How was Santiago de Chile founded, and what was the Mapuche war?
Santiago de Chile and the Mapuche war
La fundación de Santiago y la guerra de Arauco
12 February 1541–25 December 1553. Pedro de Valdivia, a veteran of the Italian wars, left Cusco in January 1540 with Pizarro's licence and on 12 February 1541 founded Santiago in the Mapocho…
Where: Chile
What happened
Pedro de Valdivia, a veteran of the Italian wars, left Cusco in January 1540 with Pizarro's licence and on 12 February 1541 founded Santiago in the Mapocho valley, with the first town council of Chile. The city was burned in an Indigenous attack that September and rebuilt. Valdivia pushed south, founding La Serena, Concepción, Valdivia and Villarrica and in 1551 the forts of Arauco, Tucapel and Purén in Mapuche country. The Mapuche answered under Lautaro, a young man who had been Valdivia's groom and knew Spanish tactics: at Tucapel on 25 December 1553 they captured and killed the governor. Lautaro was killed in 1557, but the Guerra de Arauco went on for generations and the Biobío river stayed a frontier; the Mapuche were never conquered by Spain.
Say it
Los mapuches nunca fueron conquistados por España.
The Mapuche were never conquered by Spain.
Why it matters
Chile's Spanish was shaped on a military frontier, and the Mapuche resistance, sung by Ercilla in La Araucana, is part of Chilean identity; Mapudungun gave Spanish words like 'poncho' and 'guata'.
Read about it
Connected
- Cajamarca: Pizarro captures Atahualpa (16 November 1532)
- After: San Martín crosses the Andes
Sources
- Pedro de Valdivia (ca. 1500-1553) — Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile
- El toqui Lautaro (ca. 1534-1557) — Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile