Chapter IT Daniel Gilmour: The Story of His Captivity The British Community of the River Plate (1806-1852) Anticipating warmer weather as they crossed the equatorial line the Gilmour family (Mathew, thirty-four, Elizabeth, twenty-one, Robert, three, and Helen, one) set sail in late 1844 from Scotland's icy coast for an almost three-month voyage to the River Plate Provinces. The wooden sailing ship's southerly journey followed the ‘natural’ route from Europe to South America: Ilha Madeira, the Canaries to Cabo Verde, the Brazilian coasts of Pernambuco and Cabo Frio, to the shallow waters of the Buenos Aires port. There the family would have disembarked onto elevated oxcarts to be driven some distance to the muddy riverbank. The maritime crossing was exhausting despite the planning and calculation involved. Mathew and Elizabeth Gilmour were immigrating in order to take up a new life as puesteros on the Scottish Gibson family’s Estancia Los Yngleses. The estate was an expansive sheep and cattle ranch in the central-coastal region of Buenos Aires province 250 kilometers southeast of the city of Buenos Aires. Travelling with them was the Wright family, husband David Wright possibly the brother of Elizabeth Gilmour, nee Wright. Among the Gibsons’ estancia papers there is a four-year contract signed in Glasgow in July 1844 by Mathew Gilmour and David Wright to immigrate as shepherds to Rinc6n del Tuya, Buenos Aires province. All expenses would be paid from Glasgow for them and their families and they would receive in payment £10 for the first two years and £20 the second two. As well they would receive meat, yerba mate and tobacco, a rancho, land to sow vegetables, potatoes, corn for their own use and to 32sell, and seeds and tools for tillage. The contract also permitted the milking of cows for dairy products to be used for their own consumption and sale. A few months later, in a letter written on February 20, 1845, by Robert Gibson to brother George, we learn that *...the families are now installed in their respective puestos and the men continue giving satisfaction. Tom [Thomas Gibson] says that he likes Wright as much as he likes Gilmour. He [Tom] says they are hardworking men....”2 Mathew and Elizabeth Gilmour were Scot-speaking lowlanders from Paisley near Glasgow who were married in 1840.63 It is not known why they chose to immigrate to Spanish South America and not English North America, the latter a shorter journey by half and a destination within the British cultural realm of ‘home.’ But their decision fits the pattern of mass emigration from the British Isles to the Americas during the period as a result of the Irish potato famine, the Scottish highland clearances, poverty, and overcrowding in the industrializing urban centres of Britain. The Gilmours were not highlanders but it is because of sheep that they left Scotland. ‘Their choice of the River Plate was no doubt based on certain push/pull factors. A push from Britain to establish a post-independence, commercial stake-hold in the region and a pull from Argentina to Europeanize and whiten its population and to develop its economy. Still ©2Robert Gibson to George Gibson (locations unavailable), 20 February 1845, transcripts of the letter and 1844 contract in the hand of Elisa Magrane de Boote, private collection, Buenos Aires. Robert, George, and Thomas were sons of John Gibson, father of thirteen and owner of John Gibson and Sons textile industry in Glasgow. Los Yngleses private collection is kindly provided by Elisa Magrane de Boote married to John Boote (a Gibson descendent), current residents and part owners of Estancia Los Yngleses. More detailed information on the Estancia will follow throughout the chapter. 62rhe Gilmour family Bible, dated 1867, gives Elizabeth's birth date as 1818 (in Paisley) and Mathew’s in 1812, But going by the ages on their death certificates in 1888, their birth dates become 1823 and 1810 respectively. I take the death certificates to be more accurate and base their ages on the second set of birth dates. 33forty years before the wave of mass European immigration to Argentina the two families arrived during the federalist reign of power of Juan Manuel de Rosas, a caudillo strongman from Buenos Aires province who dominated Argentina from 1829 to 1852. From 1845 to 1848 Great Britain and France maintained a blockade on the port of Buenos Aires in opposition to Rosas’ protectionist commercial practices. If the Gilmour and Wright families arrived during this blockade they might have disembarked further south at the Cabo de San Antonio, near the mouth of the Ajé River, today the Atlantic port of General Lavalle. Los Yngleses conveniently owned a small dock at the mouth of the Ajé that was located on estancia property. ‘Twenty years before the Wrights and Gilmours crossed the Atlantic roughly 240 immigrant colonists from Scotland disembarked from the frigate Symmetry of Scarboro in August 1825 to establish the Monte Grande agricultural colony in Buenos Aires province.6¢ This collective marked the start of the Scottish community in Argentina that would later welcome the Gibsons’ two new shepherding families. Britons had settled in the Rio de la Plata region from before the revolution for independence in 1810® but not in significant numbers. These southwest lowland Scot colonists “were the first group of European immigrants that had been carefully organized [by the government].”8° Liberals such as Bernardino 64Monte Grande is today an outlying neighbourhood in the larger urban Buenos Aires metropolis. Some of the original settler houses are still standing. ©5n 1806 and 1809 David Spalding and Thomas Fair, respective proprietors, arrived from Scotland. Earliest dates of recorded English and Irish arrivals are 1802 and 1806 respectively, as per the Consular Register. James Dodds. Records of the Scottish Settlers in the River Plate and their Churches (Buenos Aires: Grant and Sylvester, 1897), 3-5. 