Calfucurá (from

Mapudungun Mapuche ( , ; from 'land' and 'people', meaning 'the people of the land') or Mapudungun (from 'land' and 'speak, speech', meaning 'the speech of the land'; also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu) is either a language isolate or member of the s ...

Kallfükura, 'blue stone'; from kallfü, 'blue', and kura, 'stone') also known as Juan Calfucurá or Cufulcurá (b. late 1770s; d. 1873), was a leading

Mapuche The Mapuche ( , ) also known as Araucanians are a group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging e ...

lonco and military figure in

Patagonia Patagonia () is a geographical region that includes parts of Argentina and Chile at the southern end of South America. The region includes the southern section of the Andes mountain chain with lakes, fjords, temperate rainforests, and glaciers ...

in the 19th century. He crossed the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

from Araucania to the

Pampas The Pampas (; from Quechua 'plain'), also known as the Pampas Plain, are fertile South American low grasslands that cover more than and include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba; all o ...

around 1830 after a call from the governor of

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

Juan Manuel de Rosas Juan Manuel José Domingo Ortiz de Rozas y López de Osornio (30 March 1793 – 14 March 1877), nicknamed "Restorer of the Laws", was an Argentine politician and army officer who ruled Buenos Aires Province and briefly the Argentine Confedera ...

, to fight the Boroanos tribe. Calfucurá succeeded in ending the military power of the Boroanos when he massacred a large part of them in 1834 during a meeting for trade. After the defeat of the Boroanos, Calfucurá settled in the Salinas Grandes area along with several other indigenous groups. He built a network of power that extended into the

Araucanía Region The Araucanía ( ), La Araucanía Region ( ) is one of Chile's 16 first-order administrative divisions, and comprises two provinces: Malleco in the north and Cautín in the south. Its capital and largest city is Temuco; other important cities ...

as well as the southern frontier region of the Argentine Pampas, based on the strategic redistribution of goods, the development of kinship ties, and commercial relations. At the same time, he entered into diplomatic relations with both the

State of Buenos Aires The State of Buenos Aires () was a secessionist republic resulting from the overthrow of the Argentine Confederation government in the Province of Buenos Aires on 11 September 1852. The State of Buenos Aires was never explicitly recognized b ...

and the

Argentine Confederation The Argentine Confederation (Spanish: ''Confederación Argentina'') was the last predecessor state of modern Argentina; its name is still one of the official names of the country according to the Argentine Constitution, Article 35. It was the nam ...

. In 1859 he attacked

Bahía Blanca Bahía Blanca (; English: ''White Bay''), colloquially referred to by its own local inhabitants as simply Bahía, is a city in the Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires province of Argentina, centered on the northwestern end of the eponymous Blanc ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

with 3,000 warriors. The decision of planning and executing the Conquest of the Desert was probably triggered by the 1872 assault of Calfucurá and his 6,000 followers on the cities of General Alvear, Veinticinco de Mayo and Nueve de Julio, where 300 '' criollos'' were killed, and 200,000 heads of cattle taken.

The Blue Stone

The name Calfucurá means 'blue stone' in the Mapuche language. Juan Calfucurá was given this name because of a blue stone he found as a boy. He kept and venerated the stone for the rest of his life. Juan Calfucurá's grandson Alfredo Namuncurá (meaning 'foot of stone') is attributed this statement about the stone:

"The most precious thing that we still keep as a family in our tribe is the celebrated Blue Stone found by my grandfather Calfucurá on the shores of a lake in Chile in his youth. This encounter was at the root of his name, Calfucurá, which means blue stone. He always carried it with him, believing that it held the destiny and the future of himself and his entire tribe. This Blue Stone was inherited by my deceased father Manuel Namuncurá ">Manuel_Namuncurá.html" ;"title="Manuel Namuncurá">Manuel Namuncurá and as long as we kept it with veneration and respect, we were lucky and prosperous. I inherited it after the death of my brother Julián, when I took command of the tribe. Now we keep it in a chest with [my father] the colonel's two swords."

The Blue Stone is the source of many legends. Some believe it was given to Juan Calfucurá by a spirit, and that the stone made him invincible. It's said that his enemies feared it.

References

18th-century Mapuche people 19th-century Mapuche people 1873 deaths Conquest of the Desert 19th-century indigenous leaders of the Americas People from Araucanía Region 1770s births Lonkos {{chile-bio-stub