WHOLE VOL. ARAUCANIAN CHILD LIFE — HILGER I75 



but the Government has never paid me anything. I object to this. God 

 gave the earth to all men, and we should not have to pay anyone for 

 the right to own a piece of it. He also made people to defend them- 

 selves and their rights. But it is difficult to find out where to go to 

 defend our rights or to find out who is to blame. At present they say 

 the Communists are in power and are to blame ; before that they used 

 to say it was the strong trying to defeat the weak." 



LAND, SUBSISTENCE, AND TRADE 

 LAND TENURE 



The Araucanians are an agricultural and grazing people. Owner- 

 ship of land was institutional. Land owned lay within one's witran 

 mapu — a witran mapu being a specific area occupied by a particular 

 kunpeni — that is, a group of families. Within the witran mapu each 

 family laid claim to ownership of pieces of land which it cultivated 

 and to others which it used as grazing land. Portions of land so owned 

 by a family were apportioned by the father to each of his sons, as 

 each one married ; these in turn gave of their land to their children ; 

 and so on. It is because of this division of land that in time all families 

 in an area were at least distantly related. 



All recognized the right of a person to the ownership of lands 

 claimed by him if he erected on it a ruka and also either cultivated 

 the land or used it for grazing his cattle, or, if it was wooded, cleared 

 it of forests. In general, ruka were some distances apart; only occa- 

 sionally were two or three close together. As previously stated, there 

 were no villages. 



The ownership of lands was recorded on charts which were — and 

 still are — kept in the possession of the cacique. It was the cacique's 

 duty to see that there was equity in the distribution of land. In fact, 

 he had the right to transfer to someone in need — if this person was a 

 member of the witran mapu — land from someone who possessed more 

 than it was thought he needed or who laid claim to more than the 

 assembled fathers of families thought he ought to claim. This is no 

 longer a matter of the cacique's jurisdiction, "now that we are under 

 Chilean law." 



Land owned by families today is marked off by fences or by natural 

 boundaries, such as creeks, rivers, ravines and forests. 



Land in the witran mapu not claimed by any individual was owned 

 in common by the kunpem — a custom which still exists among the 

 Araucanians, but which is causing unrest among politically-minded 

 Chileans who are of the opinion that such lands should be on the 



