1833.] CAPTIVE INDIANS. 97 



after the other shot. The third also said " No se ; " 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 communica- 

 tion, therefore, between the Indians, extends from the Cordillera to 

 the coast of the Atlantic. 



General Eosas'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 direc- 

 tions. The escape of the Indians to the south of the Eio Negro, 

 where in such a vast unknown country they would be safe, is pre- 

 vented by a treaty with the Tehuelches to this effect ; that Eosas 

 pays them so nmch to slaughter every Indian who passes to the 

 south of the river, but if they fail in so doing, they themselves are 

 to be extirminated. The war is waged chiefly against the Indians 

 near the Cordillera ; for many of the tribes on this eastern side are 

 fighting with Kosas. 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 Eio Negro. The 

 warfare is too bloody to last ; the Christians killing every Indian, 

 and the Indians doing the same by the Christians. It is melan- 



H 



