The Conquest of Chile is a period in Chilean history that starts with the arrival of Pedro de Valdivia in Chile in 1541 and ends with the death of Martín García Óñez de Loyola in the Battle of Curalaba in 1598, and the subsequent destruction of the Seven Cities in 1598–1604 in the Araucanía region.
This was the period of Spanish conquest of territories, founding of cities, establishment of the Captaincy General of Chile, and defeats ending its further colonial expansion southwards. The initial conflict with the Mapuche extended well beyond the conquest period becoming known as the Arauco War, and the Spanish were never able to reassert control in Araucanía south of the Bío Bío River.
Spanish conquerors entering Chile were accompanied by thousands of yanakuna from the already subdued territories of the Inca Empire as well by a few African slaves. In the first years of the period the Spanish in Chile gained a reputation of being poorly dressed (roto) among the Spanish in Peru. In fact, in Santiago, lack of clothes made some Spaniards dress in hides from dogs, cats, sea lions, and foxes.
Background Chile at the time of the Spanish arrivals
According to traditional historiography, when the Spanish first came to Central Chile the territory had been under Inca rule for about 60 years. There are however dissenting views: recent works suggest at least 130 years of Inca presence in Central Chile, and historian Osvaldo Silva posits remarkably short chronologies of direct Inca rule and military involvement. According to Silva, the last Inca push towards the south was made as late as in the early 1530s.
The main settlements of the Inca Empire in Chile lay along the Aconcagua River, Mapocho River, and the Maipo River.Bengoa 2003, pp. 37–38. Quillota, in the Aconcagua valley, was likely their foremost settlement. As it appears to be the case in the other borders of the Inca Empire, the southern border was composed of several zones: first, an inner, fully incorporated zone with mitimaes protected by a line of pukaras (fortresses) and then an outer zone with Inca pukaras scattered among allied tribes.Bengoa 2003, p. 39. This outer zone would according to historian José Bengoa have been located between the Maipo and Maule Rivers.
The largest indigenous population were the Mapuches living south of the Inca borders in the area spanning from the Itata River to Chiloé Archipelago.Otero 2006, p. 36. The Mapuche population between the Itata River and Reloncaví Sound has been estimated at 705,000–900,000 in the mid-16th century by historian José Bengoa.Bengoa 2003, p. 157. Mapuches lived in scattered hamlets, mainly along the great rivers of Southern Chile.Bengoa 2003, p. 29. All major population centres lay at the confluences of rivers.Bengoa 2003, p. 56–57. Mapuches preferred to build their houses on hilly terrain or isolated hills rather than on plains and terraces. The Mapuche people represented an unbroken culture dating back to as early as 600 to 500 BC.Bengoa 2000, pp. 16–19. Yet Mapuches had been influenced over centuries by Central Andean cultures such as Tiwanaku.Dillehay, Tom D.; Pino Quivira, Mario; Bonzani, Renée; Silva, Claudia; Wallner, Johannes; Le Quesne, Carlos (2007) Cultivated wetlands and emerging complexity in south-central Chile and long distance effects of climate change. Antiquity 81 (2007): 949–960 A cultural linkage of this sort may help explain parallels in mythological cosmologies among Mapuches, Huilliches and the peoples of the Central Andes.
Through their contact with Incan invaders Mapuches would have for the first time met people with state-level organization. Their contact with the Inca is thought to have given them a collective awareness to distinguishing between them and the invaders and uniting them into loose geopolitical units despite their lack of state organization.Bengoa 2003, p. 40.
Mapuche territory had an effective system of roads before the Spanish arrival as evidenced by the fast advances of the Spanish conquerors. According to Zavala and co-workers (2021), the widespread gold-related toponyms in Mapuche lands and early Spanish reports of gold objects, plus the easiness for the Spanish to find gold mines suggests that gold mining did occur in Pre-Hispanic Chile south of Itata River, well beyond the borders of the Inca Empire.
First Spaniards in Chile
The first Spanish subjects to enter the territory of what would become Chile were the members of the Magellan expedition that discovered the Straits of Magellan before completing the world's first circumnavigation.
The first permanent Spanish settler in Chile was Gonzalo Calvo de Barrientos who had left Peru in disrepute after a quarrel with the Pizarro brothers. The Pizarro brothers had accused Calvo de Barrientos of theft and had him cropped as punishment. Antón Cerrada joined Calvo de Barrientos in his exile.
Diego de Almagro ventured into present-day Bolivia and the Argentine Northwest in 1535. From there he crossed into Chile at the latitudes of Copiapó. Almagro's expedition was a failure as he did not find the riches he expected. Almagro's failed expedition gave the lands of Chile a bad reputation among the Spanish in Peru.
Pedro de Valdivia
Expedition to Chile
In April 1539, Francisco Pizarro authorized Pedro de Valdivia as his lieutenant governor with orders to conquer Chile. That did not include monetary aid, which he had to procure on his own. Valdivia did so, in association with the merchant Francisco Martínez Vegaso, captain Alonso de Monroy, and Pedro Sanchez de la Hoz. Sanchez was the longtime secretary to Pizarro, who had returned from Spain with authorization from the king to explore the territories south of the Viceroyalty of Peru to the Strait of Magellan, also granting Valdivia the title of governor over lands taken from the indigenous people. This was the last campaign for the Spanish in Chile.
