Securing the 'defense and custody' of the campaigns: Vaquerí­as and interethnic diplomacy on the Sierras Pampeanas during the first half of the XVIIIth century

Abstract

This article analyzes what can be considered the first official diplomatic contact between the authorities of Buenos Aires and the indigenous people of La Pampa: the assignment, on February 1717, of two caciques that inhabited the mountainous region like "Guardias Mayores" to "defend and custody" the campaign. To understand the motive of this unpredecedent action we will analyze the increasing conflicts between hispanocriollos to access wild cattle and the intense contacts between indigenous people of different places -including the mountain area- and hispanocriollos of different jurisdictions on the mountainous region during the transitional decades between XVIIth and XVIIIth, all of them attracted by the abundance of wild cattle. Finally, this work offers an interpretation of the caciques' assignment in 1717 as useful to the porteños' and indigenous' interests.