At home with the Patagonians

by George C. Musters

At the entrance of the rock-strewn gorge which formed the eastern gateway of the valley of Geylum, to the south of which towered the isolated column of rock, we were suddenly startled by the apparition of mounted Indians galloping towards us from the direction which our advanced party had taken. Conjectures as to possible calamity in the shape of a fight or accident were speedily dispelled, as they proved to be Tehuelches riding back in search of lost horses, which they averred had been stolen and craftily concealed by the Araucanians. So we continued our march through a succession of narrow rocky gorges winding amongst the hills, till, as the twilight was growing dark, we arrived, wet and weary, and feeling symptoms of illness, at the encampment situated in one of the usual grassy valleys. The toldo when reached proved to be in utter disorder, two of the women and a child having been attacked with the epidemic; so we set to work ourselves to light a fire, secure the skin covering of the toldo, and arrange the beds, and after a time the interior assumed a more ship-shape aspect, although the grass (our carpet) and everything else were wet. On every side one heard complaints of some child having fallen sick, and throughout the night the wailing cry of the women ‘Ah gelay loo!’ over their darlings rendered sleep all but impossible. Next morning broke fine and clear, so it was determined to march onwards in the hope that speedy change might get rid of the epidemic, but starting was almost as difficult as staying.

Of our party Meña had returned to look for a missing horse; Crimè was dying, and Casimiro was attending to him; and what with sick friends and children all were occupied or distracted, and the business of catching the horses devolved on myself, single-handed at first. Having secured the troop, the next task was to catch my newly-acquired steed; the sight of a lazo was sufficient to make him gallop a league, and as he was very swift, three hours were spent in ineffectual efforts, but at last, two or three of my comrades coming up to my assistance, he was caught. Giving my flibbertigibbet page charge of the remaining horses, I started, in company with one of my friends, to join the hunting circle, already in course of formation.

We rode up a valley in an easterly direction, on our way passing the invalid Crimè, who, groaning with pain, lay stretched out at full length on a sort of couch composed of blankets on the horse’s back, his wife leading the horse and wailing out loud. But as condolences were of little use, we passed on in silence, and shortly emerged from the valley, which sloped up by gradual ascent to a wide plain of sandy soil and stunted bushes, bounded on the eastern horizon by a line of high jagged hills, which stretched to the southward as far as the eye could reach. While sitting under a bush by the fire, I was attacked with headache and sickness, the premonitory symptoms of the epidemic; however, I mounted and joined the hunting party, and at the end of the circle felt much better, although unable to eat.

The finish brought us to the entrance of a valley which wound among the precipitous rocky hills of the range seen from the farther verge of the plain. While watching the cavalcade of women and baggage, I looked long in vain for my own troop of four horses, but at last descried them trotting without a guide in the rear of the column, their natural sagacity or perhaps thirst having induced them to follow their comrades. The trusty page had left them to take care of themselves, and gone off hunting on his own account, which behaviour, repeated on a subsequent occasion, caused the loss of the stud. Towards evening we encamped in a valley enclosed by three hills, one of which, of decidedly volcanic aspect, was named ‘Oerroè.’ The side of this hill was thickly scattered with fragments of the vesicular lava which furnishes the favourite material for the hand bolas. As most of us had exchanged our weapons of the chase for apples, piñones, &c., in Las Manzanas, many were soon employed picking stones and fashioning bolas. I took very good care that my page should be unprovided with hunting implements, but, alas! here he fell sick, or pretended to be, and was just as useless as before. The day after our arrival Crimè’s sufferings were terminated. I received a summons to his death-bed; the Cacique, though wandering, knew his friends, and called all to witness that his death had been caused by a Southern Tehuelche whom he named and described, and then, raising his arm, pointed to a vacant space and cried, ‘Look at him, there he stands.’ He then asked me to ‘feel his arm,’ and as, to please him, I laid my finger on his pulse it beat slower and slower, till, with a sudden gasp, he died. According to etiquette we silently retired, and the toldo resounded with the clamorous crying of the women and the wailing of his widow. The usual funeral rites were hurriedly gone through, but most were too absorbed in their own troubles to participate in them. During the night three children died, and more were at death’s door; and, the supply of horseflesh from the funeral victims being abundant, all thoughts of marching were abandoned, and the camp resounded with the lamentations of the women. In our toldo all the inmates were sick, and the duty of looking after the horses devolved on myself and Casimiro, who was recovering from his attack.

We were joined in this place by Hinchel’s son with his Araucanian wife, with whom another man came to look for a girl who had run away from Foyel’s toldo, but his quest proved fruitless, as she remained invisible, stowed away in some of the toldos. This man brought further news that Cheoeque’s people, renewing the old feud, were arming to fight now that we had gone; also that a man had been killed in a drunken brawl since our departure, and that a rumour was current that the Valdivians had had their cattle taken from them, and various other stories, most of which were declared to be lies by Orkeke, who, having lost a horse, had returned to look for it in Geylum; the budget of alarming news thus proving to be a fresh illustration of the Indians’ proneness to invent if they have nothing of real importance wherewith to astonish their hearers. Crimè’s widow took up her abode in our toldo; and as, by this chief’s death, the post of Capitanejo, with the rank of Lieutenant in the Buenos Ayrean army, and the right of drawing rations, was vacant, Casimiro consulted me as to his successor. But successive proposals of those who seemed most fit, beginning with Wáki, were objected to by the Cacique, who at last declared that he should name his almost insane son Graviel as the chief to be placed by the Argentine Government upon the list of the Caciques to be conciliated by annual pay! On April 22 a start was made, but we remained to the last, as four of Casimiro’s horses which I had brought down to the valley the previous evening were missing, so the chieftain returned to look for them, and the rest of the toldo pursued their journey.

