Christopher Columbus
Since the late 20th century, historians have criticized Columbus for initiating colonization and for abuse of natives. Among reasons for this criticism is the poor treatment of the native Taíno people of Hispaniola, whose population declined rapidly after contact with the Spanish. Columbus required the natives to pay tribute in gold and cotton. Modern estimates for the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola are around 250,000–300,000. According to the historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, by 1548, 56 years after Columbus landed, and 42 years after he died, fewer than 500 Taíno were living on the island. The indigenous population declined rapidly, due primarily to the first pandemic of European endemic diseases, which struck Hispaniola after 1519. The natives had no acquired immunity to these new diseases and suffered high fatalities. There is also documentation that they were overworked.
La Dehesa
It is believed that the first human group to be discovered here were mainly hunter–gatherer nomads .They came in search of guanacos; they arrived in Santiago in approximately 10,000 BC. Around the year 800 BC, the area became inhabited along the shores of the Mapocho River, representing the first sedentary population, which resulted from the establishment of farming communities and the auchenids' domestication. The area was controlled by the Inca and by the Spanish during the seventeenth century. The Spanish were still in control of the area in the early 1800s Bernardo O'Higgins helped to win its independence from that empire in 1810.