Mapuche silverwork is one of the best known aspects of Mapuche material culture. [2] The adornments have been subject to changes in fashion but some designs have resisted change.
Mapuche silverwork is one of the best known aspects of Mapuche material culture. [2] The adornments have been subject to changes in fashion but some designs have resisted change.
Mapuche people had a gold-related cultural tradition that predates the Inca invasion. [3] In the 16th century, at the time of the Spanish conquest of Chile, Mapuches are reported by various chroniclers to have used gold adornments. [3] According to Zavala and co-workers (2021) the widespread gold-related toponyms in Mapuche lands and early Spanish reports of gold objects, plus the easiness for the Spanish to find gold mines suggests that gold mining did occur in Pre-Hispanic Chile south of Itata River, well beyond the borders of the Inca Empire. [4]
Historian José Toribio Medina posits that most of the Mapuche gold adornments were despoiled by the Spanish during the conquest. [3] Local folklore says much gold was also hidden from the Spanish and gold mines collapsed on purpose. [3] Gold mining became a taboo among Mapuches in colonial times, and gold mining prohibited under death penalty. [3] Prior to the Destruction of the Seven Cities serving the Spanish in gold mining had been a deadly activity that killed many Mapuches. [5] Some 17th-century Spanish sources specifically reject the notion that Mapuche used gold adornments or valued the metal. [3]
During the latter half of the 18th century, Mapuche silversmiths began to produce large amounts of silver finery. [6] The surge of silversmithing activity may be related to the 1641 parliament of Quillín and the 1726 parliament of Negrete that decreased hostilities between Spaniards and Mapuches and allowed trade to increase between colonial Chile and the free Mapuches. [6] [7] In this context of increasing trade, Mapuches began in the late 18th century to accept payments in silver coins for their products; usually cattle or horses. [6] These coins and silver coins obtained in political negotiations served as raw material for Mapuche metalsmiths (Mapudungun: rüxafe). [6] [7] [8] By the 18th century silver had effectively filled the place gold previously had in Mapuche culture. [3] Old Mapuche silver pendants often included unmelted silver coins, a circumstance which has helped modern researchers to date the objects. [8] The bulk of the Spanish silver coins originated from mining in Potosí in Upper Peru. [7] The foreign origin of most silver (liqen, lien, lighen) explains why there is scarcity of silver-related Mapuche placenames relative to those referring to gold (milla). [3]
The great diversity in silver finery designs is indebted to the fact that designs were done to be identified with different reynma (families), lof mapu (lands) as well as specific lonkos and machis. [9] Mapuche silver finery was also subject to changes in fashion albeit designs associated with philosophical and spiritual concepts have not undergone major changes. [9]
In late 18th century and early 19th century, Mapuche silversmithing activity and artistic diversity reached it climax. [10] All important Mapuche chiefs of the 19th century are supposed to have had at least one silversmith. [6] The 1869 war between Chile and independent Mapuches provoked a famine among Mapuches in the winter of 1869, with the situation being worsened by a smallpox epidemic. [11] This situation led some Mapuches to sell their silver adornments in the towns of La Frontera to obtain food. [11]
As of 1984, Mapuche scholar Carlos Aldunate noted that there were no silversmiths alive among contemporary Mapuches. [6]
Although these adornments showed some variation in form, the principal one appears to be a set of three separate columns of flattened silver links joined to each other by square alternating links. At the top of the set of columns, and holding them together, is a flat two-headed bird figure and at the base is a flat semicircle or trapezoid that usually has a series of small disks dangling from its base. The wearer would place the object hanging from his/ her neck and down the chest.
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The Viceroyalty of Peru, officially known as the Kingdom of Peru, was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, governed from the capital of Lima. Peru was one of the two Spanish viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
The Mapuche is a group of native indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who share a common social, religious, and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage as Mapudungun speakers. Their homelands once extended from Aconcagua Valley to the Chiloé Archipelago and later spread eastward to Puelmapu, a land comprising part of the Argentine pampa and Patagonia. Today the collective group makes up over 80% of the indigenous peoples in Chile and about 9% of the total Chilean population. The Mapuche are concentrated in the Araucanía region. Many have migrated from rural areas to the cities of Santiago and Buenos Aires for economic opportunities.
The Arauco War was a long-running conflict between colonial Spaniards and the Mapuche people, mostly fought in the Araucanía region of Chile. The conflict began at first as a reaction to the Spanish conquerors attempting to establish cities and force Mapuches into servitude. It subsequently evolved over time into phases comprising drawn-out sieges, slave-hunting expeditions, pillaging raids, punitive expeditions, and renewed Spanish attempts to secure lost territories. Abduction of women and war rape was common on both sides.
The Occupation of Araucanía or Pacification of Araucanía (1861–1883) was a series of military campaigns, agreements and penetrations by the Chilean army and settlers into Mapuche territory which led to the incorporation of Araucanía into Chilean national territory. Pacification of Araucanía was the expression used by the Chilean authorities for this process. The conflict was concurrent with Argentine campaigns against the Mapuche (1878–1885) and Chile's wars with Spain (1865–1866) and with Peru and Bolivia (1879–1883).
The Conquest of Chile is a period in Chilean historiography that starts with the arrival of Pedro de Valdivia to Chile in 1541 and ends with the death of Martín García Óñez de Loyola in the Battle of Curalaba in 1598, and the destruction of the Seven Cities in 1598–1604 in the Araucanía region.
