Welcome to the Mapuche Region. Here you will find interesting information about this Chilean Indigenous People.
The region contains four main subjects: People (History, Social Organization, environment), Language (Gramma, Vocabulary) and Customs (Spiritual World, Rituals, mythology) and Art. Use the interactive map to take an animated tour of this people´s region. The teachers and students will find contents (texts and images) to be able for Printing.
There is also a Resources section in which you will find a virtual Library with Dictionaries, Texts, Books and a complete Llinks Directory. In addition you could listen to music or watch documentaries in our Videos, Music and Storytelling sections. Finally if you have a question relating to something other than one of these topics, you can use our Search Engine or the Site Map or write to us through the Contact form. You are cordially invited invited to Subscribe our monthly Newsletter to be informed about the site and our Chilean Indigenous Cultures news.
Palin is a communal game practiced by the Mapuches aimed to strengthen friendship between a Lonko and his lof or between two communities. Although the palin is a competition, the encounter and celebration are emphasized, a good reason for avoiding physical damage. Religious ceremonies, dancing and food accompany the game.
The game is played in a large narrow field called paliwe, measuring approximately 90 to 100 meters long by 6 to 10 meters wide. It is played with a wooden or leather ball, or pali, and a 1,2 to 1,3 meters long, curved stick, called wüño.
Each team has a representative who occupies the center of the field, and who also acts as a referee. At the center, a small hole is dug, where the pali is placed. Facing the hole, each team forms a line. The lonko palife, or leaders of the teams, must take the pali out. The players, or palife, dispute the pali, trying to throw it to the opposite border line of paliwe.
Before the war against the Spaniards, the Mapuches engaged in tribal warfare, using weapons such as bow and arrows, spears, slingshots, stone balls and mace made of wood or stone, known as macanas.
The War Covenant among the different local groups was ratified in a ceremony where a black llama was sacrificed, and its blood drained. The meat was pierced with spears and arrows and it was then eaten to celebrate the alliance. The winning party either kept their enemies as slaves, or killed them. Defeated chiefs were decapitated, hanging their heads on spears. Victory was celebrated in an open field around a Canelo tree. Around this sacred tree, men and women danced covered with animal skins. They danced, ate and drank large amounts of maqui or corn beer. During the war against the Spanish Conquest, arose the Aillarewe, a more complex social organization led by a Toki, or military leader. Father Luis de Valdivia uses the term rewe to designate a local group and aillirewe, nine rewes, to refer to the wider group.
The traditional house, ruka, has a single door, open towards the east, an orientation which expresses the cosmological preference of the Mapuche for Puelmapu (Land of the East), where the deities reside. The ruka has no windows. Inside, the sleeping place is by the internal wall while in the center lies the kutral, or open hearth. Soot blackens the wall and smoke floods the Mapuche home coming out through the güllonruka, two openings on each side of the gables. In the interior there is space to store food and there are many domestic artifacts, which hang from the ceiling and wall. The most characteristic artifacts are:
- The wenku (bench), a small settle carved from a solid block of wood.
- The witral, or loom, is placed near the ruka entry. During the bad weather the witral is used indoors, and outdoors with good weather.
The smoke and the grease from cooking turn the ruka water proof, sealing the straw-made roof and, even, forming stalactites of soot. The fire is permanently lit in the center. The construction of the ruka was celebrated with the rukatun, a house building ritual with dancers wearing wooden masks known as kollón.
The family is the main focus of the Mapuche social organization.
Before of Spanish conquest, the people of the Central-South area lived in a sort of matriarchy. The sons carried the name and the totem of their mothers (the husband living with his wife family). However, by the Spanish conquest, men were already family heads, even though the children still carried their mothers' names. From then onwards change was accelerated and wives went to live with their husbands families. Since then the patriarchy and virilocal concept has predominated. The Mapuche totem was the representation of a common tribal ancestor, not a god nor a representation of a spiritual figure.
Mapuche people had no villages; they spread out, in families, the same as they do to this very day. The lof, the residential unit, recognized a common origin, together they formed a kawin, and these formed a levo. A lof was a group of families that carried the same totem. The levos celebrated democratic assemblies where the authorities were elected.
The Mapuche remote origins comes from the large Mongolian ethnic group which arrived in America 1000 BC. Later on they would have branched off from the Andean subgroup. Three hypothesis have been formulated about the Mapuche origin:
1. Menghin (1909) proposes an Amazonian origin. Similarities in culture and language with the Amazon peoples suggest a link with a tropical subgroup, which later settled in the Andes.
2. Latchman (1924) proposes that the Mapuche people crossed The Andean mountains from the other side.. As a foreign ethnic group they settled in the zone of the Bio-Bio and Toltén rivers between the Pikunche and Williche people. Due to archaeological findings, especially ceramics, this theory has been discarded: the Mapuche ceramic is a clearly influenced by the Atacameño and Diaguita people, what is confirmed by the Tirúa and Pitren ceramic findings.
