“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

system frequently extend out into the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean for hundreds of
miles.
Plains and rolling grasslands link the majority of this river system together.
Particularly along the Uruguay as it winds north and gradually east to São Borja, numerous
dry washes – or arroyos – break up the gently undulating landscape. The region possessed
little mineral wealth. But what the well-watered plains did have were ideal soils for pasturing
animals. Following their initial introduction by the first European settlers, wild cattle and
horse herds rapidly spread across the grasslands. The vast emptiness of the pasturelands
until well into 18 th century further facilitated the spread of feral cattle. Only small groups of
Indians occupied the plains for hundreds of miles between the Río de la Plata estuary and
the distant Atlantic highlands along the southern fringes of Portuguese Brazil. On the
eastern banks of the Uruguay, sparse groups of nomadic Charruan and Minuan Indians,
numbering only in the hundreds, were scattered over a vast territory roughly the size of the
U.S. state of Washington. A larger population of Indians resided in what is today the
Argentine Littoral, but their numbers remained miniscule in comparison to the vast
civilizations in the Andean and Mexican highlands or even indigenous settlements in the
eastern half of North America. 5
Only the Guaraní to the north had developed large, sedentary societies that captured
European attention. The few Europeans to settle in the region gravitated towards these
Guaraní settlements in Paraguay. There, they created a rudimentary economy based on the
expropriation of indigenous agricultural surpluses and the harvest of yerba mate, a bitter tea,
for export. Towards the end of the 16 th century, the Jesuit Order likewise established itself
5 Jorge Gelman, Campesinos y Estancieros: Una Region del Rio de la Plata a Fines de la Epoca
Colonial (Buenos Aires: Editorial Los Libros del Riel, 1998), 36-37.
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