6€Andrew Graham-Yooll (The Forgotten Colony: A History of the English-Speaking Communities in Argentina (Buenos Aires: L.O.L.A., Revised 1999), 148. The colonists left from the port of Leith near Edinburgh. This is also perhaps the departure point of the Giimour and Wright families. The Beaumont Association carried out an example of a 34Rivadavia, the foreign affairs secretary and President of Argentina in 1826, hoped it would be the vanguard of legions of hard-working northern Europeans who might help to build the country. The Anglo- Argentine Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation,®7 negotiated with Rivadavia by the Rt. Hon. George Canning, British Foreign Secretary, and signed in February 1825 was the most solid guarantee the immigrants had because it assured them of certain civil rights in a country with an alien culture. “The Monte Grande colony prospered {initially} and was the Rivadavia government's planned showcase for the future attraction of immigrants to the country."68 But in 1829 the Monte Grande settlement failed due to, among other financial and organizational difficulties, brutal civil war in the region. Victorious caudillo General Rosas (Federalist) defeated General less-well-organized immigrant venture. A group that arrived in the province of Entre Rios at about the same time as the Robertson brothers’ venture had less success. Government promises were not kept and the land was inappropriate and too distant from Buenos Aires. Hilda D'Alessandro de Brandi, “Escoceses en la Argentina,” Todo es Historia: Registra la Memoria Nacional (Buenos Aires), no. 374 (September 1998): 67-68. 67The Anglo-Argentine treaty of 1825 was, according to Ferns, “to establish a complete legal and political equality between the British and the Argentine states.” Britain sought no special political position in the River Plate but only the same treatment for British subjects as accorded all foreigners. Two highlights of the treaty were British exemption from military service, and freedom of religious expression. Protestant practitioners had been discriminated against in this Catholic country not so far removed from the Inquisition. (It is for this reason that the Catholic Irish integrated more easily into Argentine culture.) The treaty represented a liberal effort to create a free-market relationship between an industrial community and a raw-material-producing community. The treaty endured for more than a century, until the signing of the Roca~ Runciman Pact of 1933, and was the solid foundation of Anglo-Argentine intercourse. HLS. Ferns, Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Pre: 1960), 109-130. 68Graham-Yooll, The Forgotten, 149. The Gibson family was one of a number of private landowners who contributed to this agricultural venture. Due to a financial crisis which hit both merchants and landowners equally the family sold their Monte Grande farm, bought in 1822, to Scottish merchant-adventurer brothers John and William Parish Robertson ~ the principal investors, founders, and organizers of the colony. D'Alessandro de Brandi, “Escoceses,” 69, 78. Known as viajeros ingleses or English travelers, who had arrived in the country in 1813, the Robertson brothers are authors of Letters of Paraguay (1839) and Letters of South America (1843). Dodds, Records, 4. 35Lavalle (Unitarian) and became the governor of the province of Buenos Aires. Most of the settlers dispersed in fear under great threat and many resettled in nearby Buenos Aires, Chascomtis, and other provincial centers to merge into the British community. Britain's long-term, formal influence in Argentina began with two humiliating failed invasions, But the invasions of 1806 and 1807 did succeed in breaking the commercial stranglehold that Spain retained over her River Plate colonies and lead to the creole rebellion against the Spanish Crown. In fact, H.S. Ferns argues that the British assault upon the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata “is in many respects the most important event in Argentine history.”69 The invasions, writes Ferns, caused the authority of the Spanish Crown to be overthrown and the victorious creoles to finally imagine an Argentine republic. As Hennessey adds, “once the locally recruited creole militia had conquered one of the leading military powers of the day [England] the Spanish presence was no longer necessary.”70 The colony's growing demands for ‘free trade’ became synonymous with freedom in general and the preservation of liberalized trade became for creole and British merchants alike an act of political independence.7! With the departure of defeated British troops came more contraband trade with Britain and on the foundation of this trade a British community began to grow. In fact, according to Ferns, “The presence of this community and its trading activities became one of the ©9Ferns, Britain, 17. 7Oplistair Hennessy, “Argentines, Anglo-Argentines and Others,” The Land that England Lost: Argentina and Britain, a Special Relationship, ed. Alistair Hennessy and John King (London: British Academic Press, 1992), 12. 