The Picunche (a Mapudungun word meaning "North People"), also referred to as ''picones'' by the Spanish, were a Mapudungun-speaking people living to the north of the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who s ...

s or Araucanians (a name given to those Mapuche living between the Itata and Toltén rivers) and south of the Choapa River and the Diaguitas. Until the Conquest of Chile the Itata was the natural limit between the

, located to the south, and Picunche, to the north. During the Inca attempt to conquer Chile the southern Picunche peoples that successfully resisted them were later known as the Promaucaes. The Picunche living north of the Promaucaes were called ''Quillotanes'' (those living in the Aconcagua River valley north to the Choapa) and '' Mapochoes'' (those living in the Maipo River basin) by the Spanish, and were part of the

Inca Empire The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, ( Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The adm ...

at the time when the first Spaniards arrived in Chile. Among the peoples the Spanish called the Promaucaes, the people of the Rapel River valley were particularly called by this name by the Spanish.Juan Ignacio Molina, Compendio de la historia civil del reyno de Chile, pg. 9. Those of the Mataquito River valley were called the ''Cures''. The people in the Maule River valley and to the south were distinguished as ''Maules'' and those to the south of the Maules and north of the Itata were known as ''Cauqui'' by the Inca and '' Cauquenes'' by the Spanish and that gave their name to Cauquenes River. They did not survive as a separate society into the present day, because of a general population decline and having been absorbed into the general Chilean population during the colonial period. The indigenous Picunche disappeared by a process of mestizaje by gradually abandoning their villages ('' pueblo de indios'') to settle in nearby Spanish haciendas. There Picunches mingled with disparate indigenous peoples brought in from Araucanía (

), Chiloé ( Huilliche, Cunco, Chono, Poyas) and Cuyo ( HuarpeVillalobos ''et al''. 1974, pp. 166–170.). Few in numbers, disconnected from their ancestral lands and diluted by mestizaje the Picunche and their descendants lost their indigenous identity. Pueblos indigenas de Chile

Agriculture

The Picunches' primary crops consisted of corn and potatoes, and they lived in thatched-roof adobe houses.

References

Mapuche groups Society of Chile Ethnic groups in Chile History of Chile Indigenous peoples in Chile Pre-Columbian cultures {{Chile-stub