CHAPTER IICHILEAN HISTORY

Inca Rule and Native Chiefs.—Spanish Colonial Period.—The Fight for Independence.—Republican Chile.

Neither in her deep woodlands nor upon her open plains does Chile possess monuments of ancient civilisation. The foundations of her flourishing cities date back no farther than 400 years at the most; the arts and crafts of daily life are based upon imported concepts, owning no native origin. As a settled, built, cultivated country, Chile is for the main part genuinely new.

The old races of the south, whether nomad hunters of the interior or fisherfolk of the coast and Magellanic waterways, built no towns, constructed and carved nothing that serves today as a memorial; bones hidden in caves, chipped spear and arrow heads, harpoons and fish-hooks, remain as the only evidence of the life of past generations, the only witnesses by which the condition of their present descendants can be measured. Farther north, where Inca culture penetrated, are such ruins of dwellings as those of Calama, with their burial sites. Traces of the Inca highways are yet to be found as far south as the Atacama desert and Copiapó. But in contrast with the archæological wealth of Bolivia and Peru, of Central America and Mexico, Chile has not a single pre-Spanish temple nor the rudest monolith to show. The north and central valley of Chile as far as the present Talca were under Inca control for aboutone hundred years before the Spanish conquest, Peruvian records yielding the only historical accounts of events in Chile prior to Almagro’s expedition.

A friendly connection between the Peruvian empire and the settled tribes of the Chilean north seems to have been of old standing, a tradition confirmed by the evidence of burial grounds. Upon the authority of the historian Montesinos, the Inca Yahuar Huaccac gave a daughter and a niece in marriage to two chiefs of Chile; these two princesses came later, with their children, to visit Peru, their uncle Viracocha being then Inca. A revolt took place during their absence, and the family was only reinstated by the might of the Inca, and under his tutelage. It was, however, the Inca Pachacuti who began the definite explorations and conquests that, continued by his son Tupac Yupanqui and his grandson Huayna Ccapac, increased the Inca dominion to a great empire extending from the Ancasmayu River, north of Quito, to the banks of the Maule in Chile.

Tupac Yupanqui (1439–75) conquered the Antis,[2]people of the Collao, and from Charcas decided to go farther south. He entered Chile, defeated the powerful Sinchi (chieftain) Michimalongo and later Tangalongo, the latter ruling country down to the Maule. Here the same fierce tribes who afterwards resisted the finest Spanish troops opposed him, and after setting up frontier columns, or walls, as a mark of conquest on the river banks, the Inca returned to Cuzco via Coquimbo. From this time Chile was officially organised. Quechua-speaking colonists (mitimaes) were sent here as throughout all the rest of the thousand leagues of Inca territory, registering the population and imposing tributes ofcountry produce. Curacas were instituted as tribal leaders in lieu of the Sinchis, who were in old Chile obeyed only in wartime. Extension of this definite organisation was energetically carried on by the great Inca, Huayna Ccapac, and it was during this period that the Peruvians constructed the great roads that so astonished, and aided, the Spaniards. The effective transport system and the success of the Inca rulers in pacifying districts by the simple method of transporting the original population where disaffection was suspected, replacing them with settlers from a distance, the whole meticulous paternalism of the Inca system, regulating every part of the social frame from the cradle to the grave so thoroughly that initiative was stifled, rendered easy the task of the invading European. He did no more than step into Inca shoes, and the Inca’s subjects received the change of masters almost with apathy.

2. From which name the word Andes, in whose lower folds the Antis dwelt, was probably derived.

That careful observer Cieza de Leon, in Peru from 1532–50, leaves a precise account of the Inca roads that ran south from Cuzco both along the sierras and also throughout the coastal border. The highways were made, he says, fifteen feet wide in the valleys, with a strong wall on either side, the whole space being paved with cement and shaded with trees. “These trees, in many places, spread their branches, laden with fruit, over the road and many birds fluttered among the leaves.” Resthouses containing provisions for the Inca officials and troops were built at regular intervals, and it was strictly forbidden that Peruvians should interfere with the property of natives in nearby fields or houses.

In deserts where the sand drifted high, and paving was useless, huge posts were driven in to mark the way. Zarate, who gives the width of the roads as 40 feet,says that “broad embankments were made on either side,” and all early travellers in Inca territory agree that these lost highways were extremely well made. He adds that the posts in the desert were connected with stout cords, but that even in his day the Spaniards had destroyed many of the posts, using them for making fires. The road of the coast, like that of the sierra, was 1500 miles long; and of Chilean traces any traveller through the Atacama copper regions may see a survival at the station of “Camino del Inca,” where the modern railway cuts across the ancient road.

