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Chapter 5. Transformations: The Rio de la Plata During the Bourbon Era
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chapter 5 Transformations: The Rio de la Plata During the Bourbon Era Raúl José Mandrini The year 1740 was a difficult one for Buenos Aires, a small town lost in the vastness of the southern plains of the Spanish domains in the Americas, and for the relatively small number of settlers living in the surrounding rural areas. That year, between October and November, the Indians had assaulted the districts (known as pagos) of Arrecifes, Luján, and Matanzas,1 but the worst was yet to come. The most violent attack began on the night of November 25, when the southern Indian chiefs (caciques) Cacapol and his son Cangapol commanded a terrible and surprising uprising (or malón) to revenge a cruel massacre of Indians ordered by a Spanish military official, Juan de San Martin, during an incursion (entrada) into Indian territory a few weeks earlier.2 Encountering no resistance from the Spaniards, the Indians raided the borderlands, in particular the Magdalena district located in the south of Buenos Aires, ravaging the surrounding rural areas and creating panic for the small town’s population. The careful planning of the attack and the violence with which it was carried out disturbed the witnesses, who were not accustomed to these sorts of situations because, as we will see, from the time of its foundation in 1580 the relationship that Buenos Aires had with the Pampean Indians had been relatively peaceful. The Jesuit missionary Thomas Falkner recalled those dramatic episodes many years later. He wrote, ‘‘Cacapol . . . took field at the head of a thousand men (some say four thousand) . . . fell upon the District of the Magdalena . . . and divided his troops with so much judgment, that he scoured Transformations 143 and dispeopled, in one day and a night, above twelve leagues of a most populous and plentiful country in these parts. They killed many Spaniards, and took a great number of women and children captives, with above twenty thousand head of cattle, besides horses, etc.’’3 The number of assailants was truly very high if one takes into account the low population density on the plain, and only an alliance of different groups, as Falkner mentioned, made it possible. This fact indicates that a chief like Cacapol had great authority and the capacity, beyond the reaches of a band or tribe, to mobilize warriors. Another contemporary witness was Miguel Antonio de Merlo, the procurator of the cabildo (a town council in Spanish American cities). He pointed out in a report presented to the authorities that the Indians had ‘‘so fiercely attacked the settlers who looked after the crops of the countryside that they came within five leagues of [the] city, killing everyone they encountered.’’4 The news spread quickly through the town, and it was feared that the Indians would attack it.5 But the enemy did not enter into the town because the caciques preferred to withdraw with their captured booty, with the Spanish forces being incapable of doing anything about it. The attack showed the weakness in the defense system and its effect was engraved in the memory of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires for a long time. Almost three months later, the members of the cabildo remembered the ravages that such heathens inflicted on the Magdalena district ‘‘had never seen nor experienced . . . with a great death toll for the vecinos of this district, capturing many women and children and plundering many haciendas.’’6 This episode calls up images of other Indian attacks along the colonial Spanish borderlands, especially the uprising carried out by the Comanches and a group of Wichita allies against the San Sabá Mission in Texas in March 1758, when Indians formed a force of nearly two thousand warriors, who were well equipped with firearms in order to attack and destroy the mission. The garrison of the near presidio could do nothing to protect the mission.7 In Buenos Aires these outbreaks of frontier violence had begun a few years earlier, during the middle of the 1730s, and would be repeated in the following decades, until the middle of the 1780s, alternating with periods of relative peace. In spite of these peaceful intervals, the Indian menace was a problem that was always present after the first attack, and colonial authorities had to confront it. The periods of open conflict did not entirely [44.206.248.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:22 GMT) 144 Raúl José Mandrini interrupt the older links between both...