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Updated: May 9, 2025
Stopped by a cañon, a precipitous gully hundreds of feet deep, through which the Chaco ran like a chased devil, the wagons had turned westward, and then had been forced by impassable ridges and lack of water into a southwest direction, at last gaining and crossing Pass Washington.
In all the Chaco there is not a spot that can shelter them from such pursuers as they are expecting! It is now near noon of the fourth day since they left the Sacred Town of the Tovas, and in the interval they had been riding hard and fast, day and night, scarce allowing themselves either sleep or rest.
Nothing strange in this, however, since hills of the kind, termed mesas, are common throughout most parts of Spanish America, and not rare in the Gran Chaco. All three are familiar with such eminences. But what they are not familiar with and indeed none of them have ever seen before are some scores of queer-looking structures standing all over the summit, with alley-like spaces between!
The cartilage is thus so distended that only a narrow rim remains around the ornament, and this may often be seen broken out. Sometimes three or four rattles from the tail of the rattlesnake also hang from the ear on to the shoulder. These tribes of the Chaco were all vassals of the Inca at the advent of the Spaniards.
On the east these mountains break down rather abruptly into the broad valley of the Chaco river, or the Chaco wash, as it is more commonly designated; on the west they break down gradually, through a series of slopes and mesas, into the Chin Lee valley.
While churches and mission buildings crowd each other in the home lands, the Chaco, with an estimated population of three millions, must be content with this one ray of light in the dense night. On that far-off "green hill" we shall meet some even from the Lengua tribe. Christ said: "I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved."
In the excellent zoological gardens at Buenos Aires the curator, Doctor Onelli, a naturalist of note, showed us a big male jaguar which had been trapped in the Chaco, where it had already begun a career as a man-eater, having killed three persons. They were killed, and two of them were eaten; the animal was trapped, in consequence of the alarm excited by the death of his third victim.
Young reader, you will be longing to know the name of this remarkable region; know it, then, as the "Gran Chaco." No doubt you may have heard of it before, and, if a diligent student of geography, made some acquaintance with its character.
All this has he whose dress we are describing; while surmounting his head is a broad-brimmed hat with high-peaked crown and plume of rheas feathers underneath all a kerchief of gaudy colour, which draping down over the nape of his neck protects it from the fervid rays of the Chaco sun. It is a costume imposing and picturesque; while the caparison of his horse is in keeping with it.
Its southern tributaries are the Navajo, Chaco, and De Chelly.
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