Cangapol was a Tehuelche

cacique A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...

from the area of Huilin, in the

Negro River In the English language, the term ''negro'' (or sometimes ''negress'' for a female) is a term historically used to refer to people of Black people, Black African heritage. The term ''negro'' means the color black in Spanish and Portuguese (from ...

Valley in today's

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

from 1735 to 1757.''Los padres de la laguna''
by Carlos Rodríguez.

Página 12 ''Página 12'' (sometimes stylised as ''Página/12'', ''Página, 12'' or ''Página12'') is a newspaper published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was founded on 25 May 1987 by journalist Jorge Lanata and writers Osvaldo Soriano and Alberto Eliza ...

, 22 January 2012 Born in about 1670, he was the chieftain of the

nomadic Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pa ...

Leuvuche people, who moved through a huge area from the Negro River to the Vulcan hills, today known as Tandilia hills, between the modern cities of

Tandil Tandil is the main city of the homonymous partido (department), located in Argentina, in the southeast of Buenos Aires Province, just north-northwest of Tandilia hills. The city was founded in 1823, and its name originates from the '' Piedra M ...

and

Mar del Plata Mar del Plata is a city on the coast of the Argentine Sea, Atlantic Ocean, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the seat of General Pueyrredón Partido, General Pueyrredón district. Mar del Plata is the second largest city in Buenos Aires ...

. The Leuvuches were in fact called ''Serranos'' (people from the hills) by the Spaniards. In 1751, Cangapol and his warriors expelled the

Jesuits The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

from

Laguna de los Padres Laguna de los Padres is a small lake located about 12 miles west of the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina and roughly one mile east of Sierra de los Padres' hills. The name of the lake as well as of the hills nearby has its origins in the Jesuit Fa ...

and destroyed the settlement built by them five years before. In 1753, he became an allied of the Spaniards against the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( , ) also known as Araucanians are a group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging e ...

s, who used to take profit of the Leuvuches' plunder raids north of the Salado river and then sought safe haven in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

, leaving the Leuvuches to face the Spanish retaliation alone. He died in 1757 and was succeeded by his son Nicolás.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cangapol 1670s births 1757 deaths Governorate of the Río de la Plata 18th-century indigenous leaders of the Americas