Discovery and Colonization, 1492-1810
The Spanish conquistadores encountered high civilizations in the New World in the area of present-day Mexico and in the Andean region. At the time of the Spaniards' arrival in the sixteenth century, the territory of present-day Argentina was inhabited by native populations that lacked the sophistication of the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas. In areas of northwestern Argentina, however, the ruins of stone buildings attest to the former presence of more sedentary groups that were under Inca influence. Because of the difficulties of classifying all Argentine native peoples according to linguistic and anthropological characteristics, most scholars have agreed upon a classification based on their geographic distribution.
The extinct Diaguitas, or Calchaquians, were native warriors who inhabited the mountains of the Argentine Northwest (present-day provinces of Jujuy, Catamarca, Tucumán, La Rioja, and Salta), a region characterized by its arid climate. They were organized in tribes under the control of a chief. Their dwellings, which were made of stones piled without mortar to secure them in place, were located in densely populated villages. Agriculture and the manufacture of pottery were primary occupations, and their diet consisted of maize, peas, gourds, and native fruits.
The Matacos-Mataguayos, Chorotes, GuaycuriIes, and Chiriguanos were the most important tribes that inhibited Argentina's Gran Chaco forests (in the present-day provinces of Chaco, Formosa, Santiago del Estero, northern Cordoba, and northern Santa Fe). They were nomadic fishermen and hunters whose main activity was textile manufacturing. They also built canoes from the trunks of trees and knew how to produce fire by rubbing together two pieces of wood. The most important tribes of the Littoral (the 500-kilometer urban corridor stretching along the western banks of the RIo Paraná and the RIo de la Plata) and Mesopotamia (presentday provinces of Misiones, Entre RIos, and Corrientes) were the now extinct Timbües, Cainguas, Mocoretas, Charrñas, and Agaces.
Like the Gran Chaco tribes, their main activity was textile manufacturing. The Charrüas were nomadic peoples who built their artifacts from stones and bones and who survived by fishing and hunting. The Cainguás were a sedentary group that occupied the Misiones territory in colonial times. The most technologically advanced native tribes — the QuerandIes, the Puicheans, and the Araucanians — occupied the region of the pampas (present-day provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, southern Córdoba, and southern Santa Fe). After the Diaguitas, the Araucanians were the most advanced people in preconquest Argentina. Originally confined to part of the province of Mendoza and to the area of the RIo Neuquén, they advanced to the eastern plains after the destruction of the Querandles and Pulcheans. Their weapons were the lance and the bola, and they traded with other tribes in cloth, hides, and ostrich plumes.
The region of Patagonia took its name from the peoples who inhabited the southern portion of the country before the arrival of the Spaniards. These were nomadic tribes that hunted wild guanacos and ostriches and whose industries were linked mainly to the preparation of pelts and the manufacture of stone artifacts such as knives, drills, and balls. After the initial Spanish attempts to penetrate Patagonia and the introduction of the horse, they improved their hunting techniques by riding on horseback and by immobilizing their prey with bolas. Farther south, the people of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, because of their isolation and proximity to the sea, were nomadic canoers who explored the coasts of the region.
The discovery of the New World was the culmination of a series of important developments in European history that were taking place in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Voyagers and missionaries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had already described the wealth and beauty of distant lands to the east. These travel accounts kept Europeans full of curiosity and, with the advent of new navigational technology, ready to expand the geographical limits of their known world.
In Spain the fall of the city of Granada in 1492 marked the end of almost eight centuries of Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula and led to the release of large contingents of men previously engaged in the Wars of Reconquest. The combination of available manpower and technology led to an expansionist movement beyond Spain's European frontiers at a time when land and sea routes to the east had been cut after the fall of Byzantine Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Empire.
The first achievement in this direction was the discovery of the Americas in 1492 by Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo in Italian, Cristobal Colon in Spanish). Columbus sailed west in search of the rich "Spice Islands," and his initial assumption that he had landed on the eastern shores of Asia led to the misnaming of the new islands as the Indies and its natives as Indians.
Early territorial disputes between Spain and Portugal over the new lands to the west yet to be discovered were settled through the arbitration of Pope Alexander VI. The papal bull Inter Caetera of 1493 granted Spain exclusive rights over all newly discovered lands 100 leagues (approximately 870 kilometers) to the west of the Cape Verde Islands not yet occupied by a Roman Catholic prince. But Portuguese claims led to further arbitration and the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 between Spain and Portugal, which moved the north-south line of demarcation to 370 leagues (approximately 2,350 kilometers) west of the Cape Verde Islands. According to the terms of the treaty, all lands east of the line were to belong to Portugal, west of it, to Spain.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