Along the Sierra highway came, in 1535, the first Spaniard to set foot in Chile, Diego de Almagro. He was not the first European to explore Chilean territory, for the Portuguese Fernão de Magalhães had discovered the Strait bearing his name in 1520; but he was the pioneer explorer by land. The name Chile is a native word which was probably the appellation of a (pre-Spanish) local chief; it was the name by which the Incas designated that part of the country under their control, and it persisted in spite of Valdivia’s later attempt to call it “Nueva Estramadura,” just as “Mejico” and “Cuba” survived and “Nueva España” and “Española” faded out. It has been frequently but mistakenly said that the word Chile actually does mean “chilly” in the Quechua tongue; as a matter of fact the Quechua word meaning “cold” ischiri. In early Spanish times the name Chile applied only to part of the central valley with “Copayapu” in the extreme north, “Coquimpu” just below it, and the central region partly ascribed to “Canconicagua.” But the name Chile was simple and was so quickly adopted that Almagro’s adherents were soon politically grouped as “los de Chile”—the men of Chile, and when the country was definitely colonised the name was extendedto denote all the settled country south of Peru, that is, between Copiapó and Chiloé Island.

The original spur to conquest of Chile was rivalry between the Pizarro brothers and their fellow conquistador, the old Adelantado Diego de Almagro. The Pizarros wanted to retain rich Cuzco, and Almagro was an inconvenient claimant; the magnificent city of the Incas, today a grievous sight with its shabby modern buildings superimposed upon the stately stone walls of the Incas, was already a smashed and looted ruin; but it had yielded so much treasure that it was probably impossible for the conquistadores to give up search for other golden cities. Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and the Chibcha Kingdom, had followed in rapid succession, and it is not surprising that when Indians spoke of the riches of the south, Almagro, over seventy years old, should be ready to march into Chile. Almagro had a commission from Charles V to conquer and rule over 200 leagues of land south of Francisco Pizarro’s territory (New Castille); it was to be called Nueva Toledo. At about the same time, 1534, a grant was given to the ill-fated Alcazaba of 300 leagues of land, commencing at the southern boundary of Almagro’s territory, under the name of Nueva Leon.

Almagro set out with over 500 Spaniards and 15,000 Peruvian Indians, after spending 500,000 pesos on equipment. He marched south from Cuzco, crossed the Andes and went by Titicaca Lake, following the Inca route; perhaps as a guide and a means of securing the loyal service of the Peruvians, who would never desert a member of their ruling clan, the Spanish leader took with him an Inca priest and the young Paullu Tupac Yupanqui, son of the Huayna Ccapac and brother of the Inca Manco. The latter had been crowned inCuzco in early 1534 by Pizarro, probably with the double object of quieting Peru and to obviate charges made by his personal enemies in Spain. Both Charles V and the Pope emphasised their possession of tender consciences with regard to native American rulers. This young scion of the Incas survived the expedition into Chile, and was with Almagro’s son at the battle of Chupas.

Terrible sufferings were experienced by the expedition in the bitterly cold Andes, where deep snow and cruel winds killed the Peruvians by thousands. Many of the Spanish soldiers too were frozen to death, and food supplies failed. When at last they turned west an advance party of horsemen went ahead to bring food, cheerfully yielded by the settled natives, to their starving and exhausted comrades. Arriving in the green Copiapó valley, Almagro was well received at first, but pressing his search for gold to extremes, quarrels arose, the natives were “punished,” and Almagro moved on, after receiving reinforcements brought by Orgoñez. A strong party was sent forward to report on southerly conditions, and marched as far as the Rio Claro (tributary of the Maule) where savage Indians confronted the outposts of the old Inca empire. When Almagro heard this report, and realised that neither treasures of gold nor rich cities existed, he decided to return to Cuzco, making his way back by the coastal road and traversing the scorching, waterless deserts of Atacama and Tarapacá. At his arrival in Arequipa at the end of 1536 he had lost 10,000 Indians and 156 Spaniards. The rest of Almagro’s story—the news of the Peruvian revolt, his seizure of Cuzco, and his execution at the age of seventy-five by Hernando Pizarro, when fortune finally deserted him—belongs to the history of Peru. The fact that a man had made the Chilean journeywith Almagro was considered, later on, as a claim upon royal consideration. The petition of Diego de Pantoja, in 1561, makes this point, while that of Encinas, 1558, is even more emphatic in speaking of the sufferings of the soldiers; he went south, he says, with Captain Gomez de Alvarado, fighting Indians of the “Picones, Pomamaucaes, Maule and Itata” and traversing painfully “snow and water, swamps, creeks, crossing rivers by swimming or on rafts” and with no food but wild herbs. For the moment the efforts of the Europeans were without result; during another two years Chile remained in the hands of her native rulers.

There was no actual conquest of Chile by the Spaniards. Those native tribes which had submitted to the Inca régime accepted the Europeans: they who had defied the Inca continued to defy the Spanish.

There were angry outbursts on the part of certain northern and central tribes when the Spaniards returned in force in 1540, but when these had been overcome and peace made, the Indians remained consistently loyal. The “Changos” of the coastal border took up a permanent position as friends just as the Mapuches (“Araucanians”) took up a permanent position as enemies. The Spanish settled Chile, organised a social system, built cities and defences, cultivated the ground, brought in blood and culture, created a nation; but South Chile was never a conquered country in the same sense that Mexico and Peru were conquered countries.