7\Miron Burgin, The Economic Aspects of Argentine Federalism, 1820-1852 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946), 13, 36focal points of political tension contributing to the revolution."72 In 1811, one year after the revolution for independence and four years after the second British invasion, the British Commercial Rooms were established in Buenos Aires as a center of commercial intelligence and sociability...but creoles and ‘foreigners’ were excluded....73 Protestant English and Scotsmen maintained a different relationship with Argentina to that which they had with North America. ‘Their native land held no special significance to them in the North where they were able to disappear into local society. But, in the words of Ferns, “the British who came to Argentina found a half-way house in which they did not rely for their security and way of life upon the exercise of political authority by the British Crown,"74 Neither did they rely solely upon the will or whim of the local political authorities. ‘Therefore, within a climate of cultural ambiguity and political uncertainty, but commercial hegemony, the British community became one unto itself, It excluded ‘natives’ from its ‘half-way house’, as language and Protestant devotion excluded it from Argentine society. Relief and jubilation flooded the community with the signing of the Anglo-Argentine Treaty in early 1825 because it guaranteed personal security and freedoms. One freedom, for example, was the right to finally 72Ferns, Britain, 68. Liberal free-trade policies replaced Spain's control over the Buenos Aires port and freed up independent La Plata trade with foreign markets that had been deemed illegal. Contraband activities were the norm in Buenos Aires in a climate where the Spanish controlled trade agreements. This control required goods to be carried by mule train across the Andes to Lima in Upper Peru. By the early 1800s the evolution of ‘economic development in the colony meant direct trade with Britain could be carried out from the Buenos Aires port. 78Ibid., 76. 74qpid., 78. Note that ‘Irishmen’ are not included in this discussion, Their status and hence security was considerably different to that of Protestants (known as disidentes or dissidents) because of being Roman Catholic and more easily absorbed into Catholic Argentine society. 37establish their own churches and cemeteries. Another provision exempted British nationals from obligatory military service. (This exemption becomes an important issue later when discussing Daniel Gilmour's conscription into the national guard.) During the following century or more skilled British workers immigrated to Argentina in large numbers but they never changed the social composition of the established community which by the 1830s was proportionately larger than it was ever to be in relation to Argentine society. The social composition was predominantly urban, and besides the English, consisted of many Scots skilled in some craft or profession. The community was mainly middle class with well-paid wageworkers and some rural Irish and Scottish shepherds. Their religion was mostly Protestant mixed with some Irish Catholic.”> ‘The consular listing in 1820 of the first and eldest Gibson brother, John (Proprietor), is found in James Dodds’ Records of the Scottish Settlers in the River Plate and their Churches under the chapter title of “Mercantile Pioneers.” The Gibson name is cited in the literature as illustrative of wealthy industrial immigrants who arrived during the Rivadavia (1826-1827) and early Rosas (1829-1852) periods.7° The Gibsons initially became involved in urban capitalist ventures, but, ultimately diversified their activities to the highly lucrative rural landowning economy. Dodds writes that nineteen-year-old John Gibson started an enterprise in the city of Buenos Aires for the import of English consumer goods and the export of skins and hides as a South American ‘7Stbid., 7. 78pyAlessandro de Brandi, “Escoceses,” 77-79; Elisa Magrane de Boote, “La Familia Olvidada,” The Buenas Aires Herald, 24 April 2001; Maria Saenz Quesada, Los Estancieros (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1980), 157-162; Yuya Guzman, El pais de las estancias (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1999), 63-74. 38interest of his father’s textile firm in Glasgow (with diverse subsidiaries throughout Europe). Gibson soon realized that those who controlled the money in Buenos Aires also invested in land. Successful businessmen were often formidable estancieros so Gibson began to purchase various tracts of land in Buenos Aires province (two of them the Monte Grande and Los Yngleses properties) for investment. Besides land investment the objective was to breed cattle, and later sheep for the European wool mills at home.77 Historically a cattle breeding country, Argentina had paid little attention to sheep before independence; the flocks introduced by early Spanish colonists had become wild and of poor quality. With political independence and free international trade the cattle industry developed in earnest producing hides, tallow, and salted meat for export. The cattle economy required enormous tracts of land and was dominated by a creole ranching elite whose most outspoken proponent was Juan Manuel de Rosas. But the industrial revolution in Europe required wool for the textile industry and sheep required land, so cattle estancias were pushed out to the frontier to accommodate the burgeoning sheep business of the coastal region of Buenos Aires province. ‘The country’s elite had historically diversified from investment in silver mining during the colonial era, to post-colonial urban commercialism, to capitalist cattle grazing and was eager to incorporate the profit potential of sheep. Many cattle estancias faced with a declining demand for hides moved partially or entirely to sheep breeding. As Hilda Sabato explains, the early experimentation with crossbreeding in the 1820s and 1830s was made primarily by pioneering, foreign-born mostly 77D ‘Alessandro de Brandi, "Escoceses,” 78; Dodds, Records, 265-266; Saenz Quesada, Los Estancieros 157-158. 