EARLIEST HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY
Scanty beyond all belief is our information about the people of the
River Plate before the coming of the Spaniards. Mexico and Peru had
goodly hoards of gold and silver, and were therefore objects of eager
curiosity to the invaders whose chroniclers deigned to inquire into
the traditions and mythology of their subjects; but the Silvery
River--the Rio Plata--washed no treasure regions, and the settlements
in that part of the continent were despised and neglected. Accordingly
anthropologists have been obliged to work backwards; they can only
infer the character of the prehistoric races by examining their
descendants and such scanty traces as have survived from ancient days.
And they are able to glean very little.
The European belief[12] in a western land beyond the Pillars of
Hercules was deep-rooted in classical antiquity. Beginning with a
vague legend of a wonderful world in the west, it hardened into a
semi-scientific hypothesis. The pseudo-Aristotle[13] seems to have been
the first to treat this subject in a practical manner. He says: "Popular
speech divides our inhabited world into islands and continents, but it
ignores the fact that the whole is but a single island surrounded by the
sea named the Atlantic. It is probable that there are other lands far
away, some of which are larger, some smaller, than the world we know."
He conjectured that on the other side of the Atlantic there was a great
Terra Australis corresponding to Africa. Strabo opined that it would be
possible to make a westward voyage to India were it not for the immense
extent of the Atlantic, and if circumstances had been favourable there
would probably have been an early discovery of America. It is believed
that the Carthaginians visited Madeira and the Canaries. But the two
maritime nations, Greece and Carthage, fell before Rome, and the
triumphs of Rome were on land. Roman poets and panegyrists often
indulged in vague and magnificent predictions of nations both in the
remotest East and the remotest West who should come under the sway of
Rome, and Seneca's[14] language is particularly precise, but they found
the ocean an insuperable barrier. With the downfall of the Empire and
the influx of barbarians progress was checked, but it is certain that
about a thousand years after the birth of Christ some hardy Norsemen
reached Greenland, and it is even conjectured that they penetrated into
North America. Then, in the later Middle Ages, as the trading spirit
grew stronger and the demand for slaves increased, the Portuguese began
to make voyages down the African coast. But discovery became no longer a
mere profitable adventure, it was imperatively demanded as the salvation
of Christendom from ruin, when the Turks obtained possession of
Constantinople and the caravan routes. Unless the rich Indian trade
could be continued, two-thirds of the wealth of Europe would be
destroyed, and thus the work of discovery was stimulated. The Portuguese
found an easy route to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope; but the
unsuccessful attempts to reach India by a western voyage brought even
more fruit, and at last the great island in the Atlantic was discovered.
Anthropologists have found much difficulty in determining the
origin of the various peoples who were found in the New World. The
supposition now is that the human race migrated into the continent
from Europe by way of Greenland and Labrador, and from Asia by way of
the Behring Straits, and proof is afforded by the discovery in the
Pampas of Argentina and many other places both of the long-headed
Afro-European and the round-headed Asiatic skull. The Europeans were
probably the first arrivals, and they appear early to have found their
way into Argentina, whither they were afterwards followed by the
Asiatics. It should be noticed that the whole primitive civilisation
of South America was concentrated into a comparatively narrow strip of
mountainous country between Chile and Colombia, but this imperfect
civilisation probably came into existence in quite recent times.
The Spaniards themselves, doubtless relying on native, traditions,
believed that the establishment of the Inca dominion was an event of
no great antiquity.[15] But it appears certain that this itself was
preceded by a civilisation of "white and bearded men" round about Lake
Titicaca, and Prescott declines to hazard a conjecture as to the
antiquity of South American civilisation. The long-headed race (its
origin is uncertain) kept to the east, the round-headed (usually held
to be Mongolian) kept to the west, and they met in Patagonia. However,
some savants consider that all the American races are veritable
aborigines and have no Asiatic or European origin, and although this
theory seems hardly borne out by the little evidence we possess, there
is no reason to question the belief of Ehrenreich and many others
that the South American Indians have been so long isolated that they
form a distinct type.
