The Charrua Nation

(Fragment of The Peoples of the Jaguar)

Danilo Anton

The Charrúa nation was the most important in the estuarine region of Paraguazú rivers.
Due to its location at the entrance of the great Uruguayan-Paraná basin it was one of the first nations contacted by Europeans. According to Gaboto's descriptions, Pero Lope de Souza, Schmidl and other chroniclers, they were mainly fishing people, of skilful canoers who lived in villages of a few hundred inhabitants, in the area that stretched along the estuaric and fluvial coast in the present Uruguayan departments of San José, Colonia and Soriano, on the coast of Buenos Aires, in certain islands of the Paraná delta and to the south of the current province of Entre Ríos.
It is difficult to know precise demographic data of the Charrúa population. Some evidence suggests that it was relatively numerous, probably in the order of 20,000 to 30,000 individuals.
Antonio de Herrera in his description pointed out that when the expedition of Juan Diaz de Solis arrived "they discovered many houses of Indians, and people who were watching the ship very carefully, and with signs they offered what they had, putting it on the ground, Juan Diaz de Solís wanted in any case to see that people were this, and to take some man to bring Castile "
In 1530 the Portuguese expedition of Pero Lope de Souza arrived on the coast of the present departments of Colonia and San José finding a village, probably Charrúa, which according to estimates was constituted by a community of canoeing people.
The testimony. 

According to the chronicle of this expedition, when it reached the north coast of the Río de la Plata, four canoes received them,, they were between 16 and 20 meters in length and a little less than one meter wide. In each of them there were forty oarsmen standing. After this canoe, other six canoes followed   In these boats  only the rowers summed about 240 men. Sousa notes that there were many more canoes ashore, estimating the male population of that community at about 600 men. If we add women, children and elderly, we could reach a total of about 2,000 to 2,500 people in that single village.
According to this same chronicle the natives expressed great joy and demonstrated their friendship through gifts and demonstrations of jubilation, swimming quickly near the ships, and sending several huge canoes with about forty rowers each to receive the visitors. "They were so happy that they seemed crazy."
Nevertheless, the expeditionaries, who surely had references of the tragic experience of the Spanish navigator Juan Diaz de Solís, preferred not to risk landing and continued their journey.
This description is probably the most illustrative of a Charrúa community in "pre-colonial" conditions.
If we imagine that there were twenty or more of Charrúas communities in the estuary and delta, and reducing the average population of each to about a thousand people, the total Charrúa population can be estimated reasonably at between 20,000 and 30,000 people, which would be coherent with the number of warriors that describes in 1536 the adventurer and German chronicler Ulrico Schmidl who accompanied the expedition of Pedro de Mendoza. Schmidl affirmed that in the siege of Buenos Aires there were some 23,000 warriors from four nations: "the Indians came against our seat of Buenos Aires with great power and impetus up to twenty-three thousand men and were altogether four nations; One was called Querandíes, the other Guaraníes, the third Charrúas, the Fourth Chanátimbúes. "
If the Charrúas had been a quarter of that total mentioned by Schmidl, which seems likely, the Charrua warriors involved in the site could had been about 5,000-6,000 warriors, which would effectively correspond to a total population of about 20,000-30,000 people.
Seventy years later, in 1607, when the Charrúas had moved northwest away from the Spanish centers of power, the governor of Asunción, Hernando Arias de Saavedra, still referred to the region of Uruguay as "a very fertile province and of great sum of Indians". Shortly afterwards, in 1610, in the newly established city of Buenos Aires, Governor Marín Negrón sent a letter to the king in which he estimates the Charrúa population in some "four thousand pagan Indians." Although we do not know if that number included the entire population or only the "Indians of arms" as it used to be, we can see a certain decline in population, probably related to the impact of colonization.
From "The Peoples of the Jaguar". D-Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones.
More info in Spánish on daniloanton.blogspot.com