Lule

The Lule were an indigenous people of the Gran Chaco, first encountered in what is now Argentina's Salta Province and adjoining borderlands. Divided into several bands, they lived mainly by hunting and gathering, but also planted maize, potatoes and quinoa, and the sedentary villages west of Salta kept llama herds under Andean influence. Pressed by the Wichí, many drifted south into Tucumán and Santiago del Estero. Their language, Lule, forms a small family with Vilela.

From 1670 the Jesuits gathered them into the mission of San José de Lules. After the Chaco campaign of 1708 four hundred Lules were settled at San Juan Bautista de Balbuena, moving in 1715 to San Esteban de Miraflores on the Salado River.

The mission was sacked in the rising of 1728 and rebuilt in 1752; after the Jesuit expulsion of 1768 it passed to the Franciscans before being abandoned early in the nineteenth century.