 Section 1 of the South American Republics, Volume 1 by Thomas Cleland Dawson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Pietro Natter. The South American Republics, Part 1 by Thomas Cleland Dawson. Introductory. The Discoveries and the Conquest, Part 1. Spain's Discovery of America. Town or communal government has been characteristic of Spain since before the Roman Conquest. The Visigoths, who destroyed the advanced civilization they found in the peninsula, never really amalgamated with the subject population, and happily they did not succeed in destroying the municipalities. The liberal, civilized and tolerant Saracens, who drove out the Goths, left their Christian subjects free to enjoy their own laws and customs. The municipalities gave efficient local self-government, while a system of small proprietorships made the peninsula prosper, as in the best days of the Roman Dominion. The population of Spain reached 20 million under the Moors, but finally, the Gnostic Civil Wars enabled the remnant of Visigoths, who had taken refuge in the northern mountains, to begin the gradual expulsion of the Mahomedans. In the midst of these currents of war and conquests setting to and fro, the old municipalities survived unchangeable and always supplying local self-government. A tendency towards decentralization was ingrained in the Spanish people from the earliest times. It was increased by the method in which the Christian conquest of Mahomed in Spain was achieved. The Visigothic nobility, starting from separate points in Asturias and Navar, advanced into Saracen territory and established counties and erldoms, which were virtually independent of their mother kingdoms. The Asturians expanded into Lyon and thence over Galicia, northern Portugal, old and new Castile. The power of the Lyonese monarch over Galicia was nominal. Castile and Portugal separated from Lyon almost as soon as they were rested from the Mahomedans. The Basques were always independent, and Navar, though it became the mother of Aragon, had little connection with the latter region. On the Mediterranean shore, Charlemagne drove the moors from Catalonia and made it a province of his empire, but no sooner was he dead than it became independent. Towards the end of the 13th century, the Christian conquest was virtually completed and the peninsula had been divided into four kingdoms. Each of these was, however, in reality only a federation of semi-independent feudal divisions and municipalities united by personal allegiance to a single sovereign. In the course of the continual quarrelling of the monarchs, their kingdoms frequently divided, coalesced and separated again. The death of a king or a marriage of his daughter was often the signal for war and a readjustment of boundaries, but these overturnings did not much affect the component and really vital political units. More significant than the political kingdoms were the linguistic divisions. Spain then spoke and still speaks three languages, each of which has many dialects. From Asturias and Navar, the language now known as Castilian, has spread over the central part of the peninsula, south to Cadiz and Murcia. From Galicia, the Gallego had spread directly south along the Atlantic, where one of its dialects grew into the Portuguese. On the east coast, the Catalonian, imported from Languedoc by the French conqueror, is a mere derivative of the Provençal. Its dialects are spoken all along the Mediterranean coast of Spain as far south as Alicante, as well as in the Balearic Islands. By 1300 A.D., two great political divisions, Castile and Aragon, covered three-fourths of the peninsula, and their boundaries were well established. Each, however, was a mere loose aggregation of provinces, and every province had its own laws and customs, its jealously guarded privileges, its legislative assembly and its free municipalities. Galicia had never become incorporated with Lyon, the Basques ruled themselves, Catalonia was really independent of Aragon, Castile had, from the beginning, been virtually independent, although under the same monarch as Lyon, and indeed had taken the latter's place as the metropolitan province of the kingdom. The one great unifying force was religious sentiment, stimulated into fanaticism by centuries of wars against the infidels. Nevertheless, during the two centuries before the discovery of America, the Spaniards absorbed much culture from their Moorish subjects. In 1479, the whole peninsula, except Portugal and Granada, was politically united by the accession of Ferdinand to the throne of Aragon, and of Isabella to that of Castile and Lyon. With local liberties intact and peace prevailing through its whole extent, the peninsula enjoyed a prosperity unknown since the golden era of the Moors. The population rose to 12 millions, Andalusia, Galicia, Catalonia and Valencia were among the most flourishing and thickly settled parts of Europe, while the military qualities of the aristocracy of Castile and Lyon and Aragon gave the new power the best armies of the time. Colonies founded by a monarchy so organized could never be firmly knit to each other nor to their mother country. The nobility of the sword would try to establish feudal principalities, the new cities would endeavor to exercise the local functions of the old peninsula municipalities, and the spirit of local independence still animating Catalonians, Basques, Galicians and Andalusians would be repeated on a new continent. The only bond of union would be personal allegiance to the monarch. In the 14th century, Christian navigators reached the Canary Islands, 60 miles from the African coast and 600 southeast of Gibraltar. The assurance that land did really exist below the horizon of that western ocean, so mysterious and terrible to the early navigators, gave them confidence to push farther into the deep. In navigation, the Spaniards lagged behind their Portuguese neighbors. But among the Spanish kingdoms, Castile took the lead because her Andalusian ports of Cadiz, San Lucar, Palos and Velva faced on the open Atlantic. These towns swarmed with sailors who had followed in the track of the Portuguese and visited their new possessions. The Castilians and Andalusians were naturally jealous of the successful Portuguese. Madeira, the Azores, the Cape Verdes and the gold mines of the Guinea coast had fallen to the latter, while the Spaniards had only the Canaries. They gave an eager ear to the rumors that were rife in the Portuguese islands of more marvelous discoveries still to be made, of islands beyond the Azores. An adventurous Italian, Christopher Columbus, wandering among the Portuguese possessions, heard the stories. Happily for Spain, he believed them and resolved to lead an expedition to the farther side of the Atlantic. He entered her service and proved to be an enthusiast of rare penacity. It is immaterial whether the idea of a route to the East Indies by the West occurred to him at the same time and he became convinced that there were islands in the far Atlantic waiting to be discovered. That which is certain is that he devoted his life to persuading someone in authority to entrust him with ships and men to make a voyage to the far West. The pilots at Palos backed him and he finally secured the desired permission and means from Isabella of Castile. Her interest in exploration and colonization had been shown 15 years before in her energetic measures in conquering the Canaries and forcing the Portuguese to renounce their claims to those islands and she well deserved the title of founder of the colonial empire of Spain. The story of Columbus's first voyage needs no retelling. He journeyed so far to the West that he returned convinced he had reached the longitude of Eastern Asia and the noise of his great discovery resounded through Europe and began the transformation of the world. Since the last great century, the 13th, Christendom had retrograded. The Tartars dominated Russia and the Turks were pressing hard on Germany. Unless the Christian world could find an outlet, unless it could create another resources for itself and outside of itself, unless feudalism should find an employment for its military energies outside of the vicious circle of fruitless and purposeless dynastic wars, it seemed not improbable that Mohammedan aggression would continue until all Europe lay under the deadening influence of the Turk. Only in the peninsula was apparent that spirit of expansion which is the best indication of internal vitality in a nation. The military nobility, whose determined fanaticism, magnificent courage and spirit of individual initiative had driven the Moors out of Spain in the 13th century, welcomed this fresh opportunity to slay the infidel and carve out new thieves for themselves. Conquest of the Andes Columbus showed strategic genius of the highest order in choosing Haiti as the site of the first settlement. That island afforded an admirable base for the conquest of the new world. It was large enough to furnish provisions and was conveniently situated with reference to the coasts and islands of the Caribbean. Gold washings were soon discovered in the interior and the unwar-like inhabitants were at once impressed into slavery to dig in the mines. The news of gold stimulated interest as nothing else could have done. The Castilian government took immediate steps to exclude all other nations. The Pope divided the globe between Spain and Portugal and a treaty to this effect was negotiated between the two countries. The Spaniards swarmed over to Haiti and thence expeditions were sent out in every direction headed by private adventurers bearing their sovereigns commission. The other Antilles were soon explored and by the end of the century the Spaniards had reached the South American mainland and rapidly explored the coast from the Amazon up to the Isthmus. Gold was picked up in the streams flowing from the Colombian Andes into the Caribbean. Later the northwestern coast of South America was granted out to noble adventurers who undertook its conquest and exploitation with their own means. The Isthmian region became the new center of Spanish power and commerce in America. In 1513 Balboa crossed the Isthmus to the Pacific Ocean an event second in its far-reaching consequences only to Columbus' first voyage. During the following years the Gulf of Mexico was restored and in 1518 the greatest statesman and general whom Spain ever sent to the New World Hernando Cortés began the conquest of the Empire of the Aztecs. The mining done in Haiti and along the Caribbean coast seemed pitiably insignificant compared with the treasures found in Mexico. There followed a new influx of gentlemen adventurers who scoured the coast in every direction making another defenseless empire and mines as good as those of Mexico. The expeditions down the Pacific coast of South America started from the Isthmus. Peru was soon found and in 1532 Pizarro and his band of bloodthirsty desperados with inconceivable audacity struck a vital blow at the heart of the great empire of the Incas by capturing its emperor. Within half a dozen years nearly the whole of the vast region which the Inca power had extended was overrun and the outlying provinces were ready to submit at demand. The rapidity with which a little band of Spaniards conquered the vast and warlike empire of the Incas is well nigh incredible. The terror inspired by horses and firearms did much but the capture of their emperor demoralized the imperial Inca tribes still more. Once in the possession of the sacred person of the monarch the Spaniards were regarded by the Indians as the mouthpiece and the successor to his power. From Cusco the capital a splendid system of roads and communications radiated to every part of the empire. The military and political dominance of the imperial tribes had weakened the power of resistance in the provinces. The elaborate structure which had been built up by the Incas rather facilitated than hindered the Spanish conquest once the decisive bloc had been given at the center. The provinces submitted to the new rulers as fast as the Spanish columns could march over the magnificent mountain roads. South from Cusco the Indian empire extended 2,000 miles. It covered the whole Andean region as far as the 