The Natural History of the Varieties of Man

by R. G. Latham

The Charruas proper, from the time of Solis to the year 1831, have lived the life of a nation of warriors, with their hand against every man, and every man's hand against them. Uninterrupted as was their hostility to the Spaniards, it was equally so against the other aborigines; so much so, that in no case do we find a common alliance against the common enemy to have existed;—on the contrary, the war against the Mamaluco, the Tupi, and the Arachanes, were wars of extermination. And so was the war against the Spaniards; except that the Spaniards were the exterminators. In 1831 the President of Uraguay, Rivera, destroyed the Charruas root and branch; so that at the present moment a few enslaved individuals are the only remains of that once terrible nation.

From eighty to one hundred families lived under the direction of a Tubicchó, or semi-hereditary chief, and when danger threatened, the Tubicchós met and chose amongst themselves a leader. Whoever is chosen commands the obedience of the rest—the election is half counsel, half feast. Chicha is drunk; wounds are exhibited; exploits are recounted: the most worthy is selected from his peers.

After this fires are lighted as beacons, and the warriors of tribes meet from all parts. When they can make the attack, they do it by night, and at the full-moon. How they treat their captives is a matter upon which there is a conflict in the evidence. Ruy Diaz de Guzman denies that they are cruel to their prisoners. I have no wish to disturb Ruy Diaz de Guzman's evidence. Others, however, have controverted it. Against the fact of their being cannibals there is the same, and (perhaps) better testimony. Where they taste human flesh at all, it is done in the spirit of vengeance, and not to satisfy appetite. They tasted of the body of Solis; and they had good reason to hate him.

Their chief ornaments are the tattoo and the feathers of the ostrich; and the favourite colour for their incisions is blue.

Now I believe that this savage semi-heroic character of the Charruas is a fair sample of the wilder and more unsubdued Indians of Chili, Patagonia, and the Gran Chaco; also, that it is equally true of the Araucanians as described by Ercilla, and the Pampa Indians of Sir E. Head. And what is this but a repetition of the same features which we see in the corresponding part of North America? Here, when we have got beyond the tropics, we find the Algonkin, Sioux, and Iroquois warriors, conterminous with, and (as the present writer believes) passing into the feebler Eskimo—these latter bearing the same relation to their southern neighbours as the Fuegians do to the northern ones.

Like the Paduca area for North America, the Pampas and the parts to the north of them are preeminently the country of the horse—so that the ethnology of Mongolia and Tartary partially reappears here.

In looking back to consider what parts of South America have been described, we find that the long but narrow strip of the western coast bounded by the Andes and the Pacific, has been nearly (perhaps wholly) distributed between three stocks—the Muysca, the Peruvian, and the Chileno-Patagonian. I say perhaps wholly, because the Atacamas and Changos are probably referable to one of these two latter divisions. Again—it is likely that future researches may throw these three great groups into one; at least such is the inference to be drawn from a comparison of the Patagonian and Peruvian languages.

To a certain extent, the southern part of the peninsula is disposed of along with the western; since it is safe to say that as far as 30° south latitude (perhaps farther) the Chileno-Patagonian stock, like the Eskimo and Athabaskan, stretches across the breadth as well as along the side of the continent.

The parts still standing over—two-thirds or more of the whole peninsula—are those bounded by the ocean, the Andes, and 30° south latitude.

Premising that of these three boundaries the last is artificial and conventional, whilst the two former are natural, I shall take first in order those areas which, being geographical or political rather than ethnological, exhibit the phænomenon, so often met with already, of numerous groups within narrow compasses. This being done, the remaining part of the continent will exhibit the contrast of the wide extension of single families.