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It seems that the Comechingons have been present in Corcoba mountains since ancient times. Candonga cave was inhabited from the very beginning of present times. But the Indian remains found in the sites of Ongamira and Observatorio were even earlier, as this culture did not practice pottery and primarily used rock (lithic) and bone utensils. The renowned anthropologist Alberto Rex Gonzalez studied the pre-pottery horizon in Cordoba mountains, the Ayampitin site in Pampa de Olaen, the Ongamira shelter, and the Intihuasi cave (San Luis). The Austrian archeologist Oswald Menghin stated that the remains would date back 5,000 years. The use of Paleolithic tools, such as stone spears and javelin leaf-shaped points, found in different places extended until the arrival of the Spanish conquerors; probably the half pikes they mentioned in their documents were precisely stone points.

CULTURE

The Comechingon group was later influenced by the Andean culture, adopting sedentary lifestyle, farming, llamas raising, spinning and weaving, woolen clothes, black pottery with engravings, and the use of metal artifacts, though not metallurgy itself yet.

There are also traces of Amazonic elements in the Comechingon culture, probably transmitted by their northern and northwestern neighbors, the Sanarivons. An example of such influence would presumably be solid, wide-handled pottery crafts modeled inside baskets, which Serrano called “aletones,” in the northern Henia area. Maybe fine painted pottery and Neolithic polished stone axes also owe to this influence.

Cave paintings are a proof of Cordoba indigenous peoples’ cultural development. They are abundant in three major areas: the Comechingon mountains, to the southwest, adjacent to San Luis province; the Guasapampa and Cuniputo mountains, the latter of which belongs to Sierra Chica mountains, to the northwest, near La Rioja province; and the Sierras del Norte mountains, to the north, which extend to Santiago del Estero province. The paintings were studied by Gardner and Vignatti, but particularly by the Norwegian researcher Asbjorn Pedersen, who used infrared rays to reproduce approximately 30,000 paintings from 200 caves and shelters. Pedersen drew these conclusions:

1) The indigenous peoples who lived in the Cerro Colorado area of Sierra del Norte in Cordoba mountains followed local extended conventional rules to produce cave paintings, in line with their magical-religious ideology and not for decorative purposes as commonly assumed.

2) Such rules were directly related to their lifestyle and everyday elements, e.g. human relations, stressing individual details of their clothes, from front and side views; mammals seen de from a side view; arthropods and reptiles on the ground; and birds of prey in the air and other birds on the ground from a side view.

RELIGION

The Comechingons most probably believed in a high god that was identified with the Sun. They did not have many rites but did perform Amazonic magic and ritual dances, as evidenced in cave paintings found in Cerro Colorado. In such events, the witch doctor used the fruit of the cebil plant as a narcotic drug. Cebil was crushed and inhaled through the nose; stone tablets were used to grind and offer it, as archeological findings show.

The dead were buried curled up, maybe wrapped in leather. Clay vessels have been found that may have contained infants’ remains. However, there is no evidence that the Comechingons buried children in urns, like the Diaguita peoples, but rather in small chambers, like in the Ruimpal and Unquillo cultures.

Ceremonies were held whenever a girl had her period for the first time, when a little child died, and every time other significant event took place.

FAMILY

Family was the essential unit of their social organization. Above the family was the parcialidad, which occupied a circumscribed area and was run by a local chief. When the parcialidad became too large, it broke up into smaller units with their own chief, though it never lost its link to the primary parcialidad.

ECONOMY

The Comechingons were farmers as they knew artificial irrigation methods. Domestic animals were almost exclusively limited to llamas. They are thought to have kept dogs for company, too.

Gathering provided these groups with fruits, especially carob beans, which were found in wild fields in large amounts. These were complemented with other regional fruits, such as the chañar. Hunting targeted deers, guanacos, viscachas, foxes from two different species, Patagonic hares, iguanas, and birds, namely rheas.

They made stone utensils, e.g. axes, arrow points, scrapers, triangle-shaped bone points with stalk, and stone axes with or without neck. They also used bone to create knives and daggers, spindles, and long arrow points, as well as large necklaces and other beaded ornamental items to decorate dresses. Pottery was not fully developed. It was quite primitive, as can be inferred from the plain artifacts found so far. When there was any decoration at all, it was simple, concise, and geometric. Possibly, painted pottery was in fact alien to the Comechingons. Most vessels were subglobular, with plain base, and cylindrical neck; they only differed in size. In these artifacts, there are visible traces of baskets and nets, which indicates that the Comechingons produced both. Their weapons included bows and arrows, half pikes, bolas, and spears with elliptical-shaped points.

THE CONQUEST

The founding of Cordoba in 1573 was the beginning of the hispanization process, to which the Comechingons were subjected. In the encomienda system –in which a piece of land was granted to individual Spanish settlers together with its inhabitants–, neither the ethnicity nor the belonging of the different indigenous peoples were considered. Actually, the Comechingons had to exist side by side with Indians of different language, culture, and ascendancy, such as the Sanaviron and the Huarpe peoples, both from Cordoba, and the Olongastas, from San Luis and La Rioja provinces, especially before their founding (1591 and 1594, respectively).

Jesuit missioners did not make an effort to study these indigenous groups native language. Instead, they attempted to impose the quichua language to them, as they have done with the Tonocotes Indians from Santiago del Estero province, since it was the language some conquerors and they themselves knew. Such attempts produced some results according to documents from the 16th and 17th century, but meant the death of the Comechingons’ own language. Consequently, this distinctive group melted in to the increasingly hispanicized mass that belonged to the former Tucuman provincial government and eventually disappeared as such.