Mythologies of the Comechingón Tribe
Comechingón (plural Comechingones) is the common name for a group of people indigenous to the Argentine provinces of Córdoba and San Luis. By the end of the 17th century, most Comechingones had been killed or displaced by the Spanish conquistadores. The two main Comechingón groups called themselves Henia (in the north) and Kamiare (in the south), each subdivided into a dozen or so tribes. The name comechingón is a deformation of the pejorative term kamichingan—"cave dwellers"—used by the Sanavirón tribe. They were sedentary, practiced agriculture yet gathered wild fruits, and raised animals for wool, meat and eggs. Their culture was heavily influenced by that of the Andes. Several aspects seem to differentiate the Henia-Kamiare from the rest of amerindians. They had a rather Caucasian appearance, with beards and quite a few of them with greenish eyes. Another distinctive aspect was their communal stone houses, half buried in the ground to endure the cold, wind and snow of the winter. Their language was lost when Spanish policies favoured Quechua, an indigenous language they transplanted from Upper Peru. Nevertheless, they left a rich pictography and abstract petroglyphs. A cultural contribution is the vowel extension in the Spanish of the present inhabitants of Córdoba, but also not uncommon in San Luis and other neighbouring provinces. According to the 2010 census there are 34,546 self-identified Comechingón descendants in Argentina.
Comechingones, an ethnic group that, until the middle of the sixteenth century, occupied the mountainous region in what are now the central Argentine provinces of Córdoba and San Luis. The economy of the Comechingones was based on agriculture using irrigation. Their chief crops were corn, squash, beans, and chili peppers. The Algarrobo (genus Prosopis), whose fruit they collected, served as another important resource. They also tended auchenidos (llama, alpaca, vicuña, and guamoco). The two most common linguistic variants of the Comechingones were Camiare and Henia, although different dialects existed. They lived in settlements consisting of as many as forty pit-dwellings, the bottom half of which were constructed underground. As protection, the settlement was surrounded by an enclosure made of thorny plants. The group's rich pictorial legacy continues to intrigue scholars; a thousand Comechingón cave-paintings are scattered throughout present-day Argentina. Each settlement was home to a kinship group (probably similar to the Andean ayllu) and under the authority of a chief (curaca). There is almost no information available on the religious life of the Comechingones, except that during ceremonies they consumed cebil (genus Anadenanthera). Ceremonial dances took place inside branch enclosures that contained animal figures carved in wood. Documents testify that by the end of the sixteenth century the population, spread among some six hundred settlements, was perhaps 30,000. One hundred years later, due either to demographic shift, cultural homogenization, or interbreeding, Comechingón culture was thought to be nonexistent. However, in 1998 the first annual "Encuentro de Descendientes de Indígenas Comechingones" was held, demonstrating a renewal of ethnic pride that hints at a recovery and revitalization of Comechingón culture in the twenty-first century.
Comechingon (plural Comechingones) is the common name for a group of people indigenous to the Argentine provinces of Cordoba and San Luis. They were thoroughly displaced or exterminated by the Spanish conquistadores by the end of the 17th Century. The two main Comechingon groups called themselves Henia (in the north) and Kamiare (in the south), each subdivided into a dozen or so tribes. The name comechingon is a deformation of the pejorative term kamichingan"cave dwellers"used by the Sanaviron tribe. It is claimed that there are still six Comechingon families in Cordoba in the barrio Alto alberdi. Information is available from direction de cultura Cordoba.
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