Tehuelche

Guanaco hunters of the dry steppes of eastern Patagonia, the Tehuelche, whose southern branch calls itself Aónikenk, are a people of Argentina's far south. For thousands of years their ancestors hunted guanaco across the steppes between the Andes and the Atlantic; from the eighteenth century many adopted horses and much of the culture of the neighbouring Mapuche. Colonisation by Argentina and Chile in the nineteenth century broke up their way of life, but tens of thousands of people in Argentina identify as Tehuelche today.

European sailors first called them Patagones. The name Tehuelche is usually traced to a Mapuche expression, chewel che, glossed as "brave" or "rugged people". Researchers often speak of a "Tehuelche complex", grouping several Patagonian and pampas peoples who shared ways of life even though their languages were not all related. Most agree that the Chubut River divided a northern branch, reaching towards the Río Negro and Colorado, from a southern branch that ranged down to the Strait of Magellan. Scholarly classifications have long differed, partly because some groups were absorbed before they were well recorded.

The ancestors of the Tehuelche probably made the rock art of the Cueva de las Manos, which was produced over many thousands of years until about 700 AD. Stone-tool traditions show a growing specialisation in guanaco hunting. Groups moved with the seasons, wintering in sheltered lowlands, by lakes and on the coast, and climbing in summer to the central plateaus and the Andes, where Mount Fitz Roy was among their sacred places. Each band of kin had its own hunting grounds, marked by hills or trees, and using a neighbour's land required permission. Shamans narrated myths and practised healing; the creator Kóoch was believed to have brought order to the world but not to intervene in it.

On 31 March 1520 the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan put in at San Julián Bay to winter, and its chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, described the people there as giants, an image that fixed the "Patagonian giants" in European literature for centuries. The Tehuelche became familiar with Spanish horses around 1570, and over time mare's meat overtook guanaco as their staple food. Horses also changed their routes: long north–south journeys now linked the far south with the valleys of Neuquén and the Río Negro, where southern hunters traded hides for fruit, seeds and apples.

From the eighteenth century, trade fairs in what is now Buenos Aires Province drew together pampas, Patagonian and Andean peoples. The Mapuche influence that followed was so strong that many Tehuelche adopted the Mapuche language and customs, and their descendants often describe themselves as Mapuche-Tehuelche. Chiefs south of the Río Negro made treaties with the Argentine government in the nineteenth century, and relations with the Welsh settlers who arrived in the Chubut valley in 1865 were mostly friendly.

Argentine and Chilean settlement, especially the huge sheep estates of Patagonia, destroyed the hunting economy, and new diseases caused deadly epidemics. The Argentine army's Conquest of the Desert brought many communities close to destruction. Some Tehuelche were taken to Europe in the late nineteenth century and exhibited against their will in human zoos. In 1898 Argentina created the Camusu Aike reservation in Santa Cruz for Tehuelche families, and other reserves followed in 1922, though these later lost their status. In Chile, a smallpox outbreak in 1905 struck a settled group near Punta Arenas, and survivors moved into Argentina.

Most Tehuelche now live in the towns and cities of Argentine Patagonia. The 2010 census counted 27,813 people who identified as Tehuelche, the largest number in Chubut, and the 2022 census 40,836, of whom more than half described themselves as Araucanised. Settlements in Santa Cruz such as Camusu Aike, recognised as a legal community in 2007, keep a few bilingual speakers of the southern language, Aonek'o 'a'ien, while a revival programme whose name means "I am not ashamed of speaking Tehuelche" works to spread the language and culture.

Our 1492 map labels the southern Tehuelche lands "Aónikenk (Tehuelche)", an approximate outline across southern Patagonia. Its neighbours include the Mapuche and the Günün a küna to the north and the Selk'nam, Kawésqar and Chono towards the Strait and the Pacific coast.