Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ONE SPANIARD'S VIEW OF
THE HUMBLE COUNTRYPEOPLE,
CA. 1790
T
These herdsmen, servants in a desert, almost without communi-
cation, scarcely know friendship, and are consequently inclined
toward distrust and deceit. When they play at cards, for which they
have a great passion, they ordinarily sit over their heels, having hold
of the reins of their horse in their toes, so that it does not wander
off, and frequently they have at their side a blade or knife stuck in the
ground, disposed to kill whoever gambles with them if they discover a
minor trick, because in this point they are very knowledgeable and are
not models of loyalty and honesty in the game. When they have lost all
their money they gamble their shirt, if it is worth it, and he who wins
generally gives his [shirt] to the loser if it is worthless, because among
them no one has two. When they go off to marry, the future husbands
ask to borrow white clothes, take them off on leaving the church, and
return the clothes to those who lent them, going to sleep on the skin
of a cow, because they do not generally have a house or furniture. . . .
These men are almost all thieves, and they even steal women. They
carry them into the depths of the deserted woods, where they con-
struct a small hut similar to that of the Charrúa, and they eat the meat
of wild cattle that are found in the vicinity. When the couple is com-
pletely devoid of clothes, or when any other urgent necessity obliges
them, the man departs alone and goes to steal horses from the Spanish
farms; he sells them later in Brazil and returns bringing the necessities.
Source: Viajes por la América meridional entre 1781 hasta 1801.
In Luna,
Félix.
Historia integral de la Argentina
. 10 vols. (Buenos Aires: Planeta,
1995, Vol. 3, pp. 46-47.
wheat into flour and churned butter or tended the orchards and gardens.
Close to the city, small farmers harvested vegetables from truck gardens
and produced milk and cheese from small herds of dairy animals.
In domesticating their herds, ranchers of the Pampas depended on two
traditional Hispanic practices: the
rodeo
and the brand. Town councils
granted both land and brands to prospective ranchers among its citi-
zens. In the colonial period cattle ranches fell under the generic name
