Promaucaes

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Promaucaes, Promaucas or Purumaucas (quechua > puruma auca); pre-Columbian tribal group that lived in the present territory of Chile, south of the Maipo River basin of Santiago, Chile and the Itata River, (those to the north were called mapochoes by the Spanish). They were speakers of mapudungun like the Mapuches to the south and part of the Picunche tribal grouping that lived north of the Itata River.

The Incas named all the populations that were not under their empire puruma auca. As a result of the victory of these Picunche tribes over the Inca Empire in the Battle of the Maule they acquired this distinctive name. The Spanish later corrupted the name into purumaucas or promaucaes. Thus their region became known by the early Spanish in Chile as the province of Promaucae and its inhabitants were called promaucaes.

Among the peoples the Spanish called the Promaucaes the people of the Rapel River valley were particularly called by this name by the Spanish ^[1]. Those of the Mataquito River valley were called the Cures ^[2]. The people in the Maule River valley and to the south were distinguished as maules and those to the south of the Maules and north of the Itata were known as Cauqui by the Inca ^[3] or cauquenes ^[4] that gave their name to Cauquenes River.

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• Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, Segunda Parte : Libro VII, Cap. 19, 20.
• Juan Ignacio Molina Compendio de la historia civil del reyno de Chile