Pehuenche are an indigenous people of South America. They live in the Andes, primarily in present-day south central Chile and adjacent Argentina. Their name derives from their dependence for food on the seeds of the Araucaria araucana or monkey-puzzle tree. In the 16th century, the Pehuenche lived in the mountainous territory from approximately 34 degrees to 40 degrees south. Later they became Araucanized and partially merged with the Mapuche peoples. In the 21st century, they still retain some of their ancestral lands.
Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America is the extraction, purification and alloying of metals and metal crafting by Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European contact in the late 15th century. Indigenous Americans had been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BCE, and North American copper finds being dated to approximately 5000 BCE. The metal would have been found in nature without the need for smelting, and shaped into the desired form using hot and cold hammering without chemical alteration or alloying. To date "no one has found evidence that points to the use of melting, smelting and casting in prehistoric eastern North America."
In Chilean historiography, Colonial Chile is the period from 1600 to 1810, beginning with the Destruction of the Seven Cities and ending with the onset of the Chilean War of Independence. During this time, the Chilean heartland was ruled by Captaincy General of Chile. The period was characterized by a lengthy conflict between Spaniards and native Mapuches known as the Arauco War. Colonial society was divided in distinct groups including Peninsulars, Criollos, Mestizos, Indians and Black people.
Between 1830 and 1850, Chilean silver mining grew at an unprecedented pace which transformed mining into one of the country's principal sources of wealth. The rush caused rapid demographic, infrastructural, and economic expansion in the semi-arid Norte Chico mountains where the silver deposits lay. A number of Chileans made large fortunes in the rush and made investments in other areas of the economy of Chile. By the 1850s, the rush was in decline and lucrative silver mining definitively ended in the 1870s. At the same time, mining activity in Chile reoriented to saltpetre operations.
Traditional metal working in Mexico dates from the Mesoamerican period with metals such as gold, silver and copper. Other metals were mined and worked starting in the colonial period. The working of gold and silver, especially for jewelry, initially declined after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. However, during the colonial period, the working of metals rose again and took on much of the character traditional goods still have. Today, important metal products include those from silver, gold, copper, iron, tin and more made into jewelry, household objects, furniture, pots, decorative objects, toys and more. Important metal working centers include Taxco for silver, Santa Clara del Cobre for copper, Celaya for tin and Zacatecas for wrought iron.
José Bengoa Cabello is a Chilean historian and anthropologist. He is known in Chile for his study of Mapuche history and society. After the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, José Bengoa was dismissed from his work at the University of Chile by the Pinochet regime. He was the principal advocate for the first Social Forum of the ACLU International Human Rights Task Force, during the SubCommission's fifty-fourth session in August 2002. Bengoa had been living in Cajón del Maipo for some time. For medical reasons and concerns, he sometimes returns to his home in Ñuñoa. The anthropologist had been diagnosed with bone cancer and had a bone marrow transplant in 2017.
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The last major rebellion of the indigenous Mapuches of Araucanía took place in 1881, during the last phase of the Occupation of Araucanía (1861–1883) by the Chilean state. It was planned by Mapuche chiefs in March 1881 to be launched in November the same year. Mapuche support for the uprising was not unanimous: Some Mapuche factions sided with the Chileans and others declared themselves neutral. The organizers of the uprising did however succeed in involving Mapuche factions that had not previously been at war with Chile. With most of the attacks repelled within a matters of days Chile went on the next years to consolidate its conquests.
As an archaeological culture, the Mapuche people of southern Chile and Argentina have a long history which dates back to 600–500 BC. The Mapuche society underwent great transformations after Spanish contact in the mid–16th century. These changes included the adoption of Old World crops and animals and the onset of a rich Spanish–Mapuche trade in La Frontera and Valdivia. Despite these contacts Mapuche were never completely subjugated by the Spanish Empire. Between the 18th and 19th century Mapuche culture and people spread eastwards into the Pampas and the Patagonian plains. This vast new territory allowed Mapuche groups to control a substantial part of the salt and cattle trade in the Southern Cone.
Inca rule in Chile lasted from the 1470s to the 1530s when the Inca Empire was absorbed by Spain. The main settlements of the Inca Empire in Chile lay along the Aconcagua, Mapocho and Maipo rivers. Quillota in Aconcagua Valley was likely the Incas' foremost settlement. The bulk of the people conquered by the Incas in Central Chile were Diaguitas and part of the Promaucae. Incas appear to have distinguished between a "province of Chile" and a "province of Copayapo" neighboring it to the north. In Aconcagua Valley the Incas settled people from the areas of Arequipa and possibly also the Lake Titicaca.
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Agriculture in Chile has a long history dating back to the Pre-Hispanic period. Indigenous peoples practised varying types of agriculture, from the oases of the Atacama Desert to as far south as the Guaitecas Archipelago. Potato was the staple food in the populous Mapuche lands. Llama and chilihueque herding was practised by various indigenous groups.
[Chile] is rich in pastures and cultivated fields, in which all kind of animals and plants can be breed or grown, there is plenty of very beautiful wood for making houses, and plenty of firewood, and rich gold mines, and all land is full of them...
Huinca or wingka is an exonym used by indigenous Mapuche to refer to non-Mapuche, white Chileans and Argentines. The term originated in the area of Concepción in Chile from the Mapuche language word we-inka, meaning new-Inca. This is a reference to Inca invaders who were later taken over by new Spanish invaders. This word is rendered as "inga" by Pedro de Valdivia in a letter to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. At the time of the initial contact Mapuches called horses "hueque ingas" in reference to the hueque according to Valdivia's letter to the Emperor.
Media related to Mapuche silverwork at Wikimedia Commons
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