CHAPTER II
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
The Araucanian wars made Chile a school of arms for all South America. The appointment to its captaincy-general was eagerly sought by ambitious soldiers, and the place, especially after the seventeenth century, was a stepping-stone to the magnificent and lucrative position of viceroy at Lima. Preoccupied with the southern wars, passing most of their time on the frontiers, the governors paid little attention to central and northern Chile. The Indians peacefully cultivated the great estates of their feudal masters; and although the mining industry was considerable it never threatened the extinction of the neighbouring population. The few towns were mere villages, built of one-story, thatch-covered houses, commerce was insignificant, portable wealth small, money almost unknown. However, the landed proprietors of Chile mostly lived upon their estates, and came into more intimate contact with their Indian tenants than in the richer and more tropical provinces, a circumstance which has had a profound effect upon the character and racial composition of the modern Chilean.
Although unsuccessful in Araucania, the governors prospered in their efforts to extend the Spanish dominion east of the Andes and before the end of the sixteenth century the fertile valleys of the province of Cuyo—Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luiz—as far as the central desert which separates them from the grass-covered pampas of Buenos Aires, were incorporated with Chile. At the same time the green and populous island of Chiloë—the Ireland of the Pacific—was added to the captaincy-general.
The first comers were adventurous soldiers looking for sudden riches, but Chile furnished these gentlemen small returns for hard knocks. The reasons which led the Spanish government to discourage emigration to Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, did not apply to Chile, and when, early in the seventeenth century, the Madrid authorities abandoned the useless and expensive effort to conquer Araucania, they permitted a considerable number of real colonists. A heavy immigration followed—composed mostly of Basques and Aragonese—hardy and industrious settlers who made thrifty farmers and merchants. These people were no mere army of occupation—a privileged class living parasitically upon the Indians; they set about developing the real resources of the country, and their blood, mixing into the fine and strong aboriginal strain, vastly improved it. The lower classes in Chile are industrious, enduring, and brave, and though at times they show a touch of that primitive ferocity characteristic of young peoples, their innate energy and great physical strength have been of incalculable value to the nation.
Little worth detailing is recorded in the annals of Chile during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For many years the Araucanians refused to make any treaty with the Spaniards. The chronicles are filled with accounts of the incursions made by the Indians into Spanish territory—often successful, more often repulsed, with sieges, ambushes—tales of reckless valour and unspeakable cruelty. Sometimes the Europeans carried the war over the Biobio, and during the ten years prior to 1640 they were so successful in carrying fire, slaughter, and pillage to the homes of the Araucanians, that the latter finally consented to an armistice and a formal treaty of peace. The Spanish governor went to the plain of Quillin, escorted by more than ten thousand persons, and the Araucanian general appeared in state at the head of all the toquis, ulmens, and chief warriors of the confederacy. Into the open space between the high contracting parties was led a llama for sacrifice, whose sprinkled blood remained a pledge that the historic Biobio would henceforth be respected by both nations as the boundary, and that the Araucanians would never permit colonists of third nations upon their shores, or aid the English and Dutch buccaneers. The Indians faithfully adhered to this pact of friendship and refused to furnish the Dutch with provisions when the latter took possession of Valdivia in 1643. But in 1655 the cupidity of Spanish officers caused trouble, and war devastated both sides of the border for the next ten years. In 1665 a new treaty, identical in terms, was negotiated, which continued in force until 1722. However, Spanish priests pushed their evangelising among the Indians, and officers, called "Capitanos de los amigos," appointed to guard the interests of the missionaries, assumed authority highly offensive to the Araucanians. The great council was summoned, a general selected, and the missionaries expelled. When the Spanish governor marched to the frontier with five thousand men the Indians offered battle which the Spaniards dared not accept. The former continued firm in their demands, and peace was only re-established by abolishing the obnoxious officials.
