This Incurable Evil Mapuche Resistance to Spanish Enslavement, 1598–1687 by Eugene C. Berger

Author:Eugene C. Berger
Format: epub

FIGURE 4.1. Game of chueca (palín), from Alonso de Ovalle’s Historica Relación, 1646.

Tesillo also described both the quantity and quality of amigos, detailing how they performed bravely in rescuing captives held by indios de guerra, while also adding that they made up the bulk of the Army of Arauco. In one particular campaign, only thirty Spanish harquebusiers accompanied a column of two hundred indio amigo cavalrymen.¹⁸ In a battle against Querepoante the following year, five hundred indios amigos accompanied the Spanish against an estimated seven thousand indios de guerra. Obviously outnumbered, the Spanish and indios amigos could not prevent the counterattack where Querepoante’s troops burned the “ranches” belonging to indio amigo leader Catumalo.¹⁹

Indios amigos also served the Spanish in their conflict with European enemies. Chile never was able to do much to prevent Dutch or English incursions into the Spanish Pacific, but they did try to solicit help from indios amigos in protecting their coast. For example, Cristobal Talgui Pillán, an indio amigo scout in the 1670s, had reported that the English had populated two islands 160 leagues from Chiloé, “toward the Magellan Strait.” Talgui Pillán added that the English had two forts, artillery, sheep, and goats; had planted wheat; and were building “a large ship whose wood was brought by Indians loyal to them.”²⁰ On one island, the English were said to have built a stone wall and on the other a mill.²¹

Thus, there would be no Army of Arauco without indios amigos. By allying with the Spanish, indios amigos risked banishment by their own Mapuche neighbors, counterattacks by Mapuche indios de guerra, and displacement from their families as they accompanied the Spanish on campaigns. An important question therefore becomes: how did the indios amigos benefit? For the most part, the answer seems to be a sense of stability. In many of the peace agreements creating their indio amigo status, the Spanish promised that they would not repartir (resettle) the amigos.²² For their part, the indios amigos would be required to move closer to Spanish forts and serve as a buffer against the indios de guerra. So this was a resettlement of sorts, but with the Mapuche and Huilliche deciding whether and when to approach Spanish forts.

This settlement of allies near forts represented “frontier policy on the cheap” and was successful enough in Chile for the Spanish to try it in other colonies. Sending indios amigos to make raids or trade missions farther into the Araucanía would prevent the need for expensive major offensives that had proved unsuccessful or even counterproductive.²³ This settlement policy represented an important post-1598 change, as now forts would not be isolated outposts well south of the Bío-Bío; instead, a new fort would only go up if adjacent territory had been pacified. Viceroy Francisco de Borja y Aragón expressed the strategy as way to estrechar (stretch out, put pressure on) indios de guerra by adding new settlements south of the Bío-Bío:²⁴: “It wasn’t the fort that sheltered the amigos, but the amigos who came to protect the fort.

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