39British estancieros, These sheep producers had access to purebreds for import, foreign capital investment, and foreign markets for export. Foreigners found that wool production required less initial investment and land than cattle, could be processed right on the farm, was easily accessible to the port, and was not monopolized by native estancieros. A result of sheep breeding was the stimulation of European immigration needed for this labour-intensive pastoral activity 78 and is indicative, as Burgin argues, of the kind of economic development Buenos Aires was experiencing post-independence.79 The Gibson family followed what Sabato calls a “traditional course from urban activities to cattle and then to sheep..."8° when in the 1830s the brothers began raising sheep in earnest. Answering to the industrial demands of the growing European textile market they began importing pedigree breeds to cross with local flocks. Over time pure Romny Marsh and Lincoln/Merino breeds adapted to the region and flourished, establishing Estancia Los Yngleses as one of the leaders in the development of a lucrative sheep industry. By 1880, in Estanislao Zeballos’ estimate, Estancia Los Yngleses could be considered the most ‘78}ilda Sabato, Agrarian Capitalism and the World Market: Buenos Aires in the Pastoral Age, 1840-1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990), 159, 79purgin, The Economic, 31. Of huge significance to agricultural development was the introduction of the first wire fence. The son of one of the Gibsons’ contracted employees, a young man named Richard Blake Newton, was at one time the manager of a Gibson estancia. He has been credited with this import and its consequent contribution to the modernization and development of the rural sector. Newton fenced his own land in 1844 to prevent his livestock from trampling the garden. This was the beginning of the end of ditches and stacked cow skulls surrounding a property. While creating prosperity for some the fencing of Argentina had a profound effect on the economic, political, and cultural life of the landless rural population, hindering the free movement of wild herds, disrupting nomadic Indian routes, and curtailing free-range territories used by gauchos. S0sabato, Agrarian, 24, 159. 40important breeder of Lincoln in the country and perhaps the world.8! Contemporary chronicler, James Dodds, concurs in 1897 that the well- known estancia “now occupies the front rank among our breeders of Lincoln cross.”62 The Gibsons not only improved their stock; they also modernized the production of wool and its byproducts. In 1843 they installed a vaporizing machine to separate the grease from the wool, 8 in 1849 they constructed a sheep dip to fight tics and scab, and imported the country’s first machine for baling wool. They exported the bales directly from their small dockside on the Ajé River to Liverpool and Amberes avoiding any intermediaries and intermittent blockades on the port of Buenos Aires.8+ Estancia Los Yngleses (the ‘English’ estancia), so named by its Scottish owners,86 was previously named Estancia El Carmen and was owned by the creole rancher, Esteban José Marquez, who established it in 1810 south of the Salado River, the then Indian frontier. In 1824 the land was purchased by the Gibson Brothers on behalf of their father 8lgaenz Quesada, Los Estancieros, 158. See Estanislao S. Zeballos, author of Descripcién amena de la Repiblica Argentina (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1881, t.3. A través de las cabafias). 82Dodds, Records, 265. 83 Wool grease, which is extracted from sheep's wool by a washing process, can today be refined to a high grade of UPS lanolin, Early uses of wool grease included the lubrication of cartwheels. Lanolin is used in such products as cosmetics. S4p ‘Alessandro de Brandi, “Escoceses,” 78-79; Guzman Bl Pais, 72. The wool baling machine, now a relic ts still to be found at Los Yngleses. ‘SSpritish nationalities were not distinguished among the creole population. If you spoke English you were an inglés, and a foreigner of any kind was a gringo or forestero. In fact, it was not uncommon for people in the British community, no matter what their nationality, to refer to themselves as English. An example of this is the case of the Irish. Mulhall brothers (owners of the Standard newspaper) who called themselves English, all the while advocates for Irish Home Rule. Oliver Marshall, The English Language Press in Latin America (Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1996), 15, 41(who never traveled to Argentina) and remains in the family until today.85 The present-day Atlantic port town of General Lavalle emerged out of an increase in population directly related to the commercial wool-processing activities of the Estancia. Known interchangeably as Rincon de Aj6, or Rinc6n del Tuy, the area is described by M.G. and E.T. Mulhall in their 1875 edition of Handbook of the River Plate Republics as having a twenty- league coastline of sandhills: “The country is wild, woody, and watered.”§7 Yuyti Guzman describes it as having had a green and humid geography, its natural characteristics being solitary and mysterious, and of a unique topography.