Bahía Blanca and Carmen de Patagones.

For some Argentine historians it was an invasion in which the Mapuche almost extinguished the northern Tehuelche through violence, but the current academic consensus is that it was a more complex phenomenon. This alleged Mapuche invasion has been used politically to deny legitimacy to indigenous claims in southern Argentina, arguing that they would be petitions made by descendants of the "Chilean invaders" and not by descendants of the original inhabitants, even though the Chilean and Argentine States did not exist at that time.

The Tehuelches south of the Río Negro had a woman as their sovereign: María la Grande. Her successor Casimiro Biguá was the first Tehuelche chief to make treaties with the Argentine government. His sons, the chiefs Papón and Mulato, ended up in a reservation in southern Chile.

The Tehuelches had to live with the Welsh immigrants who began to colonize Chubut from the second half of the XIX century: in In general, relations were harmonious between both peoples. In 1869 chief Biguá recognized the need to defend the Welsh against a possible attack by chief Calfucurá.

Little is known about the pre-horse Tehuelche culture, although their socioeconomic organization resembled that of the Onas of Tierra del Fuego. The introduction of the horse by the Spaniards, an animal they knew from 1570, transformed the model of social organization of the Tehuelches: an equestrian complex was formed among them. Like the Amerindians of the great prairies of North America, the Tehuelches also worked the scrub steppes of Patagonia, living mainly on guanaco and rhea meat (ñandú or choique), followed by the meat of huemul, deer, mara and even puma and jaguar, in addition to certain plants (because although late, they learned to cultivate the land). Regarding fish and shellfish, taboos existed in certain cases: some groups were, for example, prohibited from eating fish. His groups used to be made up of 50 to 100 members.

The adoption of the horse signified a profound social revolution in the Tehuelche culture: the mobility that brought them altered the ancestral territorialities and greatly modified the pattern of displacements, if before the century XVII east-west transhumance predominated in pursuit of the guanacos, from the equestrian complex longitudinal movements (from south to north and vice versa) became very important, establishing extensive circuits of exchange: in the mid-19th century, the Aonikenk bartered their skins and shellfish for cholilas (strawberries, blackberries, caulkers, pehuén seeds, llao llao, coligüe shoots and hearts, etc.) and apples to the gennakenk of Neuquén, of the Alto Valle del Río Negro and of the so-called País de las Frutillas or Chulilaw (region delimited approximately to the north by Lake Nahuel Huapi, to the east by the low and morainic mountain ranges called Patagonides, to the west by the high peaks of the Andes and to the south by Lake Buenos Aires/General Carrera).

The horse, or more precisely the mare, became the main part of their diet, leaving the guanacos in second place. The Selknam of Tierra del Fuego, on the other hand, did not develop a comparable equestrian complex.

Kidnapping and forcible exhibition

Starting in the second half of the 19th century, some aonikkenk groups were abducted and exhibited against their will in countries like: Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France or England. The family of which more specific information is known was that of a chief named Pitioche, who was captured along with his wife and son. Some of these dramatic events are part of the book Human Zoos by Christian Báez and Peter Mason.

Reservations in Santa Cruz

By decree of January 11, 1898 of President José Evaristo Uriburu, the Camusu Aike reserve was created for the “concentration of Tehuelche tribes”, which is located in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina and initially had 50,000 ha (lots 77 bis, 78 bis, 79 bis, 94 bis and 95 bis). By decree of April 30, 1953, President Juan Domingo Perón reduced it to 30,000 ha.

In 1922 President Hipólito Yrigoyen created by decree the reserves of: Viedma Lake (lots 119-117) between 20,000 and 25,000 ha, Cardiel Lake (lot 6) and Cardiel Lake (lot 28 bis). The first two were disaffected in 1966 and the third in 1990.

Situation of the Tehuelches

In Argentina

Rosa Chiquichano, of Tehuelche origin, was a member of the Argentine Nation for the province of Chubut.

According to the inconclusive "National Indigenous Census" of 1966-1968, there were a few descendants of this ethnic group in Argentina who spoke the Tehuelche language. The population with Tehuelche lineage that has remained most attached to this culture is located in the central plateau of the province of Santa Cruz, although it is Creole. The census recorded in Santa Cruz:

• Requested Department: 28 tehuelches, none speak of the aonekko 'a'ien.
• Department Güer Aike: 44 tehuelches, of which 24 speakers of the aonekko 'a'ien. Camusu Aike settling.
• Department Lago Argentino: 36 tehuelches, of which 14 spoke the aonekko 'a'ien. Cerro Index settlement with 5 families (24 people).
• Department Lago Buenos Aires: 6 tehuelches, of which 2 spoke the aonekko 'a'ien.
• Department Río Chico: with 52 tehuelches, of which 11 spoke the aonekko 'a'ien. Two Tehuelche settlements in this department: Lot 6 with 34 inhabitants, and Lot 28 bis with 3 families.

