The Picunche (a Mapudungun word meaning "North People"),[1] also referred to as picones by the Spanish, were a Mapudungun-speaking people living to the north of the Mapuches or Araucanians (a name given to those Mapuche living between the Itata and Toltén rivers) and south of the Choapa River and the Diaguitas.

Until the Conquest of Chile the Itata was the natural limit between the Mapuche, located to the south, and Picunche, to the north.

The indigenous Picunche disappeared by a process of mestizaje by gradually abandoning their villages (pueblo de indios) to settle in nearby Spanish haciendas.

There Picunches mingled with disparate indigenous peoples brought in from Araucanía (Mapuche), Chiloé (Huilliche, Cunco, Chono, Poyas[5]) and Cuyo (Huarpe[6]).

[7] Few in numbers, disconnected from their ancestral lands and diluted by mestizaje the Picunche and their descendants lost their indigenous identity.