Charles Darwin describes the
Campaña del Desierto in his The Voyage Of The Beagle:
The wandering tribes of horse Indians, which have always occupied the greater part of this country, having of late much harassed the outlying estancias, the government at Buenos Ayres equipped some time since an army under the command of General Rosas for the purpose of exterminating them. . . .
I saw another troop of these banditti-like soldiers start on an expedition against a tribe of Indians at the small Salinas, who had been betrayed by a prisoner cacique. The Spaniard who brought the orders for this expedition was a very intelligent man. He gave me an account of the last engagement at which he was present. Some Indians, who had been taken prisoners, gave information of a tribe living north of the Colorado. Two hundred soldiers were sent; and they first discovered the Indians by a cloud of dust from their horses' feet as they chanced to be travelling. The country was mountainous and wild, and it must have been far in the interior, for the Cordillera were in sight. The Indians, men, women, and children, were about one hundred and ten in number, and they were nearly all taken or killed, for the soldiers sabre every man.
Pic. Captured females awaiting their distribution among the troops.
5 comments:
For 10,000 plus years, this is how humanity operated - one tribe raiding the next, then the other tribe raids back. You kill the menfolk, enslave the children and take the women. It wasn't white people's fault that they perfected guns and it was no longer a fair fight.
K
Yes, but this is almost contemporary. It was all in the open and orders were clear and in writing. Just as the travelling Englishman Charles Darwin describes it. He was also received by General Rosas. We are not talking about 10000 years ago but within the memory of some old people.
Gen. Rosas was just (one of) the last of his kind for white people. Argentina was always a little behind the times. "Darker" people still do this kind of thing to each other and nobody much cares.
K
About "caring": Following the successful campaign, Rosas became the ruler of Argentina. He promoted the immigration of Irish who are Catholics, but restricted that of English protestants. His civilizing mission was continued to the end of the century by other leaders. It is in the Argentine schoolbooks, very explicitly, and never occurred to me to question it.
Civilizing mission sounds much better than genocide. It's all in the spin.
K
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