Nineteenth Century British Travel Accounts of Argentina

Author(s): Kristine L. Jones

Source: Ethnohistory , Spring, 1986, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Spring, 1986), pp. 195-211
Published by: Duke University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/481774

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ETHNOHISTORY 33(2):195-211 JONES

NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITISH TRAVEL ACCOUNTS

OF ARGENTINA

Kristine L. Jones Bowdoin College

Abstract

Standardized depictions of an ahistorical "Indian" in nineteenth century travel ac-

counts of Argentina are important ethnohistorical sources not because the accounts
describe a theoretically pristine state of politically autonomous indigenous societies,
but because they describe the points of articulation with expanding Western society.
In the nearly one hundred fifty years between initial Jesuit missionizing attempts in
the Argentine pampas in the 1740s and the final "Conquest of the Desert" in the
1880s, a major reorganization of Indian societies coincided with the expansion of
European society into the grasslands. These narratives document the changing modes
of interaction between "Indian" and "Western" societies, record the development
of a complex intercultural frontier society, and reveal the emerging conquest ideology
justifying the politics of expansion.

The value of travel accounts as ethnohistorical sources lies not so much in

ethnographic verities as in the documentation of developing frontier society in
articulation with expanding western capitalism.' In Argentina the expansion of
European society into the pampas and Patagonia between initial missionizing at
tempts in the 1740s and the ultimate "Conquest of the Desert" of the 1880s coin-
cided with a major reorganization of social and political life among autonomou
indigenous societies. Nineteenth century British travel accounts of Argentina, whil
attempting in form to objectively describe Indian society, categorized, objectified
commoditized and thus delegitimized the role of native people in frontier expan-
sion. Historians must recognize that ahistorical details of social life in travel ac-
counts do not document a sphere uniquely "Indian," but rather describe an
emergent intercultural frontier society as well as reflect shifts in expansionist ideology.
This paper will analyze the development of nineteenth century travel accounts
of Argentina in an attempt to delineate explicitly the categories and objective
in them. The commoditization of travel accounts themselves stands out as one
striking characteristic of this literature, as described in the first section of the paper.
Discussion of the use of travel accounts as ethnohistorical sources, the sec-
ond section of this paper, reveals the interpretive transformations in the travel
accounts that ultimately legitimized the concept of "the Indians" as plundering
obstacles to progress.
While implicit western ideological perspectives denied legitimacy to the activities
of sovereign native societies, and therefore failed to record them in more formal
documents, informal descriptions by British travelers indicate the very important
role of the Indians in the history of Argentina. However, because of the fixed,
ahistorical categories in travel accounts that described Indians, historians consistently
have ignored the dynamics and importance of this interaction. Travelers' accounts
documented society peripheral, but nonetheless directly tied to the expanding ex-
port economy of the British empire. British travelers and speculators not only
reported on this "marginal" society, but comprised an integral part of it. To be
used as ethnography, travel accounts must be interpreted in this light.

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196 KRISTINE L. JONES

Background

The development of the travel account as a commodity in the nineteenth century

was not limited solely to narratives about Argentina, nor to accounts exclusively
British. Nor did the commoditization of the genre trivialize its importance in in-
forming and interpreting the world for individuals interested in economic exploita-
tion of that world. Much recent scholarship analyzes the western development of
an ideology about the "non-western" world. Recently, Edward Said's Orientalism
(1979) provoked serious reappraisal of a major intellectual tradition. In recent
studies of the New World, anthropologists and geographers point to the impor-
tance of reconsidering traditional representations of that region belonging to neither
the "East" nor "West." The new look at old images has stimulated revisionist
trends in some fields of Latin American and North American history.2
The issues of myth and image in western concepts about the thousands of distinct
native societies in the Americas have been approached by scholars focusing primarily
on discovery and early contact. That European concepts predetermined much of
Spanish colonial policy has long been acknowledged, and Lewis Hanke's Aristotle
and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (1959)
stands as the classic analysis of the origins of western ideological justifications
for (mis)treatment of Native Americans in Spanish America. Robert Berkhofer's
White Man's Indian (1979) documents for North America the invention of the
idea of "The Indian" that has obvious parallels to the South American case. Olive
Dickason's Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism in the
Americas (1984) discusses French reactions and interpretations of disparate societies
in Brazil, Florida, and the St. Lawrence. As these and many other studies point
out, perceptions and misconceptions about the Americas purveyed in early ex-
ploration accounts colored interpretations in subsequent centuries.
Publication of travel accounts of the New World began almost as soon as the
first European explorers returned home. By the sixteenth century, the accounts
of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Bartolom6 de Las Casas, and the Spanish-educated
Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, created great interest, and by the seventeenth century
published travel accounts enjoyed more popularity than standard romances, ac-
cording to one contemporary observer in France (Dickason 1984: 6). Part of this
popularity may perhaps be ascribed to the fact that Spain firmly established con-
trol over most of South America soon after conquest, and maintained a stern watch
over possible interlopers. The jealous protectiveness of Spain about its American
colonies led to suppression of information that might prove advantageous to its
European rivals. In the three centuries following the Spanish conquest of New
Spain and Peru, royal dictates militated against foreign access to information about
the fabled riches of the Americas. Even so, this blackout could not stem interest
in the commercial potentials of the restricted colonies, and the very occasional
travel accounts met a curiosity for information about the Americas with a com-
bination of hearsay, myth, and some truths.
By the early nineteenth century, travel accounts of Spanish America fell within
a firmly established tradition that perpetuated earlier images, while adding new
variations and embellishments. However, while in the previous centuries only a
handful of such accounts were published, in the early 1800s scores of travel ac-
counts about South America appeared. Analysis and collation of the upsurge of

