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 Rio Negro. The warfare
is too bloody to last; the Christians killing every Indian,
and the Indians doing the same by the Christians. It is
melancholy to trace how the Indians have given way before
the Spanish invaders. Schirdel [21] says that in 1535, when
Buenos Ayres was founded, there were villages containing
two and three thousand inhabitants. Even in Falconer's
time (1750) the Indians made inroads as far as Luxan,
Areco, and Arrecife, but now they are driven beyond the
Salado. Not only have whole tribes been exterminated, but
the remaining Indians have become more barbarous: instead
of living in large villages, and being employed in the arts of
fishing, as well as of the chase, they now wander about the
open plains, without home or fixed occupation.
I heard also some account of an engagement which took
place, a few weeks previously to the one mentioned, at
Cholechel.
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