Picunche

The Picunche were Mapudungun-speaking farming communities between the Choapa and Itata rivers in central Chile. They grew maize and potatoes and lived in adobe houses with thatched roofs.

At the end of the fifteenth century, southern Picunche groups known as the Promaucae resisted Inca expansion; later chronicles described their confrontation at the Maule River. Northern Picunche groups were under Inca rule when the Spaniards arrived. Under Spanish rule, villagers gradually moved to nearby estates, where they mixed with Indigenous people brought from Araucanía, Chiloé and Cuyo and lost their separate identity.