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British Travel Accounts 197

nineteenth century travel accounts of Latin America awaits full investigation, but
there is little doubt that such literature elaborated on the traditions and image
of the discovery chronicles. By this time, British travel accounts were also colored
by the "Black Legend" propaganda, originating from seventeenth and eighteenth
century enmities, which ascribed all evils of the colonial order to an idea of a per-
nicious Spanish national character.3
The positivist perspective so rigorously attempted in nineteenth century narra-
tions often purchased earlier images and myths wholesale, and then redistributed
them in new packaging to meet the demands of the industrial age. Nevertheless,
careful attention to the intent of these interpretations leads to further understand-
ing of historical change and the nature of European economic expansion as well
as the formation of American societies as they were affected by this expansion.
Discussion of British travel accounts of Argentina documents one such case.

British Travel Accounts and the Argentine Economy

One of the first publications of an Englishman in Argentina appeared more than

a century and a half after Pedro de Mendoza's mooring in the Parana river delta,
and it provided the English for the first time the kind of detail Spain so carefully
guarded. Thomas Falkner, a Jesuit priest who had worked among Indians in the
pampas and Patagonia in an ill-fated missionizing attempt in the 1740s, left a record
of his experience, first published in London in 1774 as a political pamphlet.
Falkner's Description of Patagonia and the Adjoining Parts of South America:
Containing an Account of the Soil, Produce, Animals, Vales, Mountains, Rivers,
Lakes, etc. of those Countries; The Religion, Government, Policy, Customs, Dress,
Arms and Language of the Indian Inhabitants; and some Particulars relating to
Falkland's Islands provided one of the very first published surveys of the unex
plored territories south of the city of Buenos Aires, as well as the first systematic
description of the inhabitants of those regions. Publication in London of Falkner's
description worried the Spaniards, already concerned about foreign pretensions
against their American possessions. Administrative and political reforms initiated
by the Bourbon monarchy in the late eighteenth century tightened the net of secrecy
over the colonies, and the mystery of the fabled riches of the Americas remained
locked to the rest of the world for several more decades. Publications such as
Falkner's narrative assumed significance simply because such accounts so rarely
appeared; so rarely, in fact, that the more fantastical aspects of Falkner's version
reappeared in 1788 in a derivative relation under the pen of Thomas Pennant,
entitled Of the Patagonians. Formedfrom the Relation of Father Falkner A Jesuit
who had Resided Among them Thirty Eight Years. Andfrom the Different Voyages
who had met this Tall Race.

It was not until Alexander von Humboldt was allowed to tour and repor
on the state of the Spanish possessions in 1799-1804, and his account was p
and translated, that reliable information reached a wider European com
The significance of Humboldt's tour, the first such fact-finding visit by a fo
authorized by the Spanish government, is well known by generations of st
The narratives, published and translated from French into English, create
sation in Europe by replacing hearsay with a more accurate descriptio

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198 KRISTINE L. JONES

Spanish possessions. By virtue of precedent, Humboldt's narrative set the

ard for the proliferation of European travel accounts that followed,
when access to trade followed the independence of most of Spanish
in 1810.
The subsequent dismantling and demise of the colonial order in the Americas,
as in other parts of the world, opened new vistas for free trade and investment,
and a scramble for capitalist advantage ensued. When the Spanish monopoly over
trade in their American colonies ended, and all trade restrictions were lifted by
1810, a speculative mania in England resulted. Foreign commercial expansion into
Argentina stimulated increased production of hides, tallow, and salted meat, and
the volume of production of Buenos Aires Province more than tripled in the first
two decades of the nineteenth century (Scobie 1971: 97). British merchants quickly
assumed precedence in this trade, and in little over ten years following the demise
of the Spanish trade monopoly English capital dominated the Argentine economy
(Reber 1979).
In 1824 the English government authorized a study of the commercial situation
in Colombia, Mexico, and the Rio de la Plata. Woodbine Parish's popular travel
account of the period disseminated the results of this study to a broader audience
in a treatise entitled Buenos Ayres, and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata: from
their Discovery and Conquest by the Spaniards to the Establishment of their Pres-
ent State, Trade, Debt, etc.; An Appendix of Historical and Statistical Documents;
and a description of the Geology and Fossil Monsters of the Pampas (1852). Parish
reported that over half of the public debt and most of the valuable property in
Argentina was in English hands. Vera Reber's recent study of the origins of the
British mercantile system in Argentina corroborates his assertions, documenting
that thirty-nine commercial houses operated by British capitalists controlled almost
all import and export trade, which consisted mostly of cured hides, furs, and salted
meat (Reber 1979).
The fervor of English speculation reached heights comparable to any gold rush.
Contributing to the fever was the spate of travelers' accounts published by Lon-
don houses responsive to this interest in Argentina. As one historian wrote:

