Pikumche

The Pikunche, whose Mapudungun name means people of the north, were Mapudungun-speaking villagers of central Chile, spread from the Choapa and Aconcagua valleys south to the Bío Bío River. They farmed maize and potatoes, irrigated their fields and worked copper, pottery and stone; the southern bands who beat back the Inca armies became known as the Promaucae.

When Pedro de Valdivia invaded from 1541, the chief Michimalonco, who had already expelled the Inca governor Quilicanta, led the resistance and destroyed the newly founded Santiago. Spanish towns, encomiendas and haciendas gradually confined the Pikunche to planned Indian villages.

During the colonial period they mingled with Spaniards and relocated natives, leaving their old villages for the haciendas until their Indigenous identity dissolved into the general Chilean population.