Monte Verde in the context of "Peopling of the Americas"

In South America, Indigenous peoples comprise the Pre-Columbian peoples and their descendants, as contrasted with people of European ancestry and those of African descent. In Spanish, Indigenous peoples are referred to as pueblos indígenas (lit. 'Indigenous peoples'), or pueblos nativos (lit. 'native peoples'). The term aborigen (lit. 'aborigine') is used in Argentina, and pueblos aborígenes (lit. 'aboriginal peoples') is commonly used in Colombia. The English term Amerindian (short for "Indians of the Americas") is often used in the Guianas. Latin Americans of mixed European and Indigenous descent are usually referred to as mestizos (Spanish) and mestiços (Portuguese), while those of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry are referred to as zambos.

It is believed that the first human populations of South America either arrived from Asia into North America via the Bering Land Bridge and migrated southwards or alternatively from Polynesia across the Pacific. The earliest generally accepted archaeological evidence for human habitation in South America dates to 14,000 years ago, and is located at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile. The descendants of these first inhabitants would become the Indigenous populations of South America.

Los Lagos Region (Spanish: Región de Los Lagos pronounced [los ˈlaɣos], lit. 'Region of the Lakes') is one of Chile's 16 regions, which are first order administrative divisions, and comprises four provinces: Chiloé, Llanquihue, Osorno and Palena. The region contains the country's second-largest island, Chiloé, and the second-largest lake, Llanquihue. Its capital is Puerto Montt; other important cities include Osorno, Castro, Ancud, and Puerto Varas. Los Lagos Region is considered part of Patagonia.

Historically, the Huilliche have called this territory between Bueno River and Reloncaví Sound Futahuillimapu, meaning "great land of the south". The region hosts Monte Verde, one of the oldest archaeological sites of the Americas. The largest indigenous group of the region are the Huilliche who lived in the area before the arrival of the Spanish. The Spanish crown settled Chiloé Archipelago in 1567 while the rest of the region begun to be slowly colonized by non-indigenous people only in the late 18th century. In the 1850s, Germans arrived to colonize the shores of Llanquihue Lake under a Chilean state-sponsored program.