Did Darwin Avert His Eyes to Cultural Extinction?

From 1832-1835, Charles Darwin traveled across South America both on land and at sea aboard HMS Beagle, during which time he uncovered fossils which would later inform the theory of evolution.  Though many are familiar with Darwin’s exploits, perhaps fewer are aware of shocking ethnic cleansing which formed the backdrop of his voyage.  Indeed, even as Darwin reflected on the physical extinction of ancient megafauna, the scientist was also confronted with the extinction of indigenous peoples.

What is the cultural legacy of Darwin’s voyage?  I’ve come to Montevideo to discuss fraught history with anthropologists, paleontologists and indigenous peoples.  Though Uruguay is regarded as one of the more Europeanized nations in South America, its indigenous past has been obscured.  And yet, Darwin arrived in the country at a pivotal time, when native people were struggling to survive under extreme conditions.  Judging from the written record, Darwin does not seem to have realized what he had stumbled into.

In July 1832, the naturalist disembarked in Uruguay (or the “Banda Oriental,” as it was known then) at a time of political instability.  Some twenty years before, José Artigas had launched a revolt against Spain, but the territory was subsequently invaded by Brazil.  In 1825, a threatened Argentina propped up forces under Juan Lavalleja, which led to a stalemate with Brazil.  It was only in 1828 that Uruguay declared independence; however, the nation was in poor shape and had been devastated by war.  Furthermore, Uruguay’s first president Fructuoso Rivera, a veteran of the earlier conflict with Brazil, was no friend to indigenous peoples.

Just a little over a year before Darwin arrived, in April 1831, Rivera helped organize the infamous Salsipuedes massacre.  The president informed Charrúa indigenous peoples their assistance was needed to secure the Brazilian border, and summoned the main chiefs, as well as women and children, to a meeting near the Salsipuedes Creek (translated as “get out if you can”) in the north of the country.  There, however, the natives were taken by surprise by government troops under the command of Rivera’s nephew Bernabé, who proceeded to massacre forty indigenous Charrúa.  Many regard the ignominious episode as a crime against humanity and even genocide, and today a commemorative statue stands in Montevideo.

According to official history, only four people survived, the so-called “last Charrúas” including chief Vaimaca Perú (or Pirú), healer Senaqué, warrior Tacuabé and his wife Guyunusa.  After being taken prisoner, French impresario François De Curel brought the indigenous peoples to Paris as slaves, where they were exhibited in a circus and subjected to baseless phrenology experiments.  Guyunusa gave birth to Tacuabé’s daughter, though subsequently she, Perú and Senaqué succumbed to illness and died (it’s unclear what happened to Tacuabé and the child, who may have escaped).

For more on the Charrúa, I spoke with anthropologist Mónica Sans at University of the Republic.  In 2002, she and her colleagues conducted morphological studies on Perú’s remains which had been repatriated to Uruguay from France.  Rivera prosecuted his scorched earth policy, she said, in tandem with ranchers who viewed the Charrúa as a threat since the latter hunted cattle.

However, some Charrúa such as Perú had fought with Artigas against the Spanish, and therefore weren’t suspicious as they gathered at Salsipuedes.  As he was being attacked, a wounded Perú is said to have denounced Rivera, who had now turned on former independence fighters.  While most of the indigenous men were killed at Salsipuedes, Sans says women and children were captured and resettled with affluent Spanish and criollo families in Montevideo, where they became acculturated and started to dress differently.  Others adopted Spanish surnames.

Just how much of these complex workings a young twenty-three-year-old Darwin fully grasped is open to question.  Just a month before the naturalist arrived in Montevideo, supporters of Lavalleja, Rivera’s political rival, had attempted to kill the president, and the local city garrison revolted while calling for Lavalleja to be made Commander-in-Chief.  Hardly preoccupied with politics, the naturalist was drawn to porpoises, penguins and seals onboard the Beagle while noting the mixing of fresh and seawater in the estuary of the Plata River.

Suddenly, however, Darwin witnessed “an eventful day in the history of the Beagle,” when a government minister came on board in Montevideo and “begged for assistance against a serious insurrection of some black troops.”  The latter had turned against Lavalleja, making for a chaotic milieu, and Beagle captain Robert FitzRoy sent a force ashore, including Darwin himself, to retake a fort and protect the property of British merchants.

