This article studies the renegades in the War of Chile or of Arauco between the end of the sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century. These were the men who deserted the Spanish military forces to join the Mapuche rebels, to whom they provided tactical information, as well as making their knowledge and war experience available to them. The reasons for their flight, their reception in Mapuche society and their roles as soldiers as well as cultural mediators are discussed. Along with analyzing the scarce information that exists about them, written from the Spanish side that considered them traitors and apostates, it is suggested that their full incorporation into Mapuche society depended on becoming a part of an indigenous lineage, which granted them all the rights and obligations that the admapu contemplated, which greatly weakened their presence within the rebel lands, since it relied on the protection a war chief could give them.