Evidence as to the date of their migration or the length of time they
may have been settled in Argentina we have none, but there is a theory
of considerable plausibility to the effect that there was a break in
the continuity of the human race in South America. It has already been
shown that the bones of huge extinct animals appear very frequently in
Argentina; indeed, as Darwin remarks, "the whole area of the Pampas is
one wide sepulchre for these extinct animals." Now, mingled with them
have often been found human bones and the tools and weapons of man in
his pleistocene stage. Near Buenos Aires,[16] for example, a discovery
was made of bones of the mastodon, machairodus, and other extinct
animals, and together with them were mingled human bones and tools in
stone and bone. These facts help to strengthen the hypothesis that
at a remote period of antiquity there occurred some gigantic natural
cataclysm which swept away alike man and the vast animals with which
he lived in these regions. Little as we know about the origin of
South American man we can, of course, classify the races which are
known to exist in South America or which existed when the Spaniards
appeared.[17] The aborigines may be divided into three great
races--the Ando-Peruvian, the Pampean, and the Brasilio-Guaranian.
The Ando-Peruvian has three branches, known as the Peruvian proper,
the Antisian, and the Araucanian. The Pampean likewise has three
branches--the Pampean proper, the Chiquitean, the Moxean; while the
Brasilio-Guaranian has no ramifications. The Peruvians, who do not
concern us here, include, of course, the whole of the Inca race. The
Antisians are so called because they lived in the mountains east of
Cuzco, which the Incas called Antis (hence Andes), and they now
inhabit the hot and moist forest-lands of Bolivia and Peru. They
are, and always have been, savages, with clear olive complexions and
slight, somewhat effeminate figures. The Tacana is their most
important tribe. The Araucanians (who include the Fuegians) are more
important for our purpose, and are a very hardy race, who fought for
hundreds of years on equal terms with the Spaniards and were finally
subdued rather by the subtle blight of civilisation than by arms. A
Frenchman[18] who visited the River Plate in the middle of the
eighteenth century describes them in the following terms: "The Indians
who inhabit this part of America, north and south of the river de la
Plata, are of that race called by the Spaniards Indios bravos. They
are middle-sized, very ugly, and afflicted with the itch. They are of
a deep tawny colour, which they blacken still more by continually
rubbing themselves with grease. They have no other dress than a great
cloak of roe-deer skins hanging down to their heels, in which they
wrap themselves up. These skins are very well dressed; they turn the
hairy side inwards and paint the outside with various colours. The
distinguishing mark of their cacique is a band or strap of leather,
which is tied round his forehead; it is formed into a diadem or crown and
adorned with plates of copper. Their arms are bows and arrows; and they
likewise make use of nooses and of balls.... Sometimes they come in
bodies of two or three hundred men, to carry off the cattle from the
lands of the Spaniards or to attack the caravans of the travellers.
They plunder and murder or carry them into slavery. This evil cannot be
remedied; for how is it possible to conquer a nomadic nation in an
immense uncultivated country, where it would be difficult even to find
them? Besides, these Indians are brave and inured to hardships, and
those times exist no longer when one Spaniard could put a thousand
Indians to flight." D'Orbigny says that in character and religion the
Araucanians have strong affinities to the Patagonians and Puelches, but
physically they are very different, and they undoubtedly belong to the
Peruvian or mountain race.
The Pampean race spread over the whole of modern Argentina and beyond.
They include the Patagonians and Puelches of the south and many
tribes, such as the Charruas, in the river regions of the north. These
all belong to the branch of the Pampean proper.
The Chiquitean branch is of less importance, comprising the foreign
Indians of Paraguay--the unfortunate people who were so cruelly
harried by the Paulistas in the seventeenth century. The Moxeans are
an interesting branch, but they do not properly belong to our subject,
for they inhabit the unexplored forest tracts on the confines of Peru,
Bolivia, and Brazil.
