The first federalist leader of South America
Artigas's detractors accused him of being "a chief of Indians.".
In some respects they were right, Artigas was indeed "a chief of Indians."
Yes, he was. 

Artigas was actually a "chief of Indians."

For the first time in history, the "brave Indians" (charruas and minuanes warriors) joined a multi-ethnic movement led by a local born european descendant, who, in fact, had lived as an Indian several years during his youth.
Already in 1811 this spontaneous integration of charrúas, minuanes, Guaraní maroons, Afro-Creoles and gauchos into the emancipatory struggle was observed. This massive and spontaneous integration appears registered in several documents of the time.
At the end of December 1811, Artigas wrote to the Buenos Aires government explaining why he decided to attack the Portuguese in Bethlehem with the participation of a strong Charrúa contingent: "... my suspicions turned into realities .... The robberies were they committed millions and their cruelties ... (of the Portuguese) ... went to the extreme of  torment some Americans who fell into their hands, also murdering others .... I made up my mind and on the 18th of the current ... (December) ... I marched a division of this weapon made up of 500 men, to the that he united 452 Indians, all under the command of the captain of the blandengues, Don Manuel Pinto Carneiro, in the direction of Bethlehem, in whose vicinity was a Portuguese column of 300 men under the command of Sergeant Major Manoel dos Santos. Vera V.S. that the action was not as complete as it should have been because the position of the enemy, together with the lack of horses on our part, facilitated their escape.
Your Excellency, this has been inevitable. The arms of the fatherland were required to attack them. » We reflect with Maggi: «What interest, what feeling, what hope, what strange adhesion motivates the unfaithful tribes to resent themselves thus, immediately, spontaneously, to enter a war that they do not understand? There is not a single example in the entire American revolution… the Charrúa come to fight for a friend who calls them. ». A little more than three months later, on April 9, 1812, the Portuguese commander José Pereira de Fonseca communicated to the commander general of the Portuguese troops occupying the Banda Oriental that the rebels (revolutionary artiguistas) had formed a "quilombo in the Rincon de Tres Arboles, with a number of 500 men, with the exception of 600 Indians who claim to have in the same quilombo "from where they issued games to take, burn and steal the" Villa de Serro
Largo »(which the Spanish called Melo) at that time occupied by the Portuguese. It should be noted that the "500 men" refer to "gauchos" and that of course it also includes a majority of "Indians" (more or less Christianized). Instead, the expression "Indians" is used here to refer to the "infidel Indians" or "Charruas" o minuanes »The total population of this quilombo, including women, children and the elderly, must have been three times greater, just over 3,000 people, of whom nearly 2,000 were" brave Indians ".
Thus, in the midst of Artigas's exile in the North, there were (at least) 452 charrúa warriors facing the Portuguese in Bethlehem and another 600 harassing the enemy in Cerro Largo. More than 1,000 warriors at both sites. If we add their families we are talking about 3,500 people from the Charrúa Nation and allies who remained in this Band defending the cause of the peoples. T
We must add other groups and families that could be refugees in other parts of the country. This means that by the year 1811 there were still some 5,000 charrúa and minuanes scattered in the southern pampas. Their number was to decrease significantly as a consequence of wars. The defeat of Artigas was also the beginning of the great defeat of the Charrúa Nation in Uruguay..
Reproduced from "The peoples of the jaguar", Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones

Artiguist federalism and the Iroquois connection

"La Gaceta de Buenos Aires" was the official organ of the Governing Board that emerged as a result of the May Movement and it was there where one of the main ideologists of the revolutionary movement expressed its thought: Mariano Moreno. It was precisely through "La Gaceta de Buenos Aires", in its editions published during the second half of 1810 that for the first time the principles of federalism that would have been so important in the political evolution of the countries of the South were disseminated. 
The federalist ideas were immediately picked up by José Artigas and inspired by them, that five years later the political project of the Federal League would be established, including several provinces, with its general headquarters in Purificación on the banks of the Uruguay River.
Mariano Moreno's description of the federal system in La Gaceta is based on certain concepts put forward by Thomas Jefferson, a well-known revolutionary and president of the United States, who is cited by Moreno to describe (and praise) the main characteristics of the native political systems in North America (with reference more especially to the Iroquois), as well as its democratic and egalitarian character ..
In his letter "La Gaceta de Buenos Aires" Moreno said:
"The modern peoples are the only ones who have given us an exact idea of ​​the federal government, and even among the savages of America it has been found and practiced in terms that the Greeks never knew. Let us listen to Mr. Jefferson, who in the observations on La Virginia, describes all the parts of such an association: "All the peoples of North America, says this wise writer, are hunters, and their subsistence is only derived from the hunting, fishing, the productions that the land gives for itself, the corn sown and collected by women and the culture of a species of potatoes; but they have neither regular agriculture, nor cattle, nor domestic animals of any kind. They, then, can only have that degree of sociability and government organization compatible with their society: but they really do. His government is a kind of patriarchal confederation. 
Each villa or family has a distinguished head with a particular title and is commonly called Sachem. The various villas or families, which make up a tribe, each have their own boss. These chiefs are generally men advanced in age and distinguished by their prudence and talent in councils. The businesses that do not concern but the villa or family are decided by the head and the principals of the town or family; those that interest a whole tribe, such as the distribution of military jobs and the quarrels between the different villages and families, are decided by assemblies or councils formed from different towns or villages; in short, those which concern the whole nation, such as war, peace, alliances with neighboring nations, are determined by a general council composed of the chiefs of the tribes, accompanied by the principal warriors and a certain number of heads of villas, who go in class with their counselors. There is a council house in each village, where the chief and the principal meet when the occasion demands. Each tribe also has its place, in which the village chiefs meet to discuss the business of the tribe; and finally, in each nation there is a meeting point or general council where the heads of different nations meet with the main warriors, to deal with the general business of the whole nation. When a matter is proposed in the National Council, the head of each tribe consults separately with the advisors that he has brought, after which he announces in the council the opinion of his tribe, and as all the influence that the tribes have with each other , it is reduced to persuasion, all seek by mutual concessions to obtain unanimity. "Here is an admirable state that brings the patriarchal government together in the form of a rigorous federation. This consists essentially in the meeting of many peoples or provinces independent of each other, but subject at the same time to a diet or general council of all of them, which sovereignly decides on matters of state that touch the body of the nation ... The system is perhaps the best that has been circulated among men, but it can hardly be applied to all of America. Where will that great diet be formed, nor how will instructions be received from peoples so distant for the unexpected emergencies of the State? I would wish that the provinces, reducing themselves to the limits they have hitherto had, should separately form the constitution convenient to the happiness of each one, that they should always bear in mind the just maxim of helping and helping each other; and that reserving for another time all federaticio system, that in the present circumstances is unverifiable and could be harmful, treat only of a narrow alliance that you are
There is a council house in each village, where the chief and the principal meet when the occasion demands. Each tribe also has its place, in which the village chiefs meet to discuss the business of the tribe; and finally, in each nation there is a meeting point or general council where the heads of different nations meet with the main warriors, to deal with the general business of the whole nation. When a matter is proposed in the National Council, the head of each tribe consults separately with the advisors that he has brought, after which he announces in the council the opinion of his tribe, and as all the influence that the tribes have with each other , it is reduced to persuasion, all seek by mutual concessions to obtain unanimity. "Here is an admirable state that brings the patriarchal government together in the form of a rigorous federation. This consists essentially in the meeting of many peoples or provinces independent of each other, but subject at the same time to a diet or general council of all of them, which sovereignly decides on matters of state that touch the body of the nation ... The system is perhaps the best that has been circulated among men, but it can hardly be applied to all of America. Where will that great diet be formed, nor how will instructions be received from peoples so distant for the unexpected emergencies of the State? I would wish that the provinces, reducing themselves to the limits they have hitherto had, should separately form the constitution convenient to the happiness of each one, that they should always bear in mind the just maxim of helping and helping each other; and that by reserving for another time all federative system, which in the present circumstances is unverifiable and could be harmful, they were only dealing with a close alliance that would sustain the fraternity that should always reign and that can only save us from the interior passions, which are the enemy terrible for a State that tries to be constituted, that the armies of the foreign powers that oppose it. "
Eduardo Acevedo comments that Moreno's entire federal baggage is transcribed in this letter from La Gaceta de Buenos Aires, and that for this author "the federal regime amounted to a league of autonomous and independent nations; and that of the vast scene of North America, only Doctor Moreno knew that the savage tribes had federal diets. "

The writings of Mariano Moreno were published by the Ateneo de Buenos Aires in Volume 1 of its Library and included a reference to the federal system of the United States. However, this reference was added later because it did not exist in Moreno's original writing. A note included in the publication states: «The preceding paragraph does not appear in« The Gazette »». As this fragment is included in the writings published by the brother of Mariano Moreno, Doctor Manuel Moreno (who had traveled and knew first hand the federal system of the United States) it is almost certain that he himself was the one who added it to save that "emptiness" that existed in the texts of his brother.

Eduardo Acevedo says:

"The glory of Mariano Moreno did not require this posthumous incorporation, since in 1810 everyone in the Río de la Plata ignored the wonderful mechanism of the American confederation, and the heroes of May continued to ignore it for many years."
However, thanks to the pen of Jefferson and Moreno, they did not ignore the federal system of the Iroquois meticulously transcribed in La Gaceta de Buenos Aires as early as 1810.
It is good to remember that La Gaceta de Buenos Aires was the main source of ideological reference in 1810 and of course it should have exerted an enormous influence on the ideas of Artigas, who although he had already lived the Confederate experience between the Charrúas and Minuanes, could make explicit These ideas are much clearer thanks to the description of Moreno's article.
Later, the influence of the United States Constitution was felt much more directly. Already in 1815 the National Library established in Montevideo under federal artiguist control included among its books the federal constitution of the United States, the constitutions of the states, the minutes of the congress and the writings of Thomas Paine (revolutionary ideologist of that country). These inventories were recorded in the opening speech of the library by its first director Dámaso Antonio Larrañaga.
Nicolás Herrera, a source who can not be suspected of having pro-artiguistas tendencies, wrote from Rio de Janeiro to the Director-elect of the United Provinces a letter in favor of the monarchy where he explains his opinion about Artigas:
«Artigas, in possession of Entre Rios and Corrientes, took advantage of the vacillating situation of the capital to make bizarre pretensions that denied by the government have ignited a new war ... everywhere and even in the most remote places only people spoke of legislation, constitution, congress and sovereignty ... »
For Nicolás Herrera, this dissemination of democratic and federal ideas was outrageous. However, these same ideas were the ones that had led to the explicit approval of some congressmen of the United States.
Taken from "Los Pueblos del Jaguar", D.Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones