W. H. Koebel

The population of Uruguay prior to the Spanish conquest—Principal tribes—Paucity of information concerning the early aboriginal life—The CharrÚas—Warlike characteristics of the race—Territory of the tribe—Stature and physique—Features—The occupations of war and hunting—Temperament mannerisms—A people on the nethermost rung of the social ladder—Absence of laws and penalties—Medicine-men—A crude remedy—The simplicity of the marriage ceremony—Morality at a low ebb—The prevalence of social equality—Method of settling private disputes—The CharrÚas as warriors—Tactics employed in warfare—Some grim signals of victory—Treatment of the prisoners of war—Absence of a settled plan of campaign—Arms of the CharrÚas—Primitive Indian weapons—Household implements—Burial rites—The mutilation of the living out of respect for the dead—Some savage ceremonies—Absence of religion—A lowly existence—Desolate dwellings—Change of customs effected by the introduction of horses—Indian appreciation of cattle—Improvement in the weapons of the tribe—Formidable cavalry—The end of the CharrÚas—Other Uruguayan tribes—The Yaros—Bohanes—Chanas—Guenoas—Minuanes—Arachanes.

At the time of the Spanish Conquest the territory which now constitutes the Republic of Uruguay was peopled by about four thousand Indians. These, however, did not form a single nation, but were divided off into a number of tribes. The most important of these were the CharrÚas, Yaros, Bohanes, Chanas, and Guenoas. Each of these groups possessed its own territory, and each was wont to exist in a state of continued hostility with its neighbours.

Nothing is known of the history of these folk previous to the arrival of the Spaniard, and even during the earlier periods of the conquest information is scanty enough, since contact between native and European was confined almost entirely to warlike occasions, and since, even when opportunity offered, the early colonists were neither sufficiently adapted nor especially educated for the purpose.

The CharrÚas constituted the leading tribe of these aboriginal people. They owed this ascendancy to their warlike spirit, and to their comparatively large numbers. It was they who murdered Juan Diaz de Solis, the discoverer of the Rio de la Plata, together with many of his companions, and it was they, moreover, who offered the most strenuous resistance to the colonising attempts of the Spaniards.

The CharrÚas, to the number of a couple of thousand, inhabited the coast of the River Plate, and carried on a semi-nomadic existence between Maldonado and the mouth of the River Uruguay, occupying a region that extended inland for about ninety miles, its inner frontiers running parallel with the coast-line. The stature of these natives attained to middle height; they were robust, well built, and usually free from that tendency to obesity which is the characteristic of the Guarani Indians. As a race they were distinguished by rather large heads, wide mouths, and flat noses. Their skin was unusually dark, and in colour approached the complexion of the negro more nearly than that of any other South American race. Peculiarly adapted to resist hunger and fatigue, they were agile and swift of foot as became those who existed principally on the deer and ostriches that they hunted. It is said that their health was such that many attained to a very advanced age.

The character of these Indiana was essentially warlike and turbulent, and they were remarkable for their passion for revenge and deceit. Of a taciturn and apathetic temperament, they refused to submit to discipline of any kind. They were, moreover, peculiarly averse to outward display of any emotion. A laugh, for instance, would be noiseless, signalled merely by a half-opening of the lips; conversation was carried on in a low and unmodulated tone of voice, and a true CharrÚa would run a considerable distance to gain a comrade's side rather than be under the necessity of shouting openly to him. The sole occasions on which the exercise of patience would seem to have come naturally to the race were those of hunting and of scouting. A child of nature, with the faculties of hearing and sight marvellously developed, the CharrÚa became reticent and morose when brought into contact with civilisation.

ANCIENT STONES EMPLOYED FOR NUT-CRUSHING.

To face p. 140.

In social ethics these dwellers on the coast ranked low; indeed, their place was amongst the lowest in the scale of tribes. Division either of labour or of the spoils of war was unknown. Each hunted and fought for his own hand alone, while the wife constructed a few rude utensils and performed the duties of a slave. Their system knew neither laws, punishments, nor rewards, and the only services that were wont to be recompensed in any way were those of the medicine-men, whose natural cunning was doubtless as superior to that of the rest as is the case elsewhere. Nevertheless, these leeches seem to have been acquainted with only one remedy. This was to suck with might and main at that portion of the body beneath the surface of which an inward pain was complained of. The marriage ceremony was confined to the obtaining of the consent of the bride's parents. The state of wedlock, however, was considered of some importance in the man, as it conferred on him the right to go to war, and to take part in the councils of the tribe.