After taking a farewell look at the Cordillera, which was presently shut out from view by the hills, the counterslope of which we descended, a hurried march led us through a very barren rocky country entangled in broken irregular hills, with scarcely a bush to shelter under, and little or no pasture. We encamped, or rather reached the camp after it was pitched, in a cañon containing a small spring and a very little green pasture, and went to bed supperless, as, not being in time for the hunt, and game being very scarce, what we could beg from our neighbours was naturally given to those recovering from sickness.

Jackechan’s wife and child were still very unwell, and, as the child was supposed to be dying, the doctor was sent for. He proceeded to cure it by laying it on the ground, muttering a charm and patting it on the head; after which he put his mouth close to its chest and shouted to bring the devil out: he then turned it on its face and repeated the same process. The child’s health mended next day, and it was shortly out of danger.

About ten o’clock at night Casimiro returned with his horses, which had strayed a considerable distance on the road back to Geylum. The next day a long march of twenty miles brought us to an encampment on the western verge of a broad plain, watered by a brooklet. During the hunt the first Patagonian hares, or cavies, were caught. These little animals live in burrows, but are generally out feeding or sleeping in the grass during the day. They are excessively swift for perhaps a mile, but, like the foxes of this country, soon get tired. The chase of these small deer afforded an agreeable relief to the monotony of the journey. As soon as we entered a plain or valley where they abounded, as they always were found in numbers where the pasture was good, all hurried off to ‘stop the earths,’ i.e. close up the burrows with bushes; but the cunning little beasts often evaded us by slipping into a burrow overlooked by the earth stoppers. It required considerable skill to bring them down with the bolas, as, if only caught round the legs or body, they disentangled themselves quickly, but a blow on the head proved at once fatal. They are good eating, though the flesh is somewhat dry when roasted. Their skins are made up into mantles, but are of little value, as the hair soon comes off.

About a mile below the encampment, where the sandy plain narrowed and sloped down to a low-lying grassy valley, a singular phenomenon presented itself. The morning after our arrival, when going out to look for the horses, a furious easterly gale whirled the dust aloft in dense clouds, and, to my great surprise, the sand, which was driven into our faces, was as hot as when the fire so nearly encircled us. Almost blinded in forcing our way through this curtain of driving sand, we rode right into a hollow, where the earth appeared to be on fire; as the horses plunged through the heated surface the hair was burnt off their fetlocks, and they were nearly maddened with fright, so that it was a difficult feat for the riders without saddles or stirrups to keep their seats. Once I was somewhere near my horse’s ears, but, more by good luck than good management, just escaped being thrown as it were into the fire. After the gale had partially moderated, I proceeded to inspect this place, and found that, although not, as I at first thought, absolutely on fire, the ground was smoking as if from internal combustion. The surface presented a crust of baked yellow clay, which, yielding to the horses’ feet, disclosed a black subsoil; there was no flame, but a thin white vapour issued from the ground. When I incautiously ventured a step on the treacherous crust it gave way, but I managed to extricate myself with no further damage than burning my potro boots. The Indians stated that the fire had been originally caused some years previously by their having kindled the pasture higher up the valley, and that the ground had been burning ever since. It was impossible to discover whether there was any subjacent bed of combustible matter which might thus have been ignited; but, as there are hot wells and springs in the same range not many miles distant to the south-east, it seems more probably due to volcanic agency. The principal hot spring was described as a circular basin of about six feet in diameter, the water, of a temperature not so hot as to scald the hand, bubbling up through numerous holes in a clay bottom. In many of the surrounding hills there are lava and pumice of not extremely ancient formation; some of the hills have also an appearance of having been at a recent period the outlets of eruptive forces, which have scattered large shattered masses of rock over the sides of the extinct craters.

In this encampment I had a serious misunderstanding with our chief, which all but ended in a downright quarrel; but after consideration we agreed to make it up, as although on two occasions of danger he had left me to my fate, I thought it better on the whole to keep friends for the present. The evening of this quarrel, as a party of three toldos were starting off to go to the Chupat, and Casimiro was desirous of extending his fame to the Welsh settlement, I wrote a letter to the authorities enquiring about some saddles, part of his Argentine rations sent thither by mistake, which the chief declared to have been intended for him, but which had been distributed amongst other Indians. The letter was forwarded by one of the Indians who was supposed to be of English parentage on one side, although he showed but little traces of English blood in his type, with the exception perhaps of his hair, which was of a lighter colour than that usually met with: he was a very good-natured fellow, and I regretted his departure, as he was one of my adherents, but being a man of very sober habits he did not wish to be mixed up in the universal orgie which would probably take place on arriving in the vicinity of Patagones. With this party the young widow who had made overtures of marriage to me also departed, after an affectionate farewell, and receiving a handkerchief as a remembrance. The following morning we also started, and one of the universal loafers who had gambled his property away, asking for a mount, was told to catch the ‘white horse’ presented by Orkeke: he accordingly borrowed a horse to catch him, and at the end of our day’s journey had not succeeded in doing more than driving him in, to use a nautical term, in our wake; this was exactly what I had intended, as this Indian was a great rogue, and had cheated me at cards out of a set of metal bolas, equivalent to a horse.