Good, bad, or indifferent, these books were devoured by a public anxious to find
out all they could about the people, the policies, the possibilities of commerce and
investment, and opportunities for emigration. Some of these, for example, the famous
relation of Captain Head, were so well written that they became best sellers. (Trifilo
1959, author's translation)

British travel accounts of Argentina proliferated as rapidly as capitalist invest-

ment. Interest in investment stimulated greater demand for information, and scores
of travel accounts appeared in response to this demand. Between 1805 and 1835,
British publishing houses had published over a dozen travel accounts about Argen-
tina.4 Publication reached a peak in the 1820s with the appearance of the works
of Head (1826), Beaumont (1828), Caldcleugh (1825), Miers (1826), Vidal (1820),
Brackenridge (1820a; 1820b), Miller (1828), and others. It bears mentioning that
these accounts of Argentina predominated in the scores of travel accounts about
South America, including Peru, Brazil, and Mexico, in which England had an
interest. The intent of these travelogues seldom was hidden, as is demonstrated
in such titles as: Travels in Buenos Ayres, and the Adjacent Provinces of the Rio
de la Plata. With Observations Intended for the Use of Persons Who Contemplate

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British Travel Accounts 199

Emigrating to that Country; or Embarking Capital in its Affairs (Beaumont 1828).

Inevitably, the speculative boom was followed by bust in 1826, but public in-
terest in things Argentine continued for several years. By 1830 speculative interest
in Argentina dropped off as the British began to look elsewhere for investments,
and publication of travelers' accounts dwindled.
New Argentine policies under the Rosas administration in the 1830s restricting
British investment seemed to dampen the enthusiasm for publication of travel ac-
counts of Argentina. Manuel de Rosas's twenty-three year administration actively
opposed foreign investment, which so thwarted British and French interests that
between 1845 and 1849 they imposed a blockade against Argentina. Because this
political development precluded investment possibilities, the British public lost in-
terest in popularized travel accounts of Argentina.
Even so, British interests in the potentials for its shipping industry continued,
and the British Navy endeavored to complete mapping and surveying tours of the
relatively unknown coastline. The voyages of HMS Beagle comprised two of three
such expeditions. The few published narratives about Argentina in the 1840s
originated from such official expeditions, usually the edited journals of British
diplomats or naval officers.
John MacDouall prefaced Narrative of a Voyage to Patagonia and Terra [sic]
del Fuego Through the Straits of Magellan in H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle in
1826 and 1827 by writing, "I have written it not only with the view of gain . . .
but also . .. with that. .. of ridding myself of the remarks of certain kind-hearted
people . . . toujours pret at pointing out what ought to be done on all possible
occasions (1833: v)." This account can be viewed as another example of the
popularized travel accounts churned out in the late 1820s, but Charles Darwin's
Diary of the H.M.S. Beagle (1839) falls more clearly into the new scientific model
of the positivist age.
Following the demise of Rosas in 1852, renewed trade with England once again
stimulated public interest in Argentina. By this time industrial growth in England
directed demand for new sources of raw materials, and investors looked to Argen-
tina for possible commercial advantage. The need in England for raw wool for
the textile industries, combined with possibilities for wool production in Argen-
tina, attracted direct British investment in Argentine latifundia, the land itself.
This shift from trade in cured hides and furs to direct investment in land owner-
ship hastened a transformation from the more traditional cattle raising estancias
to more competitive capital and labor intensive sheep raising enterprises (Sabato
1980). Renewed public interest in commercial activities, as might be expected,
resulted in a new wave of British travelers' journals, published even more cheaply
and aimed at a wider public. In the 1850s and 1860s once again, nearly a dozen
travel accounts about Argentina reached the public (Bourne 1853; MacCann 1853;
Hinchcliff 1863; Hutchinson 1868; Latham 1866; Seymour 1869; Catlin 1868),
compared to those few published between 1839 and 1850 (King 1846; Parish 1839;
Robertson & Robertson 1843; Darwin 1839). Increased investment possibilities
created increased demand for information, and travel accounts met this demand.
The full commoditization of the travel account now was complete.
This commoditization of the published travel account meant that it began to
lose its utility as capitalist propaganda, a means to an end. Publication of travel
accounts first met a demand for information, but the popularity of the accounts