*° Abounding with streams, pools, marshes, bogs, swamps, crab grounds, and lagoons with small islands, situated on a type of peninsula, the area was difficult to access and equally difficult to exit. For this reason an extraordinary ecological habitat developed providing refuge and insulation from outlying areas. The local Montes Grandes forests were “famous for the best creole horses.”89 Guzman elaborates on the wild equine herds of the area and of the Indians who pursued them for food and transportation. Providing a safe refuge for the horses, but hindering their escape, the area was a popular native hunting ground. But once white settlement began it became equally dangerous for the hunters who were also restricted by cul-de-sacs and impasses. Home to the largest number of tigres (jaguars and pumas) seen anywhere in the country, these felines crouched in 86Dodds (Records, 265) notes that the unfenced property was sized at nearly one hundred square miles in 1834 and was stocked with long-horned native breeds of half- wild cattle on the cusp of the start of the more lucrative sheep industry. 87M.G. and E.T. Mulhall, Handbook of the River Plate Republics: Comprising Buenos Aires and the Provinces of the Argentine Republic and the Republics of Uruguay and Paraguay (London: Edward Stanford, 1875), 138. 88Guandn, El Pais, 63-64. 89Mulhall, Handbook, 138. 42willows and thick shrubbery to feed on a variety of fish. With its rich zoology and typical botany, the area had an abundance of birds and various species of waterfowl. In his book Birds of La Plata (1920) writer and naturalist William H. Hudson researched this area with the help of his friend, ornithologist Ernest Gibson (brother of Herbert, son of Thomas), whom Hudson cites. Despite the great dangers of jaguars, pumas, and swamps the area provided a peaceful oasis from the incessant civil wars being fought throughout the country during the first and middle parts of the nineteenth century. Likewise, it provided a hiding place from Indian raids that devastated many other settlements in the region. The Estancia Los Yngleses owned two cannons and muskets and ils buildings were surrounded by a commonly used zanja (ditch) which acted as a barrier to. mounted Indian raiders.®! The estate also had several outer buildings constructed in a circular fashion around a grassy interior for defensive purposes. It is evident that the Indian frontier was still very close to the southern coastline and perimeter of the capital city in the 1830s. Maria ‘Saenz Quesada notes that the Estancia was the target of two malones or Indian raids in 1831 and 1835 9? which helps to date the following quote by Dodds: In those early days in the outlying districts provision had to be made against the inroads of Indians, and we [author and reader] remember that the Messrs. Gibson had at the 90Thomas Gibson was an avid artist who often included the area’s pink flamingos in his paintings. Others of his watercolours show daily work scenes at Estancia Los Yngleses depicting labourers, administrators, and Gibson family members. ®lother ways of fortifying a house were small grated windows and a parapet on the roof for observation and defense. ®2saenz Quesada, Los Estancieros, 158. 43estancia a couple of pieces of cannon with a goodly supply of ammunition, and had on one occasion to use the ordnance in successfully repelling the Indians, and saving the homestead from fire and sword, but with the loss of a large number of cattle. These alarms were, however, owing to the insular position of the estate, seldom felt among the peaceful and romantic woods and delis of the Rincén del Tuyu.% By the time the sheep industry had taken off mid-century cattle estates had pushed the Indian frontier westward and southward leaving the Los Yngleses within settled territory. Sheep might have provided further insurance against raiding parties because Indians were more interested in taking cattle than sheep. With their short legs sheep were not so easily stampeded in flight across the frontier to tierra adentro and had not been a traditional source of food, hide, or barter for native peoples. To get an idea of the number of puestos and shepherds needed to run a pastoral or grazing establishment the size of Los Yngleses it is helpful to look at data on Estancia Espartillar near Chascomis in the vicinity of Los Yngleses. Recall that in 1834 Los Yngleses covered nearly one hundred square miles; in the early 1850s Estancia Espartillar covered sixty square miles on which its owner, John Fair, raised cattle and Lincoln sheep. Estancia Espartillar held over 100,000 head of sheep and cattle and counted forty puestos or sheep stations that were occupied by Scotch or Irish shepherds.® The Gibson flocks grew from 6,280 head in 1840, to 32,318 head within two decades. 95 By 1883 they were producing and exporting 220,000 kilograms of wool annually®€ and ®8Dodds, Records, 266-267. 4Ipid., 266-267. 98Jonathan C. Brown, A Socioeconomic History of Argentina, 1776-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 139. See Los Yngleses’ Sir Herbert Gibson's The History and Present State of the Sheep Breeding Industry tn the Argentine Republic (Buenos Aires. 1893). 96Magrane de Boote, “La Familia.” 44by 1884 Estancia Los Yngleses had increased its head of Lincoln alone from its initial 1,000 to 100,000.97 In order to process increasing quantities of wool, sheep skin, and mutton, breeders required labour, and foreign estancieros preferred immigrant managers, supervisors, shepherds, and even servants. In the late 1840s Irish, Scots, and Basques formed the bulk of pastoral wage earners. They were mostly skilled and hard-working immigrants used to peasant family labour who were looking for social and economic improvement.