Great question! I’m away from my books at the moment, but I’ll still try to discuss the circumstances that made it possible for the Mapuche to remain independent for centuries. I’m not an expert on precontact indigenous interactions, so I won’t discuss their resistance of the Inca. However, when it came to European conquest and resistance, the Mapuche utilized successful organizational, military, economic, and acculturation strategies that allowed them to exist outside the pale of European colonization for centuries. They also benefited from a fortuitous position on the Southern Cone that remained a relatively low priority for colonization until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Firstly, nomadic and semi-nomadic groups tended to be the last indigenous peoples to succumb to European/American subjugation. European conquistadores succeeded in quickly conquering the large indigenous empires by mobilizing indigenous allies and placing themselves at the top of existing hierarchies and labor structures. After toppling the Inca and the Triple Alliance, the Spaniards continued to search for large settled populations of indigenous with only modest success. Although South America was populated by hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, their population densities were generally lower, less settled, and more difficult to condense around population centers.

Even as Spain consolidated their control over the Western Hemisphere, especially in the Southern Cone, their settlements remained mere outposts of European culture in a vast gulf of untamed space. Far from commanding metropolises like we sometimes imagine, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Asunción, and Córdoba remained isolated communities, connected by small (though expanding) trade routes that serviced Potosí. During most of the colonial period, Spain never really had the resources nor the motivation to exert a significant military effort along the South American frontiers (northeastern Paraguay, the Banda Oriental, the Chaco, Patagonia, Araucania, and the Amazon to name a few major frontier zones). Specifically, the Mapuche did not offer significant economic opportunity, and Spanish expeditions failed to find significant mineral wealth worth their investment. Consequently, by the end of the 1500s, the entire province of Chile only had a population of around 5,000 settlers.

Further complicating the situation, the Mapuche quickly adopted European military technology like horseback riding, firearms, and cavalry raids to present a significant military threat on both sides of the Andes throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They successfully raided and destroyed a number Spanish settlements, forcing back Spanish colonization again and again. Internally, specific bands successfully created flexible alliances through negotiations and shared interests that allowed the Mapuche as a whole to match and often overpower the Spanish military presence, forcing Spain to permanently station troops in Chile, despite the enormous upkeep costs associated with maintaining regulars on the fringe of the world itself. Spain instituted a policy of defensive war to hold their territory by establishing forts at regular intervals. Offensive war was expensive and was rarely prosecuted successfully due to the mobile nature and superior geographic knowledge of the Mapuche.

Lacking military capabilities, Spain turned to missionaries to bring Christianity and “civilization” to the frontier. The Jesuits and Franciscans established missions in an attempt to concentrate indigenous populations as they had elsewhere in the empire. However, these attempts were a failure. The Guaraní in Paraguay faced the significant threat of Portuguese and Spanish slave traders, so they willingly chose to enter missions for military and legal protections. Mapuche bands on the other hand had no need to give up their freedom, convert to Christianity, give up their cultural heritage, and work for new overlords. The fact that they had no previous tradition of labor systems made the missions even less appealing. In reality, the outside threats they faced were successfully resisted and even advantageous to individuals. The Jesuits were forced to travel in-land, provide gifts to encourage Mapuches to be baptized, then move on. The Mapuche realized that they could be baptized more than once to receive extra gifts, thus gaining access to capital which could raise their social standing.

Throughout the colonial and early national periods, vast economic flows developed between indigenous groups on the Pampas and those in Araucania. Cattle and other European trade goods taken or traded for along the frontier south of Buenos Aires easily traveled overland and through the Andes to grazing land and markets in Chile. Indigenous people profited through this trade, gaining access to European goods without significantly altering their way of life. Over time, this led to a gradual shift in Mapuche culture and development. Despite the raids, Spaniards generally advocated for defensive measures rather than offensive war, especially as they became more and more embroiled in European conflicts elsewhere. The Spanish military became increasingly overextended. Much to the concern of colonial authorities, most of Patagonia appeared vulnerable to European interlopers who threatened and sometimes did use indigenous allies to disrupt Spain’s colonial possessions.

During the Wars for Independence, the Mapuche allied with Royalist forces, who promised to continue recognizing de facto independence. Mapuche raids into the heartland, however, stirred up even greater anti-Mapuche sentiments that would linger for generations. Following independence, Chilean and Argentine authorities remained inwardly concerned with consolidation of state institutions and power. Independence leaders felt that mineral wealth in the north presented a better economic opportunity, especially as state power became concentrated among wealthy elite families. They invested in the central valley and mines in the Andes rather than push the frontier south. Economic opportunities multiplied with the guano and nitrate booms in the middle nineteenth century. Furthermore, Chile’s government became increasingly concerned with securing the Strait of Magellan, which was equated with prosperity in Valparaíso and the Chilean heartland. These circumstances culminated with Chile ceding most of Patagonia to Argentina in exchange for the Strait, then an offensive war against Bolivia and Peru for control of the Atacama Desert. This war and others during the mid-nineteenth century (especially the Paraguayan War) can be seen as the culmination of state formation as newly established nation-states began negotiating through diplomacy and war the limits of their states which had heretofore existed only as rough approximations rather than set borders.

Araucania and Patagonia remained largely unpenetrated, but increasingly, Chile’s economic prosperity, modest industrialization, and economic interests made the situation untenable. Fertile agricultural lands remained just outside Chile’s grasp. Voices clamored for the opportunity to take what they viewed as theirs from the savages who did not know enough of civilization to appreciate the value of the land. At the same time, both Chile and Argentina sought to eliminate the possibility that if war broke out between the two nations that one nation would ally with the indigenous groups against the other. Drawing on strategies from the United States, both Chile and Argentina used their newly consolidated armies, fresh from victories in state formation wars, to force the Mapuche and other indigenous groups into submission in a series of absolutely brutal campaigns of extermination and subjugation. The organization, speed, technology, and brutality used in the campaigns were beyond anything which had previously been brought to bear against them. The Mapuche were overwhelmed and forced onto reservations and agricultural lands. Like other settler colonies, Chile and Argentina today grapple with the uncomfortable reality that their modern nation-states were ultimately secured by eliminating the cultures and peoples who originally inhabited the territory.