The Ranquel or Rankülche are an indigenous tribe from the northern part of

La Pampa Province La Pampa () is a sparsely populated province of Argentina, located in the Pampas in the center of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise San Luis, Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Río Negro, Neuquén and Mendoza. History In ...

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 ...

, in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

.Tapia, Alicia Haydée
"Archaeological Perspectives on the Ranquel Chiefdoms in the North of the Dry Pampas, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Abstract."
''International Journal of Historical Archaeology.'' (retrieved 5 July 2011) With Puelche,

Pehuenche Pehuenche (or Pewenche) are an Indigenous people of South America. They live in the Andes, primarily in present-day south central Chile and adjacent Argentina. Their name derives from their dependence for food on the seeds of the ''Araucaria ar ...

and also Patagones from the Günün-a-Küna group origins, they were conquered by the

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 ...

Name

The name ''Ranquel'' is the Spanish name for their own name of Rankülche: ''rankül'' -cane-, ''che'' -man, people- in

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 ...

; that is to say "cane-people"

History

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Ranquel controlled two chiefdoms in Argentina. Between 1775-1790 a group of Pehuenche advanced from the side of 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 ...

mountains east to the territory they called ''Mamül Mapu'' (''mamül'': kindling, woods; ''mapu'': land, territory) as it was covered by dense woods of '' Prosopis caldenia'', ''

Prosopis nigra ''Neltuma nigra'' (formerly ''Prosopis nigra'') is a South American leguminous tree species that inhabits the Gran Chaco ecoregion (in particular, the transition zone between the Wet Chaco and the Southern Chaco), in Argentina and Paraguay. It ...

'', and ''

Geoffroea decorticans ''Geoffroea decorticans'', the chañar, kumbaru, or Chilean palo verde (green wood), is a small deciduous tree, up to 8 meters (25 ft) tall that inhabits most arid forests (montes or espinales) of southern South America. The chañar is cold ...

''. They settled along the Cuarto and

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

rivers, from the south of today's Argentine provinces of San Luis, Córdoba, to the south of La Pampa. They were hunters, nomads and during a good part of the 19th century they had an alliance with the

Tehuelche people The Tehuelche people, also called the Aónikenk, are an Indigenous people from eastern Patagonia in South America. In the 18th and 19th centuries the Tehuelche were influenced by Mapuche people, and many adopted a horseriding lifestyle. Once a ...

, with whom they traveled east into the western part of today's

Buenos Aires Province Buenos Aires, officially the Buenos Aires Province, is the largest and most populous Provinces of Argentina, Argentine province. It takes its name from the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of the country, which used to be part of the province an ...

and southern end of Córdoba Province, and also to Mendoza, San Luis and Santa Fe. In 1833

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 ...

led the Desert Campaign (1833–34), in which he attempted to eliminate the Ranquel. Their leader at that time was Yanquetruz, and they put up a skilled defense, making good use of the desert terrain. Yanquetruz was succeeded around 1834 by Painé Guor. Their last chief was Pincén, who was confined to the prison at Martín García island (1880). They allied themselves with the forces of Felipe Varela during the rebellion against the

Paraguayan War The Paraguayan War (, , ), also known as the War of the Triple Alliance (, , ), was a South American war that lasted from 1864 to 1870. It was fought between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, the Empire of Brazil, and Uruguay. It wa ...

and the Central Government in Buenos Aires. After Pincén's capture, the Ranquels were further reduced in population during the

Conquest of the Desert The Conquest of the Desert () was an Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, Argentine military campaign directed mainly by General Julio Argentino Roca during the 1870s and 1880s with the intention of establishing dominance over Patagonia, inh ...

, with their lands being occupied by the army. A reservation, the Colonia Emilio Mitre, was established for them in today's La Pampa province, where their descendants lived today.

Recent developments

On 14 August 2007 the government of San Luis province returned to the Ranquel people, including two small lakes, about south of the town of Fraga.San Luis government

Notes

External links

A Visit to the Ranquel Indians
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ranquel People Indigenous peoples in Argentina Indigenous peoples of the Southern Cone Mapuche groups