CHAPTER II
THE INVASION OF CORRIENTES
The South American Indian, as a soldier, is a being about whom we English know very little. Of course we know that, centuries ago, he was a force to be reckoned with locally; we know that when his civilisation was stamped out of him he became a mere savage, ignorant, dirty, brutal and crafty; but it is something of a surprise to us to learn that, during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, he occasionally shook off much of his savagery, and showed himself the equal of the white soldier in discipline, generalship, staying-power and chivalry. A case in point is that of Andresito Artegas, one of the most striking figures in modern South American history.
Andresito, who belonged to the Guaycuru branch of the great Guaranian tribe, was the adopted son of the celebrated insurgent leader, Artegas, who seems to have given him some education and to have developed in him the great natural foresight and controlling power which he was to exhibit later in the war between the Guaranians and the Portuguese of Argentina.
This petty war, which lasted roughly from 1818 to 1820, was largely a “coming to a head” of the constant bickerings, forays, and persecutions which, for years, 33 had been interchanged between the white man and the red; and though, in the end, the Indians were badly beaten and the tribe almost annihilated, in the early and middle stages of the contest there seemed every likelihood of the Portuguese being driven out of La Plata. In 1819, emboldened by a train of minor successes, Andresito, with a force of seven hundred Guaycurus, determined to seize the city of Corrientes.
Next to Buenos Ayres, this was the wealthiest and most important of the Argentine towns, and much of the commerce was in the hands of British merchants, such as the well-known brothers Robertson, and their friend and sometime patron Thomas Postlethwaite. To men like this the news of Andresito’s advance was alarming enough, for it would probably mean financial ruin, if nothing worse; but to the more excitable Portuguese residents it was absolute paralysis. People went stark mad with panic; the seven hundred Indians became seven, and even seventy, thousand. Tales went from mouth to mouth of massacres unspeakable in every village and town on Andresito’s line of march, and it was said that the Paraguay boundary and the Parana River—the only means of safety hitherto open to fugitives—were already in Indian hands.
Mr. Postlethwaite, disappointed in the hopes of being able to send his two daughters down the river to Buenos Ayres, resolved to take matters into his own hands as far as possible, and saw that all the Europeans were armed and ready to band together in self-defence. But before anything in the way of concerted effort could be agreed upon, rumour became fact; Andresito and his Indian cavalry were within half a mile of the 34 city. Two Portuguese men dropped dead in the street with fright; Francisco Bedoya, commandant of the colonial troops, lost his head altogether; collected all the money and plate he could lay his hands on and buried it in the garden, then began to run about the streets like a rat in a trap.
As a last resource, Mr. Postlethwaite sent one of his servants to Andresito with a letter, warning him that our Government might mete out a terrible punishment if British life and property were not respected; and, to his great relief, the man soon came riding back with a courteous message from the young chief, to the effect that no violence was intended to anyone, least of all to British subjects.
The Englishman was imparting this message to his friends when the steady trot of a large body of horse was heard, and everyone either rushed to hiding-places or swarmed into the streets. Postlethwaite and his daughters reached the Plaza in time to see the Indian soldiers take possession of it. Nothing could less resemble a horde of uncivilised invaders than these seven hundred men. Headed by the handsome young Andresito and his Spanish-Peruvian secretary, Mexias, the Guaycurus halted and dismounted at the sound of the bugle, and it could be seen that they were a set of well-trained fellows, armed like a European cavalry troop, dressed like civilised people, and apparently no more ready for outrage than if they had been loyalist soldiers come to rescue the town.
The rear of the procession was certainly remarkable, being composed of four hundred boys of from six to fourteen years, half of them the children of white 35 people, round whom thronged a mixed group of farmers and their wives, screaming, threatening, and entreating. The Indian boys were liberated slaves, and it appeared that wherever Andresito had found a native child in captivity, he had freed him and taken a white boy prisoner. It is interesting to know that, not many days later, the Indian chief gathered together the distressed parents who had been able to keep up with or to follow his march, and handed the white children over to them.