37th degree of south latitude and extended from the Pacific to the eastern slopes of the Andean foothills. In the present Argentine it included the tribes living in the lesser chains which occupied the northwestern part of the republic. Some of these Argentine tribes seemed to have been only tributary to the Incas. Others were completely dependent and extensive colonies had been founded in the cotton regions. The general language was Inca and that admirable system of irrigation and intensive culture which made Peru proper a garden had been introduced on the eastern slopes of the southern Andes. The southern part of the Great Bolivian Plateau seems to have submitted quietly to the Spanish conquerors and the stream of adventurers passed on to the south. In 1542 Diego de Rojas led the first expedition of which a record had survived down through the Umahuaca valley into the actual territory of the Argentine. He himself perished in a fight with a wild tribe near the main chain of the Andes and his followers continued their march. Near to Cuman they passed out from the mountain defiles on to the Pampa and leaving the desert to their right penetrated through Santiago and Cordoba to the Paraná. No permanent settlement was then made but the reports of thousands of peaceable and wealthy Indians inhabiting irrigated valleys and the accounts of the magnificent pastures which stretched away to the east soon tempted the Spaniards to take permanent possession. Seven years after the first exploration a town was founded in latitude 27° midway between the Andes and the Paraná. About the same time other adventurers came pouring over the Andes from northern Chile and this current soon joined that from the north. The Spaniards established themselves as feudal lords and the unhappy Indians were divided among them. In one district 47,000 Indians were divided among 56 grandees. In 1553 Santiago de Estero for many years the capital of the province of Cuman was founded. In 1561 the governor of Chile sent from Santiago de Chile over the Andes an expedition which founded the city of Mendoza in a most beautiful region where the vine flourishes in perfection and where a wonderful system of irrigation inherited from the Indians still exists to attest the latter's engineering skill. Next year San Juan was founded and these two towns were the centers for the settlement of the province of Cuyo which remained a part of Chile for 200 years. The immigrants from northern Chile and Bolivia established to Cuman in the tropical garden spot of the Republic in 1565. From Santiago de Estero in 1573 an expedition was sent 250 miles to the south to a region of fertile valleys and plains at the foot of a beautiful mountain range. This was Cordoba which at once became and has since remained the most populous of the interior provinces. By the end of the 16th century the Spanish power was firmly established in settlements that have since become the Argentine provinces of Jujuy, Tucuman, Catamarca, Santiago, Rioja and Cordoba. All these really formed a southern extension of Upper Peru. Their geographical, political and commercial relations were with Charcas, Potosí and Lima. The discovery in 1545 of the great silver mines at Potosí at once made the high Bolivian plateau then known as the Audiencia of Charcas the most valuable and important province of all the Spanish monarchs South American Empire. In 1571 the discovery of quick silver mines in Peru vastly increased the output of precious metals. In 1575 the wonderful Oruro mines were opened and before the end of the century the Copper Pan amalgamation process was invented in Bolivia revolutionizing the production of silver. The resulting prosperity of the mining regions of Bolivia stimulated the settlement of the northwestern provinces of the Argentine. The miners needed provisions which could not well be raised in the neighborhood of Potosí. There was a demand for cattle for beef and for horses and mules for transportation. A solid economic foundation was thus provided for the plain settlements and the enslavement of the Indians and the breeding of cattle went on a pace. By the end of the 16th century Northwestern Argentine, the province of Tucumán as it was then called, was the seat of many thriving settlements whose Spanish inhabitants were mostly pastoral. The Indians in the neighborhood of each settlement had been reduced to slavery and cultivated the fields that had been their fathers for the benefit of their white masters. The Spanish proprietors lived like feudal lords while the Spanish authorities left these remote regions largely to their own devices. Conditions in Cuyo, the western province just across the Andes from Santiago de Chile were substantially the same. A political dependency of Chile the few external relations it had were with that captaincy general. The Spanish grantees ruled their Indian slaves in patriarchal fashion. Agriculture was the principal occupation. Pastoral industry was not so profitable as in Tucumán and the region was more isolated. In both Tucumán and Cuyo Spanish rule was superimposed upon a previously existing commercial and social structure. There was no attempt to expel or destroy the aborigines. On the contrary, they were the sole laborers and their exertions the chief source of the wealth of their conquerors. There began a process of approximation between the Spaniards and their semi-civilized subjects. While the former continued to be a privileged and ruling case, the latter absorbed much European knowledge from them. The Indian language long held its own alongside of the Spanish and is still spoken in many parts of the region. On the Atlantic side among degraded people who had not progressed beyond the wandering and tribal stages of existence Spanish settlements proceeded on entirely different lines. There existed no well organized body politic into whose control the conquerors could step with hardly an interruption to industry. Campaigns could not be made with the confident expectation of finding abundant accumulation of food and root. Expeditions among the squalid tribes were slow and dangerous and settlements stuck close to the rivers following fearlessly across the plateau to the spots where the finest lands and the most flourishing Indian communities lay ready for the spoiler. The beginnings of the coast provinces were painful and disastrous. The settlements were feeble. Centuries elapsed before the natural advantage of the region were utilized. And before its accessibility and fertility drew a great immigration. The assimilation of Indian blood did not take place on a large scale and the immigrants and their descendants became perforce horsemen and fighters. End of section 1. Section 2 of the South American Republics. Volume 1 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pietronatter. Introductory. The Discoveries and Conquest. Part 2. Discovery of the Plate. The Portuguese Discovery of the East Coast of South America in 1500 was a disagreeable surprise to the Spanish government. The Treaty of Tordesillas had been framed with the purpose of giving America to Spain while Africa and the shores of the Indian Ocean were left to Portugal. Nevertheless the Portuguese vigorously asserted their right to the prize they had picked up by accident and insisted on the letter of the treaty. They promptly explored the coast as far south as Santa Catarina, 600 miles north of the plate, but they had asserted no ownership further south at the date when the Spanish expeditions began to be sent to the South Atlantic. In 1516 a celebrated sea captain from the north of Spain, Juan Diaz de Solis, was sent out by the Castilian government to explore the continent. He simply reconnoitred the Brazilian coast, where the Portuguese had not yet established any settlements, and pressing on to the south finally reached the plate. His first impression on rounding Cape San Maria, where the Uruguayan shore turns to the northwest, was that he had reached the southern point of the continent and discovered the sea route into the Pacific. But the freshness of the water in the great estuary undeceived him. Following along the northern bank, he landed with a small party and was attacked and slain by a tribe of fierce and intractable Indians. When the news reached Lisbon, the Portuguese government protested against this invasion of territory which it claimed lay east of the Tordesillas line. Portugal however did not follow up her protest or try to take possession for herself. At this very time a celebrated Portuguese navigator Fernando Magellan, disgusted by the neglect of his own country, was urging the Spanish government to give him the means of carrying out his great project for the circumnavigation of the globe. He was confident he could reach the East Indies by rounding the southern point of South America or by finding a passage through the continent in higher latitudes than had yet been reached. The year 1519 when Magellan sailed from San Lucar on the first voyage round the world was big with fate for Spain. Cortes was adding a new empire by the conquest of Mexico, thus giving Spain control of the world's supply of precious metals. The popular assemblies of Castile and Aragon of Catalonia, Valencia and Galicia were preparing for a hopeless struggle against the might of a monarch who ruled two thirds of Europe. At the very moment that Charles V was crushing peninsular freedom by brutal military force, the genius of Magellan and Cortes gave him the whole of America. Spain had heretofore been a federation of self-governing communes and provinces, but their independence was now destroyed. Military despotism proved strong enough to crush liberty, although it was unable to stamp out the feeling of local segregation. The very soldiers that conquered America took over an intensive feeling that the central government was dangerous and inimical to the people, a sentiment which had always survived in some form among their descendants. Magellan stopped at the plate in the beginning of 1520 and explored the estuary to make sure that it did not afford the passage he was seeking. In October he reached the mouth of the strait that bears and wonderfully favored by wind and weather threaded his way to the Pacific in five weeks. Subsequent wayfarers were not so fortunate and the strait never became a practicable commercial route until after the introduction of steam navigation. In the succeeding hundred years not half a dozen ships reached the Pacific round South America. Practically the Pacific was accessible only over the 1560s or by the immensely long journey round the Cape of Good Hope. Nevertheless the importance of this epoch making voyage has not been overestimated. The Pacific became in a sense a Spanish lake in which she could maintain at will a naval preponderance. She occupied the Philippines and secured control at leisure of the Pacific coast of America. However the scientific results were more important. Thereafter the thorough exploration of all the shores of the South Sea was only a question of time. Magellan's voyage made geography an exact science. He sketched the map of the world with broad and sure strokes and left nothing for subsequent explorers except the filling in of details. The occupation of the Philippines and Moluccas gave rise to new disputes between Portugal as to their rights under the Treaty of Tordesillas. The imperfect instruments of those days left the line doubtful on the eastern South American coast as well as on the other side of the world. In 1526 Sebastian Cabot was sent by the Spanish government to determine astronomically the location of the line in America and then to follow Magellan's track to the mouth of the plate he heard rumors among the Indians of silver mines on the river's banks and of the existence of a great and wealthy empire at its headwaters. This was Peru not yet reached by the Castilians on their way south from the Isthmus but the coast Indians showed Cabot silver ornaments which had been passed from hand to hand from the highlands of Peru and Bolivia down the river to the Atlantic. Cabot and his band of adventurers determined to neglect their surveying trusting that the discovery of silver mines would excuse their disobedience. They spent three years in vain journeying