The Bugles Sounded The Attack

The massacres of Indians that began with Columbus never stopped. In Uruguay and Argentine Patagonia they were exterminated during the last century by troops that hunted them down and penned them in forests or in the desert so that they might not disturb the organized advance of cattle latifundia. The last of the Charruas, who lived by raising bulls in the wild pampas of northern Uruguay, were betrayed in 1832 by President Jose Fructuoso Rivera. Removed from the bush that gave them protection, deprived of horses and arms by false promises of friendship, they were overwhelmed at a place called Boca del Tigre. "The bugles sounded the attack," wrote Eduardo Acevedo Diaz in La Epoca (August 19, 1890). "The horde churned about desperately, one after the other of its young braves falling like bulls pierced in the neck." Many chiefs were killed. The few Indians who could break through the circle of fire took vengeance soon afterward. Pursued by Rivera's brother, they laid an ambush and riddled him and his soldiers with spears. The chief Sepe "had the tip of his spear adorned with some tendons from the corpse." In Argentine, Patagonia soldiers drew pay for each pair of testicles they brought in.