THE PEOPLE OF PATAGONIA.

Patagonia is the name given to a sparsely populated region located at the Southernmost end of South America, shared by Argentina and Chile. The surface of the land is very varied. Trackless plains rise in gently graded terraces to the lofty ranges of the Andes, between which there is a mighty network of lakes and lagoons.
The name Patagonia comes from the word "Patagon" used to describe the ancient people of the region who tended to be taller than the ancient Europeans. They were suppose to have exceeded at least double the normal human height.
There are no written records about their ancient legends and myths since their religious beliefs were passed down orally. Central to their cosmological beliefs was the idea of a Creator, who was embodied in four components: an older man, an older woman, a young man and a young woman. They also had a very complex knowledge of the spiritual world and how it coexisted with humans and animals in the natural world, and daily circumstances dictated the spiritual practices to be followed. The most well known ritual ceremony was "the general praying" done in extreme spiritual and social circumstances.
The existence of these Patagonian people were brought to light for the first time in the 1520s when Ferdinand Magellan and his crew saw them while exploring the coastline of South America en route to their circumnavigation.
Human habitation of the region dates back thousands of years, with some early archaeological findings in the area dated to at least the 13th millennium BC. Hearths, stone scrapers, animal remains have been found East of the Andes. The Cave of the Hands is a famous site in Santa Cruz, Argentina. The cave at the foot of a cliff is covered in wall paintings, particularly the negative images of hundreds of hands.
The hunting of guanaco (camelid native to the region) was the primary source of food for these fierce people which were hunter-gatherers living as nomads, which means living with limited possessions, as they had to move across long distances. Everything from the guanaco was used: the meat and blood were used for food, the fat to grease their bodies during winter, and the hide to make clothing and canopies. They also hunted whales, sea mammals, small rodents and sea birds and gathered fruits that grew during the regional summer. Those fruits were the only sweet foods in their diet.
Their rock tools were made of obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass, found in only certain parts of the region, so these people had to make long journeys to renew their supplies.
The people of the Patagonia region of today are called Tehuelche that is in fact a collective name for all the communities that live in there. The newly-established ranches in the land led the communities to break down into smaller groups. The invasion of the Patagonia territory by foreign forces in the 1870s led to a devastating killing of a massive number of native people, as well as driving thousands from their homeland.