Veteran Tells of Indian War
October 02, 2014Map depicting the Voyage of the Beagle |
Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882). The Voyage of the Beagle.
Vol. 29, pp. 107-111 of
The Harvard Classics
Just before Darwin
visited Bahia Blanca, an Indian insurrection had been ruthlessly put
down. A veteran of the Indian war told Darwin how Indians had been
treated.
(Darwin returns from
South America, Oct. 2, 1836.)
During my stay at Bahia Blanca, while
waiting for the Beagle, the place was in a constant state of
excitement, from rumours of wars and victories, between the troops of
Rosas and the wild Indians. One day an account came that a small
party forming one of the postas on the line to Buenos Ayres, had been
found all murdered. The next day three hundred men arrived from the
Colorado, under the command of Commandant Miranda. A large portion of
these men were Indians (mansos, or tame), belonging to
the tribe of the Cacique Bernantio. They passed the night here; and
it was impossible to conceive anything more wild and savage than the
scene of their bivouac. Some drank till they were intoxicated; others
swallowed the steaming blood of the cattle slaughtered for their
suppers, and then, being sick from drunkenness, they cast it up
again, and were besmeared with filth and gore.
Nam simul expletus
dapibus, vinoque sepultus
Cervicem inflexam
posuit, jacuitque per antrum
Immensus, saniem
eructans, ac frusta cruenta
Per somnum commixta
mero.
In the morning they started for the
scene of the murder, with orders to follow the “rastro,” or
track, even if it led them to Chile. We subsequently heard that the
wild Indians had escaped into the great Pampas, and from some cause
the track had been missed. One glance at the rastro tells these
people a whole history. Supposing they examine the track of a
thousand horses, they will soon guess the number of mounted ones by
seeing how many have cantered; by the depth of the other impressions,
whether any horses were loaded with cargoes; by the irregularity of
the footsteps, how far tired; by the manner in which the food has
been cooked, whether the pursued travelled in haste; by the general
appearance, how long it has been since they passed. They consider a
rastro of ten days or a fortnight, quite recent enough to be hunted
out. We also heard that Miranda struck from the west end of the
Sierra Ventana, in a direct line to the island of Cholechel, situated
seventy leagues up the Rio Negro. This is a distance of between two
and three hundred miles, through a country completely unknown. What
other troops in the world are so independent? With the sun for their
guide, mare’s flesh for food, their saddle-cloths for beds,—as
long as there is a little water, these men would penetrate to the end
of the world.
A few days afterwards I saw another
troop of these banditti-like soldiers start on an expedition against
a tribe of Indians at the small Salinas, who had been betrayed by a
prisoner cacique. The Spaniard who brought the orders for this
expedition was a very intelligent man. He gave me an account of the
last engagement at which he was present. Some Indians, who had been
taken prisoners, gave information of a tribe living north of the
Colorado. Two hundred soldiers were sent; and they first discovered
the Indians by a cloud of dust from their horses’ feet, as they
chanced to be travelling. The country was mountainous and wild, and
it must have been far in the interior, for the Cordillera were in
sight. The Indians, men, women, and children, were about one hundred
and ten in number, and they were nearly all taken or killed, for the
soldiers sabre every man. The Indians are now so terrified that they
offer no resistance in a body, but each flies, neglecting even his
wife and children; but when overtaken, like wild animals, they fight
against any number to the last moment. One dying Indian seized with
his teeth the thumb of his adversary, and allowed his own eye to be
forced out sooner than relinquish his hold. Another, who was wounded,
feigned death, keeping a knife ready to strike one more fatal blow.
My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out
for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas
from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his
pursuer. “I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and
then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife.” This is a
dark picture; but how much more shocking is the unquestionable fact,
that all the women who appear above twenty years old are massacred in
cold blood! When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he
answered, “Why, what can be done? they breed so!”
Every one here is fully convinced that
this is the most just war, because it is against barbarians. Who
would believe in this age that such atrocities could be committed in
a Christian civilized country? The children of the Indians are saved,
to be sold or given away as servants, or rather slaves for as long a
time as the owners can make them believe themselves slaves; but I
believe in their treatment there is little to complain of.
In the battle four men ran away
together. They were pursued, one was killed, and the other three were
taken alive. They turned out to be messengers or ambassadors from a
large body of Indians, united in the common cause of defence, near
the Cordillera. The tribe to which they had been sent was on the
point of holding a grand council; the feast of mare’s flesh was
ready, and the dance prepared: in the morning the ambassadors were to
have returned to the Cordillera. They were remarkably fine men, very
fair, above six feet high, and all under thirty years of age. The
three survivors of course possessed very valuable information; and to
extort this they were placed in a line. The two first being
questioned, answered, “No sé” (I do not know), and were one
after the other shot. The third also said “No sé;” adding,
“Fire, I am a man, and can die!” Not one syllable would they
breathe to injure the united cause of their country! The conduct of
the above-mentioned cacique was very different; he saved his life by
betraying the intended plan of warfare, and the point of union in the
Andes. It was believed that there were already six or seven hundred
Indians together, and that in summer their numbers would be doubled.
