Lule

The Lule were an Indigenous people of the Gran Chaco, first met in what is now Salta Province in Argentina. They lived mainly by hunting and gathering but also planted maize, potatoes and quinoa, and the villages west of Salta kept llamas. Their language 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 and in 1715 moved to San Esteban de Miraflores on the Salado River. The mission was sacked in 1728 and rebuilt in 1752, and passed to the Franciscans after the Jesuits were expelled in 1768.