264 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: GEOGRAPHY. 



hidden away in some bend of the stream or placed high up among the 

 debris of basaltic rocks that encumber the slopes of most of the more 

 important streams of the Patagonian plains. In such positions their low, 

 box-like toldos, made of guanaco skins of a dull brown color, would not 

 be easily detected. 



Many such old camping places may now be seen, strewn with pieces 

 of broken pottery, worn-out and discarded stone scrapers, stone chippings, 

 arrow points, drills, mortars, etc. A site of one of these old-time villages, 

 which I examined very carefully, is shown in Fig. 30. The bottom of 

 the canon bears unmistakable evidence of having been long used as a 

 favorite camping ground of the Tehuelches. The soil over a considerable 

 area is literally filled and covered with stone chippings, scrapers, broken 

 pottery, broken and charred fragments of bones of mammals, birds and 

 fishes, the latter taken from the stream which still flows between the 

 village site and the bluff beyond. 



At this place I picked up about two hundred arrow points and drills, 

 most of them imperfect, but did not find a single bola. Is it not possible 

 that the introduction of the horse brought the abolition of the bow and 

 arrow and the adoption of the bola as a weapon of offence and defence ? 

 The bola, considering the limits of its effective range, and the time neces- 

 sarily consumed in attaining a sufficient impetus before discharging it, 

 certainly does not appear to be especially well adapted for the capture, by 

 a man on foot, of animals possessed of such speed and endurance as are 

 the guanaco and rhea. Whether the bola was in use among these Indians 

 before the advent of the horse, can, perhaps, never be definitely deter- 

 mined, but there can be little doubt that, as an implement for the capture 

 of game, it came into far more general use after the introduction of the 

 horse, when it began gradually to displace the bow and arrow, finally 

 resulting in the total disappearance of the latter weapon. Throughout 

 my travels in Patagonia I was struck by the almost entire absence of bola 

 stones about the old village sites, where arrow points were, as a rule, 

 found in unusual abundance. The place just referred to was evidently 

 long occupied as a favorite encampment. That it has been long aban- 

 doned is evident from the fact that over considerable areas the implement- 

 bearing stratum is buried beneath several feet of aeolian drift materials. 

 Moreover, the locality is one absolutely unfitted as a camping place for 

 the present Indians, accompanied, as each band invariably is, by several 



