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 the Mapuche people, and many adopted the domestic use of horses.

Once a nomadic people, the Tehuelche struggled as their lands were colonized in the 19th century by Argentina and Chile, which gradually disrupted their traditional economies. The colonial establishment of large sheep farming estates in Patagonia was particularly detrimental to the Tehuelche. Contact with ethnic European outsiders also introduced new infectious diseases, which caused deadly epidemics among Tehuelche tribes as they lacked acquired immunity. Today most Tehuelche reside in cities and towns of Argentine Patagonia.

The name "Tehuelche complex" has been used by researchers in a broad sense to group together Indigenous peoples from Patagonia and the Pampas. Several specialists, missionaries, and travelers have proposed grouping them together because of the similarities in their cultural traits, geographic vicinity and languages. But the languages they spoke amongst themselves were not related to each other and the peoples were widely distributed geographically.