and prospecting exploring the Uruguay to the head of navigation and following up the Paraná as far as the Apipe Rapids. Signs of neither silver nor gold nor of civilized inhabitants were found. Their upper courses came down from the east the direction opposite to that in which Eldorada was reported. The gently flowing Paraguay coming down the plains in the center of the continent seemed to offer a better hope of success. But Cabot's forces and provisions were inadequate to penetrating further north than the present site of Asuncion. Returning to a fort he had left on the lower Paraná it had been taken by Indians and its garrison massacred. Discouraged by such a succession of difficulties and misfortunes he returned to Spain. The news of Cabot's expedition and its failure stimulated the Portuguese to undertake the colonization of the east coast of South America. Afonso de Souza started from Lisbon with an expedition intending to take possession of the plate. Lack of provisions, fear of the Indians, the presence of a Portuguese cast away. One of those insignificant chances that sometimes changed the course of empires as a twig diverged the currents of a river stopped Afonso before he reached his destination. Instead of establishing a colony on the estuary he founded San Vicente just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. This became the southern outpost of the Portuguese possessions as the temperate zone of South America was left open for the Spaniards to occupy when they chose. Two years after Cabot's failure Pizarro overran Peru. All Europe ran with the exploit. The Spanish king was besieged by nobles who literally begged the privilege of risking their lives and fortunes in America. These adelantados contracted to conquer at their own charges the particular districts granted them. Certain profits being reserved to the crown and Charles V freely granted such patents. Among the grandees was a Basque nobleman Pedro de Mondoça to whom was given the territory beginning at the Portuguese possessions south 200 leagues along the Atlantic coast towards the Strait of Magellan. He raced more than 2000 men and reached the plate in 1535 where he immediately founded a city on the south bank which he named Buenos Aires. He intended to make the base for an advance up the Paraná to find and conquer another Peru. His attempt was for doomed to failure. The Indians surrounding Buenos Aires were implacable in their hatred of the invaders. They lived in scattered little tribes and neither would nor could furnish food enough to maintain the Spaniards. The provisions brought from Spain were inadequate sorties were useless. The Indians fled from large parties and ambushed small ones. The preparations for the advance up the river were delayed for months. Hundreds died of hunger and disease. Within a year the place had to be abandoned and in a desperate condition the expedition fled up the river to Cabos solid fort. Here the adelantados stopped, sick and discouraged, while a few hundreds of more daring and persevering pressed on to the north determined to reach El Dorado. Arrived at the junction of the Paraguay and Paraná they chose the former river and pushed on up it as far as the 20th degree to a place they called Candelaria. There they found vast lakes and swamps spreading to the west. It was necessary to protect their retreat before plunging into the difficult country that extends across to Bolivia. Accordingly they divided and one party remained on the dry ground near the river while 200 desperate adventurers pressed on through the wilderness hoping to reach the Bolivian plateau. The party that stopped behind as a reserve was commanded by Domingo Irala, the real founder of the Spanish settlements in the Paraná valley. The main expedition never returned. Years afterward friendly Indians brought back the tale that it had reached the slopes of the Bolivian mountains, obtained much gold and silver and started back triumphantly but had perished to the last men in an Indian ambush not far from the Paraguay and safety. Irala waited the appointed time and then floated down the river. Domingo Irala and his companions were well-nigh in despair. So far as they knew they were the only survivors of the 3,000 people who had accompanied Mendotha. To the north the country was inhospitable and impenetrable and from their experiences of the year before they knew that at the mouth of the river no provisions or sacours were to be had. On their way up the river they had passed about the 25th degree a beautiful and fertile rolling country covered with magnificent forests with park-like openings and inhabited by a large and friendly Indian population. Opposite the mouth of the Pilcomayo where there was a large Indian village they stopped on their downward journey determined to settle down and take some repose from their interminable and fruitless wanderings in search of the willow-the-wisp Eldorado. There in 1536 they founded the city of Asuncion, the first Spanish settlement on the Atlantic slope of South America. The foundation of Buenos Aires the failure of Mendotha, first Adalantado to establish a colony on the plate did not discourage others from soliciting the grant of his territory. In 1540 Cabeta de Vaca, a conquistador celebrated for his feats in Florida, was appointed Adalantado and set out gallantly to find the second Peru which everyone believed to exist at the headwaters of the Paraguay. Intent on reaching the interior as soon as possible he made no attempt to establish a town and port at the mouth of the river plate, but landed at Santa Catarina on what is now the Brazilian coast in the latitude of Paraguay and set off across country with 400 men and 20 horses. The distance was a thousand miles the route led up a heavily wooded mountain range on the coast and dense across a broken but open plateau where great rivers point out the natural routes to the Paraná. The soil was fertile and the Indians along the road were able to furnish considerable food supplies. Cabeta de Vaca made the journey without appreciable loss and arrived in Asuncion eager to take command and dash across to the Andes. But the sturdy Basques had selected their able countrymen Domingo Irala as chief of the colony and gave the new Adalantado a cold welcome. Irala insisted that a reconnoitering expedition be sent before risking the body of the Spaniards. Its command was given him and he penetrated almost to the headwaters of the Paraguay. Next year Cabeta de Vaca followed but as soon as he left the Paraguay he got into difficulties. He could not penetrate the swamps nor make headway against the savage Indians who lived between the river and the eastern slopes of the Cordillera. He returned defeated and discouraged and the people of Asuncion bundled him back to Spain. Though Irala subsequently did succeed in reaching Peru, by the route up the Paraguay no practical results followed. Paraguay remained isolated from the Spanish Empire on the Pacific coast until a roundabout communication was established down the river and then went across the dry and level plains that stretched from the mouth of the river plate to the Cordillera. The early days of the Asuncion settlement were stormy. The rough adventurers fell to fighting among themselves and their cruelties often drove the patient and submissive Indians into rebellion. Their greed for bigger plantations and more slaves pushed them on to conquering the aborigines in an expanding circle. By 1553 they had founded a settlement on the Upper Paraná and were dominant from river to river in the southern half of the present territory of Paraguay. Until his death in 1557 Irala was the dominating personality in the colony. According to his lights he was just in his dealings with the Indians. When he died the settlement was firmly on its feet and even the Indians revered him as their benefactor. The mass of the population was Indian and Guarani has always remained the prevalent language in Paraguay. Absolutely isolated from other European colonies the settlement was communication with the mother country the settlement was however an unpromising affair. The few hundreds of Spaniards might have sustained their social and military superiority over the hordes of Indians by whom they were surrounded but without material and intellectual communication with Spain they could achieve no commercial success. An outlet to the sea was necessary. The original settlers had been adventurers willing to follow Mendoza through swamp and forest up to the walls of El Dorado and their children were not less enterprising. The horses brought over by the Adelantados had multiplied amazingly and were spreading wild over the Pampa to the south. Cattle, sheep and goats bred by millions before long the attractions of a pastoral life began to appeal to the Spaniards of Asuncion. The braver and more energetic preferred the free open existence of the Pampa to idleness in the sleepy villages of Paraguay. The Argentine nation proper began its existence when the Creel mounted his horse and took to cattle breeding on the plains. The possession of horses as much as of firearms gave the Gaucho his military predominance over the fiercest aborigines and the horse also the cornerstone of his industrial system. The cattle of the open Pampa gave him an unlimited supply of the best food and his horses enabled him to procure it with a minimum of effort. Iralas successors repeatedly tried to establish a colony near the mouth of the plate but they were not successful until the Creels on horseback had pushed their way south along the Pampa with driven back or subdued the wandering Indians. In 1560 the Guaranis of Paraguay were definitely crushed in the horribly bloody Battle of Akari but it was not until 1573 that the Spaniards from Asuncion succeeded in founding a city south of the confluence of the Parana and Paraguay. Santa Fe was the first Spanish settlement on the plate in territory now a part of the Argentine Republic. The man who led the Creels to the Pampa was Juan de Garay, a Basque who had been one of the soldiers in the army that conquered Peru. His energy and vigor and the bravery of the Creel cavalry who followed his expeditions down the river and over the Pampas at length opened up communications from Paraguay to Europe and gave Spain a seaport on the South Atlantic. Curiously enough in the very year that I founded Santa Fe the Spaniards from Peru founded Cordoba, the most eastward of the Andean settlements. Their hard riders had pushed on from Cordoba, reconnoitering as far as the Parana and there ran across Garay's men. The two currents of Argentine settlements met almost at the beginning though two centuries were to elapse before they completely coalesced. Eight years later in Buenos Aires after Zarate the first delantado had failed as badly as any of his predecessors. Garay by sheer force of energy and fitness became the real ruler of the settlements. Active, farsighted and able he perceived that a purely military establishment at the mouth of the river was for doomed to failure. To be permanent the port and town must be self-sustaining and therefore must be surrounded by farms and ranches and be accessible by land from the upper settlements. In the spring of 1580 the acting governor sent over land from Santa Fe 200 families of Guarani Indians accompanied by a thousand horses, 200 cows and 50 sheep besides mares, carts, oxen and other necessaries. The soldiers of the convoy were mostly creoles born in Paraguay. Both carried down from Santa Fe arms, munitions, seedgrain, tools and whatever in those rude days was essential to a settlement. He himself went by land with 40 soldiers following the highlands that scared the west bank of the Paraná from Santa Fe to Buenos Aires. The plate estuary affords no proper harbors. The immense volume of water spreading over vast shallow beds chokes it with sandbars and the shores are so shelving that even small boats cannot approach the land. The north side is bolder and at Montevideo and at the mouth of the Uruguay affords bays partly sheltered from the storms which sweep up over the level Pampas and make anchorage in the rivers so unsafe. But the north bank was cut off from land communication with the existing Spanish towns by the