Breeding, in fact, was just beginning to spread in the neighbourhood of Carmen at the time. The cattle had been brought by land from Buenos Aires, and had multiplied along the coast and the river above Carmen. South of Carmen, at San José, the cattle had run wild after the fort was abandoned. The Carmen herds were estimated, before the revolution, at 40,000 head. They disappeared during the revolutionary period, but were reconstituted immediately afterwards, and even during the war with Brazil there was an active export of hides and salt beef. Carmen profited mainly by trade with the Indians. It lived in terror of them, and had garrisons to give the alarm on the routes by which they could approach. But this state of chronic warfare did not prevent trade. Near Carmen there was a group of peaceful Indians who served as intermediaries with the tribes of the interior, who were jealous and hostile. Guides and interpreters were found in this colony, and through it came the first news of the interior. The traffic with the Indians continued for a long time to be of great use to the colonists. In 1865 the Welsh colony established on the Chubut, which had many difficulties at first, was saved from complete disaster by its trade with the Indians.
The indigenous population comprised two groups: the Tehuelches, or Patagonians proper, men of tall stature, and the Araucans, the Ranqueles, the Pehuenches and the Pampas. There was no fixed geographical limit between them. The Tehuelches lived in southern Patagonia; but the Araucans advanced eastward as far as the Pampas region and southward beyond the Chubut. The Indian population of the valley of the Genua and the Sanguerr, south of the colony of San Martin, comprised in 1880,[58] and still comprises,[59] a mixture of Araucans and Tehuelches. The Araucans were acquainted with agriculture, but, once they had tamed the horse, they became mainly a pastoral and hunting people, like the Tehuelches.
In so far as they were hunters, the Indians of Patagonia were nomadic. The taming of the horse only made it easier for them to shift from place to place, and gave them a greater range. Their nomadism has too often been regarded as an aimless wandering. They had laws, settled by the physical conditions; and we can gather a few of these. They kept away from the coastal districts except in winter; that is the season when the rains provide water-courses there. It has been observed that names of Indian origin are lacking on the coast of Patagonia. The Spanish navigators who landed there during the summer found the country deserted and the camps abandoned. On the other hand, the share of the Indians in giving names is very considerable in the interior, as far as the foot of the Andes. During the summer the Indians approached the mountains, where they found good hunting grounds. In particular they chased the young guanacos in the breeding season, December and January. Popper has indicated similar migrations amongst the Onas of Patagonia; they approach the coast in winter, and leave it in summer, to hunt in the interior.[60] The district of Lake Nahuel Huapi and Collon Cura had some attraction from afar. The forest of araucarias produced seeds (pinones) which the Indians went to gather; and they also liked the wild apples which ripened on the former estates of the old Jesuit missions. The clusters of bamboo on the Cordillera provided the lances of the Aucas and Tehuelches.
Lake Nahuel Huapi is the first stage of the busiest of the routes used by the Indians. It came from the lower Santa Cruz, went up the Rio Chico, and from there northward followed the foot of the Cordillera. D'Orbigny was told about it: "All the Indians who live near the Andes go along the eastern foot of the mountains in their journeys, because they find water there, whereas they would find none if they went by the coast; in that way they travel from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro." The Indian track only left the sub-Andean depression between the Rio Chico and Lake Buenos Aires, in the district where the high basalt mesetias extend as far as the Cordillera, and on the Pampa of the Sanguerr.
From Lake Nahuel Huapi the Indians of the south descended the Limay and the Rio Negro, and reached the island of Choele Choel, some 230 miles above Carmen, where they met the Aucas and Puelches. There they exchanged their guanacos hides for woollen fabrics made by the Aucas. Choele Choel was the only large, purely indigenous market; the whites never visited it. Geographical reasons fixed the site of this market of the nomads. In the latitude of Choele Choel the Rio Negro approaches the Colorado and the archipelago of the Sierras of the southern Pampa, which mark so many stages on the routes from the Pampa to the Andes. To the south the coast-route, less exposed to snow than the sub-Andean track, began from Choele Choel. The Indians followed this to reach the Gulf of San Jorge and the Santa Cruz in winter, during the rainy season. Darwin notes the importance of the site and the ford of Choele Choel. Villarino had suspected it, and had, as early as 1782, pleaded for the building of a fort there. By holding this point, he said, they could prevent the tribes from attacking Buenos Aires, or from approaching the Patagonian coast in the district of San José.[61]
As far back as we can go, the life of the Indians seems to have been deeply influenced by their relations with the whites. The Aucas brought to Choele Choel, not only the products of their industry, but also objects stolen or bought from the Christians on the Pampa. The report of Musters, who followed a Tehuelche tribe from Santa Cruz to the country of the Manzanas ("land of apples"), shows clearly that the attraction of the Nahuel Huapi region for the Indians was less due to its natural resources than to the presence of the Chilean settlements at Valdivia, from which came across the passes of the Cordillera certain quantities of brandy.
The Indian never took to cattle-breeding. His herd never consisted of more than mares and a few sheep. But trade in stolen cattle quickly became the chief occupation of the tribes. It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that the thievish Indian was merely and always a dreaded enemy of the ranches of Carmen. They sometimes had recourse to his services and profited by his misdeeds. After the Revolution, it was the Indians who helped to fill once more the ranches of the Rio Negro, bringing runaway cattle which had remained in the San José district. Later, Carmen bought the cattle stolen by the Indians at Buenos Aires. From 1823 to 1826 the number of the cattle sold by the Indians to the colonists on the Rio Negro is estimated at 40,000. Hence the breeders of Carmen had, as regards the Indians, alternate periods of armed conflict and complicity.