Tehuelche People

The Tehuelche people, also called the Aónikenk, are an indigenous people from eastern Patagonia in South America. In the 18th and 19th centuries the Tehuelche were influenced by Mapuche people, and many adopted a horseriding lifestyle. Once a nomadic people the lands of the Tehuelche were colonized in the 19th century by Argentina and Chile gradually disrupting their traditional economies. The establishment of large sheep farming estates in Patagonia was particularly detrimental to the Tehuelche. Contact with outsiders also brought in infectious diseases ushering deadly epidemics among Tehuelche tribes. Most existing members of the group currently reside the in cities and towns of Argentine Patagonia.

The name "Tehuelche complex" has been used by researchers in a broad sense to group together indigenous peoples from Patagonia and the Pampas. Several specialists, missionaries and travelers have proposed grouping them together on account of the similarities in their cultural traits, geographic vicinity and languages, even though the languages they spoke amongst themselves were not related to each other and their geographic distributions were extensive.

The name Tehuelche

According to the historian Antonio Pigafetta from Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1520, he referred to the indigenous people he came across in the San Julian Bay as the "Patagoni." In 1535 the historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés explained in his ''Historia general y natural de las Indias'' (General and Natural History of the Indies), that... "We Spaniards call them the Patagones for their big feet," which the historian Francisco López de Gómara agreed with in 1552. Based on these accounts, the first name the Spanish used to refer to the Tehuelche people was the Patagones. However, some researchers speculate, without verifiable bases, that Magellan could have been inspired by the dog-headed monster from the 1512 novel ''Primaleón'' known as "Pathogan."

According to the most widespread view, the word Tehuelche comes from the Mapuche term chewel che, which would mean "brave people," "rugged people," or "barren land people." Another version suggests that it could be derived from one of their factions, the Tueshens, plus the Mapuche word "che" meaning ‘people’ or ‘peoples.’

Classifications

The classification of indigenous groups that lived in the Pampas and Patagonia is confusing due to the different terms that were used to refer to the native population groups from these regions. There are various causes that have prevented the establishment of one unique and complete classification. Among these circumstances, the extinction of some of these groups, coupled with the vast amount of land on which these groups were distributed, which inhibited Spanish explorers who first identified certain Tehuelche peoples from making contact with all the groups. In other cases, the seasonal migrations that they practiced which involved traveling long distances made Europeans that observed them overestimate the number of people from a group or the distribution range of a language. In conjunction with all of these factors, the intrusion of the Mapuches, or Araucans, from the west deeply transformed their cultural reality, intermixing and absorbing ethnic groups from the Pampas and central and North of Patagonia, producing the Araucanization of a large part of the ancient inhabitants. Finally, the subsequent Conquest of the Desert carried out by the Argentine Army led to the near extinction of these indigenous communities. This historic overview has led to the disagreement among researchers.

In the 19th century, explorers such as Ramón Lista and George Chaworth Musters named them "tsóneka", "tsónik" or "chonik". The majority of experts agree that the Chubut river separated the two largest subdivisions: the "Southern Tehuelche" and "Northern Tehuelche." The first subdivision stretched towards the south to the Strait of Magellan, whereas the second group extended towards the north to the Colorado River (Argentina) and Rio Negro (Argentina). The presence, or lack thereof, Tehuelche people in the Pampas has led to disagreements among researchers, who have not agreed on the existence of a separate subdivision called the ‘Pampas,’ nor what their relationship and borders were with the Mapuches.

According to Thomas Falkner

One of the primary classifications was from English Jesuit Thomas Falkner in his 1774 work ''A description of Patagonia and the adjoining parts of South America'', which introduced the ethnic name ‘Het peoples’ for the Puelche people, which included the Tehuelche:

The Puelches, or Eastern Peoples (...) They bear different denominations, according to the situation of their respective countries, of because they were originally of different nations. Those toward the north are called Taluhets; to the west and south of these are the Diuihets; to the south east, the Chechehets; and to the south of these last is the country of the Tehuelhets (...)