mighty Uruguay Paraná and Garay desired that his new city should be always accessible from his older settlements on the right bank of the Paraná. His choice of the particular spot where the largest city of the southern hemisphere has since grown up seems to have been determined by a few trifling circumstances. He kept as near the head of the estuary as possible in order to shorten the land route from Santa Fe upon a slight rise of ground between two draws which made the site defensible. The fact that a nearby creek, the Riachuelo, afforded a shelter for little boats may also have been given weight in reaching a decision. Though his settlers did not number 500 Garay laid out his city like a townside boomer. The surrounding country was divided into ranches and the neighboring Indians were distributed among the citizens of the new town. A cabildo, or city council, was named with the full paraphernalia of a Spanish municipal government. The new town started off in the full enjoyment of all the guarantees known to immemorial Spanish constitutional law. Troubles broke out almost immediately between the Creole settlers and the Spaniards who had been sent over by the Adelantaro to fill offices and get the best things in distributions of land and slaves. Garay had hardly left the town to look after the rest of the province then the Creoles, indignant over unfair treatment forcibly demanded an open cabildo. This was an extraordinary popular assembly which, according to old Spanish custom, might be called at critical times and was something like a town meeting. In theory, the property owners and educated citizens were called together merely to give advice but in practice it was a tumultuous assemblage to overall the office holders. The Argentine Creoles were doing nothing more than asserting their constitutional rights as vassals of the king of Castile. They compelled the Spanish office holders to compromise. Meanwhile, Garay was clinching his claim to immortality as the founder of the Spanish power on the plate. He explored the Pampas to the south and west of the new city and reduced many of the tribes to slavery or vassalage. He found the plains already overrun by hundreds of thousands of horses, the descendants of the few abandoned their forty-five years before when the remnants of Mendoza's Il Start expedition fled up the river. On his way back to Santa Fe, this great Indian fighter was ambushed by Indians and stopped while he slept. His death was followed by outbreaks among the Creoles who resented the efforts of the Adelantados' new representatives to establish a monopoly in horsehair. Scarcely had they found a way to make a little money by hunting wild horses for their hair, then the officials tried to absorb all the profit. The struggle between the repressive commercial policy of Spain and the interests of the plate colonists began with the foundation of the colony of Buenos Aires and went on for more than two hundred years. In 1588 the Creoles obtained a foothold in the extreme north of the Mesopotamian region by founding the city of Corrientes near the junction of the Parana and Paraguay. All the new Commonwealth's south of Asuncion obtained a solid economic foundation in the herds of cattle and horses which covered the plains. In the regions adjacent to the Andes, the Spaniards did not become so exclusively pastoral as their brethren of the Pampas near the plate. While they had more and better Indian slaves, their pastureage was not so good. Though apparently more isolated, their proximity to Aperperu and the trade that went on with that great mining country, the goal of fortune hunting Spaniards of those years, placed them more directly under the control of the Vicerigal authorities. Tucumán was a mere southern extension of the jurisdiction of the Audiencia Charcas and Cuyo was an integral part of Chile. But this did not prevent the early development of a strong sentiment in favor of local self-government and of hatred of the imported Spanish satraps. By the year 1617 the settlements on the lower Parana had become of considerable importance. Buenos Aires was a town of 3,000 people, the right bank of the river as far as Santa Fe was a grazing ground for the herds of the Creoles. Towns and ranches were flourishing in Corrientes. In that year the Spanish crown abolished the office of Adalantaro and erected the lower settlements into a province separate from Paraguay. The new province included the territory that is now Uruguay as well as the four actual Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Corrientes. Entre Ríos and Uruguay were however as yet entirely unsettled. While the Creoles were thus firmly establishing themselves along the lower Parana and in the Andean provinces, the Jesuits were converting the Indians in the east of Paraguay and early in the 17th century these indefatigable missionaries had penetrated to the upper Parana, crossed it and were gathering the Indians by thousands into peaceful villages. End of section 2. Section 3 of the South American Republics, volume 1 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pietro Natter. Part 1, Argentina. Chapter 1, The Argentine Land. South from where the great mass of the Bolivian Andes shoves a shoulder to the east as if seeking to join the Brazilian mountain system and from where a low ridge stretches out to form the watershed between the Madeira and the eastward flowing affluence of the Paraguay extends an immense flat plain. 2,000 miles from north to south and nearly 500 miles in breadth, hardly a hillock rises above its surface from the foothills of the Andes westward to the sea. In the tropical north its surface is partly covered with trees, but south of the Chaco the only woodlands are narrow bells following the streams. Everywhere stretch the grassy plains without an obstruction or interruption. The soil is a fine alluvium, full of the right chemical elements and admirably adapted to agriculture wherever the rainfall is sufficient. As a pasture ground it is the finest on the planet. Within recent geological times this plain was the bottom of a great shallow gulf which received the detritus washed down from the Andes on the one side and the Brazilian mountains on the other. The gradual uplifting of those youngest mountains, the Andes, raised their flanks until the adjacent floor of the gulf appeared dry land, a land already and prepared for human occupancy. Nowhere does man encounter fewer obstacles to his freedom of movement or find it easier to procure his food supply than on the Pampa. The characteristic topographical feature of the political division of South America known as Argentina. Skirting the ridge on the east and draining the vast slopes of the Brazilian mountains of their tropical rainfall is the Great River Paraná. In latitude 27 degrees it is roughly to the west as if about to cross the Pampa but a hundred miles further on it resumes its southward course. At this last turn the Paraná flows into a river which comes straight down from the north draining the bed of the old inland sea that used to divide South America. This junction of the Paraná and the Paraguay forms the second largest river in the world a river without obstruction to navigation but which is so immense that it cannot be bridged. In latitude 32 degrees it turns back to the southeast soon receives the Uruguay a swifter stream that drains the southern part of the Atlantic islands and then opens out into the great shallow estuary known as the River Plate. Between the Uruguay and the Paraná is the Argentine Mesopotamia a flat region where the low-lying plains connected with streams and interspersed with timber gradually rise upstream into the highlands of the missions. To the west the Pampa is bounded by the foothills of the Andes and the parallel chains with which the great mountain system reinforces its flanks. At the Bolivian frontier the great outward jutting shoulder of the Andes looms up among a series of subordinate chains. South of them, for a thousand miles a belt of broken country averaging 200 miles in width the Pampa creeps up to the very foot of the mountain ranges and where it is watered blossoms like a garden. A quarter of the population of the Republic lives in the irrigated valleys of these Andean provinces. A comparatively narrow arid belt stretches diagonally across the South American continent from the Pacific in northern Chile to the Atlantic northern Patagonia. Consequently from north to south and from the Atlantic back toward the northeast border of that arid belt the rainfall of Argentina decreases. On the northeastern frontier it is about 80 inches air at Rosario 40 at Cordoba 30 at Buenos Aires 35. In the Andean provinces it decreases from over 40 near the Bolivian frontier on Juan in the latitude of Santa Fe and Cordoba. In the eastern part of the Great Pampa the rainfall is ample for serial crops. In the western half the rains are periodical and the region is better adapted to grazing than to agriculture and there the grasslands are intersected with tracts of deserts which grow larger towards the south. In the Andes the eastern ranges catching the rain laden upper currents with ample water to irrigate the valleys and adjacent plains. The Mesopotamian region and the country directly south of the plate estuary have of course an ample rainfall. South of the latitude of Buenos Aires the rainfall of the Andean region which has grown steadily less from the northern boundary begins again to increase. The eastern slopes of the mountains south for an indeterminate distance are well watered while the Patagonian slopes to their east are dry and desolate. The climate varies from tropical on the northern frontier to arctic in Tierra del Fuego. The southern Pampa and the Andean provinces are temperate or subtropical and admirably adapted for habitation by men of European descent. Tucuman is the hottest of these provinces. There the average temperature of the coldest month is 53 degrees. At Buenos Aires it is 50 degrees and at Cordova it is 47. The average temperatures in these localities for the whole year are respectively 63, 61 and 63. When Columbus landed in the West Indies this vast territory was occupied by two separate sets of aborigines. The Andean provinces were a part of the great Inca Empire. South as far as Mendoza the Andean valleys were filled with vigorous yet peaceful population who had brought the art of irrigation to a high degree of perfection. Plantations of corn, mandiok and potatoes flourished on the terraced hillsides and in the fertile valleys. The lower and hotter plains furnished cotton. Constant communication both commercial and governmental was kept up with the center of the Inca power in Cusco along roads that followed the eastern routes along the valleys and up over the passes to the Bolivian and dense to the central provinces of the empire. Cila on the other side of the Cordillera was a sister province and the passes over the great range were well known and constantly used. The population was greater than it is at the present day while the political solidity of the Inca Empire is doubtless exaggerated it is certain that the same civilization extended from Ecuador to Mendoza and Santiago de Chile and that the Cordillera region was the home of 20 millions of people organized into vigorous, progressive and expanding communities. The Andean civilization never showed any tendency to expand over the tropical plains of the great central depressions. The Incas themselves never cared to penetrate far down the wooded and steaming slopes of the Andes lying directly to the east of their own capital. Their dependent states bordering the Argentine Pampa did not cross the desert plains where irrigating ditches could not reach. So far as we now know the Andean Indians had never penetrated to the Atlantic. East of the Pampas in the hilly woods of Paraguay and Brazil tribes vastly inferior in intelligence, political organization and civilization maintained a precarious existence. Many of those who belonged to the great Guarani family devastated villages and cultivated the soil, but none had advanced far on the road toward a reasonably efficient social and military organization. The procuring of food for their daily wants was their chief occupation. The