The next attempt to plant the Spanish flag in Chile following the abortive expedition of Almagro was well planned and successful. Captain Pedro de Valdivia, thirty-five years old, a campmaster of HernandoPizarro, and a man of formed and resolute character, wanted to increase his fortune, consisting of an estate near Cuzco. He obtained without difficulty from Francisco Pizarro a commission to open up Chile, a land of poor repute since the return of Almagro; his appointment was that of Lieutenant Governor. His chief difficulty was in raising men, for as he says in a letter written in 1545 to Charles V, those who turned most from the project were the soldiers who had accompanied Almagro on the first unfortunate journey, when 1,500,000 pesos were spent “with, as the only fruit, the redoubled defiance of the Indians.”

He set out at the beginning of 1540, however, with nearly 200 Spaniards and 1000 Peruvian Indians, and avoiding the Andes traversed the coastal deserts, arriving in the valley of the Mapocho at the end of the same year. On the eve of departure a blow to his hopes threatened in the arrival of Sanchez de la Hoz, armed with a royal commission for the settlement of Chile; but Valdivia, equal to the occasion, induced his rival to provide a couple of ships, equip a force with fifty horses, supplies, arms, etc., and agreed to meet him at a small port just north of the Atacama desert. The appointment was kept, but as soon as the new arrival went ashore Valdivia arrested him, made him sign a renunciation of his claims to leadership and henceforth obliged him to serve as a common soldier. Eventually Sanchez de la Hoz joined a conspiracy against Valdivia, was discovered, and was beheaded in Santiago de Chile.

In February, 1541, Valdivia founded Santiago “de Nueva Estremadura,” Valdivia naming his province after Estremadura in Spain, where he was born in the town of La Serena. The colony had a hard struggle for existence, the Indians attacking the fortifications of Santa Lucia hill, where the settlers built the first housesof wood and thatched grass; in the letter mentioned above Valdivia says that the third year of the colony was not so difficult, but that during the first two years they had passed through great necessities. They ate roots, having no meat, and the man who obtained fifty grains of maize each day counted himself fortunate. He says also that they got a little gold, and gives Chile the first praises, so often repeated subsequently, for its enchanting climate. For people who want to settle permanently, there is no better land in the world than Chile, he declares; there is good level land, very healthy and pleasing, and the winter lasts but four months. In summer the climate is delicious, and men are able to walk without danger in the sunshine. The fields give abundant returns, and cattle thrive.

Live stock, in fact, throve so well that within twenty-five years of the settlement the Indians of the south possessed flocks and herds, and, learning from the Europeans, went mounted on horseback into battle.

Needing men and supplies, early in 1543 Valdivia sent six Spaniards by land to Peru. Captured by Copiapó Indians, the Captain Monroy and a soldier named Miranda escaped by an act of treachery against a friendly Indian woman, and arrived safely in Cuzco after a terrible journey through the deserts. But, to cajole Peru into giving help, Valdivia had sent them with stirrups and bits made of gold, a display so successful that by the end of the year sixty new settlers and a ship with stores reached Chile, followed by captains Villagra and Escobar with 300 more men. Valdivia was determined to overcome the south, and set out with 200 men by land while a ship followed along the coast. The Indians rose behind him, burnt his embryo shipbuilding yard at Concon (mouth of the Aconcagua River), trapped and killed his gold-miners at Quillota,and besieged the little settlement of Santiago. It was here that Inez Suarez, who had followed Valdivia from Cuzco, rendered her name immortal by her active defence of the fort; tradition says that she cut off with her own hands the heads of six Indian chieftain prisoners and threw them over the palisades to intimidate the attackers. Valdivia returned, from the Maule, where he had received a check, and re-established his colony. He had founded La Serena as a check on the northern Indians and a post on the road to Cuzco, in 1544, but saw that stronger assistance was needed to colonise and hold Chile, and returned to Peru for more help in 1547. The country was in civil war, with Gonzalo Pizarro ranged against Gasca, President of the Audience of Peru. Valdivia adopted the royal appointee’s side, was an invaluable aid with his experience of Indian wars, and helped turn the scale, taking the old Pizarro supporter, Carbajal, prisoner. He got his reward when he received formal appointment as Governor of Chile, in 1548. With a large force of well-equipped men he started out anew, was stopped on the Atacama border with orders to return to stand a trial on certain technical charges, was acquitted, set out again, and reached Santiago in April, 1549. He found that the Serena settlement had been destroyed, rebuilt it, and made an agreement of peace with the northern Indians that was never again broken.

