The indigenous peoples of Chile lived as hunters and farmers, scattered in small communities, when the area was invaded by the Inca Empire in the 15th century. The Inca people, who already ruled in Ecuador and Peru, seized northern Chile but were stopped in the south by the Araukans. When the Spaniards conquered the Inca Empire in the 1530s, the resistance of the Inca people forced them to turn around in the Atacama Desert in the north. The Spaniard Pedro de Valdivia made a new attempt a little later and in 1541 he and his men reached the fertile valley in central Chile, where they founded the city of Santiago.
