CHILEANS IN PATAGONIA 137 



Jorge toward the basin of the Sanguerr and the Genua, 

 (establishment of the Sarmiento colony, south of Col- 

 huapi, 1897 : establishment of San Martin on the Genua 

 1900). Since 1900 the population has also advanced 

 up the Santa Cruz and the Rio Chico as far as the zone 

 of the Andes, and the lagoon which still existed twenty 

 years ago, between the district of the Sanguerr and 

 that of Lake Argentine, and is easily recognized on 

 the maps of the Frontier Commission, has been almost 

 entirely filled up. 



The story of colonization in the northern part of 

 the Patagonian Andes is more complicated. Im- 

 mediately after the campaign of 1883 the valleys of 

 the Neuquen were invaded by Chilean immigrants, 

 half-breeds of the frontier, who cannot always be 

 easily distinguished from pure Araucans. A certain 

 number of Chilotes, and even Germans from the 

 southern colonies of Chile, were mixed with the half- 

 breeds. This stream of immigration had begun before 

 the conquest. As early as 1881 Host notices that there 

 are at Chosmalal various families of Chilean farmers 

 who held their lands from the Indian cacique. During 

 the summer they took care of the migratory herds 

 from the Chilean plain. Once the country was pacified, 

 they grew rapidly in number. It was they who provided 

 the manual labour for the placer miners of the Neuquen, 

 where gold began to be worked in 1890. The area 

 of Chilean colonization extends from the Rio Atuel, 

 where Villanueva found Chilean immigrants in 1884, 

 to the south of Lake Nahuel Huapi, where Chileans 

 were still met by Vallentin in 1906, on the Rio Pico, 

 close to 44 S. lat. 1 South of Nahuel Huapi there is 

 no regularly used route across the Cordillera. * The 

 Chilean colonists of the southern zone came from 



1 C. Villanueva, " De Mendoza a Narguin," Bol. Instit. Geog. 

 Argent., v. 1884, pp. 171-4. 



* Chilean woodcutters have sometimes got as far as the eastern 

 valleys in search of larch, but these were nomads who did not 

 settle. 