The Brasilio-Guaranian race is very extensive, spreading from the
north of Argentina over the whole of Brazil. They are a rude race,
civilised by the Jesuits, but probably the paternal form of government
was the highest to which they were adapted, and when their protectors
departed they retrograded. Their physical characteristics are
described as follows:[19] "The traits of the Guaranies can be
distinguished at the first glance from those of the Pampean tribes;
their head is round and not compressed sideways, nor does their
forehead recede; it is, on the contrary, high, and its flatness in
some of the tribes is due to artificial causes. Their face is almost
circular, the nose short and rather large with nostrils far less open
than those of the plain races. Their mouth is of moderate size, but
slightly projecting; their lips are somewhat thin, their eyes small
and expressive, ... their chin is round, very short, and it never
advances as far as the line of the mouth; their cheekbones are not
prominent in their youth, but in later life they project somewhat;
their eyebrows are well arched and very narrow. Their hair is long,
straight, coarse, and black, and their beard, among the tribes of
Paraguay and the Missions, is reduced merely to a few short bristles,
straight and scanty, growing on the chin and upper lip." The Guaranies
were more important in the earlier days when both their subjection and
protection were grave problems. Those who still live in their original
state are to be found in the primitive forests of the north, where it
is difficult to disturb them.
The religion of these rude tribes was tolerably uniform and, as might
have been expected, was on a much lower grade than that of the Incas,
who worshipped the invisible God Pachacamac, the creator of all
things. In general they believed in Quecubu, an evil spirit, but (what
is curious) they did not think it necessary to propitiate him in any
way, nor, again, did they worship or supplicate the Creator of the
world in which they had a shadowy belief. They believed that man was
perfectly free in his actions and that neither good deeds nor evil
deeds would affect the action either of the Creator or the evil
spirit. This Epicurean apathy was tempered by a belief in a future
life--the translation to a paradise of delight beyond the seas. Such
ritual and religious observances as they had appear to have centred
in their medicine-men, who interpreted dreams and omens and the like.
If we consider their extreme barbarism, we may judge that their
religion was singularly free from the taint of cruel rites and gross
superstitions, but it seems to have been weak and cold. The majority
of the tribes, even the most savage, have now nominally embraced
Christianity.
It is thus possible to form some idea of the condition of the
aborigines at the time of the appearance of the Spaniards, but to
obtain any knowledge of the events in South America during the
centuries immediately preceding that event is a flat impossibility,
and it is probably safe to say that the veil will never be uplifted,
for the relics we have are of prehistoric not of modern man. Nor, in all
probability, do we lose much by our ignorance, for judging by the actual
state of the inhabitants of the extra-Andine regions of South America,
when the Spaniards found them, we may repeat the disparaging verdict of
Thucydides upon ancient Greece--that looking back as far as we can we
are inclined to believe that the ancients were not distinguished, either
in war or in anything else.
The history of Argentina may be held to begin with the advent of the
Spaniards.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] For much of the matter in this chapter I am indebted to the late
E. J. Payne's valuable "History of the New World called America."
[13] In "De Mundo."
[14]
"Venient annis saecula seris
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
Tiphys que novos detegat orbes,
Nec sit terris ultima Thule."
("Medea," ii. 373.)
[15] "Some writers carry back the date five hundred, or even five
hundred and fifty, years before the Spanish invasion.... In the Report
of the Royal Audience of Peru, the epoch is more modestly fixed at two
hundred years before the Conquest" (Prescott, "Conquest of Peru," p.
5, _note_).
[16] See Sir H. H. Howorth, "The Mammoth and the Flood," chap. xii.
[17] See D'Orbigny, "L'Homme Américain," _passim_.
[18] De Bougainville, "A Voyage Round the World," pp. 24-5.
[19] D'Orbigny, ii. 295-7.