The fact that these rude savages should have obtained victories over the Spaniards by means of the crude arms that were known to them speaks wonders for their bravery. Their choice of warlike implements was no whit greater than that enjoyed by the lake-dwellers of the Stone Age. Arrows, spears, clubs, and maces—all these were made up of stone heads and wooden shafts. That which might be termed the characteristic native weapon was the bolas, the pair of stone balls attached to ostrich sinews or to some other contrivance of the kind. These—as remains the case to the present day in other lands—were employed as slings, and, for the purpose of entangling an enemy, were the most dreaded implements of all.
For the purposes of peace as well as for those of war the sole materials available to the Charrúa for the fashioning of implements were stone, wood, bone, and clay. Thus the household equipment was wont to be confined to the most primitive types of knives, saws, punches, hammers, axes, mortars, pestles, and roughly baked pottery. It is certain that they used canoes, since they used to cross over to the islands facing Maldonado, but nothing is known concerning the particular build of these humble craft.
Waged under such circumstances existence knew little glamour. Yet even here certain ceremonial institutions obtained. The women, for example, on attaining to adult age were accustomed to tattoo three stripes upon their faces as a signal of the fact, while the men wore a certain kind of headgear to bear a similar significance. On the death of a male, the warrior was buried with his arms, usually on the summit of a small hill. Later, when the luxury of domestic animals became known, the rites grew more elaborate, and the dead man's horse was usually sacrificed on the grave.
In any case the occasion of a man's death was marked by self-mutilation on the part of his wives and female relatives. These would commence by cutting their fingers, weeping bitterly all the while, and afterwards would take the spear of their deceased relative, and with it would prick themselves in various parts of the body and more especially in the arms, which were frequently pierced through and through. Azara was privileged to witness a number of these painful ceremonies, which must have been carried out with conscientious zeal, since he remarks that of all the adult women that he saw none was without mutilated fingers and numerous scars on the body.
These methods of accentuating sorrow, however, were light when compared with the tortures that adult sons were wont to inflict upon themselves on the loss of their father. It was their duty first of all to hide themselves, fasting, in their huts for two days. This effected, it was customary to point a number of sticks and to transfix the arms with these from the wrist to the shoulder, with an interval of not more than an inch between each. In this porcupine-like condition they proceeded either to a wood or to a hill, bearing in their hands sharpened stakes. By means of these each would dig out a hole in the earth sufficiently deep to cover him to the height of the breast, and in this custom demanded him to remain during a whole night. On the next day the mourners rose up from their uncomfortable holes, and met together in a special hut that was set apart for the ceremonial purposes. Here they pulled the sticks from their arms, and remained for a fortnight, partaking of only the scantiest nourishment. After which they were at liberty to rejoin their comrades, and to resume the comparatively even tenor of their normal existence.
The Charrúas afford one of the rare instances of a race who knew no religion. They neither worshipped a benevolent divinity nor endeavoured to propitiate a malignant spirit. They were, nevertheless, superstitious up to a certain point, and dreaded to leave their huts during the night. There is no doubt that some vague belief in an after-existence must have been implanted in their lowly minds. Although they do not seem ever to have referred openly to the belief, the sole fact of the burial of the dead man's arms in the same grave as the corpse is sufficient proof of their supposition that the weapons would be needed in some half-imagined and dim place beyond. But neither priest nor magician was in their midst to stimulate their wonderings on the point.
The highest degree of science or intellect, as a matter of fact, was represented by the medicine-men with their simple and mistakenly practical remedy. The race had no acquaintance with either music, games, dancing, or with ordinary conversation as understood amongst more civilised beings. In matters of personal adornment the Charrúas were equally unsophisticated. A few ostrich feathers in the hair constituted the beginning and the end of the men's costume; the sole garment of the women was a loin-cloth. Of too dull a temperament to discover even the simplest pleasures that the majority of races contrive to extract from their existence, the sole luxury in which these folk indulged was the bathing in the streams of the country. But this recreation was limited to the midsummer months: during all the other periods of the year they refrained entirely from ablutions.
The point as to whether these benighted Indians were cannibals has never been definitely cleared up. The charge of eating human flesh has been brought against the tribe by a certain number of authorities. It is stated, for instance, that the body of Juan Diaz de Solis, the discoverer of the River Plate and one of the first victims of these warriors, was consumed by the attacking party after his murder. But the evidence is not clear in either this case or in any other of the kind, although it is likely enough that they partook of the taste that was shared by various tribes who inhabited the country to the north. Their ordinary food, in any case, was the flesh of the deer and ostrich, as well as fish. Their meals were frequently demolished in a raw condition, doubtless of necessity, although they understood the means of producing fire by the friction of wood. Vegetable food was unknown to them, but they contrived to produce an intoxicating liquor from the fermentation of wasps' honey mixed with water.
A glance at the more intimate domestic life of these wild possessors of so many strictly negative attributes may well complete a rather desolate picture. The home of the Charrúa was on a par with the remainder of his few belongings. A few branches, stuck into the earth and bent towards a common centre, constituted the foundation; one or two deer-skins placed on top of these formed the superstructure. These dwellings, as a matter of fact, were no more crude than those of the Patagonian natives, and little more so than the huts of the Chaco Indians to the north-west, although the structures of both these latter were—and still remain—thatched with grasses and vegetation in the place of skins. In the case of the Charrúa the inner accommodation was limited to a few square feet; but the confined space sufficed to hold an ordinary member, although if the human units increased unduly, a second hut was erected by the side of the first. For furniture, there were the few crude household implements already mentioned, the weapons of the men, and the deer-skin or two spread upon the ground to serve as couches.
It was in this manner that the Charrúas were accustomed to live when the Spaniards, much to the rage of the original inhabitants, landed upon their shores. From that time onwards their method of existence underwent a change. With the introduction of horses they adopted the habit of riding, and soon became extraordinarily proficient in all equestrian arts, although their natural fleetness of foot suffered inevitably during the process. The cattle that now roamed the Campo in great numbers afforded them ample and easily obtained meals. Indeed, although they may have had some legitimate cause for grievance, the material benefits that the influx from Europe accorded the Indians were enormous.