“The head of the police,” Darwin wrote, “has continued in power through both governments and is considered as entirely neutral…he gave it as his opinion that it would be doing a service to the state to land our force.”  Decked out with pistols and cutlass, the naturalist added in his diary, “there certainly is a great deal of pleasure in the excitement of this sort of work, quite sufficient to explain the reckless gayety with which sailors undertake even the most hazardous attacks.”

In the end, nothing transpired: the rebels disappeared, and the Beagle’s crew sailed back to the ship.  “It is probable…the two adverse sides will come to an encounter: under such circumstances Capt Fitz Roy being in possession of the central fort, would have found it very difficult to have preserved his character of neutrality.”  Shrugging his shoulders, Darwin remarks “the politics of the place are quite unintelligible.”  Writing to a friend in Cambridge, he went back on the adventurous tone from his diary: “we Philosophers do not bargain for this sort of work and I hope there will be no more.”

Lavalleja had been forced to flee Montevideo, prompting Darwin to remark “it is now certain that Rivera [who the naturalist mistakenly refers to as ‘Signor Frutez’] will gain the day.”  Later, the naturalist observed Rivera entering the city, “accompanied by 1800 wild Gaucho cavalry; many of them were Indians.”  Though Darwin frequently writes about “Indians” in Argentina, this is the only time in his Beagle diary that he mentions seeing them in Uruguay. “I believe it was a magnificent spectacle,” Darwin writes, adding “the beauty of the horses, & the wildness of their dresses & arms were very curious.”

Constitutional government was restored, but who were the “Indians” Darwin referred to? “Perhaps they were Guaraní indigenous peoples,” Sans remarks.  The anthropologist explains the Guaraní had migrated into Uruguay prior to the Spanish conquest and were missionized (the name Uruguay itself come from the Guaraní word urugua, meaning snail, and y, meaning river, that is to say “River of Large Snails”).  Sans adds there is evidence some Guaraní participated in the massacre of Charrúa at Salsipuedes.  Carina Erchini, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Anthropology, told me that in contrast to the Charrúa, who were horsemen and hunted cattle, Guaraní pursued a more sedentary lifestyle and were allied to Rivera.

For more, I caught up with Cyro Rodríguez, a spokesperson for CONACHA (Council of the Charrúa Nation).  In recent years, Charrúa have resurfaced to demand cultural recognition, challenging the notion that Salsipuedes effectively wiped out their people.  Rodríguez, who identifies as Charrúa but who also shares Guaraní roots, agrees Darwin most likely witnessed Guaraní troops.  The latter had long coveted Charrúa land, he says, and provided “cannon fodder” for Rivera.  “I don’t think they were the decisive factor at Salsipuedes,” he says, “but they were exploited of course.”

The Beagle stayed in Montevideo for a little less than a month, “but owing to bad weather & continual fighting on shore,” Darwin noted, he had “scarcely ever been able to walk in the country.”  From Montevideo, the Beagle headed south to Argentina on its surveying mission and at Punta Alta, Darwin discovered fossils belonging to both Megatherium, a giant sloth, and Glyptodont, a giant armadillo.  Early the next year, the naturalist returned to Uruguay, and by this time Rivera was back in control, having militarily defeated Lavalleja.

Over the next few months, Darwin spent time in Montevideo as well as the small town of Maldonado, where he made note of local geological conditions.  He also collected “curious creatures” including mammals, birds and reptiles, and observed a toad, which was later named after the naturalist himself.  “During our absence,” Darwin wrote, “things have been going on pretty quietly, with the exception of a few revolutions.”  Despite this, Darwin still made sure to travel with armed escorts sporting pistols and sabers.  Traveling northwards into the interior, the naturalist had the opportunity to observe hard-drinking gauchos, whose “appearance is very striking.”

If he discussed or talked about indigenous peoples during this period, he does not write about the issue in Voyage of the Beagle, even though the public was certainly aware of earlier events at Salsipuedes.  Indeed, Montevideo’s largest newspaper, El Universal, published a statement by Rivera himself in which the president reported on hostilities and Charrúa casualties, as well as the need to resettle survivors.  In 1833, Montevideo was still a small city of just over 25,000 people, suggesting that Darwin might have simply come across resettled Charrúa in the street.