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200 KRISTINE L. JONES

for their own sake transformed the works into independent commodities
1860s, access to new specialized business almanacs, reports, and statisti
as those provided in The Brazil and River Plate Mail (1863-1878) fulfilled t
for detailed investment data. Published travel accounts, on the other hand, alt
first written to remove the shroud of secrecy and mystery surrounding the A
moved back to the realm of the exotic and mysterious. Travel accounts no
in a picture, rather than providing the only window.
By the late nineteenth century, this genre in some cases had degenerated
status, pandering to public demand for the sensational. As a commodity
sion between information and sensation in these accounts yielded to the sur
the sensational. Old legends and myths were resurrected and brought
into service.
For instance, the 1835 publication in Argentina of a collection of Spanish works
and documents edited by Pedro de Angelis (1969) provided not only useful
geographic and topographic information to the British, but also renewed interest
in the half-forgotten legend of the Ciudad Encantada de los Cesares, the mythical
city sought by Spaniards throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Published in the Angelis collection was a 1707 captivity account of a Spanish sailor,
Silvestre Antonio de Rojas (Angelis 1969: 537-47), who testified he had seen the
enchanted city of the Cesares in his captivity. This eighteenth century account served
as the prototype for a nineteenth century succession of popular captivity narratives.
An American version, The Captive in Patagonia, or Life Among the Giants (Bourne
1853), was followed in England with the translation from the French in 1871 of
Auguste Guinnard's Three Years' Slavery Among the Patagonians and Musters's
1873 At Home With the Patagonians (1871). In 1879, a much degenerated ver-
sion, entitled Wanderings in Patagonia or Life Among the Ostrich Hunters, ap-
peared in Boston (Beerbohm). While the 1707 de Rojas account is a strictly
testimonial legal document, later captivity narratives emphasized the "unknown,"
"remote," "undiscovered" aspects of the region. Guinnard, for instance, went
so far as to claim "to be the only European who has yet penetrated so far into
the interior of Patagonia." These kinds of embellishments contributed to the
transformation of the travel account into a stylized, sensationalistic, literary form.
Economic exploitation and the development of foreign trade had directly con-
tributed to the development and standardization of a stylized form of travel ac-
counts. As interest and demand for information about Argentina increased, the
published travel narrative became a commodity in its own right. The objectifica-
tion of the form itself then colored the "objectivity" of the observations. This
commoditization tended to encourage sensationalistic and derivative narratives,
which manipulated content but nevertheless maintained legitimacy by adherence
to standardized form.
Once the form was commoditized, anything could happen with content. This
led to adventure stories of the "wild west" variety discussed above or, later, the
more personal autobiographies that began to appear in the twentieth century. For
instance, Hudson's early 1900s Long Ago and Far Away (1918) can be fitted into
the travel literature genre but clearly does not speak to any perceived need for
information, as with travel accounts a century earlier. Attempts at "objectivity"
have entirely yielded in the twentieth century to the self-consciously self-reflective
versions of travel accounts exemplified by Gerald Durrell's Whispering Land (1961),

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British Travel Accounts 201

or Paul Theroux's Old Patagonian Express (1979). Perhaps most indicative of this
shift is Bruce Chatwin's popular 1977 travel account, In Patagonia. Chatwin con
structs a personal image of the "uttermost part of the earth" by manipulating
disparate curiosities and anecdotes to describe Patagonia. His approach self-
consciously builds on the foundation laid by the nineteenth century travel account
in which the same approach aimed toward entirely different commercial ends.
While few scholars would accept at face value the comments and ethnographic
observations in these twentieth century travel accounts, this academic discretion
is sometimes lost in the use of nineteenth century travel accounts as ethnography
The early accounts reported on the Indians as distinct objects, independent of other
social or political phenomena ("Sheep Farming," "The Economy," "Sale and
Rent of Lands," "The Constitution," "The Indians," [from table of contents
of Hutchinson 1865]) and so the reader tends to accept the category at face value,
while perhaps questioning possible biases within the category. Underlying assump-
tions about the categories themselves often remain unexamined, and so any possibl
relations between "Sale and Rent of Lands" or "Sheep Farming" and "The In-
dians" are lost.

