Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
simple pottery. Men and women alike shared duties of gathering and
preparing food and may have discussed basic decisions within fami-
lies before the men met in council. As warriors and hunters, the men
dominated the formal decision-making processes and carried out
raids on neighboring groups.
Overall Characteristics
The characteristics of the indigenous population influenced greatly the
subsequent history of Argentina. Even the most elemental ethnography
of the region could predict at least the general outlines of the com-
ing encounter with the Spanish. The population dispersion, political
decentralization, and lack of surplus wealth ruined the best-laid plans
of the first Spanish adventurers. There could be no quick conquest of
the Southern Cone, no fortuitous and intrepid capture of an emperor
to cause discord and disillusionment among the indigenous defend-
ers of the Pampas. No invaders could build towns and cities directly
over the ruins of indigenous settlements they had just destroyed. The
Europeans could not tap into existing agricultural and commercial
networks. No one in Argentina could mimic the rapid conquest of the
Aztec and Inca Empires.
Why? Because where the pre-Columbian populations lived in
dispersed and decentralized patterns, the subsequent European
settlement demanded a longer-term commitment and substantial
rearrangement of social and economic relationships. The newcomers
of necessity took their time, settling regions over the span of several
centuries. They created towns and farms directly out of the wilder-
ness. Europeans in the Southern Cone settled the homelands by
bringing in new agricultural technologies, livestock husbandry, and
techniques of combat.
Finally, pre-Columbian traditions survived the gradual European
settlement. The languages, gender relationships, religious beliefs, pre-
existing rivalries, ethnic diversity, and varying cultural and material
contributions—all of which were thousands of years old—endured.
All indigenous peoples of the Southern Cone had already accumulated
experience in the arts of resistance and independence. Certain tools,
foods, habits, modes of transportation, religious beliefs, and social rela-
tionships of the ancient Argentines in fact influenced and transformed
the European invaders, because these established indigenous traditions
best suited the environment.
