Yacampis
Extinct indigenous peoples of Argentina
Extinct indigenous peoples of Argentina
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The Yacampis people met their end during the first half of the 17th century, when Yacampis and Capayanes joined the aboriginal uprising in northwestern Argentina led by Cacique Chelemín, known in historiography as the "Great Diaguita Uprising" (Gran Alanzamiento Diaguita).

What happened to the Yacampis people is poorly documented, with the few existing records referring to the ancient indigenous peoples of Valle Fértil. Since the last decade of the 16th century, when the Spanish outpost based in San Juan de la Frontera began to enter the region known as Chaj\-Paj\-Nai (current Department of Valle Fértil, a name that alludes to its former designation in native language), little by little the colonization of the region recruited its original inhabitants in the first colonial encomiendas, in which the Crown granted the colonizers and conquerors indigenous grants, forming the contingents of labor that would work in the first colonial estates.

Later, around 1600, the Society of Jesus settled in the region, influencing the process of acculturation of the yacampis, turning them into Christians. Despite the Jesuit insistence on indigenous evangelization, the yacampi cults were not supplanted by Christian dogma, but were adapted in a religious syncretism in which original cultural patterns are reproduced to this day. An example is the cult of La Patroncita, in Villa San Agustín de Jauregui, where the Catholic faith is completed with indigenous myths, even the place where it is installed today is neighboring the old town of Aguaca, located in the old town. of indians.

The first interethnic conflicts between Spaniards and yacampis occurred during this time, when the encomendados Indians rebelled in 1604 because the encomendero Toribio de Dueñas exploited and mistreated the indigenous people. The yacampis uprising produced the execution of the settler and the looting of the hacienda located in Las Tumanas. The response of the peninsulars was immediate and was exemplary. On December 23, 1604, some caciques of Valle Fértil were punished for murdering their encomendero and other Spaniards: *"Summarizing the group of prisoners, with the rapid and executive formalities of the military trial on the battlefield, seventeen of them were sentenced. them whom, after having ordered them to confess and buy bulls to absolve them for them, he had them put to death and ordered them to be put in the square of this city (San Juan) on a gallows with four pillars, all consecutively hanging by the neck and in a pillar of said gallows a sign with large letters that said: FOR TRAITORS TO THE ROYAL CROWN. And having had them hanged all day, he ordered them to be removed and their heads cut off and the other Indians, after having put the most aggressors in prison, he made them a parliament giving them to understand that they were forgiven in the name of His Majesty and that they should not leave a point where they wanted to locate them and make a population, which had to be near the city.*"''''

This was the beginning of a process of repression and bullying of the native populations of the region, which was followed by others of lesser importance. In 1634 the last yacampis of Valle Fértil joined the uprising led by the titakin of Andalgalá, Juan Chelemín. Once the rebellion was put down in 1640, the rebellious towns were exterminated and the survivors denatured.


Can you provide examples of indigenous myths and cults that have survived to this day in Argentina?