Cunco people

Cuncos, Juncos or Cunches is a poorly known subgroup of Huilliche people native to coastal areas of southern Chile and the nearby inland. Mostly a historic term, Cuncos are chiefly known for their long-running conflict with the Spanish during the colonial era of Chilean history. Cuncos cultivated maize, potatoes and quinoa and raised chilihueques. Their economy was complemented by travels during spring and summer to the coast where they gathered shellfish and hunted sea lions. They were said to live in large rukas. Cuncos were organized in small local chiefdoms forming a complex system intermarried families or clans with local allegiance. The details of the identity of the Cuncos is not fully clear. José Bengoa defines "Cunco" as a category of indigenous Mapuche-Huilliche people in southern Chile used by the Spanish in colonial times. The Spanish referred to them as indios cuncos. Eugenio Alcamán cautions that the term "Cunco" in Spanish documents may not correspond to an ethnic group since they were defined, like other denominations for indigenous groups, chiefly on the basis of the territory they inhabited. Ximena Urbina stresses that the differences between the southern Mapuche groups are poorly known but that their customs and language appear to have been the same. The Cuncos, she claims, are ethnically and culturally significantly more distant from the Araucanian Mapuche than neighboring (non-Cunco) Huilliches. Ximena Urbina notes that the core group of the Cuncos distinguished themselves from the nearby Huilliches of the plains and the southern Cuncos of Maullín and Chiloé Archipelago by their staunch resistance to Spanish rule. That the Cuncos were a distinct group is also shown, according to Ximena Urbina, by the fact that the colonial Spanish also considered them the most barbarian of the southern Mapuche groups and that the Cuncos and (non-Cunco) Huilliche considered themselves different. Jesuit Andrés Febrés mentions the Cuncos as inhabiting the area between Valdivia and Chiloé.