833.] CAPTIVE INDIANS, 7S 



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, be- 

 tween 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 * 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 exter- 

 minated, 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 of 

 * Pvirchas's "Collection of Voyages." I believe the date was really 153^, 



