Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de La Plata / Their Present State, Trade, and Debt

by Sir Woodbine Parish

Colonel Garcia, the officer in question, had previously seen much of the Indians on the coast of Patagonia. He was of a conciliatory disposition, and was on many other accounts eminently qualified for the task committed to him. From the diary of his expedition, which is in my possession, it appears that the caravan or convoy placed under his charge, on this occasion, consisted of 234 waggons, with 2927 bullocks, and 520 horses attached to them. His attendants, including soldiers, were 407: they had also two field-pieces with them. Nor was this considered a large party, compared with former expeditions with the same object; indeed Garcia soon found to his cost that his force was hardly sufficient to secure him common respect from some of the many Indian Caciques, who, from the time of his leaving the frontier fort of Cruz de Guerra to his arrival at the Salinas, successively besieged him with their importunities for presents, especially of tobacco and spirits, and kept him in continual alarm lest they should attempt to carry off by force what they could not obtain by other means. Each who presented himself called himself master of the lands they were passing through, and expected corresponding presents to purchase his permission to pass forward. Nor was this the worst: it appeared that something had given rise amongst the Indians to a suspicion of the ulterior objects of the Buenos Ayreans; and, under an impression that they projected a forcible settlement in their lands, the Ranqueles tribes from the plains south of San Luis and Mendoza, under their principal Cacique Carripilum (the same spoken of in the foregoing chapter), had collected their forces with the secret determination to endeavour to cut off the whole party. Fortunately the fidelity of some of the Puelches, or Eastern tribes, who hate and are continually at variance with the Ranqueles, enabled Garcia to discover and disconcert their hostile plans, and finally, though with considerable difficulty and danger, to accomplish his object, and return with his convoy of salt-carts in safety to Buenos Ayres.

Amongst the results of this expedition was the determination by observation of seventeen points along the line of road from the Guardia de Luxan, in lat. 34° 39´, long. west of Buenos Ayres 1° 2´, to the Great Salt Lake in lat. 37° 13´, long. west of Buenos Ayres 4° 51´;[37] the whole distance travelled being 97 leagues, or, adding 24 for that from Luxan to the capital, 121 from Buenos Ayres. The journey out occupied 23 days, and the return 25; altogether the party was absent just two months, viz., from the 21st of October to the 21st of December.

The only features which seem worthy of remark along the road are the numerous lakes, which appear to be the collections of the streams from the western ramifications of the Sierra Ventana; the most considerable of which is the Laguna del Monte, in lat. 36° 53´, long. from Buenos Ayres 3° 57´; its name, the Lake of the Wood, is taken from a large island upon it covered with fine timber; it is formed by the river Guamini, and other streams from the mountain group so called; its width was estimated to be three or four leagues, and in the rainy season it forms one with the lakes of Paraguayos, extending more than seven leagues to the south-west.

Although, the Laguna del Monte was salt, it was observed that the waters of some of the smaller lakes in its immediate vicinity were perfectly sweet. The same observation was made at the Salinas; the sweetest water was abundant in the immediate vicinity of the Great Salt Lake.

Shortly before reaching the lake of Paraguayos, the Sierra de la Ventana and its ramification, the Guamini, were seen and particularly observed: the Sierra Guamini bore south 15° east, and the Ventana south-east a quarter east. There they were met by several of the best-disposed of the Caciques and their followers, who supplied them with cattle in exchange for the articles they had with them. They accompanied them to the Salinas, which they reached two days afterwards; and to them they owed their protection from the hostile Renqueles and Carripilum, whose treachery they discovered and exposed.

