The family is the main focus of the Mapuche social organization.
Before of Spanish conquest, the people of the Central-South area lived in a sort of matriarchy. The sons carried the name and the totem of their mothers (the husband living with his wife family). However, by the Spanish conquest, men were already family heads, even though the children still carried their mothers' names. From then onwards change was accelerated and wives went to live with their husbands families. Since then the patriarchy and virilocal concept has predominated. The Mapuche totem was the representation of a common tribal ancestor, not a god nor a representation of a spiritual figure.
Mapuche people had no villages; they spread out, in families, the same as they do to this very day. The lof, the residential unit, recognized a common origin, together they formed a kawin, and these formed a levo. A lof was a group of families that carried the same totem. The levos celebrated democratic assemblies where the authorities were elected.