tribes were too small to make effective warfare on a large scale. There was no prospect of any development into a higher culture. Certain tribes, inferior to the Guaranis, had spread from the wooded regions over the Catamion provinces and into the adjacent Pampa and the districts on both sides of the estuary, but they never ventured far from the water supply. Though brave and intractable these people showed no real fighting capacity until after white men had taught them the use of horses. With this knowledge however they were able to offer a very effective resistance which was not completely overcome until 20 years ago. The area of the whole republic is 1,212,000 and 600 square miles. The Mesopotamian region contains 81,000 square miles being larger than England and even more uniformly fertile. The Pampa suitable for grain production including the semi-forested Chaco Plain in the north has an area of not less than 350,000 square miles. The Andean provinces contain nearly 300,000 and Patagonia 316,000. The grazing Pampa is partly included in the Andean provinces. Its boundaries to the south and towards the Atlantic are not capable of exact definition but it includes perhaps half the territory of the republic. Except the higher mountains and the so-called deserts of the center the whole territory is productive. The description of the white men spread over this immense country the largest except Brazil of the South American states and of all these the most immediately and unquestionably suitable for maintaining a large population of European blood is tedious when told in detail but it is a story fraught with significance for the future of the world. On the plains of Argentina the descendants of the Spanish conquerors have fought out amongst themselves all the perplexing questions arising from the adaptation of Spanish absolutism and ancient burg law to a new country and to personal freedom. After more than half a century of civil war constitutional equilibrium has been attained. The country ought to be interesting where there has grown up within a few decades the largest city in the southern hemisphere and the largest Latin city except Paris and the world. The growth of Buenos Aires has been as dizzying as that of Chicago and the world has never seen a more rapid and easy multiplication of wealth than that which took place in Argentina between the years 1870 and 1890. Interesting too is Argentina as the scene of the most extensive experiment in the mixture of races now going on anywhere in the world except in the United States. In 40 years more than 2 millions of immigrants have made their homes in Argentina. The majority are from southern Europe but the proportion of British, German, French, Belgians and Swiss is a fifth of the whole. Will the northerners be assimilated and disappear in the mass of southerners or will they succeed in impressing their characteristics on the latter? Will a mixed race be evolved especially suited to success in subtropical America? Will the system of administration painfully evolved out of the old Spanish laws prove permanently suited to the great industrial and commercial state that is growing up on the Argentine Pampa? Will the municipal and bureaucratic system prove adaptable and elastic enough to furnish a political framework for the tremendous economic development which has already made such strides but which really has only begun? Will the intellectual and social ideas of the coming Argentine nation be military, bureaucratic, leisurely or will they be purely commercial? Certain answers to these questions cannot yet be deducted from the data furnished by the history of Argentina. Their solution however inheres in the past of its people. The future of Argentina will have a profound influence on the rest of the continent. It has the largest territory except Brazil, the greatest per capita wealth. Its population is increasing most rapidly and it has received the greatest amount of foreign capital. Immigration and investment in the other countries may be expected soon to begin on a large scale. The experience of Argentina promises to prove invaluable to all of South America. End of Section 3 Section 4 of the South American Republics Volume 1 by Thomas Cleland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 1. Argentina. Chapter 2. The Spanish Colonial System Spain, as a world power, reached her apogee in the year 1580, when Juan de Garay founded Buenos Aires. In that year Portugal was united to the Spanish crown and the East Indies and Brazil doubled Spain's colonial dominions. But at the very same moment the first symptom of her decline appeared. For the first time it was proved to the world that she could not hold the seas against her young rivals from Northern Europe. Sir Francis Drake, the earliest harbinger of Britain's dominance on the seas, appeared off the plates on his way to the Pacific. Spain had trusted that the difficulty of threading the Straits of Magellan would protect the South Seas, but Drake slipped in in a spell of favourable weather and found few Spanish ships which were fit to fight him along all the coast to Panama. Drake's wonderful raid managed pride where Spain was thought strongest and encouraged Englishmen to fight with a good heart a few years later the overwhelming invincible Armada. In 1616 a great Dutchman, Shouten, found the passage into the Pacific around Cape Horn. This discovery revolutionized the navigation roads all over the world. Here to for the only practicable commercial route to the Pacific had been across the Atlantic to the Eastmus. Nombre de Dios was the metropolis and the market where all the goods for South America were landed. Those intended to be sold on the shore of the Caribbean were sent along its coast and those intended for the Pacific were carried over land to Panama to be shipped on coasters down to their destination. Direct communication across the Atlantic to Buenos Aires was forbidden by the Spanish government. Shouten's epoch making discovery opened up the way for countless Dutch and English ships to ply a contraband trade with the towns of the Pacific coast but did not induce the Spanish government to change its time honored policy or vary its trade routes. America was treated as a private property of the sovereign of Castile and its commerce was to be exploited for his sole benefit. No Spaniard was allowed to freight a ship for the colonies or by a pound of goods dance without obtaining a special permission and paying for that privilege. Cadiz was the only port in Spain from which ships were permitted to sail for America and the whole trade was farmed out to a ring of Cadiz merchants. To protect this monopoly and to prevent the export of gold and silver were the chief purposes of the Spanish colonial policy. Every port on the seaboard of Spanish South America was closed to trans oceanic traffic except Nombre de Dios on the north shore of the Eastmus. The towns on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts might admit coasting vessels properly identified as coming from the Eastmus and loaded with the consignments of the Cadiz monopolists but the South Atlantic ports were absolutely closed so far as law could close them. Legally no ships whatever coasters or ocean carriers could enter and unload at Buenos Aires. Her imports from Spain must first go to the Eastmus be disembarked and then transported across the mule paths to the Pacific. Then the goods had to go in coasters to Caillau in Peru where they were again disembarked, transported up the Andean passes along the Bolivian plateau and finally down into the Argentine plain. Under such conditions in the southern provinces European manufacturers could only be sold at fabulous prices. On the other hand such a system made exports impossible except those of precious metals and valuable drugs. Hides, hair, wool, agricultural products would not stand the cost of such long transport by land and sea. The Spanish authorities seem deliberately to have come to the conclusion that America should be confined to producing silver and they ruthlessly strangled all other industries. The plate settlements especially suffered from the ruinous consequences of this system. Having no minds of precious metals they were considered worthless, their interests were ignored and their complaints given no attention. The mere existence of Buenos Aires was a source of anxiety to the monopolists and to the Spanish government. They feared that the English Dutch might take possession of the mouth of the plate and then sent expeditions to intercept gold and silver shipments along the overland routes. More immediate and real was the danger of the establishment of a contraband trade which would deprive the Cadiz merchants of their enormous profits on goods and by the Eastmian route. The home government enacted laws of incredible severity in trying to enforce this policy. In 1599 the governor of Buenos Aires was instructed to forbid all importation and exportation under penalty of death and for feature of property. The shipping of hides and horse hair to Spain would seem to be harmless enough but the Spanish government dreaded that gold and silver might be smuggled out in the packages. The government would lose its royal fifth and the precious metals might be sent to Spain's rival and enemies in Europe. According to the economic ideas then accepted, gold and silver alone constituted wealth and every ounce mined in America which did not reach Spain's offers was considered irretrievably lost. To prevent clandestine shipments of the precious metals all commercial intercourse from the coast to the interior was made illegal and no goods whatever were permitted to pass along the road between Buenos Aires and Córdoba. In the very nature of things such laws were unenforceable. Even the governors sent out for the special purpose of repressing evasions recommended modifications. But the Cadiz monopolists were stubborn and their influence with the court was all powerful. The laws remained on the statute books only to be constantly disregarded. No human power could keep people who lived on the seashore and who had hides, wool and horse hair to sell from exchanging them for clothing and tools. Perfor's Buenos Aires became a community of smugglers. English and Dutch ships surreptitiously landed their cargoes of manufactures and took their pay in hides or in silver dollars that had escaped the Spanish soldiers on the road down from Potosí. Rio and Santos in Brazil became intermediate warehouses for the commerce of the plate. The officials in Buenos Aires itself connived at evasions and the very governors made great fortunes in partnership with smugglers. The guards along the interior routes shut their eyes when the mule trains passed and the goods of Flanders and France reached Gordoba, Santiago, Potosí and even Lima by way of Buenos Aires and were sold at prices with which the Cadiz monopolists could not compete. Silver came surreptitiously from Chile and Bolivia to pay for these goods. The net result was that the trade followed its natural and easiest route although there was a fearful waste of energy in the process. The bribe-taking official, the idle soldier at the road station the smuggler handling his goods in small boats and risking his life at night and the numerous middlemen absorbed what might have been legitimate profit to the seller or to the consumer. Commerce was half strangled and with it the industries of the Spanish colonies. Civil government itself suffered for a community whose daily occupation it was to break one law could not be expected to have much respect for other laws nor for the bribe-taking rulers and muleish legislators. Nevertheless, against these outrageously unreasonable regulations the colonists for centuries made no armed protests. They never questioned the abstract right of the crown to forbid them to sell what the labor of their hands had produced. They evaded but did not contest centuries of this sort of thing ingrained into South Americans they believed that industrial and commercial activity exists only by sufferance of the government. The right to sell, to buy to exercise a profession or a trade depended on the permission of the government. The people saw the executives taxing