Pedro de Valdivia and the Founding of Santiago de Chile (1541)

Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago de Chile on 12 February 1541, naming it Santiago del Nuevo Extremo. Founded in the fertile Mapocho valley after a gruelling march across the Atacama Desert, the small Spanish town became the capital of colonial Chile and, later, of the independent republic. Valdivia’s push southwards also began the Arauco War, one of the longest Indigenous resistances in the Americas.

Background: Chile after Almagro

The first Spanish expedition to Chile, led by Diego de Almagro in 1535–1537, found no gold and returned to Peru disappointed. Chile gained a reputation as a poor and dangerous land. Pedro de Valdivia, born in Extremadura around 1497 and a veteran of the Italian wars, had come to Peru in the late 1530s and served the Pizarros at the Battle of Las Salinas in 1538.

In 1539 Francisco Pizarro named him his lieutenant governor for Chile. Valdivia had to raise money himself and found few volunteers. He left Cusco in January 1540 with only about a dozen Spaniards, collecting more along the way until he had roughly 150, together with around a thousand Indigenous auxiliaries from Peru (yanaconas) and livestock. With him travelled Inés de Suárez, his companion, who became one of the best-known women of the conquest.

The founding of Santiago

The column crossed the Atacama Desert and entered the central valley of Chile, a region where Inca rule had extended before the Spanish conquest. On 12 February 1541 Valdivia formally founded Santiago between the Mapocho River and Huelén Hill. Following Spanish practice he laid out a grid of streets around a central square, now the Plaza de Armas, distributed plots to settlers and set up a town council (cabildo), which in June 1541 named him governor in the king’s name.

The site was well chosen. The valley had good water from the Mapocho, mild weather and a settled farming population, and the hill gave a natural lookout and fortress. Before the Spanish arrived, the area had been home to Indigenous farming communities, sometimes called Picunche in Spanish sources, and had been linked to the Inca road network, which extended into central Chile. Valdivia hoped to use existing Inca-era arrangements for tribute and labour to support his settlers.

The town at first was little more than a collection of houses of wood, mud and thatch. Its early survival depended on crops sown by the settlers and on food taken from local communities, which soon caused resentment.

The attack of 1541

Relations with the local peoples quickly worsened under the pressure of Spanish demands for food, labour and gold from the Marga Marga washings. On 11 September 1541, while Valdivia was absent with part of his men, warriors led by the chief Michimalonco attacked Santiago and burned almost all of it.

The defenders held out. According to the chroniclers, Inés de Suárez urged the execution of seven chiefs held as hostages and helped rally the defence; this episode is famous in Chile but comes from Spanish accounts written after the event. For the next two years the settlers lived in great hardship until help arrived from Peru, brought back by Valdivia’s officer Alonso de Monroy.

Expansion and the Arauco War

Valdivia gradually extended Spanish rule south. La Serena was founded on his orders in 1544 to secure the route to Peru. He then pushed south towards the lands of the Mapuche, founding Concepción near the mouth of the Biobío River in 1550, and crossed the river to found La Imperial, Valdivia and other towns in 1551–1552.

The Mapuche, organised in many independent communities rather than a centralised state, proved very hard to conquer. In 1553 Lautaro, a young Mapuche who had served Valdivia as a groom and learned Spanish tactics, helped lead an uprising. On 25 December 1553 Valdivia’s small force was destroyed near the fort of Tucapel, and Valdivia was captured and killed. Accounts of how he died vary, and some of the more gruesome stories are probably legend.

The war continued long after. The Mapuche destroyed the southern Spanish towns in the uprising of 1598–1604, and the Biobío River became a lasting frontier, recognised in a series of formal parliaments starting with Quilín in 1641.

Key people

• Pedro de Valdivia (c. 1497–1553), founder of Santiago and first governor of Chile.
• Inés de Suárez, Valdivia’s companion and a defender of Santiago in 1541.
• Michimalonco, Indigenous leader who attacked Santiago in September 1541.
• Lautaro, Mapuche war leader who defeated Valdivia at Tucapel.

Timeline

• 1539: Pizarro appoints Valdivia his lieutenant governor for Chile.
• 1540, January: Valdivia leaves Cusco for Chile.
• 1541, 12 February: Valdivia founds Santiago del Nuevo Extremo.
• 1541, 11 September: Michimalonco’s warriors burn Santiago.
• 1544: La Serena is founded.
• 1550: Concepción is founded near the mouth of the Biobío.
• 1553, 25 December: Valdivia is killed after the Battle of Tucapel.

Why it matters

Santiago became the political heart of Chile and is today one of South America’s largest cities. Valdivia’s expedition, unlike Almagro’s, created a lasting colony, but its violent expansion also began a centuries-long struggle with the Mapuche, whose resistance was celebrated even by Spanish writers such as Alonso de Ercilla in his epic poem La Araucana. The founding came in the same turbulent year as the assassination of Francisco Pizarro, Valdivia’s patron.