One of the strongest feelings which I brought away with me from Patagonia was a hatred of the trader who battens upon the failings of the Tehuelches. If he hears of a festival or any tribal ceremony, he arrives upon the spot with drink. He sells liquor in exchange for horses, and when his customers are well steeped in the poison he brings, he makes some magnificent bargains. His influence is far-reaching and fatal as far-reaching to the picturesque and harmless race out of whose degradation and death he makes his living. Savage races may survive war and internecine struggles, and the decimation not infrequently caused by a cruel rule such as was T'Chaka among the Zulus, but they never survive the Civilisation of the Bottle. The horrors of the wars of history would pale beside the cold-blooded slaughter, the gradual, malignant, poisoning processes which the most self-satisfied and religious nations of the world allow to continue year after year, I should say century after century, among the aboriginal tribes, who live nominally under their protection. The pioneer trader with his stores of cheap maddening liquor is free to sell as much as he pleases, although it is a well-known fact that such trading means ruin and extermination to the unhappy ignorant folk who buy. The sin after all is national rather than personal, for the trader has his living to earn, whereas the nation which is responsible for allowing him liberty to traffic puts out no hand to stay the evil. I do not in the least bring any charge against the Argentine Government; we British are guilty of the same crime or carelessness, and in some of our dependencies terrible object-lessons of precisely the same kind can be observed.
Let me draw a picture of one of these traders for you. A lean stooping man of Paraguayan extraction, dressed out in store clothes which he but half filled. A plump face of the caste peculiar to the lowest type of the Latin peoples, with a full greasy-lipped animalism stamped upon it, after the manner of his kind. The lean body and fat face formed a contrast that struck you with repulsion as an actual deformity. This fellow played a very old trick upon a batch of Indians and considerably enriched himself thereby.
The Indians had come in upon the outskirts of a coast-town, rich with the sale of a six-months harvest of ostrich feathers, guanaco-skins and other such merchandise as they gather from the pampas. After some drinking and a variety of games of chance, our friend the trader started an argument as to which of the Indians owned the swiftest horse. A race was soon decided upon, the trader most liberally offering a prize in the shape of a bottle of drink. The race was to be ridden bare-back, as is usual in contests of this description among the Indians. The trader further suggested that the race should be run off in heats. A horse with a white blaze and a very fine head won, and his proprietor, a tall Indian in a black poncho, received the prize, which he, with help, soon disposed of. After this the talk fell naturally upon the merits of the respective horses.
"Your picaso is a good horse," said the trader to the tall Indian, "but I have a horse in my troop that could leave him far behind."
At first the Indian laughed, but the trader's boasting and insistence presently stung him to resent the aspersion on his mount, and he said he should like to see the thing done.
The trader jumped at the opportunity. The Indians had had sufficient drink to destroy their ordinary cautiousness, and were ready to take up any challenge.
"The loser to forfeit his horse to the winner," continued the trader, who had laid his plans beforehand. He then called a Chileno lad, who soon appeared leading a big lean alazan. It was easy for any seeing eye to recognise that the animal had been tied up the night before and was in quite fair racing trim; besides which, the Indian's picaso was already tired with the previous races. The Chileno boy swung up and the two horses came thundering along their course. The Indian's weight also told as compared with the lightness of the Chileno boy, and the result was altogether a foregone conclusion.
TEHUELCHES VISIT GALLEGOS