Strictly the Guanches were the primitive inhabitants of Teneriffe, where they seem to have preserved racial purity to the time of the Spanish conquest, but the name came to be applied to the indigenous populations of all the islands.
Many of the Guanches fell in resisting the Spaniards, many were sold as slaves, and many conformed to the Roman Catholic faith and married Spaniards.
In times of drought the Guanches drove their flocks to consecrated grounds, where the lambs were separated from their mothers in the belief that their plaintive bleatings would melt the heart of the Great Spirit.
Strictly speaking, the Guanches were the primitive inhabitants of Tenerife, where the population seems to have lived in relative isolation up to the time of the Spanish conquest, around the 14th century (though Genoans, Portuguese, and Castillians had occasionally landed there since the second half of the 8th century.
The Guanches, now extinct as a distinct people, appear, from the study of skulls and bones discovered, to exhibit similarities to Cro-Magnonpopulations of the Mesolithic era, and links to the Berbers, who have long inhabited northern Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic, have been suggested.
The Guanchepopulation of Tenerife were, according to accounts from the 15th century, tall, tan-skinned, and powerfully built, with some having blond hair and blue eyes.
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