Speaking of the character of these Indians, Garcia says they are remarkable alike for their cowardice as for their ferocity: their warfare is a system of continual deceit and treachery, and their stolen victories are always signalized by savage cruelties. Nothing could exceed their submissive obsequiousness to the Spaniards from the moment they knew they had an intimation of their hostile intentions, and were upon their guard against them. The prevailing vice amongst them all, even the best of them, is drunkenness,—the Caciques set the example upon every occasion; and it is seldom that their orgies end without the loss of lives, for in their cups they are always quarrelsome:—then the slightest offence is remembered, and they draw their knives, wounding and killing one another, and falling upon all, even their nearest relations, who would attempt to restrain them. Of all the Indians the Ranqueles are the worst:—they may be called the bush-rangers of the pampas:—if they cannot rob the Spaniards they will make war upon the other tribes, to carry off their horses and cattle. The Puelches, on the contrary, or eastern people, at that time settled about the Salinas and the mountains towards the coast, were found to be more peaceably disposed: they were the possessors of large herds and flocks of their own, and the manufacturers of many articles in demand amongst the Spaniards, such as ponchos, skin-cloaks, bridles, and feather-brooms, which they used to sell to them at Buenos Ayres and on the frontiers.

The extent of the Great Salt Lake is not given, and Garcia says it was impossible to ride round it from the thick woods which lined its banks; but, from an eminence a little to the south, he got a general view of it, as well as of the country for a considerable distance. Looking towards the south, as far as he could see, was one immense level plain, covered with pasturage: to the eastward, in the distance, some woods were visible, which, he was told, extended to the hilly ranges of Guamini and La Ventana. On the opposite side, to the westward of the lake, was a vast forest of chañar, algaroba, and an infinite variety of other trees, which the Indians told him extended with little interruption for three days' journey in that direction; and they added the singular circumstance that, about a day and a half off in the midst of it, upon a hilly range of some extent, were to be seen the ruins of the brick buildings of some former inhabitants (antigua poblacion), though, as to who they might have been, or when they ceased to exist, they had not the smallest notion, neither had they any tradition which could throw light upon it. The fruit-trees, they said, which, had been planted there, had multiplied exceedingly, so that it was a great resort of the Indians in their journeys across the pampas, to gather figs, peaches, walnuts, and apples, and other fruits, of which there was an abundance for all that went there. Wild cattle also, they said, were in the surrounding forest, but they were not so accessible, and were difficult to follow up through the woods. Colonel Garcia hazards no conjecture as to who could have been the settlers in this secluded and remote spot, nor has any one else obtained since any further account of them. The age of the trees might perhaps throw some light upon the date of the buildings, and I imagine that the names alone of those I have mentioned are sufficient to indicate that they must have been of European introduction, and consequently that those who planted them must have done so subsequently to the discovery of that part of the world by the Spaniards. Nothing, I was told, existed at Buenos Ayres which could throw any light whatever upon the subject.

Had the practice continued of carrying on these expeditions, it is probable that the Buenos Ayreans would have become better acquainted with the southern part of the pampas; but, upon the opening of an unrestricted trade, the importation of salt from the Cape de Verd Islands and other countries rendered it unnecessary for the government to put itself to any expense about them; and, as individuals without the protection of the troops would not run the risk of encountering the Indians, the Salinas ceased to be resorted to, and the people of Buenos Ayres became reconciled to purchasing of foreigners an article of which they have an inexhaustible supply within their own territory.

Garcia proposed to the government to form a military settlement at the Salinas, to be the central point of a line of frontier to be drawn from the river Colorado across the pampas to Fort San-Rafael on the river Diamante, south of Mendoza. This he conceived would effectually check the depredations of the Ranqueles and their thievish associates, whilst the friendly and well-disposed Puelches Indians to the south, he was tolerably assured, would at that period have been glad to have been brought under the immediate protection of the government of Buenos Ayres. The principal Caciques of the latter were three brothers, from the vicinity of Valdivia, where in their early life they had learned to respect the Spaniards, and to appreciate the benefits of keeping up a friendly and well-regulated intercourse with them. Nowhere had the king's officers taken such pains to conciliate the native tribes as in Chile, and so well had that system of treating them answered, that, in the present case, these brothers declared there was nothing they desired more than the permanent establishment of a more intimate connexion between them and the people of Buenos Ayres, and that they would gladly place themselves and their followers under the immediate protection of the government.