British Travel Accounts as Ethnohistoric Sources

Much as travel literature itself became categorized, objectified, and commodit

in the nineteenth century, descriptions in those accounts also categorized, obj
tified, and commoditized the observed. An overview and analysis of the tre
ment of "the Indian" in British travel accounts of Argentina illustrates the m
pernicious results of this tendency.
The 1744 Falkner account, with prefatory comments exhorting the benefits
trade and "the common interests of Great Britain and Spain," devoted nea
half of Description of Patagonia to description of "The Inhabitants . . . Th
Religion, Government, Policy, and Customs . . ." and "An Account of the
Language of the Inhabitants of These Countries" (Falkner 1935, table of con-
tents). Preceding subsequent ethnographic descriptions by nearly a century,
Falkner's narrative provides one of the earliest direct accounts of native societies
in the pampas. Note, however, that even this description is presented in the con-
text of an editorial argument for "extending the commerce and marine empire
of Great Britain," and "that any information concerning the geography, in-
habitants, and other particulars, of the most southern part of the American con-
tinent, might be of some public utility, and might also afford some amusement
to the curious" (ibid. i). Even this early interest in expanding commercial
possibilities motivated publication of Falkner's account, and the trend was to con-
tinue in the nineteenth century publications of travel narratives.
The prefatory remarks to Falkner's description clearly indicate a British view of
aboriginal peoples as potential trading partners. The political autonomy implicitly
granted "the inhabitants of these countries" in Falkner's account legitimized for
the British their freedom to trade and commerce in those regions. Not surprisingly,
Spain interpreted these pretensions to rights of trade as outright piracy according
to international law and intimations such as these moved the Spaniards to better
protect their colonies. One aim of the Bourbon reforms sought to better

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202 KRISTINE L. JONES

protect the American possessions from foreign intrusion with increased

fortifications along the coasts.
The use of the Falkner account for ethnographic detail, then, must acc
only for Falkner's goals as a missionary in writing the narrative but also
political uses for which the account was published-and for which it wa
and prefaced by a twenty-two page political treatise. The question is not
the Falkner account is biased, but how. Nor can the answer be found in
curacy" of the ethnographic observations, but rather it lies in the interpreti
of those observations. The careful and detailed description of political
tion and various enmities with Spanish settlers indicate a great deal about
views of tactical intelligence but not much about indigenous concepts of th
world. In fact, the account speaks more about England's expanding de
of "nations" as trading partners than about a theoretically pristine Indian
Once the Spanish trading monopoly ended, the investment potentials in
tina excited a demand for information in England, and the travel accoun
assumed a standard form. This form, of course, was not limited only to
of Argentina; rather, accounts of Argentina followed the standards set by li
describing all parts of the world in which British capitalism was expandin
teenth century British travel accounts of many developing regions in th
contributed in a demonstrable way to emerging concepts about a "third w
as a quick perusal in any major library catalogue under "travel and descri
for many countries indicates.
Following the standards of the genre, specific observations of Indian so
in Argentina gradually tended to place them in more general categories ("
distinct and separate from the specific sphere of social and economic rela
being described. Descriptions of the "natives" sounded very much like de
tions of "natives" in other parts of the world. In this way, "Indians" b
ahistorical categories, commodities to be described in narrative descrip
travel accounts. Hence, the descriptions sound more like accounts of othe
of the world and less specific to the actual situation in Argentina.
While the Falkner edition had presented the autonomous Patagonian "na
as potential allies in trade and commerce in the South Seas, a lapse of litt
a quarter of a century reversed this view in the political arena and in trav
counts. The inhabitants of the pampas signified little other than margina
ducers, political enemies manipulated by local caudillos, or allies used by t
of good, usually involving the British.
In his memoirs, the British general John Miller described how, in the in-
dependence movements, Pampas Indians enlisted against the Buenoes Aires in-
surgents. Note how the concept of the Indians as free nations has shifted to one
of political ally/enemy.
The Indians who were invited by Rodriguez to join in the war against us had an un-
conquerable hatred of the Portefios; and at the period in which we expected them
every day to fall upon us, a deputation of fourteen captains arrived in Rosario, sent
by the principal cacique to treat with Carrera. They told him, in the names of their
respective chiefs, of the very great rewards which Rodriguez had offered them for
their services; but declared they could never take part with their insidious enemies
the Portefios; and as to the rewards offered them, that they would sooner fight in
the company with brave men, independent of emolument, than they would in favor
of such cowards as they knew the Portenios to be, notwithstanding any gifts they might
offer. (Miller 1828: 153)

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British Travel Accounts 203

In this version, the Indians are coming to be seen as little more than political
pawns, with no apparant tactical motivation for their choice. Although this passage
does give some idea of indigenous political and military organization, it tells us
nothing about native perceptions of events.
Besides the notion of Indians as political pawns, another theme, of Indians as
specialized producers, appeared in the upsurge of travel accounts published after
1800. When the major seaports of South America opened to trade with the British,
and trade developed in these ports, travelers' accounts began to comment in detail
on native manufactures of possible interest to investors. Particular interest in the
possibilities of developing trade in furs and hides may even have stemmed from
British successes in the thriving and profitable fur trade with Indian tribes in North
America. For instance, Samuel Hull Wilcocke's 1807 description of native dress
lingers in detail on the advantages and disadvantages of different hides used.
They wear mantles of skins sewed together, sometimes the skins of young colts, which
are least esteemed; sometimes of otter or other skins; mostly, however, of guanaco-
skins, which are in great estimation on account of the warmth and fineness of the
wool, and their long duration; but those which are in the highest esteem are made
with the skins of small foxes, which are exceedingly soft and beautiful; the area of
a mottled grey colour, but are not so durable as those of the guanaco. (Wilcocke
1807: 449)