With the central and northern colonies secure, Valdivia turned his face south again, prepared a strong expedition and set out in January, 1550. He was checked at the Bio-Bio River, fought for a year in that region, attempting a settlement at Talcahuano, and built a constantly attacked fort at Concepción, where the present Penco stands on a beautiful curve of coast. In February, 1551, he went on, leaving fifty men inPenco; founded Imperial, leaving forty men in a fort, and in early 1552 reached the banks of the Callacalla River and founded Valdivia City, 1552. His next step was to create a chain of forts—Arauco, on the sea; Villarica, on the edge of Lake Lauquen; Osorno, opposite Chiloé Island some eighty miles inland; Tucapel, Puren, and Angol, “la Ciudad de los Infantes de Chile,” between Tucapel and the sea.

The fierce Araucanian Indians determined to destroy every settlement of the invader, and, themselves hardy nomads, were well fitted for the work of continual attack. The leaders Caupolican and the young Lautaro—the latter trained in Spanish ways and speech during some years of service as a groom of Valdivia’s—rose up, organised their people, adopting certain Spanish military methods, and began a series of relentless and systematic raids of destruction. Upon both sides, savage cruelties were practised, and from this time began to date the deliberate seizure of white women and children by the Indians. The courage with which many Spanish wives accompanied their husbands did not save them from the huts of the wild natives, and the children borne in course of time of Indian fathers by European mothers were so numerous that certain tribes became noted for their fair skins, pink cheeks and blue eyes.

In 1553, in attempting to stem the tide of Araucanian attacks on the frail forts, of which Tucapel and Arauco had already fallen, Pedro de Valdivia’s forces were overwhelmed by Lautaro and the Governor was made prisoner and barbarously executed. He was then fifty-six years of age. His policy in trying to establish settlements in the heart of Araucanian territory was not justified by the necessities of his colonists, who had more land than they could use in the fine central region.But he was impelled by false stories of gold to be found in the south, by hope of extending the territory under his jurisdiction for the Spanish crown, and no doubt also held the belief, based upon former experiences, that definite submission of the South American natives could be commanded by vigorous action. This idea had been proved correct with regard to all settled districts, but it did not apply to the elusive Mapuches. Nevertheless it was persisted in for a long time, costing a river of Spanish blood and an immense treasure in Spanish gold.

Flushed with success after the death of Valdivia, the Indians attacked all the forts simultaneously; Concepción was twice ruined and restored, in 1554 and 1555, and again smashed when Francisco de Villagra, successor of Valdivia temporarily, was trapped on the seashore after crossing the Bio-Bio and badly defeated. He redeemed his lost prestige when he broke the armies of Lautaro and killed this leader at Santiago soon afterwards, the Araucanians, emboldened, having ranged outside their own territory to attack the invading Europeans.

In 1557 there came to Chile as Governor the young Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, son of the Marquis de Cañete, Viceroy of Peru. He brought from Spain a well-equipped force of 600 Spaniards, and, arriving at Concepción from the sea, rebuilt the stronghold, mounted guns for the first time, restored all the southerly forts, and in the course of fierce battles in 1558 took prisoner and killed Caupolican.

When Garcia Hurtado left Chile in 1560 the Indians took heart and renewed attacks, and the anxious rule of Quiroga, with another interval of Villagra’s control, was concerned almost exclusively with Indian troubles. Quiroga, a determined man, was the first Spaniard totake possession of Chiloé, founding the town of Castro; he carried war into Araucanian territory relentlessly, shipping every able-bodied Indian he could catch to the mines of Peru. But his experience, and that of his successors, was that the natives were never more than momentarily beaten, that they rose behind him when his troops passed from one region to another, and that almost any fort could be overwhelmed by the extraordinary numbers that the savage chiefs brought into the field. The tactics of the Araucanians upon the battlefield, of attacking in great numbers, but keeping back enormous quantities of men who came forward when the first army was rolled back by Spanish guns, were disheartening; every settlement remained in a constant state of siege, perpetually harassed.

In 1567 Philip II of Spain authorized the establishment of a Royal Audience in Concepción; it endured until 1574, but was then suppressed owing to the insecurity of the colony. A year later the struggling settlements were further discouraged by a terrible earthquake and tidal wave that devastated the coast from Santiago to Valdivia, and in 1579 all western Spanish America was thrown into a state of consternation by the amazing news that Drake had rounded the toe of South America and had begun raiding the Pacific coast.

The enforcement of the “New Laws”—signed by Charles V in 1542, but suspended or ignored by the various Audiences as long as was possible—forbidding Spaniards to make the Indians work against their will, infuriated the colonists of Chile, who saw no other way of cultivating land or operating mines but by driving the natives to these tasks; a few Negroes were sent on from Panama or Buenos Aires, but transportation was expensive and farmers could not afford to import many slaves. Chile never yielded a large quantity of gold;it was pre-eminently an agricultural and stock-raising country, and therefore a poor one compared with such regions as Peru with its golden treasure or Charcas (Alto Peru) with its tremendous production of silver from the wonderful mines of Potosí. That in the face of all hardships and difficulties the colonisation of Central Chile steadily extended is a standing tribute to the courage of the settlers, as well as to the attractions of an exhilarating climate.

