Inquiries on the Meaning of Gold in Mapuche Culture. A review of sources and something more

This paper is part of an interdisciplinary project (ethnohistory, archaeology, translation studies) of which one of the objectives is the identification of gold extracting sites south of the city of Concepcion. It develops the hypothesis, put forward by archaeological studies, of possible gold mining by the Incas or even earlier, as opposed to an historiographical theory which claims that the Incas did not cross the Biobio river. Against this background, and considering that in the sixteenth century Mapudungun was spoken in a much larger area than the one covered by our project, i.e. Araucania, we inquire on the conspicuous presence of the word milla (gold) in Mapudungun, and the extent of its significance in mapuche society, a society that, according to records, does not seem to have given gold the symbolic and material importance it had in Andean cultures. Through a historical linguistics and translation studies approach, we undertake a review of the state of the question and systematize linguistic data provided by primary and secondary sources, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, in an attempt to resolve, as much as possible, the uncertainties surrounding the word milla and the cultural significance of gold in mapuche society