The Adventurers by Gustave Aimard

The Araucanos, whom certain travellers, either ill-informed or of bad faith, persist in representing as savage men plunged in the most frightful barbarism, are, on the contrary, a relatively civilized people. Their government, the origin of which is lost in the night of time, and which, at the period of the Spanish conquest, was as well organized and carried out as easily as at the present day, is, as we have said in a preceding chapter, an aristocratic republic, with essentially feudal tendencies. This government, which affects all the appearances of the feudal system, has all its good qualities and all its defects. Hence, except in time of war, the toquis possess but the shadow of sovereignty, and the power resides in the entire body of the chiefs, who, in questions of importance, decide in a general diet, called the _Auca-coyog_, the great council, or council of free men, for such is the name they claim for themselves, and very justly, for no power has yet been able to subdue them.

These councils are generally held in the presence of all, in a vast prairie.