The 'people of the north', Mapudungun-speaking farmers of central Chile's green valleys from the Aconcagua to the Itata who had already paid tribute to the Inca before the Spanish came.
Unlike their southern kin they were quickly conquered, set to gold-washing and farm labor, and by the 17th century had dissolved entirely into the Chilean mestizo countryside.
The atlas holds 3 border frames for Picunche — the shape you scrub through changes in 900 · 1536 · 1600.
By the leading ethnographer of the Mapuche peoples, of whom the Picunche were the 'people of the north' of central Chile.
Background on the central-Chile valleys where the quickly-conquered Picunche dissolved into the colonial mestizo population (broad context).