ARAUCANIAN, a linguistic stock of South American Indians, comprising a number of different tribes, originally occu pying a considerable area in central Chile. Some have regarded them as allied to the tribes of the Argentine Pampas, and there fore as invaders and immigrants in Chile, where the true Araucanians have prob ably long been residents, being quite dis tinct from the nomadic Puelchean (q.v.) tribes of the Pampas. Considerable in vasions of the latter probably occurred in pre-Spanish times, when the originally sedentary Araucanian group was divided into two parts, the Picunche north of the Maule river, and the Huil liche from the Tolten river south to Chiloe. The newcomers who occupied the region in between, mixed with the older Arau canians and ultimately adopted their speech, although retaining something of their old nomad culture. They stopped the Inca conquest at the Maule, and successfully opposed the full strength of the Spanish forces for two hundred years—a struggle immor talized in Ercilla's epic poem entitled "La Araucana." Under Spanish pressure considerable bodies of Araucanians moved east ward across the Andes into the Pampas, where since the latter part of the 16th and particularly in the 18th and early 19th cen turies they occupied considerable areas.
The Araucanians were a sedentary, agricultural and hunting folk, living in numerous small villages, in houses of poles and thatch. In Araucania proper, these were small, for single fami lies; elsewhere large and communal. Their clothing was of wool or skins, and generally rather meagre. They made considerable use of body painting but not of tattooing. The bow, spear and club (the club often flattened and bent at the end) were their main weapons, and hides or occasionally united strips of whale bone, together with skin shields served for body armour and protection. Reed and pole balsas or rafts were in use for coast wise navigation, while toward the south, three-plank boats, called dalcas with rudimentary sails, were known. The totemic clan was the basis of their social organization, the clan chiefs being the normal leaders of the rather scattered population. The elab orate and centralized form of government, with tribal chiefs and "national" leaders was a post-Spanish development. The Arau canians had no religious structures or temples, but had a well developed religious ritual, centred in the veneration of the clan an cestors and the clan totems, puberty rites and victory in war. In the last mentioned case, human sacrifices occurred, with ritual cannibalism. The dead were normally buried, either in heavy, canoe-shaped wooden coffins, or in stone Gists. Persons dying away from home were cremated.
See R. E. Latcham, La organization social y las creencias religiosas de los antiguos Araucanos (Pub. Museo de Etnologia y Antropologia de Chile vol. iii., pp. 245-868) ; J. T. Medina, L,os Aborijenes de Chile (Santiago, 1882) .