Morality, as understood by the more advanced sections of humanity, was at a low ebb. Wedlock was permitted an unnaturally liberal range and licence. Not only was polygamy general, but marriages between brothers and sisters were permitted, although it is related that their occurrence was rather rare. Cases of monogamy, however, were not unknown, and, whenever the opportunity offered, a wife would desert a multi-spoused husband in order to take up her abode with a man who was willing to accept her as his only wife. Conjugal faithlessness was held to be an excusable failing; indeed, on the arrival of the Spaniards, the men would frequently offer their wives to the Europeans in return for some material advantage.

Some evidence of that social equality that is so strongly a characteristic of the tribes of the River Plate is to be met with among the CharrÚas. Such chiefs as existed were almost altogether lacking in real power or authority. A leader, as a matter of fact, was elected by the people merely in order to act in cases of emergency, and his chieftainship, held on sufferance, was liable to be taken from him on the coming to the front of a man held more suitable for the post. It is a little curious to find that in so fierce a race private quarrels were not adjusted by means of the crude arms of war that they possessed. These disputes were fought out with the fists, and after a satisfactory exchange of blows the matter was ended for good and all.

Notwithstanding this sensible method of settling their individual differences, the CharrÚas were merciless in the wars waged against neighbouring tribes or Spaniards. On the first outbreak of hostilities they were wont to hide their women and children in the woods, after which spies were immediately sent out to locate the position of the enemy. This determined, it was usual to hold a council of war in the evening, and to make a surprise attack at the first glimmerings of dawn. The method of their onslaught was one calculated to terrify. Dashing out of the semi-obscurity, they would make a furious charge, uttering loud cries, the fierceness of which was supposed to be accentuated by means of the warriors striking themselves continually on the mouth.

Women and young children captured in their attacks were taken back as prisoners to the rude encampments of the conquerors, where they afterwards received complete liberty, and became incorporated with the tribe. No quarter, however, was shown to the men of the beaten force. It is said by some of the early European adventurers who came into contact with this fierce race that they were not only wont to scalp their fallen enemies, but that each was accustomed to cut an incision in his own body for every dead foeman whose body lay to the credit of his prowess or cunning. Some doubt, nevertheless, is thrown upon the existence of these habits, although they are affirmed by three rather notable authorities, Barco, Lozano, and Azara. Fortunately for the Spaniards, who discovered in the CharrÚas by far the most dreaded enemies that it was their lot to encounter in this part of South America, these Indians were easily turned from a settled purpose or plan of campaign. Thus they would lose many opportunities of pushing home success, halting in an advance in order to celebrate a first victory, and remaining on the ground for the purpose of marking the occasion at length.

The fact that these rude savages should have obtained victories over the Spaniards by means of the crude arms that were known to them speaks wonders for their bravery. Their choice of warlike implements was no whit greater than that enjoyed by the lake-dwellers of the Stone Age. Arrows, spears, clubs, and maces—all these were made up of stone heads and wooden shafts. That which might be termed the characteristic native weapon was the bolas, the pair of stone balls attached to ostrich sinews or to some other contrivance of the kind. These—as remains the case to the present day in other lands—were employed as slings, and, for the purpose of entangling an enemy, were the most dreaded implements of all.

For the purposes of peace as well as for those of war the sole materials available to the CharrÚa for the fashioning of implements were stone, wood, bone, and clay. Thus the household equipment was wont to be confined to the most primitive types of knives, saws, punches, hammers, axes, mortars, pestles, and roughly baked pottery. It is certain that they used canoes, since they used to cross over to the islands facing Maldonado, but nothing is known concerning the particular build of these humble craft.

Waged under such circumstances existence knew little glamour. Yet even here certain ceremonial institutions obtained. The women, for example, on attaining to adult age were accustomed to tattoo three stripes upon their faces as a signal of the fact, while the men wore a certain kind of headgear to bear a similar significance. On the death of a male, the warrior was buried with his arms, usually on the summit of a small hill. Later, when the luxury of domestic animals became known, the rites grew more elaborate, and the dead man's horse was usually sacrificed on the grave.

In any case the occasion of a man's death was marked by self-mutilation on the part of his wives and female relatives. These would commence by cutting their fingers, weeping bitterly all the while, and afterwards would take the spear of their deceased relative, and with it would prick themselves in various parts of the body and more especially in the arms, which were frequently pierced through and through. Azara was privileged to witness a number of these painful ceremonies, which must have been carried out with conscientious zeal, since he remarks that of all the adult women that he saw none was without mutilated fingers and numerous scars on the body.