Meanwhile nothing of moment had disturbed the slow and even current of colonial progress in northern and central Chile. The country was poor, its exports small and its imports smaller. Great fortunes were not accumulated as in other South American countries, though the national life rested on a broader, surer basis. The wheat and cattle, the fruits and poultry introduced by the Spaniards raised the standard of alimentation and the vitality of the people, while the continual admixture of Spanish blood augmented individual initiative and intelligence. The towns at first grew very slowly. Santiago itself had only eight thousand inhabitants at the end of the seventeenth century, while the other so-called cities, Coquimbo, Castro, Valparaiso, Chillan, Concepcion, and Valdivia, were in fact little more than villages. The rural districts were populous, for the soil was fertile, the climate healthful, and the means of a simple subsistence abounded. Imported vices and diseases, and the oppressions suffered at the hands of the first Spanish proprietors, had somewhat thinned out the native population, but these losses were largely made up by a rapid increase of the element which boasted white descent, and in the latter part of the eighteenth century Spanish Chile was more densely populated than the Atlantic seaboard of North America.
HOUSE OF CONGRESS, SANTIAGO.
Spanish legislation gave a monopoly of South American commerce to a favoured ring of merchants at Cadiz, forbidding any communication with Chile except by the circuitous Isthmian route. Freights were enormous, profits and taxes exorbitant, and in spite of the repressive measures of the Spanish authorities, smuggling was carried on by way of the route over the Andes to Buenos Aires and Colonia. The war of the Spanish Succession, following the death of the last of the descendants of Charles V., disorganised Spanish administration, and during the confusion of the first few years of the eighteenth century illicit trading increased apace. The triumph of Louis XIV., and the seating of a French prince on the throne of Madrid, resulted in a temporary permission to French ships to trade with South America. For a time French manufactures were brought directly to Chile by way of Cape Horn. The customs receipts—hitherto merely nominal—rapidly increased, and although the license was soon revoked at the demand of the Cadiz monopolists, a permanent impetus had been given to commerce. Improving conditions gave a fresh start to immigration, and the comparatively rational policy of the Bourbon dynasty removed many of the more crying abuses of colonial administration. A little before the middle of the eighteenth century Governor Manso, with the approval of Madrid, founded a dozen cities scattered through all the provinces as far south as the Biobio, and settlements spread to the frontier of Araucania. Manso's successor, Rosas, was even more diligent in establishing new towns and received the title of "Conde de Poblaciones." He founded the University of San Felipe at Santiago, and stimulated commerce by opening a mint. In his administration occurred the great earthquake of 1751, which engulfed and destroyed Concepcion by a tremendous wave from the sea, and inflicted great damage upon Santiago and many other towns. These convulsions are very frequent in Chile and in early times people supposed that it was not safe to build houses of more than one story. It has since been ascertained that two-story edifices are as secure as lower ones and Chilean cities contain many handsome buildings.
Rosas' successor was Don Manuel Amat. Under his administration the erection of new cities continued, and he is remembered as the captain-general who helped suppress the robbers and bandits who had infested the country. Vigilance committees were organised, volunteer patrols guarded the city streets and country roads, and a coast militia fought the pirates who infested the seashore. Chile in the middle of the eighteenth century presents the characteristics of a frontier country—rapid founding of towns, disorders and lawlessness effectively suppressed by lynch law, and a childish display of newly acquired wealth.
The encroachments upon the Araucanians finally grew irksome to those indomitable and intractable savages. What the Spanish armies and priests had failed in, the settlers who poured into the fertile plains and valleys of southern Chile seemed about to achieve. The next captain-general even tried to incorporate the independent tribes into the Spanish system, but when he attempted to gather them into towns the spirit which had animated their forefathers proved too strong. A war broke out which lasted several years and ended only when the Spanish government renewed the treaties guaranteeing them practical independence, and allowing them to keep an ambassador at Santiago. Just about this time the trans-Andean province of Cuyo was separated from Chile and transferred to the newly created Buenos Aires viceroyalty. Taken purely for reasons of administrative convenience, this measure resulted in shutting off Chile from expansion over the vast plains of the Plate Valley, confining her between the Andes and the sea, and ultimately securing to the Argentine a territorial and numerical preponderance among Spanish-American republics.
