Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [48]
—BEAGLE DIARY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1832
THE NORTHERN INDIANS OF ARGENTINA, to Darwin’s European eyes, weren’t savages. But they were dangerous, especially for wandering collectors, because while Darwin was traveling through, Argentina was in the process of a genocidal campaign of eradication led by the capable General Juan Manuel de Rosas. The general was forty years old and had spent a lifetime accumulating land and power across the Argentine plains. “He will be a Catholic and a military man,” his father told the chaplain at his baptism, and this prophecy proved eerily accurate—though not, likely, in the manner intended. Rosas expanded his ranching empire through a series of savvy business ventures, and he exercised rigid control over his workers—Argentine biographer Pacho O’Donnell suggests Rosas had a deep-seated fear of anarchy—whom he then recruited into militias. His courage and discipline inspired ferocious loyalty in his followers, and in 1829 he became governor of Buenos Aires. In 1833, no longer governor but still powerful, he set off to conquer the indigenous people of Argentina. The fighting was shockingly bloody and brutal, inspired on the Argentine side by a manifest destiny-like belief that the land was needed for white settlers and cattle ranches. The Indians, a roughly unified alliance of major tribes from across southern Argentina and Chile, fought a guerilla campaign out of the Andean foothills.
Darwin observed the ensuing wars firsthand. In August 1833, a few months after his first Tierra del Fuego trip, Darwin had the Beagle drop him off in Northern Patagonia, in a town called Patagones, where Rosas had secured a coastal strip that made it safe for Darwin to travel overland without fear of an Indian attack. Rosas himself had set up camp on the banks of the Colorado River, eighty-five miles north of Patagones. Darwin determined to visit the camp and then make his way overland to Buenos Aires. While the Beagle worked its way up the coast toward the port town of Bahia Blanca, Darwin recruited horses and a guide to take him north, into the pampas. To his good fortune, bad weather delayed the trip and allowed five gauchos to join the party. The benefit wasn’t just protection. Darwin would get the full gaucho experience, and he would later be quite proud of himself for living the free-roaming, red meat and open country lifestyle.
On the first night, one of the gauchos spotted a wandering cow, and soon a barbecue was being prepared. “We here had the four necessaries for life ‘en el campo’,” Darwin wrote. “Pasture for the horses, water (only a muddy puddle)—meat—& fire wood. The gauchos were in high spirits at finding all these luxuries, & we soon set to work at the poor cow.”
Darwin and his new friends shared the meat, spread their saddles on the ground, and went to sleep under the open sky—true cowboy style, and a mode of traveling that stirred something in the English naturalist. “There is high enjoyment in the independence of the Gaucho life,” he recorded, “to be able at any moment to pull up your horse and say here we will pass the night. The death-like stillness of the plain, the dogs keeping watch, the gipsy-group of Gauchos making their beds around the fire, has left in my mind a strongly marked picture of this first night, which will not soon be forgotten.” It was a sentiment he would express often in the next few years.
Two days later, Darwin arrived at General Rosas’ encampment. On August 15, the great leader sent Darwin a message: He would be happy to meet the English naturalist.
“General Rosas is a man of an extraordinary character,” Darwin noted in his journal. “He has at present a most predominant influence in this country & probably may end by being its ruler.” In earlier editions of the published account, Darwin added, “which it seems he will use to its prosperity and advancement.” A small footnote appears in the 1845 edition: “This prophecy