In 1583 came Alonso de Sotomayor, Marques de Villa Hermosa, setting out with Sarmiento and a splendid Spanish fleet of twenty-three ships; the original intention to pass through the Strait of Magellan was abandoned, and Sotomayor with a strong army marched overland from Buenos Aires. He too wasted lives and treasure in attempting to subdue the south, but inevitably the Indians rose behind his forces, burning forts and destroying the guard ships he placed upon the Bio-Bio River. By the time that Martin Garcia Oñez de Loyola succeeded to the Governorship in 1592 the endless wars with the Araucanians had become bitterly unpopular; the Indians had gathered new audacity under thetoqui(leader in war) Paillamacu, and with him Oñez tried to make a treaty. Hope was also placed in the pacifying influence of Jesuits, who entered in 1593, but these first missionaries were killed, and an armed force sent south in 1598 was wiped out, the Governor Oñez being amongst the slain. Paillamacu, jubilant, besieged all the forts at once, and Spanish rule was further threatened by the appearance in the Pacific of Dutch corsairs. The Cordes expedition of 1600 landed on Chiloé, sacked and held Castro. A Spanish force under Ocampo took back the town, but Spanish prestige suffered by the Indians’ realisation of quarrels among white men. Ocampo also raised the siege ofAngol and Imperial, but carried away settlers and abandoned these places. Forts upon the sea border, although safer than inland points, were not impregnable, and the Araucanians had grown so bold that more than once when Spanish vessels visiting the seaports ran aground the Indians swam out, killed the crew and looted the ships in plain view of the settlers.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, with Ramon as Governor, it was practically decided to restrict Spanish occupation of the territory south of the Bio-Bio River to seaports, and to maintain a line of forts upon the frontier. For about 100 years 2000 Spanish troops were maintained for defensive purposes, chiefly distributed throughout fourteen frontier strongholds, of which the chief were Arauco, Santa Juana, Puren, Los Angeles, Tucapel and Yumbel, and in Concepción and Valdivia. Chilean revenues were insufficient for these army expenses, and Lima contributed 100,000 pesos, for Valparaiso, Concepción and the frontier, half in specie and half in clothes and stores; about 8000 pesos of this sum was used in repairing forts and in giving presents or paying compensation to the Indians. Valdivia, with Osorno and Chiloé, received an additional 70,000 pesos from the royal treasury of Lima, and these points were governed and supplied direct from the viceregal capital.

Determination upon none but defensive fighting was due largely to Jesuit influence in Spain, under Philip II, III and IV; Father Luis de Valdivia in 1612 brought a new band of missionaries, and the south was left to them and their prospective converts. The Audience was restored, in Santiago, in 1609, and the Governor of Chile, while subordinate to the Lima Viceroyalty, was President of the Audience of Santiago as well as Captain-General of the province, his jurisdictionincluding the territory from the desert of Atacama, where Peru ended, to all the southern country he could control (the Taitao peninsula was explored in 1618) and also the province of Cuyo, extending across the Andes and embracing the city of Mendoza on the post-road to Buenos Aires.

Pirates harassed the authorities in 1616, when Le Maire found the small strait bearing his name; in 1623, when L’Hermite, with thirteen ships and 1600 men, troubled the coasts; and notably by the Dutchman Brouwer in 1644, when Valdivia was seized and three strong forts built by the invaders. The death of Brouwer, three months after his arrival, disheartened the strong force of Dutch under his control; the region was also discovered to be less promising of easy wealth than had been imagined and the place was given up. The Spanish returned in 1645, occupying and completing the excellent fortifications of the Dutch.

A terrible battle with Indians near Chillan ending with the defeat of a new Araucanian leader, Putapichion, with great slaughter, the then Governor of Chile, Francisco de Zuñiga, Marques de Baides, attempted to make a definite peace, holding the celebrated first “Parliament of Quillin” in 1641; the second Parliament of Quillin was held in 1647, with reiterated understanding that the Araucanians were to be recognised as owners of independent territory south of the Bio-Bio, but not to invade territory to the north. A third peace meeting was held in 1650 and thenceforth it became customary for each new Governor of Chile to call a meeting at the Bio-Bio border, where he repaired in state, met thousands of Araucanians, feasted them for several days and gave presents, with mutual compliments and speech-making. None of these friendly conclaves, however, prevented the Spaniards from raidingin Araucanian territory on occasion, or gave pause to Indian chiefs who saw an opportunity. In the middle of the century a disastrous rising of all the Indians, supposedly converted and friendly, took place between the Maule and Bio-Bio Rivers; 400 farms were burnt, Concepción besieged, and enormous quantities of cattle, women and children taken to Araucania.

