Gununa kune

The Gununa kune, better known by the Mapuche name Puelche, meaning people of the east, were hunter-gatherers of the country east of the Andes from the Neuquen to the Chubut steppes.

Small bands led by elders called lonko camped in tents of branches and hides, hunting guanacos, rheas and Andean deer. They crossed the mountain passes in larch-plank canoes to trade with the Huilliche and the Chono, wrapped in fur cloaks called quillangos.

Their own language, Gununa yajuch, is usually treated as an isolate only distantly linked to the Chonan tongues of the Tehuelche. In the eighteenth century they took part in poncho fairs, but epidemics at the end of that century shattered them, and the survivors were absorbed into the Araucanized Mapuche world. In the Desert Campaign of 1833 a Gununa kune chief, Vicente Goico, served with Argentine forces.