During the whole Colony they opposed resistance to the Hispanic crown. This fact forced to the administration to recognize them certain autonomy, establishing fortifications along the frontier and maintaining a professional army, unique case in the history of the colonies. The Arauco war , finishes newly during the Republic with the denominated process of “pacification” of the Araucanía that finishes in 1891.

The long period of the Arauco war, it meant besides a warlike conflict, an intense economic, cultural exchange and a miscegenation process. In these contacts it is important the adoption, on the part of the mapuches, of the horse and the silver techniques.

Starting from the “pacification” the groups that had been of great mobility during the XIX century, settle, adopting an agrarian economy. It diminishes the old cattle activity of exchange with the mapuches of the oriental area (Argentina) and the establishment of the communities begins in reductions.

The fundamental nucleus of this society is the family who used to live in a ruka made of straw and mud, with a circular shape with conical or rectangular roof . In the center of the housing constantly burned a bonfire.

A community is the group of several families, which is unit by patrilineal relationship and a territory of common property.

In last times, the base of the authority in the extensive family was the Ionko. The social unit rotated around this chief that was generally the member of more prestige and wealth (ulmen).

In the period that long Arauco war extends, the natives establish a military chief: the toqui that only government during the warlike conflict.

After the "pacification of the Araucanía" (at the end of XIX century), it was reserved to the cacique or toqui the right to distribute the lands in the reductions.

La The polygamy was a marriage form in the old mapuche society and it was considered symbol of wealth and power. Today this habit has disappeared due to economic reasons and to the influence of the Christianity.

The mapuche, bought to their wife, that is to say, she was changed for objects, animals or provisions. Each individual could have how many women he could buy and to maintain.

The matrimonial step consisted on the girlfriend's kidnapping. The pretender was made accompany of some friends, who arrived from surprise to his elect's ruca and he snatched her of his relatives. The women defended it treating the abductor blows with sticks and lit smuts. The men remained impassive. Then the boyfriend escaped in a horse with his lady, protected by his friends, and he took his wife to his room or the forest, where they remained three hidden days, after which the new husband met with his parents in-laws and he ate with them without speaking anything of that happened. At once the ceremony of the payment was verified, preceded of a great party.

The textile industry, one of the oldest of America, also reached among the mapuches an enormous importance. The dearest pieces, knitted with supreme dexterity and drawn artistically with own reasons, they were, and they are still, the blankets of the men and the belts of the women. In the art to spin and to knit the wool ended up being very skilled the mapuches women , the only ones that were in charge of that work.

Of the wool of the gump, the German nickel, the vicuña, the flame, and after the livestock brought by the Spaniards, they produced excellent fabrics of fine and showy ponchos, strips for the waist and tapes for the hair.

The inks or colors to tint their fabrics, extracted them of vegetables: seeds, leaves and roots.

The mapuches was also good potters. The pottery found in Chilean territory reached its biggest perfection in the regions of the north. It stands out the atacameña pottery especially whose quality, beauty in the lines and in the ornamental drawing are admirable. From Copiapó to the south, the pottery leaves making more inferior in all sense. The mapuche pottery, that is to say, passing the Bío-Bío to the south was faulty.

The ornamental drawing of the Araucanian pottery was not the same that in the north, but rather it depended on the genius and dexterity of the mapuche that formed it.

One of the customs that better it has been conserved among the mapuches iis the palín or chueca game, activity that was an exercise for the war. Perhaps its persistence in the time is a way to show us this feeling that invaded them when they carried out its incursions in booty search, generally metals, animals and women.

The field of game pallwe is a clean land, not always plane, generally of short grass whose contours are marked with a gutter, a thick line, or with small branches or sticks.

The dimensions of the field were adjusted to the necessities and readiness of the land of the different communities and the number of players goes between 20 or 30 for each side.

The litigants in a chueca encounter are two communities or reductions, headed by their caciques and machis: there they dance and they make sound all their musical instruments: flute, drums and trutrucas.

The enclosure place dedicated to the nguillatún they planted a great cinnamon tree branch--the sacred tree of the mapuches--and another of maqui, tied to a trunk similar to a scale, Rehue, and to their foot they placed lambs. In the rogativasthey pronounced by some noted old men, offered the blood of the recently sacrificed lambs. Immediately the whole concurrence began to give turns around the rehue, singing and dancing in a kind of frantic excitement. The scene finished with the ascending of machi to the rehue, where, in enrage attitude, she implored to the spirits the people desiresn.

The machis was the doctors among the mapuches. Commonly who exercised this occupation was the women. Although it doesn't discard the possibility of men machis . They sought to be chosen by a supernatural being, they practiced the cures with grasses, rubs, drinks and some with arts of sorcery, (they had good and bad machis...) and they felt intermediary between people and the world of the spirits.

They had a lot of influence and range among their people, they made solitary life and they were allowed to grow the hair and the fingernails. Today they are known like naturists doctors and they are asked for an infinity of physical illnesses, of the heart and other traumas.

When a mapuche got sick the machi was called, in order to cure what they believed a damage, for that they made an extravagant ceremony called machitun.

Inside of the sick person's ruca they met with him their relatives.

They put him on the floor and next to his head the machi planted a cinnamon tree branch. She kills a guanaco and extracted its heart and then she sprinkled its blood with the cinnamon tree branch. Then she burned some grasses and she filled with smoke the room. Then she said same cabalistic words, she came closer to the patient, she faked to suck the part of their body in that the ailment was and she salivated red. Finally in middle of the general surprise, she showed the bad spirit materialized in a stick, an innocent toad or a broken-hearted small lizard: this was the damage.

But sometimes the sick person didn't make better.; then the machi apologized saying that the bad spirit had damaged the patient too deep".