Nevertheless, outside the troubled zone Chile prospered; the Spanish colony grew from 1700 (with 8600 Indians and 300 Negroes) in 1613 to 30,000 in 1670. Vineyards and olive groves were planted, the wine of Chile becoming so famous that it was shipped all the way to Panama, Mexico and Central America, to Paraguay and Argentina. The Governor Juan Henriquez, a native of Lima, was responsible for much of this agricultural encouragement, and for construction of a bridge over the Mapocho River and of a canal bringing spring water to Santiago. It was this same governor who shipped hundreds of Araucanians as slaves to Peru, and sent to Lima for execution the young Englishmen of Narborough’s scientific expedition, treacherously captured at Corral in December, 1670. By this time the coast forts had been rebuilt, partly on account of anxiety regarding the activities of adventuring ships of rival nations, which, forbidden lawful trade, ranged the Pacific as corsairs and smugglers. The famous Captain Bartholomew Sharp, with one ship and 146 men, terrorised the coast in 1680; he sacked Arica and burnt Coquimbo among his exploits. After the day of the pirate Davis, raiding about 1686, it was decided to render the fertile islands off the coast less useful as rendezvous; Mocha was depopulated and an attempt made to kill all the goats that thrived on Juan Fernandez.

Many times during the seventeenth century the Chilean colonies were almost ruined by earthquakes;the live volcanos of the Andean backbone broke out from time to time, and in many cases the overthrow of dwellings bytembloresandterremotoswas accompanied at the unfortunate coastal settlements by furious onslaughts of tidal waves, when numbers of people were drowned. Santiago was badly damaged by the earthquake of 1642, but suffered worse in 1647; ten years later a terrible earthquake and tidal wave destroyed Concepción on its original site where Penco village stands today, and the city was later moved to its present situation on the north of the green-wooded, silver Bio-Bio, with its banks of black volcanic sand.

In 1700 the Spanish were able to regard the danger of active aggression on the part of the Dutch without alarm. Spain had preserved the integrity of her enormous American colonies in the teeth of an array of energetic rivals, sea-adventuring people with vigorous populations lacking space for new settlements, sharing the most jealously guarded regions of South America with but one country, Portugal. For sixty years, indeed, after the tragic death of Sebastião at El Kebir in 1578, Spain held Portugal and Portugal’s splendid colonies abroad, including Brazil; until 1640 the Kings of Spain were absolute masters of South America. The long-continued struggle with England and its constant threat to the colonies was one reason why Spain reluctantly made concessions from time to time in her dealings with Holland, a country openly displaying a keen desire to share in American profits. The formation of the Dutch West Indian Company, with comprehensive plans for settlement as well as for trade, received strong government backing, and the forcible occupation of the Brazilian coast region of Pernambuco between 1624 and 1654 caused great anxiety to Spain. Nevertheless, a commercial agreement for the supplyof indispensable Negro slaves, brought from the Portuguese colonies of West Africa, endured until Holland’s sea power was definitely affected by reverses at the hands of the English.

A sign of change of influence which had a significant and lasting effect upon the South American Pacific Coast was displayed when early in the eighteenth century Louis XIV of France induced Philip V of Spain to give to French traders the right to supply slaves to the American colonies in place of the Dutch. A certain amount of general commerce could not be denied to vessels bringing slaves, and presently limited agreements were made by which two French companies were allowed to do business with South America. The monopolist companies of Seville and Cadiz, crying ruin, protested vainly, for viceroys and governors as well as settlers found the visits of the French ships convenient and profitable; the corsairs of England too were being transformed by economic circumstances into smugglers whose operations were welcome in many quarters. France did not limit her interest in South America to commerce: we find from about 1705 onwards an increasing number of French scientists and writers visiting the West Coast—as Feuillée, the Jesuit Father and careful botanist, who published the first account of Chilean plant life; and Frezier, the distinguished engineer, who left a descriptive volume of perennial interest. It was this most observant writer who first noted the use of the Quechua wordmatéas applied to the small gourd, often beautifully carved and silver-mounted, from which it was and is usual to drink an infusion of the “herb of Paraguay,” in Chile and Peru. Sidelights of great value are also presented by the letters of French Jesuit priests who came to the West Coast about this time, and many of whom, like thedevoted Father Nyel, thought that the supreme reward for a laborious life spent among wild natives was to be killed—“meriting reception of the crown of martyrdom as the worthy recompense of apostolic work.” Father Nyel wrote, in 1705, when he was planning the establishment of a mission among the Araucanians, that in spite of having murdered the noble Father Nicolas Mascardi thirty years previously the Indians begged for Jesuits to enter their land again to instruct them. But in order to succeed with these people it was necessary to have “a strong constitution, complete indifference to all the comforts of life, a persuasive gentleness, strength, courage, and determination in spite of insurmountable difficulties encountered amidst a barbarous people.”