Not more than ten years after Argentine independence in 1810, export produc-
tion of hides, furs, and cattle by-products in Argentina depended entirely on the
market created and commanded by the British. By the 1820s, the peak of the first
wave of travel accounts and a time when British merchants had firm control over
the export economy, travel accounts commonly included descriptions of Indians
in Argentine markets not only for color but also to indicate the dynamism of the
market itself. Emeric Vidal in 1820 illustrated Pampas Indians who travelled directly
to Buenos Aires markets to sell leather goods and ostrich feathers. In their Let-
ters on South America: Comprising Travels on the Banks of the Parana and Rio
de la Plata, the Robertsons focused on the trade in hides when they mentioned
the Indians.

The Pampas Indians received in return from their agent or patron, as they called
him, their ponchos, knives, tobacco, a little white cloth, and a supply of spirits; then
off they marched in battle array to their favorite haunts. (Robertson and Robertson
1843: 271)

A sharp eye for commercial advantage prompted General Miller to note in his
memoirs, "[F]or the eight of a dollar's worth of Paraguay tea, six vizcacha skins
were bought: At Buenos Ayres the same articles would sell for three quarters of
a dollar" (Miller 1828: 153). Again, although these excerpts suggest dynamic in-
tercultural exchange, placing description of "the Indian" into fixed categories
obscures the importance or significance of these interactions. To read such ac-
counts, we must remember that they inform us not about Indian society, but about
the social and economic life of a complex intercultural frontier.
Even though political and economic conditons in Indian societies were to change
rapidly in the next two decades, travel accounts continued to portray Indians ac-
cording to these fixed categories. These categories allowed elaboration of motifs
convenient to a conquest ideology. For instance, Captain Fitzroy of HMS Beagle
railed about inconvenient manipulations of the pawns.

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204 KRISTINE L. JONES

At this moment the army of the United Province of the Rio de la Plata occupi
northern bank (of the Rio Negro), while the unfortunate and now harassed Ind
are endeavoring to keep possession of the southern side. A war of exterminatio
pears to be the object of the liberal and independent Creoles. ... It is a curious
that while Spanish held the country, these southern Indians were extremely well dis
towards the white intruders, and received them with the utmost hospitality. S
the Revolution (what a glorious sound) the most determined hostility has be
creasing. (in Stanbury, ed., 1977: 165)

In this case, sympathy lies with the non-allied Indians because of the enm
isting between the British and the United Provinces at that time.
Darwin also adhered to the "political pawn" theme, but cloaked it in t
of scientific observation of a natural phenomenon.
It was supposed that General Rosas had about six hundred Indian allies. The
were a full, fine race, yet it was afterwards easy to see in the Fuegian savage the s
countenance rendered hideous by cold, want of food, and less civilization. (1930

In other words, those Indians not available for political or military ad

nor producing objects of commercial interest, remained in that classic
of the other, the savage.5
Even though direct contact and interaction with Indian societies south o
Aires in the pampas and Patagonia increased throughout the 1840s and
the intractable indigenous societies resisted coercive integration into e
western economic and political spheres, and hence the idea of the "unc
Indian grew more prominent in travel accounts.
As a part of the same process, as more and more accounts of Patago
peared, the notion of an "unknown" and "unexplored" region grew st
The following excerpt from MacDouall's 1833 narrative illustrates a tone
ored most later accounts of the Patagonians.
Since these people have been known, they do not seem to have altered; wrappe
the guanacoe skin, and inured from infancy to privation, they range the deser
controlled; subservient to no law or will but their own, they undoubtedly poss
contentment and a delight in their native wilds inconceivable to the inhabitan
the civilized world. (p. 160-61)

Evidence to support the notion of the uncivilized nature of the Indians

on "savage" aspects of their actions. When stopping along the souther
north of the Rio Negro outlet passengers of HMS Beagle had occasion t
on the countenance of Indian prisoners (probably Tehuelche) held by Bue
soldiers. Captain Fitzroy noted
[O]n the other side, a group of almost naked Indian prisoners sat devouring th
mains of a half-roasted horse; and as they scowled at us savagely, still holding
large bones they had been gnawing, with their rough hair and scanty substitut
clothing blown about by the wind, I thought I had never beheld a more singular gr
(in Stanbury, ed., 1977: 83)

Darwin commented similarly on the same incident.

The Indians, whilst gnawing bones of beef, looked, as they are, half re-called b
No painter ever imagined so wild a set of expressions. (Ibid.)

The apparent equation of savagery with lack of proper British table m

also evident in MacDouall's description of a Patagonian (also prob
Tehuelche) feast.

