A Visit to the Ranquel Indians

Description

Lucio V. Mansilla (1831-1913)| the widely traveled and cultured scion of a famous family| was a colonel in the Argentine army when he undertook an “excursion” to the Argentine interior in 1870 to visit natives in areas then largely unknown. Mansilla wrote a friend a series of letters that were then serially published in a leading Buenos Aires newspaper. His careful observations offer valuable ethnographic data| as Argentina’s Indians were almost totally extinguished or assimilated within a few generations of Mansilla’s expedition. Mansilla’s work both in this account and elsewhere made him a leading figure in Argentina’s “Generation of 1880| ” a group crucial in the development of Argentine literary and intellectual life.