The most distinguished of the scientists who were, perhaps somewhat grudgingly, given leave to enter the Spanish colonies were the French Academicians, headed by La Condamine, who came to Ecuador in 1735 to measure an arc of the meridian upon the Equator, and whose Spanish associates, sent by Madrid, made a detailed, frank and brilliant report of the condition of Peru, Ecuador and Chile. TheNoticias Secretashanded to the King upon their return are extremely illuminating, especially in the light of the events of eighty years later, when the irritation which they observed between “creoles” (native-born Americans of European blood) and Spaniards from the Peninsula came to a head. The voyage of Juan and Ulloa, the accounts of Frezier, Feuillée and the Jesuits, were as eagerly read in Europe as the biographies of the corsairs, for whatever official reports were made by Spanish officials from Spanish America never saw daylight, strangers were forbidden to enter, and in consequence South America had the magic of the unknown.

By the middle of the eighteenth century Chile was still a small country, settled chiefly between Coquimbo and Concepción, yielding a little gold and silver from surface veins, but with her greatest activity in connection with agriculture; she was spared the feverish excitements and reactions of wealthier countries. Most of her trade was conducted by land, over the Andes into Argentina, with a brisk exchange of Chilean woollen ponchos, honey, hams and lard foryerba matéfrom Paraguay and European goods imported at Buenos Aires; to Peru was shipped wheat and wine and beef or pork fat (grasa), exchanged for cargoes ofaji(red pepper) from Arica and silver from Potosí.

Commerce with the Araucanians, eager buyers of hardware, metal implements and ornaments in exchange for guanaco skins and cattle, went on in spite of the mistrust engendered by the events of 1723, when a general rising of the Indians took place, the settled villages of converts created by the Jesuit missionaries were deserted, and a new war commenced. The Araucanians themselves sued for peace on this occasion, a new Parliament was held with fresh agreements that the country below the Bio-Bio should be intact to the Indians, and the Governor agreed to withdraw the Spanish officials who had been posted in the villages of Christian Indians.

Castro, on Chiloé Island, traded its famous bacon and lard and planks of hardwoods (chieflyalerce) for manufactured goods, and maintained a sturdy if isolated existence; Osorno was little but a fort; Valdivia, with its port of Corral, was carefully guarded, since it was considered as the key to the South Sea, and five or six forts covered the bay and the waterway to the city. In 1720 there were a couple of thousand people here, chiefly convicts of Peru and Chile sent south duringtheir period of punishment, and the garrisons were maintained by Spanish and Peruvian Indian soldiers. Concepción was not only a Spanish stronghold, but a genuine agricultural colony, its splendid soil and enchanting climate, bright, balmy and temperate, bringing the settler who forms the backbone of Chilean society. Valparaiso was nothing but a shabby port, lacking a customhouse, all goods being shipped by mule-back to Santiago, ninety miles inland, or rather, 120 miles by the Zapata pass and Pudahuel, the only road then existing. It was fairly well defended by upper and lower forts overlooking the curve on the bay’s south where the houses of Valparaiso lay along a narrow strip of beach. Santiago was a well-built city, the centre of a fortunate agricultural and pastoral region; northwards lay but one settlement of note, La Serena (Coquimbo), with Copiapó, a prosperous silver mining centre, farther north.

The changes affecting Spanish America were not limited to the entry of the French. Philip V, to induce Queen Anne of England to sign the Peace of Utrecht, agreed to give the right of supplying slaves (asiento) to the South Sea Company, for thirty years, from 1713 to 1743; by this agreement 4800 Negroes were to be annually taken to the Plate, and as a further and extraordinary concession the company was allowed to send one ship each year to the Porto Bello fair (below Panama, on the Atlantic coast). At the same time a peremptory stop was put to the overseas commerce of the French, who had been allowed by Louis XIV during the War of the Spanish Succession to trade from St. Malo to the American colonies of Spain, herself too much involved to aid them with supplies.

The war of 1739 between England and Spain put anend to the English traffic for nine years, but the terms of peace included an indemnity to be paid to the South Sea Company for their trading rights, a British merchant in Buenos Aires carrying on for a few years (until 1752) the transportation of African slaves; after this time a group of Spanish merchants took up this traffic. It was in 1748 that Spain, finding her commerce with the colonies greatly reduced by home troubles, and the more or less legitimate efforts of other nations, from the 15,000 or even 25,000 tons of shipping formerly sent each year under convoy across the Atlantic, stopped the yearly visits of the famous galleons and the protecting warships. This fleet had sailed annually for 200 years. A system of unguarded merchant boats was licensed, ships sailing for the Plate six times a year.

In 1774 the rules forbidding the Spanish American colonies to trade with each other were relaxed by Charles III, and the effect of this is illustrated by the figures of Spanish merchant shipping sailing for the Americas in 1778, the year of the erection of a Viceroyalty in Buenos Aires, the fourth of Spanish America; no less than 170 vessels sailed, as against twelve to fifteen in the days of the yearly fleet of jealously licensed vessels.