These methods of accentuating sorrow, however, were light when compared with the tortures that adult sons were wont to inflict upon themselves on the loss of their father. It was their duty first of all to hide themselves, fasting, in their huts for two days. This effected, it was customary to point a number of sticks and to transfix the arms with these from the wrist to the shoulder, with an interval of not more than an inch between each. In this porcupine-like condition they proceeded either to a wood or to a hill, bearing in their hands sharpened stakes. By means of these each would dig out a hole in the earth sufficiently deep to cover him to the height of the breast, and in this custom demanded him to remain during a whole night. On the next day the mourners rose up from their uncomfortable holes, and met together in a special hut that was set apart for the ceremonial purposes. Here they pulled the sticks from their arms, and remained for a fortnight, partaking of only the scantiest nourishment. After which they were at liberty to rejoin their comrades, and to resume the comparatively even tenor of their normal existence.

The CharrÚas afford one of the rare instances of a race who knew no religion. They neither worshipped a benevolent divinity nor endeavoured to propitiate a malignant spirit. They were, nevertheless, superstitious up to a certain point, and dreaded to leave their huts during the night. There is no doubt that some vague belief in an after-existence must have been implanted in their lowly minds. Although they do not seem ever to have referred openly to the belief, the sole fact of the burial of the dead man's arms in the same grave as the corpse is sufficient proof of their supposition that the weapons would be needed in some half-imagined and dim place beyond. But neither priest nor magician was in their midst to stimulate their wonderings on the point.

The highest degree of science or intellect, as a matter of fact, was represented by the medicine-men with their simple and mistakenly practical remedy. The race had no acquaintance with either music, games, dancing, or with ordinary conversation as understood amongst more civilised beings. In matters of personal adornment the CharrÚas were equally unsophisticated. A few ostrich feathers in the hair constituted the beginning and the end of the men's costume; the sole garment of the women was a loin-cloth. Of too dull a temperament to discover even the simplest pleasures that the majority of races contrive to extract from their existence, the sole luxury in which these folk indulged was the bathing in the streams of the country. But this recreation was limited to the midsummer months: during all the other periods of the year they refrained entirely from ablutions.

The point as to whether these benighted Indians were cannibals has never been definitely cleared up. The charge of eating human flesh has been brought against the tribe by a certain number of authorities. It is stated, for instance, that the body of Juan Diaz de Solis, the discoverer of the River Plate and one of the first victims of these warriors, was consumed by the attacking party after his murder. But the evidence is not clear in either this case or in any other of the kind, although it is likely enough that they partook of the taste that was shared by various tribes who inhabited the country to the north. Their ordinary food, in any case, was the flesh of the deer and ostrich, as well as fish. Their meals were frequently demolished in a raw condition, doubtless of necessity, although they understood the means of producing fire by the friction of wood. Vegetable food was unknown to them, but they contrived to produce an intoxicating liquor from the fermentation of wasps' honey mixed with water.

A glance at the more intimate domestic life of these wild possessors of so many strictly negative attributes may well complete a rather desolate picture. The home of the CharrÚa was on a par with the remainder of his few belongings. A few branches, stuck into the earth and bent towards a common centre, constituted the foundation; one or two deer-skins placed on top of these formed the superstructure. These dwellings, as a matter of fact, were no more crude than those of the Patagonian natives, and little more so than the huts of the Chaco Indians to the north-west, although the structures of both these latter were—and still remain—thatched with grasses and vegetation in the place of skins. In the case of the CharrÚa the inner accommodation was limited to a few square feet; but the confined space sufficed to hold an ordinary member, although if the human units increased unduly, a second hut was erected by the side of the first. For furniture, there were the few crude household implements already mentioned, the weapons of the men, and the deer-skin or two spread upon the ground to serve as couches.

It was in this manner that the CharrÚas were accustomed to live when the Spaniards, much to the rage of the original inhabitants, landed upon their shores. From that time onwards their method of existence underwent a change. With the introduction of horses they adopted the habit of riding, and soon became extraordinarily proficient in all equestrian arts, although their natural fleetness of foot suffered inevitably during the process. The cattle that now roamed the Campo in great numbers afforded them ample and easily obtained meals. Indeed, although they may have had some legitimate cause for grievance, the material benefits that the influx from Europe accorded the Indians were enormous.

