ful if the Incarial arms were ever borne beyond the river Maule.[1] Thus the southern tribes of Chile, the Promaucians, Curés, Cauques, Pencones, Araucanians, Cunches, Chilotes, Chiquilanians, Pehuenches, Puelches and Huilliches, were free from the powerful autonomy of Cuzco, and at this time primitive manners, laws and customs prevailed among them. And even with the northern tribes, the Incas had not dared to hazard the attempt to introduce their form of government, language and manners, as they were wont to do when they had conquered a new territory; so that the Spaniards found everywhere among the fifteen tribes inhabiting Chile, primitive manners, laws and usages.
We can imagine with what curiosity the invaders looked upon the natives as they wended their way southward. Here was a people who had risen above savagery and had reached the stage of settled communities, cultivating the soil, mining, and carrying on all the industries usual to semi-civilized races.
They spoke a language, which for richness of vocabulary and harmony of sound, was scarcely inferior to the cultivated Quichua of the Incas. So complete was their language that a grammar could be formed, in fact, one has been formed, and a volume would be necessary to contain its radical and compound words.
Chile, like Peru, Mexico and Central America, as the architectural remains would indicate, had once been the home of a race more highly civilized than the warring tribes with which Almagro and his followers now became acquainted. Undoubtedly the people of Chile had once been of one nation, for all the tribes
- ↑ Garcillasso says they went onward to "the valley of Chile," which has been thought to be the valley of Mapocho. By some it is thought that the river Rapel was as far as the Inca fixed his southern boundary, as there were remains there of what appeared to be an ancient Peruvian fortress.
