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 ...
Valcheta is one of the oldest settlements in Río Negro Province. On 5 October 1833, an advance column of the left-flank Rosa's Desert Campaign, under Sergeant Major Leandro Ibáñez, fought a skirmish with a native tribe under Cayupán who was camped near the local creek.
Before that time, the locality was called "río Chiquito" (Spanish ''for small river'') and that is how it was shown in maps of the time, among them the one published by Félix de Azara. The place was a local ground for the Gennakenk tribe before 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 ...
invasion of the 19th Century.
The Argentine army built a small fort named "de Roa" at the site in 1883. From that date on European immigration mainly by
Spaniards
Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance-speaking ethnic group native to the Iberian Peninsula, primarily associated with the modern nation-state of Spain. Genetically and ethnolinguistically, Spaniards belong to the broader Southern a ...
and
Italians
Italians (, ) are a European peoples, European ethnic group native to the Italian geographical region. Italians share a common Italian culture, culture, History of Italy, history, Cultural heritage, ancestry and Italian language, language. ...
, colonized the region, with the town officially founded on 19 June 1889.
Name
Valcheta's site shows up in old maps also written as ''Balcheta'', ''Balchitas'', ''Valchitas''. Nonetheless, in the native Gennakenk language, the letter "v" did not exist which may have led to a misspelling in the official reports from the late 19th Century.
There are differing accounts on the meaning of the name. The most credible is the one suggested by anthropologist Rodolfo Casamiquela, meaning "creek that overflows", referring to the frequent flooding in the valley before Europeans built canals.
Geography
Valcheta, in the valley of the creek of the same name, is an