PATAGONIAN PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY

First indigenous people settled in Patagonia some 10,000 years ago. While Tehuelche nation survived hunting rheas, guanacos and deer in valleys and. Mountains, onas, selknam, alacalufes and kaweskar - expert canoeists - wandered along the Patagonian coast and fiords, fishing, diving for algae mollusks or crustaceous for food or hunting wolves, otters and sea birds, for keeping themselves warm or for tents.
During XI and 18th century, intrepid Europeans adventurers and explorers came in search of the silver paths and golden made buildings of the mythical Caesars City, and so they lost their lives in exchange of nothing. Patagonian treasures are in fact the peace, beauties and solitude of the cold jungle and even the horrid blare of glaciers plunging in great chunks of ice into hidden lakes.
Simpson Canyon and its river, home for Canto de Lluvia Lodge, has been and still is the main access to the ocean for all the inland territories of Aysén and vice versa.
First foreign visitor: In 1766-67 a Catholic priest discovered the fiord and the river when looking for the Caesars City and named it RIO DE LOS DESAMPARADOS (Helpless People River)
A hundred years later a Chilean Navy captain with a 14 sailors crew came up the river just up in front of Canto de Lluvia. Same as Lewis & Clark expedition in the US they were after a fluvial connection with the Atlantic Ocean - for those years a Chilean sea. His report to the Admiral Quarters disclosed also for the government the huge potential of the whole new territory
In the earliest 1900 large companies leased enormous territories for cattle and sheep raising. At the same time some courageous small Chilean farmers and former peons migrated from Argentina seeking for properties and better life. Although both fractions confronted, they started together the first settlements and villages that become the cities of today.