What is more, according to anthropologist Sans, Vaimaca Perú and other prisoners were held captive in the city, and had departed for France just a few scant months prior to Darwin’s return.  Wouldn’t the naturalist have gotten wind of what happened?  Darwin admitted his Spanish was “vile,” which made others look at him “with much pity.”  But if the scientist discussed politics or indigenous peoples with local British residents, there’s little indication in online Darwin databases.  “It’s curious Darwin doesn’t mention it,” Sans remarked.  Going further, she speculates “perhaps he didn’t want to become aware of the issue.”

Darwin does refer, however, to so-called cairns, or sacred mounds, while traveling in the countryside around Maldonado.  The naturalist was neither the first nor last to observe the stacked stone constructions.  Experts believe cairns were used by indigenous groups for burial purposes both before and after the European conquest, though perhaps the structures served as pilgrimage sites or fulfilled ceremonial or ritual ends.  Erchini, the archaeologist, told me the sites could have also served as observation points.  It’s possible the cairns were used by Charrúa, though it’s difficult to link specific cultural groups to archaeological sites.

Climbing up Cerro de las Animas (or Hill of the Souls, a well-known landmark), Darwin observed “several small heaps of stones, which evidently had lain there for many years.”  Darwin’s companion, “an inhabitant of the place,” declared the site was “the work of the Indians in the old time.”  If the guide was indigenous, Darwin doesn’t state, and the scientist doesn’t follow up but rather dismisses the matter: “At the present day, not a single Indian, either civilized or wild, exists in this part of the province; nor am I aware that the former inhabitants have left behind them any more permanent records than these insignificant piles on the summit of the Sierra de las Animas.”

But if Darwin failed to express curiosity in his writing about what had happened to indigenous peoples in Uruguay, events in Argentina would prove to be harder to ignore.  Traveling south to Patagonia aboard the Beagle in July 1833, Darwin dealt with Juan Manuel de Rosas — the former governor of Buenos Aires— who was waging a genocidal war against indigenous peoples.  The following month, Darwin wrote the conflict was “shocking in its barbarity,” adding that Rosas’ forces were a “villainous Banditti-like army.”  At other moments, however, the naturalist seemed to verge on sanitizing the conflict, remarking that Rosas’ army had made the country “very tolerably safe from Indians.”  In a quip which doesn’t hold up very well, Darwin added the war could also “produce great benefits” since it could open more land for cattle ranching.

Back in Uruguay at the end of the year, Darwin traveled to the town of Colonia del Sacramento, where he observed physical damage from the earlier war with Brazil.  The rise of power-hungry local generals, he remarked, had interfered with political stability.  In the Sarandí stream, Darwin uncovered a skull belonging to Glossotherium, a giant sloth, and on the Negro River, he discovered another skull which had been used for target practice belonging to Toxodon, a giant hoofed creature and “one of the strangest animals ever discovered.”

At a storehouse belonging to Uruguay’s National Museum of Natural History, I met with paleontologist Andrés Rinderknecht.  Shortly before my arrival in Montevideo, the museum had put on an exhibit dealing with Darwin’s legacy in Uruguay.  The naturalist’s discovery of Toxodon fossils, Rinderknecht remarked, was an important step which helped Darwin come up with evolutionary theory.  I’m curious how Darwin could have avoided writing about cultural extinction in Uruguay, even as he delved into the physical extinction of ancient animals?  Perhaps, Rinderknecht remarks, the extermination of indigenous peoples was simply not discussed much, or, even if so, the issue was somehow normalized both in Rosas’ Argentina as well as Uruguay.

Though certainly celebrated for his scientific breakthroughs, Darwin’s cultural legacy is more mixed.  On the one hand, the naturalist was a liberal and an abolitionist.  He was apparently opposed to phrenology, and therefore might have dismissed bogus experiments conducted on the Charrúa in Paris (though ironically, FitzRoy nearly barred Darwin himself from the Beagle voyage because the captain did not care for the naturalist’s nose).  To his credit, Darwin argued that all races make up one species, an idea which has been backed up by modern genetics.  As civilization progressed, Darwin believed society would be united by cooperation, liberalism and kindness.