Ambassadors were to have been sent to the Indians at the small
Salinas, near Bahia Blanca, whom I have mentioned that this same
cacique had betrayed. The communication, therefore, between the
Indians, extends from the Cordillera to the coast of the Atlantic.
General Rosas’s plan is to kill all
stragglers, and having driven the remainder to a common point, to
attack them in a body, in the summer, with the assistance of the
Chilenos. This operation is to be repeated for three successive
years. I imagine the summer is chosen as the time for the main
attack, because the plains are then without water, and the Indians
can only travel in particular directions. The escape of the Indians
to the south of the Rio Negro, where in such a vast unknown country
they would be safe, is prevented by a treaty with the Tehuelches to
this effect;—that Rosas pays them so much to slaughter every Indian
who passes to the south of the river, but if they fail in so doing,
they themselves are to be exterminated. The war is waged chiefly
against the Indians near the Cordillera; for many of the tribes on
this eastern side are fighting with Rosas. The general, however, like
Lord Chesterfield, thinking that his friends may in a future day
become his enemies, always places them in the front ranks, so that
their numbers may be thinned. Since leaving South America we have
heard that this war of extermination completely failed.
Among the captive
girls taken in the same engagement, there were two very pretty
Spanish ones, who had been carried away by the Indians when young,
and could now only speak the Indian tongue. From their account they
must have come from Salta, a distance in a straight line of nearly
one thousand miles. This gives one a grand idea of the immense
territory over which the Indians roam: yet, great as it is, I think
there will not, in another half-century, be a wild Indian northward
of the Rio Negro. The warfare is too bloody to last; the Christians
killing every Indian, and the Indians doing the same by the
Christians. It is melancholy to trace how the Indians have given way
before the Spanish invaders. Schirdel 1 says
that in 1535, when Buenos Ayres was founded, there were villages
containing two and three thousand inhabitants. Even in Falconer’s
time (1750) the Indians made inroads as far as Luxan, Areco, and
Arrecife, but now they are driven beyond the Salado. Not only have
whole tribes been exterminated, but the remaining Indians have become
more barbarous: instead of living in large villages, and being
employed in the arts of fishing, as well as of the chase, they now
wander about the open plains, without home or fixed occupation.
I heard also some account of an
engagement which took place, a few weeks previously to the one
mentioned, at Cholechel. This is a very important station on account
of being a pass for horses; and it was, in consequence, for some time
the head-quarters of a division of the army. When the troops first
arrived there they found a tribe of Indians, of whom they killed
twenty or thirty. The cacique escaped in a manner which astonished
every one. The chief Indians always have one or two picked horses,
which they keep ready for any urgent occasion. On one of these, an
old white horse, the cacique sprung, taking with him his little son.
The horse had neither saddle nor bridle. To avoid the shots, the
Indian rode in the peculiar method of his nation; namely, with an arm
round the horse’s neck, and one leg only on its back. Thus hanging
on one side, he was seen patting the horse’s head, and talking to
him. The pursuers urged every effort in the chase; the Commandment
three times changed his horse, but all in vain. The old Indian father
and his son escaped, and were free. What a fine picture one can form
in one’s mind,—the naked, bronze-like figure of the old man with
his little boy, riding like a Mazeppa on the white horse, thus
leaving far behind him the host of his pursuers!
I saw one day a
soldier striking fire with a piece of flint, which I immediately
recognised as having been a part of the head of an arrow. He told me
it was found near the island of Cholechel, and that they are
frequently picked up there. It was between two and three inches long,
and therefore twice as large as those now used in Tierra del Fuego:
it was made of opaque cream-coloured flint, but the point and barbs
had been intentionally broken off. It is well known that no Pampas
Indians now use bows and arrows. I believe a small tribe in Banda
Oriental must be excepted; but they are widely separated from the
Pampas Indians, and border close on those tribes that inhabit the
forest, and live on foot. It appears, therefore, that these
arrow-heads are antiquarian 2 relics of the
Indians, before the great change in habits consequent on the
introduction of the horse into South America.
Note
21. Purchas’s
Collection of Voyages. I believe the date was really 1537.
Note
22. Azara has
even doubted whether the Pampas Indians ever used bows.
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