industry at their pleasure and suppressing its very beginnings until such a procedure came to seem a matter of course. Commercial spirit was constantly hampered and business skill deprived of its rewards. The evil effects of such a policy can be seen at every step of the development of the Spanish American countries. It is no wonder that office holding became the most popular of avocations. The farmer, the stock appraiser and the merchant seemed to be allowed to exist only to pay the Spanish functionary instead of the government's existing for the benefit of the producing community. To this day service with the government is more esteemed than commercial pursuits. The national ideals are only slowly becoming industrial. The king of Castile was absolute sovereign and sole proprietor of America. The continent was an apanage of his own. It did not form an integral part of Spain. America and Spain were connected solely through their common allegiance to him. The king governed America directly, assisted not by his regular ministers, but by a body of personal advisors called the Council of the Indies. His representatives in South America were the vice-royce of Mexico and Peru. The latter's jurisdiction extended over all South America. Even great territorial divisions had been made captaincy's general and though theoretically subordinate to the vice-roy, they were in effect independent of him. In the great capital cities set bodies of high judicial and executive officials known as Audiencias. Amongst their functions was that of exercising the powers of the vice-roy during his absence. Cercas, the capital of the mining region of Bolivia, was the seat of Audiencia and since this city had no resident vice-roy or captain general, its Audiencia was the real supreme authority over the Argentine and all the territory east of the Cordillera, from Lake Titicaca to the Straits. Vice-royalties and captaincy's general were divided into provinces each of which was ruled by a royal governor. When the Spaniards permanently occupied a new region, their first step was to found a city and organize a municipal government. Like the Romans, they knew no other unit of political structure. The governing body was called the Cabildo and consisted of from 6 to 12 members who held office for life. It conducted the ordinary judicial and civil administration through officers selected by itself and from its own members. Though the governor was ex-officio president of this body and although its members had bought their places, they were not mere figureheads to register his will. Limited though their functions were, they represented the time honored governmental form into which Spaniards had always crystallized and the Creos could not be prevented from obtaining a preponderance influence in them. Throughout colonial times they represented local and Creol interests and operated continually as a check to the aggression of the military governors. The territorial jurisdiction of a municipality was usually ill-defined. Indeed, as a rule, in the days of settlement, it extended in every direction until the claim of another city was encountered and the terms city and province were therefore usually synonymous. As population grew denser, new cities were founded, which as municipalities were independent of the capital town, but they were not necessarily separated from the original province. The cabildo of the capital of a province bore a peculiar relation to the royal governor and often tried to ex-ercise a control over the affairs of the whole province deeming themselves his associates and the sharers of the functions he ex-ercised outside of its own boundaries as well as within them. This assumption was favored by the fact that no general body representing all the offices of a province existed nor any constitutional machinery by which they could act in common. Spanish Americans have known only two forms of government which have everywhere and always co-existed, though they seem inconsistent. First there is an executive, the limits of his power ill-defined and often imposing his will by force, in essence arbitrary and personal and feared rather than respected by the people. Secondly the cabildos and the modern deliberative bodies never really elective these have nevertheless performed many of the functions of bodies truly representative. They have checked the arbitrary executives and furnished the basis for government by discussion. For centuries the communities looked to them for the conduct of ordinary local governmental affairs and they survived all the storms of colonial and revolutionary times. On the other hand their importance in the Spanish governmental scheme has been a most potent influence in preventing the growth of local representative government by elective assemblies and officials. Consequently in national matters freely elected and truly representative assemblies have been hard to obtain. Legislation has been controlled by the functionaries and there has been no general and continuous participation in governmental affairs by the body of the people. Government by discussion and by the common sense of the majority is difficult to establish among a people accustomed for centuries to seeing matters in the hands of officials whom they had no practical means of holding to responsibility. The people have rarely felt that the executive was their own officer. He was imposed on them from above. He was not amenable to them and so far as they were concerned he ruled at his own risk. The Creoles were intensely democratic in feeling and hard to control and when they could not tolerate an executive they turned him out by force because no effective machinery existed by which they could turn him out peaceably. Though the colonial governor was required to give an account of his administration at the close of his term as a matter of fact he was an responsible and despotic satrap who taxed, judged and imprisoned people at his pleasure restrained only by his traditional respect for the Cabildos and by the fear of exciting revolt. He commanded the armed forces and his power was in fact rather military than civil in origin, method and application. The Cabildos selected the ordinary judicial officers of first resort from among their own members list but their authority was not very effective outside the town itself. The vast plains between the settlements were largely governed patriarchally by the ranch owners and the popular and capable Gauchos who grew into leaders. A taste for town life soon became characteristic of the Spanish Americans and wherever able they crowded into the towns in preference to staying on their ranches. Wealth, intelligence and political activity therefore came to be concentrated in a few foci. The government of granting immense tracts of land and dividing up the Indians as slaves among the proprietors would apparently have a tendency to produce a landed aristocracy. But the money profits in colonial days were small and the great landowners lived in the same style as his poorer neighbor. Titles of nobility did not exist and the constitution of society was decidedly democratic. From the very earliest times no love was lost between the Creels and the newly arrived Spaniards. The governor was almost invariably a Spaniard while the Cabildo and its officers were usually Creels. End of section 4 Section 5 of the South American Republics Volume 1 by Thomas Clellan Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Argentina Chapter 3, the 17th century The greatest name in the history of Buenos Aires during the early years of the 17th century is that of Hernand Darius Saavedra, of distinguished ancestry and pure Spanish blood he was born at Asuncion in 1561. A thorough creel, his education was confined to the instruction he received at the moment of the Franciscan brothers in his native town. At 15 he left school and joined an expedition against the Indians of the Andes. He showed remarkable capacity in fighting on the plains and his shrewdness and firmness in dealing with the Aborigines were even more valuable than his courage. Juan de Garay, the farsighted Basque who founded Buenos Aires was the patron, model and hero of the young Hernand Darius who gave great expedition over the southern Pampa. When Garay, the great Indian fighter and colonizer perished, his mantle fell on the young men's shoulders. In 1588 Hernand Darius distinguished himself in the defense of Corrientes against the Indians of Chaco and was the leader in the difficult campaigns undertaken in retaliation. By the time he had reached 30 he was the leading creel in all the vast region from the Upper Paraguay down to Buenos Aires and when the Spanish lieutenant general of Asuncion was deposed an open cabildo called him to the vacancy. Eleven years later in 1602 the governor of Buenos Aires died and by common consent Hernand Darius filled the office at Interim. This popular selection was soon confirmed by royal commission. He signalized his term of office by an expedition down the coast in which he carried the terror of the white man's arms to the limits of the continent and defeated the Indians wherever they resisted. Severe with the Indians when occasion demanded he was inflexibly just and as a rule protected them against the unlawful aggression of his countermen. Though he did so much to curb their military power he left behind him the name of being their best friend. He manumitted his own slaves he opposed the extension of the system of Encomiendas with its enslavement of the wild Indians and after his first term as the governor of Buenos Aires he was named official protector of the aborigines. Although a creole such was his ability as a military leader and his shrewdness, wisdom and firmness as a civil ruler that the Spanish government could not ignore him. Though a governor was soon sent out from Spain to replace him and fatten off the provincials, Hernand Darius remained the most powerful man in the colony. The Spanish authorities found that they needed him and he retained their confidence as well as that of the creoles. He wisely advised the latter against open opposition believing that continued peace must make the colony so strong that its interests could not continue to be ignored. In 1610 the Spanish government promulgated laws forbidding the further enslavement of Indians and Hernand Darius did much to secure their enforcement. At the same time he encouraged the Jesuits to extend their missions over the upper valley of the Uruguay while he secured the ranchers of the western plains against the encroachment of these energetic priests. The creoles prospered in the pastoral pursuits on the Pampas while the Jesuits developed the more purely agricultural resources of the wooded hills in the east. The success of his policy soon became evident in the increasing prosperity of the colony. 