130 INDIAN WARFARE 



the horses taking the lead and flying in from the outer- 

 most estancias, followed by the cattle. These great 

 stampedes affected hundreds of thousands of animals 

 and carried them far from home, scattering them 

 so widely over the country, where they mixed with 

 other herds, that large numbers of them were per- 

 manently lost to their owners. 



The frontier at that time was protected by a line 

 of small mud-built forts, each garrisoned by two or 

 three score of soldiers, or gauchos, armed with swords 

 and carbines, the little forts being situated at a dis- 

 tance of from five to ten leagues apart. The Indians, 

 when invading, divided their forces into a number of 

 bands, which came in at a furious pace at several 

 widely separated points. Moving rapidly, they would 

 harry the outside estancias, killing and taking cap- 

 tives, burning houses, and gathering all the cattle and 

 horses they could overtake, and with their spoils they 

 would retreat to the desert, giving their enemy as 

 wide a berth as possible, but fighting him when 

 overtaken. 



This was the state of things on all the Argentine 

 frontiers in my time, and it had been so from the 

 time the country was first colonised, and it continued 

 so down to the eighties of last century, when at long 

 last the war was carried into the desert and the tribes 

 beaten and their raiding spirit broken for ever. 



The reader will perhaps smile incredulously when 

 I state that the Indians in this war of over two 

 centuries did not use fire-arms and had no weapon 

 but a lance made of bamboo cane, of an extraordinary 



