Meanwhile Mendoza, the great pacificator and organiser, had come out to Lima and assumed the viceroyalty. Turbulent adventurers swarmed into Peru whom he thought could be better employed elsewhere. Southern Chile seemed just the place for these reckless, needy cavaliers, who were so anxious to carve out fiefs for themselves. Early in 1557, Garcia de Mendoza, son of the viceroy, was appointed captain-general and enjoined to reduce the Araucanians to obedience. He came accompanied by ten ships and a considerable force of Spaniards. Still larger forces were on their way overland from Peru. Cautiously landing troops and artillery at the deserted city of Concepcion, he had finished his defences before the confederacy could mobilise its army. Though the Araucanians attacked with desperate fury, their charges were beaten back by the artillery fire. Re-forming on the other side of the Biobio, the Indians waited until Mendoza, who had meanwhile received a large reinforcement of cavalry, advanced. In the battle which followed they were defeated, but they had learned a lesson of prudence and they fought in front of forests into whose depths the Spanish cavalry could not pursue. Retreating slowly, they again gave battle, and, though again defeated, inflicted great losses on the Spanish infantry. Mendoza hanged his prisoners, and once more advanced, this time to the place where Valdivia had met his death. Here he founded a fortified town, naming it Cañete, after the hereditary title of his family. Leaving it heavily garrisoned, he went on to Imperial for provisions. In his absence the Indians unsuccessfully tried to carry Cañete by assault, and seeing the hopelessness of aggressive movements, they withdrew to the wooded districts and mountains, abandoning the open country and the sea-coast to the Spaniards. Mendoza pushed on beyond the southern limits of the Araucanian territory and discovered and explored the populous archipelago of Chiloë. On his way back he founded, on the mainland a hundred miles south of Valdivia, the city of Osorno.
The Araucanians were now shut in between the Andes and a semicircle of towns and forts; it seemed as if their final subjection would only be a question of time. Mendoza returned to Santiago, leaving a lieutenant to undertake a campaign of raids and surprises. A few of the Araucanians remained in the field, and it was not until their veteran chief, Caupolican, was betrayed and pitilessly shot to death with arrows, that the whole confederacy again flew to arms under the command of his son. Marching on Concepcion, the Indians cut to pieces first one Spanish force of five hundred men and then another; and blockaded the city from the land side. The Spaniards, holding the sea, had no difficulty in pouring in reinforcements from Peru and Valparaiso, and the Indian army finally retreated. At Quiapo, between Concepcion and Cañete, it was defeated and nearly annihilated, its most celebrated chiefs and heroes perishing in the slaughter. Once more the Araucanians retired to their forests and mountains while the Spaniards rebuilt and improved the line of fortifications and took possession of the valuable gold mines of Villarica. But they could make no further impression on these indomitable Indians. For forty years the war continued, sometimes active, sometimes desultory, and with constantly varying fortunes. Year after year the Spaniards poured in reinforcements, and their expeditions more than once ravaged the remotest parts of the Araucanian territory. But as soon as the armies retired the unflagging Indians would return to the attack, cutting off isolated bands of settlers and surprising forts and towns.
About 1593, the able chieftain Paillamachu was toqui of the confederacy. The incessant wars against the Araucanians had made the province such a continual drain on the Peruvian treasury, that Mendoza, who had been promoted to the viceregal throne, determined to end this impossible situation in one way or another. A general was sent to Chile with full powers either to treat or fight, but the haughty and intractable Indians rejected with scorn his overtures for peace. He then fortified the line of the Biobio and erected new fortresses to serve as bases for a campaign of extermination to be undertaken as soon as reinforcements arrived. These came slowly and the Indians themselves took the offensive, considerable bands invading the Spanish settlements, storming some forts and blockading others. The Spanish general exerted himself to concentrate his scattered forces, but while making a hasty journey, accompanied only by a small escort, from Imperial toward Concepcion, he was surprised and killed by a band of Indians. Forty-eight hours later not only the whole of Araucania, but also the provinces south of Valdivia, rose in arms. All the Spanish towns south of the Biobio—Osorno, Valdivia, Villarica, Imperial, Cañete, Angol, Coya, and Arauco—were simultaneously besieged. Paillamachu crossed the river and burned first Concepcion and then Chillan, a town a hundred miles north of the Araucanian boundary, ravaging the country to the river Maule. Alarmed for the safety of Santiago, the Lima viceroy sent a new governor with a well-equipped army, but it was as much as he could do to force the Indians back into their own territory. The Indian general suddenly assaulted the city of Valdivia, carried it by storm, slaughtered or captured the inhabitants, and seized two millions of booty with many arms and cannon. Villarica and Imperial managed to hold out for three years but finally they, with Osorno, were reduced by starvation. When Paillamachu died in 1603 the Spaniards had no foothold on the mainland south of the Biobio except the Valdivia citadel.
INDIAN ENCAMPMENT.
Two or three years later the government made a last effort to reduce the Araucanians. An army of three thousand Spaniards besides a large contingent of natives advanced across the Biobio. To such an overwhelming force the Araucanians dared not offer open battle, but they hung on its flanks, skirmishing and harassing, and the host was compelled to return without having accomplished anything decisive. From the protection of the forts on the Biobio, the Spanish general sent expeditions to lay waste the Indian country, but these smaller bodies were roughly handled and the first period of Araucanian wars closed with the nearly complete destruction of the Spanish forces operating in southern Chile. The authorities at Lima and Madrid gave it up as a bad job. Thenceforward the Biobio remained the southern boundary of the Spanish possessions. An army of two thousand men and a line of forts guarded the frontier, and though hostilities were frequent, for centuries no real progress was made toward depriving the Araucanians of their independence. In the progress of time the slow infiltration of Spanish blood and Spanish customs modified their characteristics, but it was not until 1882 that they became real subjects of the Chilean government.
