SHINING PRIDE OF THE MAPUCHE.

• Author: Bach, Caleb
• Position: Indigenous people of Chile and Argentina

These indigenous people of southern Chile and Argentina have long preserved a tradition of silverwork, producing elaborate jewelry that illuminates their ethnic identity

The first thing you notice is that a shiny red ribbon--gathered front and center over her forehead--crowns her like a rose. Covering her head and trailing down her back is a veil of emerald brocade. A row of silver coins, which falls along her hairline, concealing it--is attached to a head piece of as many individual silver links. Her earrings, oddly, are simple, a single pierced pendant the size of a small coin. A brooch of birds, slightly off center, gathers in her black shawl and reveals the weight of more coins behind it. The sheer weight of silver is palpable. Yet tiny, tinkling bells--onomatopoetically called tralal tralal--hang delicately at her side. Underneath it all, an embroidered flower of mauve and yellow is barely visible; white on navy cotton mimics a pattern of silver filagree, and another red satin ribbon, joining together brooch and necklace, is tied just above her heart.

In Mapudungun, their own "language of the land," Mapuche means "people of the land." The Spanish called them araucanos, from Arauco, the area south of the Bio-Bio River. The sixteenth-century bard Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga, in his epic poem La araucana, applied the term araucanos to all indigenous people of southern Chile.

While the precise origins of the Mapuche are still debated among anthropologists, for centuries they occupied an extensive region roughly defined by the Choapa River to the north and Chiloe Island to the south. There they coexisted and intermixed with the Picunche and Huilliche, groups with which they shared a common language, customs, and beliefs. In the mid-seventeenth century, some Mapuche began to migrate eastward over the lower passes of the southern Andes, where they competed with the Pehuenche, or "pine people," of the eastern slopes and the Tehuelche of the Argentine pampa. These two groups, among others nearby, gradually became "Araucanized" as they adopted the Mapuche language and other cultural traits.

The Mapuche themselves, though basically a peaceful people, nonetheless enjoyed a reputation as fierce fighters, especially in defense of their land and way of life. Much earlier the Incas, who referred to the Mapuche as rebels or savages, failed in their efforts to incorporate them into their empire. The Spanish, too, met with stiff resistance: In 1553 Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia perished at the hands of the legendary young Mapuche chieftain Lautaro who, traditional accounts say, tied the the founder of Chile to a tree and obliged him to drink molten gold to relieve his auric thirst.

During the colonial period and republican era, governmental officials rarely respected treaties guaranteeing the Mapuche their lands, obliging them constantly to defend their territory. This period of prolonged hostilities became known as the Arauco War. Ultimately in the 1880s, after a series of rebellions, the Mapuche were resettled on reservations, costing them some of their best ancestral lands as well as their seminomadic way of life.

Since then, a variety of laws and policies, some motivated by dubious goals, have had as their aim the further integration of the Mapuche into Chilean society. Today, roughly a million people of...