1833.] CAPTIVE INDIANS. 103 
men, very fair, above six feet high, and all under thirty years of 
age. The three survivors of course possessed very valuable 
information ; and to extort this they were placed inaline. The 
two first being questioned, answered, “Nosé” (Idonot know), 
and were one after the other shot. The third also said “ No s¢;” 
adding, “Fire, 1 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 communication, therefore, between 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 exter- 
mination 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 