Valdivia came to the Valley of Copiapo and took possession in the name of the King of Spain and named it Nueva Extremadura, for his Spanish homeland of Extremadura. Arriving in central Chile, Pedro de Valdivia was confronted by the toqui Michimalonco, who a couple of years before had expelled the Incas from the northern parts of the Mapuche lands. The Spanish and Mapuche faced each other in the Battle of Mapocho, in which Valdivia was victorious. Michimalonco decided to make a tactical retreat to gather more contingents and to expel the Spanish invaders with a surprise attack, but the Spanish learnt of this accumulation of forces and decided to head for where the Mapuche were accumulating for their surprise attack and at the Battle of Chillox, Michimalonco was defeated again.
The resounding victory left Pedro de Valdivia confident. On February 12, 1541, he founded the city of Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura on Huelen hill (present-day Santa Lucia Hill). After a few months of settlement, Pedro de Valdivia gathered his forces and went directly to attack the fortress of Michimalonco in Paidahuén, leading to the battle of Paidahuén where the Mapuches were completely defeated and Michimalonco taken prisoner. To obtain his freedom, Michimalonco offered the Spanish the ownership of the Marga Marga gold pans, belonging to Michimalonco since his expulsion of the Incas. With this, Michimalonco and his imprisoned men were released and Michimalonco set some of his vassals to work for the Spanish in their exploitation of the gold.
Governor Valdivia had rejected the position and titles due him while Pizarro was alive, as it could have been seen as an act of treason. He accepted the titles after the death of Francisco Pizarro. Pedro de Valdivia was named Governor and Captain-General of the Captaincy General of Chile on June 11, 1541. He was the first Governor of Chile.
For long time Valdivia was preoccupied about other Spanish conquistadors disputing him what he saw as his domains. As long as he did not have a royal assignment this could very much happen. The Strait of Magellan was important in Valdivia's design for the Conquest of Chile, as he perceived it was part of his Chilean territory albeit he never reached so far south.
Valdivia organized the first distribution of encomiendas and of indigenous peoples among the Spanish immigrants in Santiago. The Chilean region was not as rich in minerals as Peru, so the indigenous peoples were forced to work on construction projects and placer gold mining. After a time of exploitation of the gold, Trangolonco, Michimalonco's brother, revolted and defeated the Spaniards in Marga Marga and destroyed the Spanish settlement, then defeated the Spanish in Concón and burned a ship under construction that was in the Bay, only a Spaniard and a slave escaped from the place. As ambassador, Trangolonco addressed all the indigenous chiefs of the Cachapoal, Maipo and Mapocho valleys to send their contingents and join Michimalonco, so that, just as he did with the Incas, he could expel the Spanish from Araucanía. This action managed to gather around 16,000 warriors.
On September 11, 1541, Michimalonco attacked the Spanish and carried out the Destruction of Santiago, with only a handful of Spaniards barely surviving. Then Michimalonco applied the “empty war” which consisted of not giving the Spaniards any type of food or supplies so that they could go back to Peru. The Spanish barely resisted and there were a series of skirmishes between Spanish and Mapuche forces.
After a large number of confrontations between the hosts of Valdivia and those of Michimalonco, at the end of 1543 the Spanish managed to finish controlling the valleys of Cachapoal, Maipo and Aconcagua with the conquest by Pedro de Valdivia of three forts that Michimalonco maintained in the Andean mountain range of the Aconcagua River, which caused the withdrawal of Michimalonco's forces towards the north.
In 1544 Michimalonco headed to the Limarí River valley to cut off land communications between Chile and Peru for the Spanish. Michimalonco became strong in this sector with its Mapuche contingent added to the contingent of its Diaguita allies. After some victories against the Spanish advances, Pedro de Valdivia was forced to command his army himself and go to sustain the battle of Limarí, where the Mapuche-Diaguita hosts were defeated. Then Valdivia commanded Juan Bohon to found the city of La Serena in 1544 to guarantee that communications with Peru by land would not be interrupted again. The Juan Bautista Pastene expedition ventured to unexplored southern Chile in 1544. Arriving at the Bio-Bio River, started the Arauco War with the Mapuche people. The epic poem La Araucana (1576) by Alonso de Ercilla describes the Spanish viewpoint.
The Spanish won several battles, such as the Andalien battle, and Penco battle in 1550. The victories allowed Valdiva to found cities on the Mapuche homelands, such as Concepcion in 1550, La Imperial, Valdivia, and Villarrica in 1552, and Los Confines in 1553.
According to Pedro de Valdivia the Mapuche identified the Spanish as "ingas", meaning Incas, a word that stuck is now known under the form wingka meaning new-Inca. At the time of the initial contact Mapuches called horses "hueque ingas" in reference to the hueque according to Valdivia's letter to the Emperor.