After he returned from his voyage, Darwin began to reason that evolution was irregular and not linear, and sometimes conditions of existence favored simpler forms.  On the cultural level, however, Darwin was a man of his era and therefore viewed the advance of civilization as “a triumphant progress, morally justified and probably inevitable.”  The naturalist believed in a hierarchy of races, not just in terms of social complexity and technological prowess, but also as far as mental capabilities were concerned.  Sounding jarringly imperialistic, he wrote how “civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

Even more glaringly, the scientist failed to champion indigenous rights in the Descent of Man.  As observers have noted, “unlike slavery, a wrong that could be righted, the ‘extinction’ he knows about is cast as a matter of human agency but one without full human responsibility.”  In his later years, Darwin “compromised his moral universe” by failing to oppose the “the horrors of frontier expansion.”  Though he had an “unusually sharp perception of the historical relations of genocide—economic, social, political and cultural,” Darwin “confused matters by trying to integrate colonialism into an evolutionary history of civilization analogous to natural history.”  Reacting to Darwin’s ideas, Latin American politicians later sought to lure white Europeans to the continent, intermarry and thereby “improve the stock.”

“Even the greatest of us are merely people – complex and flawed,” notes the Guardian.
“No one sensible is calling for the cancelling of Darwin, though that does not mean that he and his work are exempt from historical reassessment.”  Other scholars note, “those who undertake a project studying and writing about Charles Darwin are rarely the same afterward…no matter how deeply immersed one might become in his books, notebooks, letters, and scribblings, the man and his mind still bear enigmas.  Indeed, the closer we get, the less adequate our perceptions and analyses seem to be.  There is always something that escapes, that melts into distance, no matter which end of the telescope we look through.”

Darwin’s Beagle Diary makes few references to Indians in the Uruguayan context, and needless to say the naturalist doesn’t even mention Uruguay in his autobiography.  An online search of the Darwin Correspondence Project, an exhaustive database, does not turn up entries on the Charrúa, and there’s little indication the scientist followed up in later years about Rivera or indigenous matters in Uruguay.

Today, the Charrúa are seeking to overcome the notion their culture has become extinct.  The country now commemorates Charrúa Nation and Indigenous Identity Day on April 11, which marks the Salsipuedes massacre, and a memorial site has been erected.  Rodríguez of CONACHA told me there are efforts to bring back medicinal knowledge as well as the Charrúa language, a campaign which might have intrigued Darwin, who addressed the issue of evolution and language in The Descent of Man.

Archaeologist Erchini says Uruguay has made progress when it comes to acknowledging the indigenous past.  When she herself was a student, people were told indigenous people never existed and Uruguayans were all of European descent.  That has begun to change in recent years, however, as museums and academic researchers have begun to highlight the country’s indigenous heritage.  On the other hand, there are indications such heritage is being disrespected: reportedly, Darwin’s cairns on Sierra de las Ánimas have been destroyed owing to looting and industrial development.

Meanwhile, Uruguay struggles to deal with its own controversial history.  Rivera, who Darwin spotted charging into Montevideo, is a charged political figure.  He and his followers embraced red colors and became the Colorado (or red) Party.  Today, even as some leftist politicians press for historical recognition of Charrúa genocide, others consider Rivera the father of the country and Colorado Party politicians bristle when the issue of such genocide is broached.  “They maintain the Charrúa didn’t even exist, weren’t important or don’t matter,” Sans remarked.

What some may not realize, however, is that many Uruguayans share indigenous heritage.  Sans has conducted genetic research demonstrating a full third of Uruguayans share such heritage, but on the maternal line, suggesting indigenous men were killed off and therefore did not pass on their genes.  Indigenous women, meanwhile, were spared but subjected to skewed power dynamics.  Uruguay, says Rodríguez, must come to terms with harsh historic injustices such as rape and sexual slavery.  From Darwin’s era to the present, indigenous people have been made invisible, but perhaps the country will now finally recognize its multi-cultural origins.