For Falkner the "Tehuelhets" or "Patagones" were the Tehuelche people who lived from the banks of the Rio Negro to the Strait of Magellan:

The Tehuelhets, who in Europe are known by the name of Patagons, have been, through ignorance of their idiom, called Tehuelchus; for chu signifies country of abode, and not people; which is expressed by the word het, and, more to the south, by the word kunnee or kunny. These and the Chechehets are known to the Spaniards by the name of Serranos, or Mountaineers. They are split into a great many subdivisions, as the Leuvuches, or People of the River, and Calille-Het, or People of the Mountains; amongst whom are the Chulilau-cunnees, Sehuau-cunnees, and Yacana-cunnees. All these, except those of the River, are called by the Moluches, Vucha-Huilliches.

According to Milcíades Vignati

In 1936 Milcíades Vignati published ''Las culturas indígenas de la Pampa y Las culturas indígenas de la Patagonia'' (The Indigenous Cultures of the Pampas and the Indigenous Cultures of Patagonia) in which he proposed that between the 16th and 19th centuries the "Gününa-küne" or "Tuelches" lived from the southern half of the province of Rio Negro to the boundary between the present Chubut and Santa Cruz provinces. The "Serranos" were to the North of them and the "Aônükün'k" or "Patagones" were located to the South. These peoples were divided between three groups: the "Peénken" (people of the North), the "Háunikenk" (people of the South), and the "Aónikenk" (the people of the West).

According to Federico Escalada

In his 1949 piece ''El complejo tehuelche. Estudio de etnografía patagónica'' (The Tehuelche Complex. An Ethnographic study of Patagonians), the military doctor Federico A. Escalada classified the Tehuelche people from historic periods, on the basis of the ''Estudio de la realidad humana y de la bibliografía'' (Study of Human Reality and Bibliography), into five simple categories, each with their own language derived from a mother language called "Ken." He grouped them together geographically into "dry land" and "islanders," denying the existence of a separate "Pampa" group.

The names used by Escalada, which he obtained from Mapuche-speaking informants, were:
* Dry land Tehuelche people:
**"Guénena-kéne": the group he considered the northern component of the Tehuelche complex. It is evident that the group, historically, lived primarily along the main rivers of North Patagonia and extended through the northern territories of Chubut, up to Río Negro, constantly entering in to the south of the present Buenos Aires Province and the southeastern region of La Pampa Province. The name Guénena-kéne was provided to Escalada in 1945 by Chief Ciriaco Chaquilla from the Chubut Panyanieyo area, who identified himself as a member of the "Pampa Verdadero". He spoke the Puelche language, which was used by the Guénena-kéne people. Escalada's classification of the Guénena-kéne people coincided with other individuals who encountered the same group such as: Guillermo Cox, a British traveler who traveled through the south of Neuquén in 1863 and referred to the group as the "Northern Tehuelche people;" Juan Federico Hunziker, a Swiss missionary who was in Patagonia in 1864 and referred to the Guénena-kéne as the "Genacin;" Francisco Pascasio Moreno who in 1876 called them the "Gennaken;" and Tomás Harrington, a rural teacher who went through Chubut between 1911 and 1935 and compiled a vocabulary which he published in 1946 stating that the indigenous peoples who informed him about their almost dead language referred to themselves as "Gününa küne." In combination with other neighboring groups the Guénena-kéne were generally referred to as the Puelches (i.e. ‘Eastern’) by the Mapuches, a name which Alcide d’Orbigny also gave them in his ''Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale'' (1826–1833). The Salesian missionary Doménico Milanesio named the Guénena-kéne the "Pampas" in his 1898 vocabulary, published in 1915. In 1922, doctor and German ethnologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, who traveled through Argentina circa 1900, called them the "Agününa künnü."
**"Aóni-kénk": The southern component of the Tehuelche complex, located from the Magellan Strait up to the Chubut River in Argentina and the Palena province in Chile. Escalada called their language Aonika áish, the Tehuelche language. He obtained the name from his informant Agustina Quilchaman de Manquel.
**"Chehuache-kénk": The western or foothill component of the Tehuelche complex, located in the valleys and foothills of the Andean Mountains between General Carrera Lake and Fontana Lake up to Nahuel Huapi Lake in Argentina. In Chile they were in the Andean sectors of Osorno, Llanquihue Province and the Palena Province. Their language was called Teushen. Escalada was the first to suggest they were a separate component, since researchers who identified them before him positioned them as a southern faction of the Northern Tehuelche people: the "Southern Northern Tehuelche people," who Harrington called "Chulila küne" (Cholila People).
*Island Tehuelche People, located on Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego