Scanty beyond all belief is our information about the people of the River Plate before the coming of the Spaniards. Mexico and Peru had goodly hoards of gold and silver, and were therefore objects of eager curiosity to the invaders whose chroniclers deigned to inquire into the traditions and mythology of their subjects; but the Silvery River—the Rio Plata—washed no treasure regions, and the settlements in that part of the continent were despised and neglected. Accordingly anthropologists have been obliged to work backwards; they can only infer the character of the prehistoric races by examining their descendants and such scanty traces as have survived from ancient days. And they are able to glean very little.

The European belief[12] in a western land beyond the Pillars of Hercules was deep-rooted in classical antiquity. Beginning with a vague legend of a wonderful world in the west, it hardened into a semi-scientific hypothesis. The pseudo-Aristotle[13] seems to have been the first to treat this subject in a practical manner. He says: "Popular speech divides our inhabited world into islands and continents, but it ignores the fact that the whole is but a single island surrounded by the sea named the Atlantic. It is probable that there are other lands far away, some of which are larger, some smaller, than the world we know." He conjectured that on the other side of the Atlantic there was a great Terra Australis corresponding to Africa. Strabo opined that it would be possible to make a westward voyage to India were it not for the immense extent of the Atlantic, and if circumstances had been favourable there would probably have been an early discovery of America. It is believed that the Carthaginians visited Madeira and the Canaries. But the two maritime nations, Greece and Carthage, fell before Rome, and the triumphs of Rome were on land. Roman poets and panegyrists often indulged in vague and magnificent predictions of nations both in the remotest East and the remotest West who should come under the sway of Rome, and Seneca's[14] language is particularly precise, but they found the ocean an insuperable barrier. With the downfall of the Empire and the influx of barbarians progress was checked, but it is certain that about a thousand years after the birth of Christ some hardy Norsemen reached Greenland, and it is even conjectured that they penetrated into North America. Then, in the later Middle Ages, as the trading spirit grew stronger and the demand for slaves increased, the Portuguese began to make voyages down the African coast. But discovery became no longer a mere profitable adventure, it was imperatively demanded as the salvation of Christendom from ruin, when the Turks obtained possession of Constantinople and the caravan routes. Unless the rich Indian trade could be continued, two-thirds of the wealth of Europe would be destroyed, and thus the work of discovery was stimulated. The Portuguese found an easy route to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope; but the unsuccessful attempts to reach India by a western voyage brought even more fruit, and at last the great island in the Atlantic was discovered.

Anthropologists have found much difficulty in determining the origin of the various peoples who were found in the New World. The supposition now is that the human race migrated into the continent from Europe by way of Greenland and Labrador, and from Asia by way of the Behring Straits, and proof is afforded by the discovery in the Pampas of Argentina and many other places both of the long-headed Afro-European and the round-headed Asiatic skull. The Europeans were probably the first arrivals, and they appear early to have found their way into Argentina, whither they were afterwards followed by the Asiatics. It should be noticed that the whole primitive civilisation of South America was concentrated into a comparatively narrow strip of mountainous country between Chile and Colombia, but this imperfect civilisation probably came into existence in quite recent times.

The Spaniards themselves, doubtless relying on native, traditions, believed that the establishment of the Inca dominion was an event of no great antiquity.[15] But it appears certain that this itself was preceded by a civilisation of "white and bearded men" round about Lake Titicaca, and Prescott declines to hazard a conjecture as to the antiquity of South American civilisation. The long-headed race (its origin is uncertain) kept to the east, the round-headed (usually held to be Mongolian) kept to the west, and they met in Patagonia. However, some savants consider that all the American races are veritable aborigines and have no Asiatic or European origin, and although this theory seems hardly borne out by the little evidence we possess, there is no reason to question the belief of Ehrenreich and many others that the South American Indians have been so long isolated that they form a distinct type.

Evidence as to the date of their migration or the length of time they may have been settled in Argentina we have none, but there is a theory of considerable plausibility to the effect that there was a break in the continuity of the human race in South America. It has already been shown that the bones of huge extinct animals appear very frequently in Argentina; indeed, as Darwin remarks, "the whole area of the Pampas is one wide sepulchre for these extinct animals." Now, mingled with them have often been found human bones and the tools and weapons of man in his pleistocene stage. Near Buenos Aires,[16] for example, a discovery was made of bones of the mastodon, machairodus, and other extinct animals, and together with them were mingled human bones and tools in stone and bone. These facts help to strengthen the hypothesis that at a remote period of antiquity there occurred some gigantic natural cataclysm which swept away alike man and the vast animals with which he lived in these regions. Little as we know about the origin of South American man we can, of course, classify the races which are known to exist in South America or which existed when the Spaniards appeared.[17] The aborigines may be divided into three great races—the Ando-Peruvian, the Pampean, and the Brasilio-Guaranian. The Ando-Peruvian has three branches, known as the Peruvian proper, the Antisian, and the Araucanian. The Pampean likewise has three branches—the Pampean proper, the Chiquitean, the Moxean; while the Brasilio-Guaranian has no ramifications. The Peruvians, who do not concern us here, include, of course, the whole of the Inca race. The Antisians are so called because they lived in the mountains east of Cuzco, which the Incas called Antis (hence Andes), and they now inhabit the hot and moist forest-lands of Bolivia and Peru. They are, and always have been, savages, with clear olive complexions and slight, somewhat effeminate figures. The Tacana is their most important tribe. The Araucanians (who include the Fuegians) are more important for our purpose, and are a very hardy race, who fought for hundreds of years on equal terms with the Spaniards and were finally subdued rather by the subtle blight of civilisation than by arms. A Frenchman[18] who visited the River Plate in the middle of the eighteenth century describes them in the following terms: "The Indians who inhabit this part of America, north and south of the river de la Plata, are of that race called by the Spaniards Indios bravos. They are middle-sized, very ugly, and afflicted with the itch. They are of a deep tawny colour, which they blacken still more by continually rubbing themselves with grease. They have no other dress than a great cloak of roe-deer skins hanging down to their heels, in which they wrap themselves up. These skins are very well dressed; they turn the hairy side inwards and paint the outside with various colours. The distinguishing mark of their cacique is a band or strap of leather, which is tied round his forehead; it is formed into a diadem or crown and adorned with plates of copper. Their arms are bows and arrows; and they likewise make use of nooses and of balls.... Sometimes they come in bodies of two or three hundred men, to carry off the cattle from the lands of the Spaniards or to attack the caravans of the travellers. They plunder and murder or carry them into slavery. This evil cannot be remedied; for how is it possible to conquer a nomadic nation in an immense uncultivated country, where it would be difficult even to find them? Besides, these Indians are brave and inured to hardships, and those times exist no longer when one Spaniard could put a thousand Indians to flight." D'Orbigny says that in character and religion the Araucanians have strong affinities to the Patagonians and Puelches, but physically they are very different, and they undoubtedly belong to the Peruvian or mountain race.

The Pampean race spread over the whole of modern Argentina and beyond. They include the Patagonians and Puelches of the south and many tribes, such as the Charruas, in the river regions of the north. These all belong to the branch of the Pampean proper.

The Chiquitean branch is of less importance, comprising the foreign Indians of Paraguay—the unfortunate people who were so cruelly harried by the Paulistas in the seventeenth century. The Moxeans are an interesting branch, but they do not properly belong to our subject, for they inhabit the unexplored forest tracts on the confines of Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil.

The Brasilio-Guaranian race is very extensive, spreading from the north of Argentina over the whole of Brazil. They are a rude race, civilised by the Jesuits, but probably the paternal form of government was the highest to which they were adapted, and when their protectors departed they retrograded. Their physical characteristics are described as follows:[19] "The traits of the Guaranies can be distinguished at the first glance from those of the Pampean tribes; their head is round and not compressed sideways, nor does their forehead recede; it is, on the contrary, high, and its flatness in some of the tribes is due to artificial causes. Their face is almost circular, the nose short and rather large with nostrils far less open than those of the plain races. Their mouth is of moderate size, but slightly projecting; their lips are somewhat thin, their eyes small and expressive, ... their chin is round, very short, and it never advances as far as the line of the mouth; their cheekbones are not prominent in their youth, but in later life they project somewhat; their eyebrows are well arched and very narrow. Their hair is long, straight, coarse, and black, and their beard, among the tribes of Paraguay and the Missions, is reduced merely to a few short bristles, straight and scanty, growing on the chin and upper lip." The Guaranies were more important in the earlier days when both their subjection and protection were grave problems. Those who still live in their original state are to be found in the primitive forests of the north, where it is difficult to disturb them.

The religion of these rude tribes was tolerably uniform and, as might have been expected, was on a much lower grade than that of the Incas, who worshipped the invisible God Pachacamac, the creator of all things. In general they believed in Quecubu, an evil spirit, but (what is curious) they did not think it necessary to propitiate him in any way, nor, again, did they worship or supplicate the Creator of the world in which they had a shadowy belief. They believed that man was perfectly free in his actions and that neither good deeds nor evil deeds would affect the action either of the Creator or the evil spirit. This Epicurean apathy was tempered by a belief in a future life—the translation to a paradise of delight beyond the seas. Such ritual and religious observances as they had appear to have centred in their medicine-men, who interpreted dreams and omens and the like. If we consider their extreme barbarism, we may judge that their religion was singularly free from the taint of cruel rites and gross superstitions, but it seems to have been weak and cold. The majority of the tribes, even the most savage, have now nominally embraced Christianity.

It is thus possible to form some idea of the condition of the aborigines at the time of the appearance of the Spaniards, but to obtain any knowledge of the events in South America during the centuries immediately preceding that event is a flat impossibility, and it is probably safe to say that the veil will never be uplifted, for the relics we have are of prehistoric not of modern man. Nor, in all probability, do we lose much by our ignorance, for judging by the actual state of the inhabitants of the extra-Andine regions of South America, when the Spaniards found them, we may repeat the disparaging verdict of Thucydides upon ancient Greece—that looking back as far as we can we are inclined to believe that the ancients were not distinguished, either in war or in anything else.

The history of Argentina may be held to begin with the advent of the Spaniards.