There were also mixed marriages in Tres Lagos, Puerto San Julián, Gobernador Gregores and Río Gallegos.

The 2004-2005 Complementary Survey of Indigenous Peoples (ECPI), complementary to the 2001 National Population, Household and Housing Census, resulted in 4,351 people being recognized or first-generation descendants of the Tehuelche people in the provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz (of which 307 reside in indigenous communities). Another 1,664 recognized themselves in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the 24 districts of Greater Buenos Aires; and 4,575 in the rest of the country. Throughout Argentina, 10,590 Tehuelches recognized themselves.

The 2010 National Population Census in Argentina revealed the existence of 27,813 people who recognized themselves as Tehuelches throughout the country, 7,924 of them in the province of Chubut, 4,570 in the Province of Buenos Aires, 2,615 in the Santa Cruz, 2,269 in Río Negro, 1,702 in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, 844 in Mendoza province, 738 in Neuquén, and 625 in La Pampa.

Currently there are Tehuelche settlements in Santa Cruz:

• Camusu Aike Territory: 3900 ha 180 km northwest of Río Gallegos, recognized in September 2007 with legal status. The 1968 census recorded 11 families with 41 individuals.
• Lot 6 of Lake Cardiel: between the city of Governor Gregores and Lake San Martín.
• Lot 28 bis of Lake Cardiel: next to the city of Governor Gregores.
• Cerro: 40 km southeast of Lake Viedma and 50 km south of Tres Lagos.
• Copolque (or Kopolke): is located in the Colonia Leandro N. Alem in the vicinity of Las Heras in the department wished.

Bandera tehuelche: the blue of the sea, the brown of the earth and, in the middle, the arrow that looks toward the north, with inside the Cross of the South.

In these settlements there are some bilingual speakers of aonekko 'a'ien, the rest speak Spanish.

In Chubut are the reserves of El Chalía (Manuel Quilchamal community, in the Río Senguer department, 60 km from the town of Doctor Ricardo Rojas, created in 1916 with 60,000 ha, reduced today to 32,000, with some 80 people), and Loma Redonda (between Río Mayo and Alto Río Senguer, with 30 people). 17.65% of them are bilingual Spanish-Mapudungun and the rest speak Spanish. The 1991 census only reported two old women with memories of the Aonek' or 'a'ien language.

Since 1995, the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs (INAI) began to recognize legal status through registration in the National Registry of Indigenous Communities (Renaci) to indigenous communities in Argentina, including 2 Tehuelche communities in the province of Santa Cruz and 4 Mapuches-Tehuelches from the provinces of Chubut, Río Negro, Buenos Aires and Santa Cruz:

Province of Santa Cruz (village tehuelche)

• Copolque Community (in the wished department, 5 June 2007)
• Community Camusu Aike (in the department Güer Aike, 14 September 2007)

Province of Santa Cruz (Mapuche-tehuelche village)

• Nehuen Mulfuñ Community (in Pico Truncado del departamento Deseado, on 25 March 2014)

Chubut Province (Mapuche-tehuelche village)

• Indigenous Community River Round (in the Cushamen department, 24 February 1997)

Río Negro Province (village tehuelche)

• Aboriginal Community Río Chico (in the Ñorquincó department, September 1, 2000)

Province of Buenos AiresMapuche-tehuelche village)

• Tehuelche Callvu Shotel (in the La Plata match, May 18, 2010)

Mapuches-tehuelches

In the province of Chubut there are mixed communities of Mapuches and Tehuelches, who call themselves Mapuche-Tehuelche:

There are also four Mapuche-Tehuelche urban communities in Santa Cruz: in Caleta Olivia (Fem Mapu), Río Gallegos (Aitué), in Río Turbio (Willimapu) and in Puerto Santa Cruz (Millanahuel).

The Cushamen aboriginal reserve in the Cushamen department in Chubut, was created in 1899 to house the tribe of chief Miguel Ñancuche Nahuelquir, who was evicted from the Neuquén mountain range by the Conquest of the Desert. It comprises 1,250 km³ and 400 Mapuche-Tehuelche families.

In Chile

Its situation in Chile is almost complete extinction. In 1905 they suffered a smallpox epidemic that killed the cacique Mulato and others from his tribe living in the valley of the Zurdo river, near Punta Arenas. The survivors took refuge in Argentine territory, possibly in the Camusu Aike reserve. Tehuelche groups later continued to enter Chile to hunt guanacos in the Magallanes region, where they were last seen around 1927 from the Killik Aike area. Their memory is present in the place names of Villa Tehuelches, a Chilean town in the commune of White Lagoon.