Chapaleufu

Chapaleufu belongs to Puelmapu, the traditional Mapuche territory east of the Andes, which reaches across much of Patagonia and the Pampas. This broad homeland joined open grassland, drier southern spaces and the mountain approaches in a single Indigenous geographic frame, and its people lived by moving across the land rather than around one contained settlement.

On the plains of the northern Pampas lived the Ranquel, or Rankülche, the "cane people". Between 1775 and 1790 a group of Pehuenche advanced from the Andes into the land they called Mamül Mapu, the "land of wood", covered with dense stands of caldén and algarrobo, and settled along the Cuarto and Colorado rivers. Joined by Puelche and Patagonian groups, they hunted and ranged widely, and for long periods allied with the Tehuelche, travelling east to the western edge of Buenos Aires province and as far as Mendoza, San Luis and Santa Fe. In 1833 Juan Manuel de Rosas led a Desert Campaign meant to destroy them. Their leader Yanquetruz put up a skilled defence, making good use of the desert terrain, and around 1834 he was succeeded by Painé Guor.