Uruguay

by W. H. Koebel

In this earlier era of River Plate history the march of civilisation had been arrested at the first step in Uruguay on each occasion on which it had been undertaken. It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that success attended the endeavours of the Spaniards. In 1618 the first missionaries entered Uruguay. The Franciscan fathers Bernardo de Guzman, Villavicencio, and Aldao landed in that year at the mouth of the Rio, and converted to Christianity many members of the more peaceably disposed tribes. In 1624 Bernardo de Guzman founded the first Uruguayan Jesuit settlement, Santo Domingo de Soriano, and a little later the missions of Espinillo, Viboras, and Aldao were established in the present provinces of Soriano and Colonia. Larger and more important missions were shortly afterwards founded in the north, and formed a more or less integral portion of the great Jesuit field in Paraguay. At one time there were no less than thirty-seven of these stations existing within the frontiers of the old Banda Oriental as they were then defined. In consequence of the later Brazilian encroachments, however, the sites of only seven of these—San Francisco de Borga, San Nicolas, San Juan Bautista, San Luis Gonzaga, San Miguel, San Lorenzo, and Santa Angel—lie within the boundaries of the present Republic.

While in the north of Uruguay the Indians, taught by the missionaries, were now beginning to occupy themselves with agriculture and grazing, in the south the herds introduced by Hernandarias were multiplying amazingly. These were responsible for the visits of many who came over from Argentina to slay the cattle and to collect their hides. They were licensed by the Cabildo of Buenos Aires, who received a third of the profits. In order to facilitate this traffic in hides, these Faeneros, as they were termed, gradually established themselves upon the banks of the Uruguay and its tributaries, and upon the ocean coast. Thus the names of Cufré, Pavón, Toledo, Pando, Solis, Maldonado, and many others have been bequeathed to the soil by the merchant adventurers who trafficked in those spots, since each named his settlement after himself.

No little competition was afforded these Faeneros by the Changadores, adventurers of a more reckless order who made their incursions into the country without licence and against the law. Corresponding precisely to the buccaneers of the farther north, they slew where opportunity offered, taking refuge in Brazil when pursued, until their growing numbers enabled them from time to time to offer armed resistance to the officers of the Crown sent to chastise them. Attracted by this commerce, pirates, whether of Portuguese or other nationality, would occasionally make descents, and would raid and harry the cattle in their turn. The Indians, for their part, were not slow in availing themselves of this new and convenient source of livelihood, and, according to a Uruguayan writer became "carnivorous from necessity and equestrian from force of imitation." In 1680 a more serious danger threatened the Banda Oriental. At the beginning of that year a Portuguese fleet came to anchor off the island of San Gabriel. Eight hundred soldiers and a number of colonist families were disembarked at Colonia del Sacramento on the mainland, where they founded a township. On learning of this invasion the Governor of Buenos Aires, José de Garro, immediately demanded the evacuation of the place. As a reply to this request, Lobo, the Portuguese commander, triumphantly produced a map on which Colonia was represented as in Brazilian territory. A strenuous geographical discussion ensued, at the conclusion of which Garro, having failed to convince the intruders of the inaccuracy of the chart by more subtle arguments, resolved to expel the enemy by force.

With this end in view he obtained the loan of three thousand Indians from the Jesuits, who were by this time becoming accustomed to the lending of men and arms for such patriotic purposes. With this force, stiffened by the presence of three hundred Spaniards, he captured the hostile settlement, taking prisoners the Portuguese Governor and garrison.

It is related that the Spanish general had prepared a striking ruse de guerre that was to serve in this assault. Four thousand loose horses were to be driven to the front of the charging forces, and upon these animals the first devastation of the artillery fire of the defenders was to expend itself. The Indians, however, whose destined place was in the vanguard, raised some powerful objections to this scheme of attack. Considering with reason that a backward rush of the wounded and terrified beasts—like that of the elephants of a previous age—would promise greater disaster to themselves than to the enemy, they protested against the living bulwark with its many possibilities. Thus the town was captured without the aid of the horses, and the first of the many combats that reddened the shore of Colonia ended in favour of Spain.

This triumph was short-lived. In 1681 Carlos II. of Spain in a weak moment signed a treaty by which Colonia was given back to Portugal, to be held by her until a definite decision could be arrived at concerning the vexed question of ownership. In the meanwhile it was arranged that the geographical arguments should be settled by the pontifical authorities, whose expert knowledge upon the point was doubtful. The Portuguese, moreover, in order to obtain an added salve to their dignity, stipulated that Garro should be deprived of his post. This was complied with; but the result did not in the least coincide with the Portuguese expectations. Garro himself must have smiled broadly when he learned that he was deprived of his command at Buenos Aires in order to take over the superior governorship of Chile!

In 1702 a campaign was waged against the Indians. The tactics of the majority of the tribes had remained consistently aggressive, and their predatory interest in the commerce of hides and dried meat had developed to a pitch inconvenient to the settlers. The war, although its scope did not include the entire aboriginal population, was one of extermination so far as it went, and at its conclusion the sections of the Charrúas, Bohanes, and Yaros in the neighbourhood of the River Yi had practically ceased to exist.

In the meanwhile Colonia, in the hands of the Portuguese, had become the centre of contraband operations by means of which merchandise was smuggled into the sternly closed port of Buenos Aires. As a point of vantage it served so admirably for this purpose, and so greatly to the profit of both the Portuguese and of the more unscrupulous residents of Buenos Aires, that in 1705 Philip V. of Spain ordered its recapture in earnest.

For this purpose two thousand Spaniards and four thousand Jesuit Indians assembled. After a six months' strenuous siege of the place the Portuguese garrison fled in a fleet that had been sent to their rescue, and Colonia passed back into the hands of the Spaniards. But the vicissitudes of the spot were not yet at an end. Oblivious of the past, Philip V. by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ceded the town to the Portuguese. Garcia Ros, the Governor of Buenos Aires, was of sterner mould. Taking advantage of a loosely worded clause in the treaty, he limited the Portuguese ownership of the soil to the radius of a cannon-shot from the plaza of the town. By this means the inconvenience of the occupation was to a certain extent neutralised.