Yet the hatred with which these fierce warriors of the Campo regarded the white intruders tended with time to increase rather than diminish. As a foe the Indian was far more formidable now than at the time of the first encounters. Behold him on horseback, careering like the wind across the pastures, armed with a deadly iron-tipped lance some fourteen feet in length! For he had obtained the means now to fight the conquistadores with their own weapons, and even his arrows were pointed with metal, although he still retained the homely stone in the case of his ever efficient bolas. Thus he remained, immutably fierce, alternately winning and losing the endless fights, but never conquered nor enslaved for three centuries. At the end of that period, in 1832, came the end of his race, and the small remnant was practically annihilated. The fate of the last four of the CharrÚas is pathetically humorous, as illustrating what unsuspected ends a wild community may be made to serve. Two men and two women, the sole survivors of the unconquered warrior tribe, were sent across the ocean to Paris, where they were placed on exhibition, and doubtless proved a profitable investment.

Having concluded with the CharrÚas, the remaining aboriginal tribes of Uruguay demand very little space by comparison. There were, nevertheless, half a dozen minor groups that inhabited the other portion of the land that is now Uruguay.

The Yaros Indians occupied a small district on the south-western coast of the country, and were a warlike race whose customs and manner of existence much resembled those of the CharrÚas. With this latter race they were on terms of hostility, and only allied themselves with their aboriginal neighbours for the occasional purpose of a joint attack upon the Spaniards. At the beginning of the eighteenth century they were to all intents and purposes exterminated by the more powerful CharrÚas, the few survivors joining the ranks of their conquerors.

Little is known of the Bohanes, who occupied the coastal territory to the north of the Yaros. They were likewise enemies of the CharrÚas, and in the end suffered partial extermination at the hands of the latter tribe. It is said that a certain number escaped into Paraguay and became absorbed amongst the Guarani inhabitants of the north. It appears certain that, although this insignificant group could not number much more than a hundred families, their language differed entirely from the tongues of the neighbouring tribes.

The Chanas were island-dwellers whose character contrasted rather remarkably with that of the inhabitants of the mainland. When first met with they were occupying the islands in the River Uruguay to the north of the point where the Rio Negro joins the principal stream. A race of peaceable and rather timid folk, they suffered not a little at the hands of the more warlike tribes. Thus, when the Spaniards occupied their native islands, the Yaros endeavoured to obtain a footing on the western coast-line; but, driven from here by the CharrÚas, they found shelter in a collection of islets to the south of those that had formed their first abode. They were more or less expert fishers and watermen, and possessed a language of their own. Many of their customs were akin to those of the Guarani Indians. Thus when the bodies of their dead had been buried for a sufficiently long time to lose all flesh, the skeletons would be dug up, painted with grease and ochre, and then entered once again in company with their ancestors. In the case of a dead child it was their custom to place the body in a large earthenware urn which they filled with earth and ochre, covering up the vessel with burnt clay.

The Chanas lent themselves readily to civilisation. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century they became converted to Christianity, and in the beginning the Jesuit mission station of Soriano was peopled almost entirely by members of this tribe. Of an intelligence and temperament infinitely superior to that of the remaining tribes, they mingled freely with the Spaniards after a while, and adopted European manners and customs. The race disappeared eventually merely from the force of absorption by marriage with their civilised neighbours.

The Guenoas existed in the north-western portion of the country, leading a semi-nomadic life. They were to be distinguished from the Indians who dwelt to the south of their territory in that they were amenable to discipline in their natural state. At their head were recognised chiefs, or caciques, who appear to have exercised no little authority. They were endowed, moreover, with a certain amount of superstitious belief, and witch-doctors were to be found among them. They had also learned the art of signalling from a distance by means of bonfires. Although a warlike race, they were far more susceptible than the CharrÚas to outside influence. A portion of the tribe eventually found refuge in the Jesuit missions, and the majority of the males took service in the Spanish and Portuguese armies.

The Minuanes occupied a territory to the east of the Guenoas, and in physical appearance, manners, and customs closely resembled the CharrÚas, to such an extent, indeed, that the two tribes have frequently been confused by writers. An error of the kind is natural enough, since the two groups were wont to bind themselves in hard-and-fast alliance in order to combat the Spaniards. The Minuanes, however, were a trifle more advanced in some respects than their southern allies. They were accustomed, for instance, to wear loin-cloths, with the frequent addition of a skin flung across the shoulders. Moreover, their hostility towards Europeans was undoubtedly less deep-seated, since the Jesuits succeeded in incorporating them for a while in one of their missions. The majority, it is true, soon returned to their own wild life, but a certain number remained.

The last tribe to be noticed is that of the Arachanes, a people of Guarani origin who lived on the east coast between the ocean and the great Lake Merim. Practically nothing is known of these folk. They were dispersed and exterminated at the commencement of the seventeenth century by the Brazilian mamelukes in the course of their raids from San Paulo.