3. Guevara (1925) bases on a migration from north to south. There is also archaeological and ethnographical evidence of similarity with the Tiwanaku culture.
Several theories deal with the relation between Mapudungun and other languages. According to standard classification, The Mapuche belong to the Araucano sub-family (Araucano family Chon) of the Andean group, Andean-equatorial branch. Authors as Tovar (1961) suggest that Mapudungun belongs to the type II Andean group, along with languages such as Quechua, Ayamara, Aonikenk (Tewelche), Sel´knam (ona) and Yagán.
Luisa Stark relates Mapudungun to the Maya Language.
Payne, in 1984, speaks of a kinship between Mapudungun and the languages of the Arawak family, of the equatorial group, corresponding to the Andean- equatorial branch.
The numerical system of the Mapuches is decimal and each word corresponds to a unit:
1 kiñe
2 epu
3 kíla
4 meli
5 kechu
6 kayu
7 regle
8 pura
9 aya
10 mari
100 pataka
1000 waranka
The phonetic system of Mapudungun consists of six vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ï; three semi consonants: y, w, g, and eighteen consonants: c, o, f, k, l, a, m, n, p, r, s, t, t, tr.
The pronunciation of the vowels is as follows:
a is similar to the English a as in man
e is similar to the English e as in end
i is similar to the English i as in pin
o is similar to the English o as in cold
u is similar to the English oo as in moon
The sixth vowel ï can be pronounced like a u, but with the lips place in an e position.
The mapuche verbs have the particularity of expressing several people interacting among themselves, for example: teli-n: I looked, leli-e-n: you looked at me.
The textiles of the Mapuche people are of prehispanic origin and it is mainly the women who practice this activity.
The spinning is done with a Kuilo (spindle) and the weaving is done on a Witral or vertical loom for large cloth. There are different types of creations in Mapuche textiles, such as: ponchos, rugs, blankets and bags.
In the origins of the textiles, a story of the oral Mapuche tradition says like this:
«One day, a young girl washed wheat in the river, when an old man came and kidnapped her; taking her to his lands. The old man married the young girl. They say he told her: "I´m going to Argentina, when I come back, I want all this wool knitted" The man left and the young girl stayed crying ¡ She didn´t known how to knitt! Crying next to the fireplace when the Choñoiwe Kuze, the old fire spoke to her: "You dont have to get sou upset, I´ll call the Lalen Kuze to help you". In a while she appeard, crawling down the fire place the Old Spider, she told the girl: "Do it like I do, watch me and you´ll learn how to knitt".
The days passed, when the man arrived, ther wool was knitted. Lalen Kuze when every night an helped the young girl, finishing both the work».
In this story whe can appreciate like a part of the textile activity is related with the sacred field and parrt of the religious sence of the Mapuche. Wisdom is a gift given by Chao Ngechen / God, to the human, being all life expressions supported by him.
This bond is represented by two femenin tutelary deitys, the "Old Fire" and the "Old Spider", that give this knowledgment to the young lady.
Mapuche Clothing
The traditional dress for a woman is the Chamal or Kepal; a square cloth, wrapped around the body leaving the shoulder naked, the waistband or Trarihue, which is tied to the waist; and the Ikulla, a black shawl with blue edges. The man wears black pants called Chiripa and the Makuñ, a finely woven poncho, which may have a simple decoration or rows of figures.
<< My mom told us that before, they would put on the Mapuche woman a small wool that is found in a tree - I think it is Hualle -, i i´s a special wool, it is on the mountains; but only the lucky one finds it, it is a real thin wool. When babies, the Mapuche girls would wrap their wrist, then they would be like spiders to knitt or weave, they would become experts in knitting. I´d tell my mom why wouldnt she look one for me, why did she not get me one when I was a baby. I dream that I was gonna weave some day; but I thought I would be slower because she didn´t put the thin wool on my wrist. She would tell me: << When big, it is harder, being a small baby is good, you have to look for it in the hills, it is a little hard; but you find it >>.
(Margarita Painequeo, Temuco, 1988).
Wood carving is one of the most traditional art manifestations in the mapuche territory. This technique took control of the utensils of old inhabitants of these lands, using for it the wood of the rich forests of the sector.
Today it is continued working in the same way, with the axe and chip axe carving the wood but creating new products, some functional such as plates, spoons and buckets, sources, trays and others, in those use and decoration invent hens dish, ducks and others.
They made utensils, plates, spoons, ritual masks.
This kind of handcraftship transits between the domestic function and the possesion of a ritual meaning, for example, the masks represent the Kollom playing a specific rol in the Nguillatun ceremony.
The Rehue and the Chemamull are carved trunks that finish in wide heads. The ritual mask, the Kollon, is finished with horsehair.