The indigenous peoples (aboriginal peoples) of South America are found from the Isthmus of Panama to Tierra del Fuego. An estimated 30 million people were living there when the Europeans arrived. In the Andean region extensive remains show developed cultures at Chavín de Huántar and among the Paracas in Peru. The Mochica, Chimu, and Nazca in Peru, the Chibcha and Aymara of the Andes, and the Araucanos and Mapuche of Chile had socially complex pre-Columbian cultures, surpassed only by the Inca.

Descendants of these peoples live today in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northwestern Argentina, and Chile. Quechua, spoken by the Inca, is the most widely spoken language in South America.

Since the Spanish conquest indigenous peoples have been used as laborers, poorly paid and lacking political representation; these conditions of semiservitude are changing slowly. Some, notably the Inca, play a significant role in the national culture; but many live in small, peripheral groups.

A few descendants of the Arawaks and Caribs live in Venezuela, the Guianas, and Northern Brazil. The Guaraní in Brazil are few and scattered, but in Paraguay their language is widely spoken and, like Quechua in Bolivia, is the official language of the country.

Among tropical forest groups are the Jívaro of Ecuador and Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela. The Colorados of Western Ecuador and the Puelches and Tehuelches, hunters of Patagonia, are virtually extinct. A dwindling number of Fuegians, so called for their campsites at Tierra del Fuego, live by hunting and fishing.

Sadly, the indigenous peoples of South America continue to be assimilated into white-dominated national cultures as their traditional ways of life and homelands are being destroyed by over-population growth and industrial development.

Indigenous Peoples of Argentina