DBA Armies

This covers the Mapuche of modern Chile from the Inca invasion of 1461 until the southern tribes (conventionally called Araucanians) began making use of captured Spanish armour, guns and horses. The Inca called them Promauca “wild enemies” and never managed to subdue them. The Spanish initially had no better luck and on one occasion had to break a pike block with a battery of 6 guns. Records of warfare between the southern tribes and the Spanish describe them as using dense blocks of men armed with pikes which by 1556 were 15 foot long, and also as having archers who also carried a short spear or a 2-handed wooden club like a 6 foot long hockey stick called a “lonco quillquill”, who in early battles skirmished ahead, but later formed groups between the pike blocks. References: Armies of the 16th Century Vol 2 1. Heath, Slingshot 222 & 236.