In 1785 there was further relaxation, all the ports of Spain and all the ports of Spanish America being allowed to trade mutually, and as other proof of liberal ideas there came, in 1788, the appointment of Ambrose O’Higgins as Governor of Chile. This excellent organiser was born in Ireland, in County Sligo, and spent part of his barefoot youth in running errands for the great folk of his native village; he went as a youth to Spain, enlisting in the Spanish army, as many adventurous Irish did about this time, and later made his way to the Spanish American colonies. He distinguished himself in the Araucanian wars, was made a colonel, and in 1788 was nominated to the Chilean captain-generalship by Teodoro de Croix, the Viceroy of Peru, a native of Lille. The name of Ambrose O’Higgins is as much respected in Chile today as that of his son, Bernardo, born in Chillan, who became Supreme Director during the early days of Chilean independence.

Reproductions from Gay’s “History of Chile” (1854)

Más a Tierra (Juan Fernández Group) in the 18th Century.

O’Higgins’ Parliament with the Araucanian Indians, March, 1793.

Capturing Condors in the Chilean Andes.

Guanacos on the Edge of Laja Lake.

Governor O’Higgins called the Parliament of Negrete with the Araucanians, and set about the improvement of Chile; found and rebuilt the ruins of Osorno fort, and made a road from Osorno to Valdivia; another highway from Valparaiso to Santiago; and a third from Santiago to Mendoza. He constructed bridges, notably over the turbulent Mapocho River, and his good Chilean work only ceased when he was created Viceroy of Peru, with the title of Marquis of Osorno. He remained in that post until his death in 1801. A spurt in town foundation during the eighteenth century also bears witness to the growing prosperity of Chile. Between 1736 and 1746 the courtly and wideawake governor Don José Manso de Velasco, Conde de Superunda, founded San Felipe, Melipilla, Rancagua and Cauquenes; the same official encouraged the operation of mines, making cannon for the defence of one of the Concepción forts from local copper, and reopening gold mines at Tiltil (between Santiago and Valparaiso) and developing the copper works of Coquimbo and of Copiapó. His successor, Don Domingo Ortiz, founded Huasco and Curicó, built the University of Santiago and began the Mint, completed during the régime of Don Luis Muñoz between 1802 and 1807. The plans, tradition says, were mixed with those for Lima, and by mistake Chile received authority for a much more splendid building than was intended for her, La Moneda still serving as Government offices in Santiago.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Europe had undergone violent spiritual as well as material changes that could not fail to affect the world and inevitably produced reactions in the Americas. The independence of the United States had less effect upon South American thought than the French Revolution, for with North America the South was not in touch. There was little commerce, and the language difficulty was a bar, while French literature and French movements were extremely influential. The ideas of the Encyclopedists fell upon fertile soil.

When Napoleon conquered Spain, putting his brother Joseph Buonaparte upon the royal throne of the Bourbons and driving Ferdinand VII into exile, there was little thought upon the West Coast of this misfortune as an opportune time for seizing freedom. Even when the action of Mexico and Buenos Aires pointed the road of independence, Peru and Chile demurred from disloyalty and declared their intention of returning to the king when he should be again upon the Spanish throne. The grievances against Spain of which so much was afterwards heard were not realised by the majority of the populace, and in fact the creoles were well aware that from narrow trading policies, the dictation of officials, sumptuary laws, and the still-existent although waning burden of the Inquisition, Spain suffered even more acutely than her overseas dominions. The rights ofmayorazgo, that is the preservation, intact for generation after generation, of enormous estates which could not be broken up among a number of heirs, or divided for sale, were a source of definite complaint; but it was an inheritance from the land tenure laws of Spain, also inelastic, to which they were inured by custom. The most fertile ground for the growth of animosity between the colonies and the mother countryseems to have been the tangible annoyance of the stream from the Peninsula, both of officials and merchants or adventurers. Don Antonio Ulloa, writing the “Noticias Secretas” for the King’s eye in 1735, noted that the big towns were “theatres of discord between Spanish and creoles.... It is enough for a man to be a European orchapetonto be at once opposed to the creoles, and sufficient to have been born in the Indies to hate Europeans. This ill-will is raised to so high a grade that in some respects it exceeds the open hatred with which two nations at war abuse and insult each other.” He thought the feeling tended to increase rather than to diminish, and notes that it was more bitter in the interior and mountainous regions, because the coast people were bent to a more liberal spirit by their dependence upon commerce with strangers, had more work to do and something else to think about. He gave as reasons for the mutual dislike, first, the “vanity and presumption” of the creoles; and next, the wretched condition in which many poor Europeans usually arrived in the Indies. The native-born were lazy, thought the Spanish officer, and envied the industrious and intelligent Spaniard the fortune which he presently made. The succession of Peninsular officials to many posts in the colonies was not without its influence in providing grievances also, but as a matter of fact a number of minor berths were frequently filled by the native-born, who also became Inquisitors and clerics, the list of viceroys and governors also providing a few colonial names, and a large number of American-born receiving good positions in Spain. But on the whole the colonies were necessarily still dependent upon Spain for blood, ideas, intercourse with the world, and, but for Napoleon, independence would have been long delayed.

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