%8 When workers belonged to the same nationality as the owner (for example the Glasgow-based Gibson and Gilmour families) bonds of patronage would be built based upon shared language, religion, and cultural ties. Of further practicality to the employer was that these foreigners were not subject to military levies, so prejudicial at times of conflict and labour shortage.99 For both Scot-speaking lowlanders and Gaclic-speaking highlanders part of the success of the sheep breeding industry in Argentina came as a result of the Scottish clearances. In an ironic turn of events people displaced by sheep in the highlands and facing generational poverty and overcrowding in industrial European cities saw financial opportunities in the raising of sheep abroad. Likewise, Irish families fleeing the potato famine of the 1840s often found employment 97D‘Alessandro de Brandi, “Escoceses,” 79. 8Guzmén (El Pais, 66-67) describes puesteros as being rough farm boys who were healthy and strong: suffering miners looking for work in the fresh air: sailors with a yearning to raise sheep - all confident in their physical strength, their desire to earn a living, and the enthusiasm that spurs great expectations. sabato (Agrarian, 90-91) goes on to say that Italian and Spanish immigrants were massively dedicated to agricultural or commercial activities during the period 1840- 1890. Frenchmen had varied trades, concentrating in arts and crafts; Basques worked in saladeros, brick factories, dairy farms, and sheep raising. Germans and Swiss were 45and opportunity for advancement in the raising of sheep. These shepherds would over time identify themselves as British, forming part of a larger homogencous British community. But it is the distinctive rural skills and experience as shepherds (often arriving with their families and sheep dogs) that made their mark on a modernizing rural structure in Argentina. A rural contract between employer and employee established rate of payment based on percentage: the puestero and his family would receive a third part of the wool and lambs, or half if the shepherd had some capital to put forward. Sabato argues that with the expansion of sheep raising, the family unit became an essential part of the social and economic rural order compared to the days of cattle herding when single men were responsible for the bulk of the work.100 A married shepherd was more stable, and together with a wife was able to reproduce the labour force. Men and boys were in charge of shepherding the flocks assigned to them while women were in charge of domestic duties and care of fowl and orchards. James Scobie says that those who worked hard, had a certain amount of luck, and used the shares system to increase their own flock could become independent sheep farmers within three to four years “thus laying the foundation for some of modern Argentina’s largest fortunes and most aristocratic families.”!0! But it was a very hard life. Rainstorms that would kill hundreds of lambs, conscripted peons and horses taken off to fight in menacing civil wars near and far, floods, concentrated in colonies and small rural towns while Irish and Scots were particularly dedicated to sheep raising. 100 ypid., 112-113. 101 James Scobie, Argentina: A City and a Nation, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 84. 46droughts, locusts, and contagious epidemics such as cholera and yellow fever made for a very precarious living for those without capital to back them. 102 Heavy seasonal labours of lambing, dipping, and shearing were replaced the rest of the year with the monotony of fenceless herding. Mutton cooked over a fire of dried sheep dung in a two-room mud and thatch rancho was endured in hopes of future land ownership. 103 Families with names like Taylor, Poe, Cummings,1°4 Wright, and Gilmour arrived at a crucial moment of transformation in the internal pampa. Saenz Quesada states that sheep closed the era of the large cattle estancia that had been politically the exclusive domain of federalist cattle ranchers. Juan Manuel de Rosas was the provincial caudillo who represented the interests of this rural creole elite and would watch the countryside change significantly in the few remaining years of his dictatorship. Elizabeth Gilmour must have conceived her third child in January 1845 either at sea or shortly upon arrival in Argentina and about the time the Gibson brothers were assessing their new Scottish shepherds in their letter of February 20, 1845. Son Daniel was born on October 15, 1845, - the first Gilmour born in the new country. In 1847 Janet was born and in 1848 an infant son was buried in the Los Yngleses cemetery 102g4enz Quesada, Los Estancieros, 162. 108Scobie, Argentina, 84-85. For a gripping first-hand account of the trials and tribulations of sheep farming relayed through letters home, read George Reid's A South ‘American Adventure: Letters from George Reid, 1867-1870 (London: selected and privately published by Valerie Boyle, 1999). Reid attempted to find adventure and make his fortune in the province of Entre Rios where land prices were cheaper than in the more densely populated province of Buenos Aires. His youth and enthusiasm did not pay off for him, however, and he returned home to Portugal three years later none the richer. 