The old inhabitants of Chubut River Valley were the tehuelches, and we can find a great influence of them in the province's traditions. They left crafts, legends and traditions. In Chubut main cities, we can appreciate "quillangos", "matras", hunting slings and a lot of crafts. The word tehuelche is the Spanish for chehuelche, that means: chehuel brave and che: people. This "brave people" inhabited Chubut River's both riverbanks. In general their groups did not overcome a hundred ones. It was at least composed by a family or a group of them, under a cacique leadership. He was the highest authority and he decided about hunting and movements. They knew how to conserve meats through drying to the sun or through the use of salt. They got housing and clothes from animals. Their clothes were the Patagonian typical ones, made of guanaco or fox furs, with the hair inside. The housing were the awnings, they were a series of stakes on which the furs were placed. They kept a close relationship to each other, either for trade or war. This last one used to be the answer to the violation of hunting territories or for revenge. When the Spaniards arrived from Chile, a lot of tehuelches groups went to the pehuenches settlements in the present Neuquén. The advance from Chile, pushed by the Spaniards, caused with the passing of time, the necessity to join the Araucarians

They believed in a supreme being, who lived in the north, they called him Tukutzual, and those who lived in the south Kooch. According to the tradition, like all the nomads, they share the belief in Elal, a hero that had condemned the first men generation to be fishes, because they had violated a sex tabú. They were forbidden to eat fishes because it was like eating up to their ancestors.