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British Travel Accounts 205

They were all, and at the same time, equally busy about the fire, each turning and
roasting his individual portion. The greater part, when the flesh was sufficiently
blackened, withdrew it from the fire and sank their well-arranged teeth into it, gnawing,
or rather tearing off, some good mouthfuls. . . . (1833: 163)

Following the two decade hiatus in British trade with Argentina, these same
categories (political pawn, market specialist, uncivilized savage) appeared in the
revived production of travel accounts. When the renewed trading relations be-
tween Argentina and England (following Rosa's demise) stimulated publication
of travel accounts about that country once again, the new wave of narratives
perpetuated and elaborated the notion of the (uncivilized) Indian as ahistorical
object. Even though intensified British presence in Argentina allowed travelers
greater access to interaction and familiarity with Indian society, rote categorical
descriptions in these later accounts show little attention to contemporary relations
between "the Indian" and the rest of the intercultural society of the southern Argen-
tine frontier. Standard "Indian Life" passages can be found in most travel ac-
counts published in the 1850s and 1860s.
While the category of Indian as political pawn continued, the image was changing
from the relatively straightforward descriptions of military incidents such as General
Miller described to a more ominous image in the last part of the century. For in-
stance, Colonel J. Anthony King's account of his personal adventures in Twenty-
four Years in the Argentine Republic, published in 1846, described "The Depreda-
tions of the Pampas" carried out in 1829.

The Indians, known as Pampas, had entered many of the (Cordoban) villages in hordes,
committing murders, driving the people from their homes, destroying their prop-
erty, and, in numerous instances, burning their houses. From the systematic manner
and the impunity with which they performed their work, taking prisoners and carry-
ing them through the very towns which had proclaimed for Rosas (who had recently
become conspicuous), it seemed more than possible that these terrible scenes were
enacted by his connivance, or even by his direction. (1846: 224)

While travel accounts of Indians published in the first two decades of the nine-
teenth century painted a much more benign picture of Indians as political pawns,
little more than dumb accomplices in the notorious inter-provincial struggles, the
accounts published in the latter half of that century drew much more
threatening conclusions.
William MacCann's account of his Two Thousand Miles' Ride Through the
Argentine Provinces (1853) detailed frontier life as it was more than two decades
after the incident described by King, yet his portrayal shows none of the insight
into political motivations of Indian actions hinted at by King. Instead, a stark,
menacing image transforms the category of the Indian as political pawn into a
new and ominous image.

The frontier (San Nicolas) is at no greater distance than about twenty leagues; beyond
which there is a vast and unexplored territory possessed by Indians, whose villages,
however, are so remote as to be little known to Spaniards.... About two years ago
a large body of Indians made an assault upon the pasture lands of these parts, sweeping
away a great quantity of cattle and horses. (p. 18)

MacCann's description of these "remote," "little known" Indians, written nearly

a century after Falkner's account, and several decades after important commer-
cial relations with the Indians had been established and broken, indicates not so

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206 KRISTINE L. JONES

much an ethnographic void as an emerging interpretation that posited the

as menace and obstacle to commerce.

About two months previously, a party of retreating Indians fell in with a caravan
of merchandize coming from Mendoza, when they drove off 290 bullocks, 48 mules,
70 horses, and robbed two merchants of 800 doubloons (2,500). (Ibid. 21)

While earlier "depredations" had been interpreted as political maneuvering

the concept of Indian as obstacle now was firmly established in a stark
conquest ideology.
This is not to suggest that the images of the Indian were not manipulated without
reference to reality. Indeed, the intercultural dynamics in this frontier region by
the mid-1850s had degenerated into outright warfare-and warfare in which the
majority of the pampean and patagonian societies were pitted in direct conflict
with expanding western society. Travel accounts, however, by adhering to form
in descriptions of a stylized, ahistorical, objectified "Indian," did not record chang-
ing social dynamics, but rather reflected these changes in increasingly harsh images.
Sensationalistic pulp novels played with this new category of "Indian menace,"
reinforcing racist ideas and concepts about the "Patagonian Savages." Examples
of particularly bloody indigenous ceremonies, extracted from any social context,
illustrated the theme. The equation of "savagery" with horse flesh still persisted,
with some range in exploiting the theme. George Musters's sympathetic feelings
for the Indians with whom he traveled caused him to rationalize his participation
in such aberrant behavior.