300,000 hides were smuggled out of Buenos Aires in British ships alone in the year 1658 and by 1630 the Jesuit missions extended in a broad continuous belt along the Paraná and the Uruguay from the tropic of the Capricorn to the 30th degree. They were the rulers of a great theocratic republic whose area could not have been less than 50,000 square miles and whose population of something like a million was concentrated in thriving and peaceful villages. The Jesuits systematically studied the resources of the country and taught their Indians the cultivation of many crops suitable for export. Their territory was commercially tributary to Buenos Aires and contributed to her growth and prosperity. When the governorship of Buenos Aires again became vacant in 1615 by the death of the Spanish incumbent, Hernández entered on his own third term and two years later, by his advice the rapidly growing province was divided. Paraguay became a separate province and the new province of Buenos Aires included all the territory east of Tucumán and south and east of Paraguay. The three provinces of Paraguay, Buenos Aires and Tucumán were administratively separate and each was directly dependent upon the audiencia at Charcás and the viceroy at Lima. One immediate purpose of the Spanish government in erecting Buenos Aires into an independent province was the enforcement of the prohibition of trade. It was thought that a governor always on the ground and concentrating his attention on the subject would be efficient in this direction. However, the result was the opposite of that expected. No governor of Buenos Aires could avoid making the interests of his capital city his own. If honest, he was constantly pressing the home government to open the doors a little and to make exceptions of particular cases. If dishonest, he went into partnership with the traders. Hernández's career is the one striking example of success by a creel in colonial times. Though the conquest and settlement of South America was accomplished by individual initiative the men who had done the pioneering, who had fought and journeyed and suffered, who had stained their souls with horrible cruelties whose adventures and successes would not be credited if the physical evidences did not prove the truth of the chronicles were displaced with scant ceremony to make room for the impoverished court favorites. If the original conquerors were thus badly treated the creals, unfortunate to have missed the inestimble advantage of being born on Castilian soil could not look for favor or equal treatment with the office holders sent out from Madrid year after year. The story of the provinces that now form the territory of the Argentine Republic has not great interest during the long years that intervene from the completion of the romantic conquest until the uprising against Spanish authority. With the end of the 16th century the spirit of enterprise among both Spaniards and Creoles diminished. Throughout the 17th century little progress was made in extirpating the savage Indians even in regions as close to Buenos Aires as Entre Rios and Uruguay. Settlements were confined to the right bank of the Paraná and the Indians on the left bank protected behind the white flood of that river's delta were left undisturbed. On the other hand the dry and level pumpas gave easy access to the thriving towns of the province of Tucumán. The Cordoba Range, the greatest of the outworks of the Andes rises from the plain less than 200 miles from the Paraná at Santa Fe and only 400 miles from Buenos Aires itself. The city of Cordoba in the fertile and well watered slope at the foot of the Sierra was the capital of the province the seat of a university from 1613 and the center of Creole culture. The intercourse of the Buenos Aires with their neighbors of the interior constantly increased in spite of the prohibitions of the Spanish government while Cordoba and the other towns of Tucumán prospered with the sale of pac mules to the mines of Bolivia. In the fertile andian valleys of Rioja and Catamarca had lived since Inca times the powerful nation of Calciacus. Though they had acknowledged the suzerainty of the Cusco emperors they were ruled by their own chiefs the first Spaniards that penetrated south from the Bolivian Plateau failed to reduce them to submission. After a bitter experience the invaders passed to the west for 50 years these gallant people were left undisturbed in their Andean fastnesses. Late in the 16th century aggressions again began the Indians fought desperately but were overcome 40,000 were sold into slavery 11,000 were exiled to Santiago del Estero to Santa Fe and Buenos Aires the town of Quilmes now one of the suburbs of Buenos Aires was named from the mountain fastness where the Calciacus made their last stand. Rosario was also settled by families of these brave Indians who were dragged across the pompas by the victorious Spaniards. About 1655 a leader represented himself to the remnants of this warlike people claiming to be the descendant and heir of the ancient Inca princes he was known to the Indians as Valpa Inca while the Spaniards called him Borques a woman of his own race by the name of Coya accompanied him and she was greeted with all the ceremonious honors that belonged to the Inca queen according to ancient customs even the Jesuit missionaries made claims of Borques but the governor regarded him only as a menace to Spanish rule he was pursued relentlessly his followers rose and revolt the rebellion spread northwards but with the capture of the Inca it collapsed he was sent to Lima, tried for treason and executed while the Calciacus were placed under a military deputy governor subordinate to the governor of Tucumán their descendants have repeatedly proved that they came of fighting stock they were among the best soldiers on the patriot side in the war of independence the province of Rioja never submitted to Rosas it resisted Mitre even after Pavón the last and decisive battle of the civil wars and it was the last province to give its allegiance to the confederation the third province into which the whole territory which is now Argentina was then divided was Cuyol including the three provinces of Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis in its early years three settlements did not extend far from the Andes late in the 16th century San Luis was added thus connecting the Spanish dominions from Chile across to the borders of Cordova the complicity of the Spanish governors with the contraband commerce which were they especially charged to suppress is abundantly shown by contemporary documents the first governor sent to Buenos Aires after its erection into a separate province was accused of agreeing to allow a Lisbon merchant to lend a shipload of goods he fled to Sanctuary among the Jesuits and there perished of grief and shame but others were more impudent and successful Mercado via Corta came to his post announcing that he would so effectively enforce the prohibition that quote not a bird could pass with food in its beak from Buenos Aires to the interior end quote however not so many months passed before a Dutch ship applied for permission to disembark its cargo presenting papers signed by a natural son of King Philip himself the captain offered to turn over his cargo in return for a certain amount of hides wool, silver and enough food to take him back to Flanders this proposition on its face was very advantageous and via Corta accepted it on account of the royal treasury he made a faithful return of the enormous prophets accruing from the cargo of the ship in question but neglected to report that three other Dutch ships were anchored just out of sight and that she passed over to them in the night what had been laden on her the day before by chance a royal commissioner was in Flanders and watched the unladen of all four ships he certified that three million dollars worth of hides, wool, woods and silver were taken out of their holes via Corta was cashiered for the moment but a few years later we find him installed as governor of Tucumán another governor, Andres de Robles engaged so publicly and impudently in fraudulent transactions and corrupt contracts that his conduct was the text of sermons in all the churches but he calmly went his way and paid no attention to the clerical boycott and priestly denunciations imports by way of Buenos Aires increased so rapidly that soon the Cadiz monopolists were complaining to the council of the Indies that the potosí shops were filled with goods which had come by way of the plate absolute prohibition had manifestly failed and so palliative measures were tried permission was given to special ships to sail from Cadiz for Buenos Aires carrying only enough merchandise to supply the demand of Buenos Aires itself and giving bonds to return to Cadiz so that the return cargo could be checked over to see that no silver was included naturally this system proved impracticable and only opened another road to evasion the first severe blow to the extension of the Spanish dominions over the valley of Parana was struck by the Portuguese creoles of Sao Paulo in 1632 though King Philip of Spain was at that time also monarch of Portugal and Brazil de Paulistas viewed with alarm and jealousy the encroachments of the Jesuits into the region lying to the southeast of the homes they had occupied for a century they had had a hard fight to keep the Jesuits from establishing villages in their own neighborhood and now they saw these old enemies creeping up the slope of the tributaries of the Upper Parana shutting them off from expansion over the remote interior de Paulistas hated Spaniards and Jesuits they wanted Indian slaves they wrecked little of the fine spun discussions as to the whereabouts of the dividing line between the Castillan and Portuguese possessions their allegiance to the Spanish monarch upon them their homes were on the headwaters of tributaries of the Parana and their expeditions followed fearlessly down the streams and across the plateau and burst unheralded on the northern villages of the Jesuits the poor Indians were defenseless and totally unprepared the Jesuits had taught them the arts of peace but not of war they had no arms their spiritual rulers had be thought themselves safe in these both plateaus in the middle of the continent the few thousands of Paulistas away over on the Atlantic border had not been considered worth taking into consideration though few in number the band of Portuguese creals created immense havoc the Jesuit chroniclers said that 3000 Paulistas killed and carried away into captivity 400,000 Indians in a few years this is certainly an exaggeration we know that all the Jesuit villages were wiped out as far south as the Iguazu and that north of that tributary the Spanish line was pushed back to the Parana the Jesuits protested but their complaints availed nothing a few years later Portugal regained its independence of Spain and the work of the Paulistas stood Spain lost her opportunity of securing the whole plate valley and the way was opened to the Brazilians to make the interior of the continent Portuguese the Paulistas raids extended as far as the Jesuit villages in Paraguay and those on the upper Uruguay but here the priests managed to hold their own portugals next moved toward getting possessions of all the territory east of the Parana and the Uruguay was made from the coast in 1680 an expedition sent by the governor of Rio landed directly opposite the city of Buenos Aires and built a fort calling it Colonia this was the first permanent occupation on Uruguayan soil either by Portugal or Spain both nations claimed it under differing interpretations of the Treaty of Tordesillas Portuguese historians claim that the Paulistas had explored and asserted a right to the region in the early years of the 17th century and Spanish authorities stated that Jesuits had established a mission on the lower Uruguay about the same time as a matter of fact Colonia was the first permanent European settlement south of Santa Catarina and north of the plate on or near the Atlantic coast the governor of Buenos Aires promptly raised the force sailed across the estuary and captured the new fort however, Spain's diplomatic position in Europe at the time did not justify risking serious trouble over a matter that seemed so trifling as the possession of a piece of desert in South America the governor was ordered to restore Colonia to the Portuguese authorities leaving open for subsequent discussion and determination the question as to which nation was entitled to the territory on the north bank with some interruptions Portugal remained in possession of the port of Colonia for a century and in existence the constant source of annoyance to the Buenos Aires it immediately became a rival for the trade with the interior and its merchants had the advantage of the open aid of their own government their competitors at Buenos Aires across the river were confesedly engaged in breaking the law of their country exportable goods were never safe from seizure until they had left Argentine soil Colonia was a convenient storing place for river crafts once within its port could discharge at their leisure free from anxiety that active officials might threaten to enforce inconvenient laws every time a war broke out between the two countries in Europe the exasperated governor of Buenos Aires would send over an expedition and capture the Portuguese town three times was it taken and so often restored on the conclusion of peace Colonia in Portuguese hands feared with the trade of Buenos Aires merchants and the illicit gains of Spanish officials and also destroyed an irreminent of efficiency