104pescendants of these families still work in the region. Author unavailable, “Los Yngleses,” Provincia de Buenos Aires, (Buenos Aires: publisher and date unavailable), 50-55. 47having been stricken with de mal, lockjaw, and a common cause of infant mortality in the camp.105 An entry in a Los Yngleses ledger dated October 10, 1848 (four years and three months after signing the original four- year contract in Glasgow), notes that Mateo Gilmour, puestero, at $150 per month, will stay in his puesto under contract for one year from that date, An entry from May 1849 establishes a Gibson joint account with Mr. Gilmour. Working on a ‘halves’ agreement Mathew Gilmour would provide plough and harness; “and we scuffle plough, [harness] and spades, shovels, and... He pays one man and we another, he giving his own work without charge. We also give shears...and doors for new Rancho (and Adrian to assist...). The net profits to be equally divided. Each to be supplied with vegetables gratis. The galpén or ‘new rancho’ to remain ours.”108 While under a second renewed contract as puestero, and still living in a Gibson rancho, Joseph was born in 1850, and Mathew on April 12, 1852, although he died five days later. On the foggy morning of ‘Thursday, May 13, 1852,107 less than a month after the death of their five-day-old son, and while Elizabeth was, according to a Standard newspaper article from April 1883 “stricken down with a severe 105Lockjaw resulting from tetanus and perhaps caused by the cutting of the umbilical cord with a dirty knife, The people who died on the estancia premises, as well as neighbours, were buried at Los Yngleses cemetery. It was the only local cemetery as the nearest town was 120 kilometers away. The cemetery record lists “infant of Matihew Gilmour, puestero, Scot. in. 1848, de mal.” 106pstancia Los Yngleses, Cuademo de capatazes y peones por mes, 1845-1851. 107Note that seven years have passed since the Gilmours became employed by Gibson Brothers. It is evident that the family has not yet been able to become independent of Gibson labour contracts. By 1852 the family had lost three sons to death or abduction which does not bode well for a labour unit dependent on male shepherding skills. Daniel, of course, was denied this avenue to wealth because when he was abducted he lost the social and class ties to the British community necessary for forging economic alliances. 488 son Daniel of six years and seven months was abducted from the Estancia Los Yngleses homestead. He had been tending his father’s flock in Dodds' ‘peaceful and romantic woods and dells of the Rincén del Tuyu.’ They would not see him again for thirty-one years. Lost and Found on the Argentine Frontier (1852-1883) Daniel Gilmour's life story can be seen on three levels: first as the narrative of an individual, second as the narrative of the Gilmour family and the British community, and third as the narrative of Argentina during a period of dramatic political, economic, and social change and transition. When placed chronologically and parallel the three narratives intersect and provide a glimpse of conjunctures that give context to the individual narrative and humanize the national narrative. We will see, for example, that one of the appealing features of Daniel Gilmour's life is that it intersects with the major events and pivotal personalities of Argentine post-independence history: the reign and fall of General Juan Manuel de Rosas; the formation of the National Guard; the Paraguayan War; the publishing of Hernandez’s Martin Fierro; the creation of Minister Adolfo Alsina's defensive ditch; the Conquest of the Desert by General Julio Roca; the elimination of the pampa Indians; the decline of the gaucho; and the explosion of European immigration and the project to modernize the nation-state. Even the year of Daniel's 108ciImour family Bible dated 1867. Under the heading of “Childrens Names” references to Daniel include “Daniel Gilmour was born 15” October, 1845,” and “Daniel Gilmour was found on the 1" of April, 1883, having been lost 31 years.” Under the heading of “Deaths” references to Daniel include “Daniel Gilmour was lost on the thirteenth of May. 1852,” and “Daniel Gilmour died on the thirteenth of January, 1896.” ‘This would be an anomaly in most family Bibles where a family member's name would appear only once, not twice, under each category. It is also interesting to note that his loss was classified as a death and his return as a birth. Even though the births, deaths, and marriages of Daniel's parents and siblings are listed, the birth and death in 1848 of one infant son are not. 49birth, 1845 (the first Gilmour to be born on Argentine soil), can symbolize this conjuncture. In that year Domingo Faustinto Sarmiento!0 published his hugely influential Facundo: or, Civilization and Barbarism. Sarmiento was part of the anti-Rosas Generation of 1837, an exiled group of impassioned young male intellectuals whose purpose was to identify the country’s major problems and to devise a program of modernization based on a liberal European model. Sarmiento’s premise was that the country existed as a duality: white and black, urban and rural, European and American, cultured and natural, civilized and barbaric - ideas which justified elitist notions of enlightenment and modernity. The release of this great literary work written by a founding father who would have a profound influence on the development of the new republic coincided with the birth of a Scottish child who's whole life - identity and destiny - ‘would be defined by the philosophy and epistemology of Domingo F. Sarmiento, his influential cohort, and