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 the Mapuche people, and many adopted the domestic use of horses.
Once a nomadic people, the Tehuelche struggled as their lands were colonized in the 19th century by Argentina and Chile, which gradually disrupted their traditional economies. The colonial establishment of large sheep farming estates in Patagonia was particularly detrimental to the Tehuelche. Contact with ethnic European outsiders also introduced new infectious diseases, which caused deadly epidemics among Tehuelche tribes as they lacked acquired immunity. Today most Tehuelche reside 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 because of the similarities in their cultural traits, geographic vicinity and languages. But the languages they spoke amongst themselves were not related to each other and the peoples were widely distributed geographically.
Name 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 (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:
or Falkner the "Tehuelhets" or "Patagones" were the Tehuelche people who lived from the banks of the Rio Negro to the Strait of Magellan:
According to Milcíades Vignati In 1936 Milcíades Vignati published (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 (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 (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 (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: "Selkʼnam": The Selkʼnam people, who lived on the northern steppe region of the island. "Man(e)kʼenk": The Haush, an intermixed group of Selkʼnam with non-Patagonian Yaghan people. They lived in the Mitre Peninsula on the Eastern part of the island.
According to Rodolfo Casamiquela Argentine historian and paleontologist Rodolfo Casamiquela reviewed Escalada's classifications in his books (Rectifications and ratifications towards a definitive interpretation of the ethnological panorama of Patagonia and the adjacent Northern area) (1965); (A new ethnological panorama of the Pan-Pampas and adjacent Patagonian area) (1969); and (Outline of an ethnology of the Río Negro province) (1985), reaffirming the existence of a Tehuelche complex.
Casamiquela proposed the following classification for the continental area circa 1700: "Southern Southern Tehuelche people": Or "Aónik'enk" (which in their language means "southern"), also called "Aonik" or "Ch'oonükü". Their distribution was from the Strait of Magellan to the Santa Cruz River and they were nomadic hunters. Their language was "Aonek'o 'a'jen". "Northern Southern Tehuelche people" or "Mech'arn": Their epicenter was in the Chico and Chalía river areas in Santa Cruz. Their language was "Téwsün". Casamiquela says they were similar to the southerners and they were absorbed by their southern neighborhoods and the Mapuches. "Southern Northern Tehuelche people": Also called "Pampas" and "mountain-dwellers" by historians from Buenos Aires (who lived in the mountains of the Tandilia system and the Sierra de la Ventana). They lived between the Chubut river and Río Negro and Río Limay. Those who lived in the center or east of the Chubut and Río Negro provinces called themselves "Günün a künna" or "Gününa këna" (the excellent people). Those who lived in the foothill region north of the Chubut river and west of the Río Negro were called "Chüwach a künna" or "Chëwach a këna" ("People on the edge of the mountains). The common language to both groups was "Gününa iájech". Although culturally similar to the southern Tehuelche people, they differed from them because they were Pampian without mixing with Fuegians. "Northern Northern Tehuelche people": The "Puelches" from north of Neuquén and the group called "Querandí" by the Guaraní people belong to this group. At the time of the Spanish arrival in the Pampas, these nomadic Pampian hunters were based in Mendoza Province, and extended in to the south of Córdoba Province and San Luis Province, to almost all of current Buenos Aires Province and the city of Buenos Aires. The Querandí disappeared as a Tehuelche faction, mixing in colonial times with other groups.
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