Tenesch

The Tenesch, also called Poya, were a band of the northern Tehuelche of Patagonia, ranging both sides of the Andes from Llanquihue and Palena in Chile to the lands east and south of Nahuel Huapi Lake. Nomadic hunters organized in family groups under a chief, they lived in leather tents, pursued guanaco and the small rhea called choique. They took to the horse early in the seventeenth century.

Captain Juan Fernández crossed the Andes to Nahuel Huapi in 1620 and found Poya and Puelche camps around the lake. The Jesuit Nicolás Mascardi opened a mission there in 1670, but the Poya killed him in 1673.

As Mapuche bands pushed east through the Andes, calling them vuriloche, or people of the other side, the Poya were absorbed into the Mapuche world and ceased to exist as a separate people.