Abstract

As plains dwellers, the Tehuelche were hardy drifters who wandered across the barren steppe dressed in the skins of the guanaco, the pretty, rust-coloured relative of the llama that inhabits the southern reaches of the Americas. The Tehuelche creation story is known as the Elal Cycle, after a heroic man-god who arrives in Patagonia from a “Big Island” on the back of a swan.

Keywords:

• history,
• Elal,
• story,
• llama,
• people,
• Patagonia,
• Tehuelche creation