his followers.11° In addition, Daniel Gilmour's abduction on May 13, 1852, occurred shortly after the military defeat of dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas on February 3, 1852, at Monte Caseros about ten kilometers west of the city of Buenos Aires. Rosas’ defeat was nationally significant because it set in motion the demise of powerful federalist provincial caudillos and put the country on a new liberal path with the signing of the national constitution in 1853. Rosas’ defeat and exile resulted in the disbanding and disbursement of his montonera troops thus unleashing what 109jncidentally, Sarmiento was born in 1811 (“Sarmiento liked to remember that he was born at the same time as the Argentine republic....") and died in 1888, the year of both Daniel's parents’ deaths. Gwen Kirkpatrick and Francine Masiello, “Introduction: Sarmiento between History and Fiction” in Sarmiento: Author of a Nation, edited by Tullo Halperin Donghi, Ivan Jaksic, Gwen Kirkpatrick and Francine Masiello (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 2. 110See Shumway, The Invention, 112-167. Sarmiento went on to become a strong advocate for education and president of the republic between 1868 and 1874. 50amounted to a horde of gaucho thieves and brigands on the countryside. ‘These, along with Rosas’ former secret police, or mazorca, that had been based in Buenos Aires were ready to terrorize citizens dispersed in farms and small towns throughout the republic. Rosas went to war at Caseros with a hastily ill-equipped and poorly trained army of 23,000 to fight caudillo General Justo José de Urquiza’s superior allied army of 24,000,111 John Lynch paints a picture of chaos in city and countryside in the days after the defeat. Rosista soldiers fled in disarray defeated as much by their lack of discipline and experience as by their lack of leadership. Waves of fugitives passed through Buenos Aires on their way to the South, Fleeing soldiers killed for horses and at first rosista cavalry, then Urquiza troops and local delinquents looted the city.112 Argentina’s military history texts do not so poignantly capture the raw horror of the habitual visits by federalist or unitarian bands of gaucho or Indian soldiers to isolated ranchos or estancias. Sent initially by commanding officers to procure obligatory fresh horses and food the soldiers’ often ulterior motive was to rape, pillage, and murder. Through the medium of fiction Susan Wilkinson's historical novel Sebastian's Pride describes in gripping detail the brutality of just such a visit by Rosas’ men to the home of fifteen-year-old Maria Rodriguez and her parents where a session of rape, murder, and theft leaves the girl as the sole survivor.!13 Ironically, she is rescued and taken in by a British father and son, as Rosas is rescued by the English to live out his life of exile in Southampton. Accounts and descriptions of the brutal nature of 11g¢e John Lynch's Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas 1829-1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 330, and Rock's Argentina. 112Lynch, Argentine, 113susan Wilkinson, Sebastian's Pride (Penguin Canada, 1989), 109-115. 51the military forces both pre-and-post Rosas are common in the literature and serve to set the scenario for the Gilmour abduction by describing the type of man who might have taken the boy. ‘Who was the gaucho who took Daniel Gilmour away on that foggy ‘Thursday morning? His name was Nicolas GonzAlez!14 and he could have easily been one of the now-exiled Rosas’ defeated soldiers fleeing south to the secluded Ajé and Tuyit!!5 region from northerly Caseros. David Carruthers sets a compelling scene in his memoir of 1962 when he describes, with some minor inaccuracies of date, the possible origins of the gaucho Nicolas Gonzalez: ...about the year 1842 [should read 1852], of the years and dates I can't be sure as I have no records to go by, but I do know that the “tirano” Juan Manuel Rosas was in power [had just fallen from power] so if we look back on these long gone yy times we will find that “El Rincon de Ajo” with it’s (sic) famed “Montes Grandes” was an ideal hide-out for criminals and desperate characters fleeing from Rosas’ justice, or vice- versa injustice, and thought as little of cutting a man’s throat as they would of taking a mate amargo.!16 114Nephew David Carruthers named the gaucho “Nicolas Gonzalez" in his memoir of 1962. The Stanclard newspaper correspondent called him “José Ignacio Gonzales” in “A Thrilling Romance: Mr. Gilmour's Son Found: Rejotcings at Tuyd,” Standard (Buenos Aires) 18 April 1883, no. 6252. 1 am inclined to put more weight on a known name that must have been repeated many times in the family over the years as opposed to a possible one-time mistake that could have been made by the ‘outsider’ correspondent. The correspondent's information was current (ten days) but the nephew's information was enduring (eighty years). The Gilmour family knew the abductor making it more likely that his name would have been clearly articulated over the years both before and after Daniel's return home. 115,n example of fugitive behavior to avoid military service by fleeing to the Tuya district Is illustrated by Slatta when he states that “Government mobilization of the national guard in 1880 prompted many {farm] workers to flee to remote [coastal] counties such as Vecino, Mar Chiquita, and Tuy.” Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 138. 116 ate is a bitter (hence amargo), widely consumed Paraguayan tea brewed in a gourd and sipped through a silver stra. 52