Previous to this I had felt a sort of repugnance to eating horse, as perhaps most
Englishmen ... have; but hunger overcame all scruples, and I soon acquired a taste
for this meat. (1873: 80)

Bourne's popularized American adventure, published in Boston, most clearly

demonstrates the manipulation of images to conform to the idea of savagery.
I learned, on inquiry, that a horse was to be killed; a matter which, it appeared, was
always the occasion of a solemn powwow. On reaching the spot, the poor old beast,
lean and lank, with a lariat about his neck, stood surrounded by some fifty Indians.
The squaws were singing, in stentorian tones, "Ye! Ye! Yup! Yup! Lar, lapuly, yapuly!"
with a repetition that became unendurable, and drove me to a respectful distance.
The horse's fore-legs were fast bound together, a violent push forward threw him
heavily to the ground, and he was speedily despatched with a knife .... Soon after
my return to the wigwam, a huge portion of the carcass was sent to our quarters
and hung up, to furnish our meals! After being duly dressed by the women ... it
was served up-my only alternative to starvation. Famine has no scruples of delicacy;
if the reader is disgusted, he is in a state of sympathy with the writer. (1853: 102)

Even Guinnard's narrative of his Three Years' Slavery Among the Patagonians,
a classic ethnographic source, portrays the traditional ceremony as revolting.
These savages slaughter and cut up a horse. ... In less than ten minutes all this is
done, and numerous spectators, seated on the very spot, are devouring with ferocious
avidity hot livers, hearts, lungs, and raw kidneys, dipped in blood, which they after-
wards drink. (1871: 184)

Of these accounts of the infamous blood drinkers of Patagonia, Musters's is the

only one to suggest "this saving the blood (which was secured in pots) to be cooked,
(was) considered a great delicacy" (1873: 81).

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British Travel Accounts 207

However much that delicacy may have resembled English blood pudding, the
only available interpretation in the context of capitalist expansion was one of con-
quest over savagery. When the Argentine nation celebrated a military victory over
the indios salvajes in 1880, British capital investment immediately expanded into
the "conquered desert."

Concluding Remarks

The travel account, by stylistic convention, placed description of Indians into

categories independent of any historical context. This objectification of Indians
as a category then permitted interpretation of the category according to conven-
ient ideology, be it "sovereign nations" suitable for trade, "market specialists"
providing access to raw materials for trade, "political pawns" in the struggle over
control of that trade, or "uncivilized obstacles to progress" in the modernization
of production for trade. The categories evident in nineteenth century British travel
accounts reflect evolving political attitudes about Indians much more than they
document social life as actually lived by indigenous people. Because the categories
of "Indianness" in the travel literature deny any legitimacy to actions taken by
the individuals described, interpretation of these works as historical sources must
first interpret the categories. The descriptions in travel accounts document not
only specific ethnographic details at specific dates, but also reflect a developing
western conquest ideology for Argentina.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Hector Lindo Fuentes and Enrique Mayer for useful criticism and discus-
sion. I also thank Megan McLaughlin, who offered careful, critical, and time-consuming
editorial assistance.

Notes

1. See "Conflict and Adaptation in the Argentine Pampas 1750-1880" (Jones 1984)
for historical analysis from this perspective.
2. Such a broad statement invites some discussion. Ethnohistory has published much
of the work that represents these new directions, particularly for North American
history. Historians of Colonial America have been forced to reappraise early American
history in light of careful ethnohistorical research, which, moving beyond the old
images, shows the very important role of Native Americans in the development of
the American colonies. Although the historiography of the National period of United
States history has been less influenced by this trend, studies of nineteenth century
western expansion are beginning to recognize the importance of Native Americans
in the dynamism of that process, which conquest ideologies successfully obscured.
In the historiography of Latin America, study of "the Indians," especially those
of the Andean and Mesoamerican regions, has long been standard. Only recently,
however, have historians looked more closely at the distinction between a standard
image of "the Indian" in Latin America and an actual intercultural socio-political
arena which contributed to the unique historical developments of particular regions.

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208 KRISTINE L. JONES

A review of comparable theoretical and methodological approaches for No

South American ethnohistory might begin with the bibliographic essays of
(1978) and Salomon (1982).
3. See Keen (1969: 703-21) and Hanke (1971: 112-27) for scholarly discussion
Black Legend.
4. An exhaustive bibliographic review of all British travel accounts of Argenti
the intent of this paper; however, the following bibliographic "cross-tab" d
count for the majority of published travel accounts of Argentina.

Published Between Number

1800 and 1820 2

1821 and 1835 12
1836 and 1850 6
1851 and 1880 14

5. The classical idea of the "savage" literally derives from classical philosophy.
Dickason's discussion of "L'Homme Sauvage" reviews recent studies of the "Noble
Savage." Her introductory comments indicate the complexity of the issue.
Such achievements as the city states of Mexico, Central America, or Peru were either
overlooked or else were dismissed as being, at best, barbarous. An examination of the
concept of savagery reveals that its origin is both more complex and far older than such
a view would indicate. In fact, it involved the well-known Renaissance folkloric figure
of the Wild Man; early Christian perceptions of monkeys, apes, and baboons; and the
classical Greek and Roman tradition of the noble savage. (1984: 63)

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Submitted 26 October 1984

Accepted 17 May 1985
Final revisions received 1 January 1986

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