remaining to the prohibition of commerce across the Atlantic back of these commercial and temporary considerations was the menace to the future occupancy by Spaniards of the vast and fertile region extending from the boundaries of Sao Paulo to the mouth of the Uruguay end of section 5 section 6 of the South American Republics, volume 1 by Thomas Cleland Dawson this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pietronater, part 1 Argentina, chapter 4 the 18th century the rapid decadence of Spain itself during the reigns of the last kings of the House of Austria was reflected in the colonies with the accession of the Bourbons a forward movement began the colonial administration was roused into an appearance of activity something was done in the direction of adopting a more rational commercial policy but it was already too late the control of trade had irrevocably passed to Holland and England and Spain could not recover the business of her own colonies the efforts to improve administration were largely nullified by the conservatism of her aristocracy it seemed that her medieval governmental machinery could not be adapted to the conditions created by her active rivals in 1726 Montevideo, the strategic key to Uruguay and the north bank of the plate was occupied and fortified thereafter, though Colonia still remained in Portugese hands, it was isolated and scarcely attainable immediately the north shore of the Uruguay began to be settled by Spaniards simultaneously the ranchers of the right bank of the Parana who had long been tempted by the fine pastures on the opposite shore finally ventured to secure a foothold in Entrerios the war like Charruas had kept the white men out of this favored region for two centuries, although it was so near to Buenos Aires they did not yield without a struggle but they were overcome and those who refused to submit fled to the east bank of the Uruguay river the present country of that name there they were followed by the proselytizing Jesuits and it was only a question of a few years before the Argentines proper had crossed the Uruguay and were pasturing their herds in the rolling champagne country that extends from that river to the sea the Spanish advance would have continued up the coast probably as far as the northern boundary of the Rio Grande do Sul if the Portugese had not in the meantime established a town and fort at the mouth of the Dac Lagoon which was the only port that gives access to the interior of that most valuable region the increase in population the extension of the occupied pasture ground and the greater demand from Europe for hides and wool tended to multiply the volume and value of Argentine exportable commodities northern Europe made marvelous strides in purchasing power during the 18th century and prices all over the world felt the impetus the commercial policy of the Spanish government became more lax and the trade prohibition fell into contempt and disuse the system of fleets of Spanish ships and their convoy was abandoned and single ships mostly foreignly owned and trusting to their sailing qualities and equipment to escape capture carried all the trade the trade of Buenos Aires grew and the population of the city increased in proportion the exhaustion of the surface deposits and richer loads of precious metals in the mining provinces during the 18th century tended to increase the relative importance of Buenos Aires and her territory even in the mind of the Spanish government and to turn a current of immigration towards the pastoral and agricultural provinces in 1750 the Spanish government made an effort to get rid of the Portuguese in Colonia by negotiation Portugal agreed to exchange that port for the Jesuit missions which covered the fine pastures in the western half of the present Brazilian state of Rio Grande the helpless Indians were driven off or massacred in spite of their feeble resistance but as soon as the treaty was made public Spanish and Jesuit protests against the abandonment of the territory were so violent that the agreement was formally annulled by mutual consent the Portuguese retained Colonia and though they gave up their formal claims to the missions the military operations they had so promptly undertaken against that region had pretty well root doubt Spanish influence on the east bank of the Upper Uruguay it was never re-established and the dividing line of 1750 is still substantially the boundary between Spanish and Portuguese South America in 1767 Spain followed the example of Portugal and France and expelled the Jesuits from her dominions for generations they had been the largest property holders in the plate provinces in the larger towns popular education was in their hands their great schools convents and churches were the finest edifices in the country to endow their educational and religious work they had accumulated townhouses ranches, plantations mills, cattle, ships and even slaves along the banks of the Upper Parana and Uruguay they had succeeded in dominating and absorbing the whole productive life of the community their system in the Indian regions smothered everything else no white man was allowed to visit their settlements the Indians were kept in absolute ignorance of the existence of an external world the Jesuits required their subjects to work gathering matete, cutting wood cultivating the soil and tending cattle however the Indians were kindly treated and were content with the easy life they enjoyed under the mild Jesuit rule the fathers exported immense quantities of hides and controlled the production of matete then as now the favorite drink of creels and Indians in the southern half of the continent the Indians received their living and the Jesuits absorbed the surplus their misfortunes in Brazil had taught them a lesson and they had tried to erect their theocracy in regions where they need not come into close contact and constant conflict with delay settlers for a century they had been left undisturbed in southeastern Paraguay and the region between the Upper Paraná and Paraguay neither their services to civilization nor regard for the interests of the Indians nor their wealth and influence could avail anything against the mandate of the Spanish monarch backed by the Vatican and joyfully enforced by the colonial authorities the Jesuits who had been employed in teaching in the towns were incontinently imprisoned and summarily shipped off across the seas while their schools were placed under the charge of other ecclesiastics and their estates sold at auction in the missions resistance was anticipated but none was made the Indians accustomed to look to fathers for guidance in everything were aghast when they saw the Jesuits leaving and Spanish officials taking their places the new shepherds had not the skill to drive the flocks to the shearing and could not keep the Indians together so as to exploit them for the benefit of the royal treasury from their cruelties and exactions the Indians fled and sought refuge among the Creole settlements of Entrerrios and Uruguay where they constituted a valuable addition to the population this transplantation had hardly been accomplished when the Spanish government took a step revolutionized the administration of the southern half of the continent during the reminder of colonial times and determined the future boundaries of the nations of South America on the 1st of August 1776 the vice royalty of Buenos Aires was created all the territory south of Lake Titicaca was separated from the vice royalty of Peru and the province of Cuyo was detached from the captaincy general of Chile the new vice royalty covered the territory that has since become the four countries Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina in colonial times it was divided into eight intendencias of which the northern four covered the region that is now Bolivia and was then known as Upper Peru the four southern intendencias were Paraguay Salta covering the northwestern provinces Cordoba covering the central and western provinces and finally Buenos Aires which besides the present province included Santa Fe the whole Mesopotamian region Uruguay and the Jesuit country of the Upper Paraná the creation of the vice royalty was a reluctant and tardy reversal of the colonial policy which had steadfastly refused to recognize in Buenos Aires the inevitable outlet of the region although the four northern intendencias contained more than half the population and Paraguay probably half the reminder Buenos Aires was made the capital situated at the mouth of the great system of waterways it was the natural commercial center of the whole vice royalty in 50 years it had doubled in population while the old cities on the Bolivian plateau had remained stationary in 1776 the population did not much exceed 20,000 souls but was rapidly increasing here to four it had been rather a resort of smuggling merchants than a center of political and social influence nevertheless from this unpromising route was to spring the spreading tree of South American independence Buenos Aires is the only capital that never readmitted the Spanish authorities once they had been expelled and within her walls San Martín drilled the nucleus of the armies that drove the vineyards out of Chile and Peru the alarming growth of the Portuguese power southward was another potent reason for the establishment of a strong and independent military jurisdiction at the mouth of the plate the Spanish government had at last determined on vigorous measures to take Colonia, drive the Portuguese from Rio Grande and push the Spanish boundaries east to the original Tordesillas line Pedro de Ceballos the first viceroy sailed in November 1776 in command of the largest force which up to that time had been sent to the western continent against his 21,000 men and great fleet the Portuguese had no force, military or naval strong enough to make a serious resistance the flourishing Brazilian settlement of Santa Catarina was easily reduced and leaving it garrisoned the fleet and army went to the plate Colonia surrendered without resistance and the army prepared to march northward and drive the Portuguese from all the coast as far north as Santa Catarina hardly was the advance begun when news was received that peace between Spain and Portugal had been signed the latter retained eastern Rio Grande and Santa Catarina was restored while Spain's title to Uruguay and the missions was recognized Ceballos returned to Buenos Aires and actively engaged in the military and civil organization of the new viceroyalty a fresh set of special regulations had been prepared in Spain creating an elaborate hierarchy of executives the chief provincial governors now called Intendencias were subject to the orders of the viceroy in military matters but as to taxation they were directly responsible to the crown they were interested with the paying of governmental employees which gave them great influence with the Cabildos and functionaries the intention of the Spanish government was manifestly to enforce close relationship and greater subjection to the central authority at Madrid in practice however the financial independence of the provincial governors stimulated the feeling of local independence increased the influence of the Cabildos and paved way for the revolution since 1765 the rest of South America had enjoyed the privilege of free commerce from the mother country now the same rule was applied to Buenos Aires and trade with Spain quickly attained respectable dimensions in the 5 years from 1792 to 1796 more than 100 ships made the voyage to Spain and exports ran up to 5 million dollars annually Buenos Aires became the entrepôt of the wine and brandy of Cuyo the poncho and highs of Tucumán the tabaco, woods and mate tea of Paraguay the golden silver of Upper Peru the copper of Chile and even the sugar, cacao and rice of Lower Peru by the end of the century the population of the city was 40,000 30,000 more lived in the immediate vicinity Montevideo had 7,000 and the outlying settlements of Uruguay 25,000 inhabitants the civilized population of the Buenos Aires in Tendencia was about 170,000 and in population and in wealth it had become easily the first among the 8 great districts of device royalty End of section 6