Taking in the Andean cordillera, the Pampas grasslands of Argentina and Uruguay, the desert steppes of southern Patagonia, and the temperate lowlands of south-central Chile (Araucanía), this chapter explores the horse’s arrival and impact in South America’s Southern Cone. Convention divides the Cone along the spine of the mountains between Chile and Argentina. To their east it contrasts the Pampas in the north with Patagonia in the south. I follow most recent scholarship in stressing the historical connections that such boundaries obscure. Similarly, I emphasize not only the acquisition of horses, but also the significance of hunting, taking, and trading feral livestock and the adoption of elements of food production. Both developments formed part of the inclusion of ‘free’ Native Americans within broader international political and commercial systems. At the same time, the work of anthropologists and the comments of contemporary European observers make the Southern Cone one of the most richly documented regions of all for studying the emergence of Horse Nations post-1492. The Southern Cone is environmentally far more complex than a simple tripartite classification into Araucanía, Patagonia, and Pampas suggests. In the north the Pampas reach to the Paraná and Salado drainages, to the south as far as the Río Colorado and its tributaries. They extend east to include Uruguay and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and in the west reach the Andean foothills. A basic division follows the 500 mm isohyet: to its west the Dry Pampa is increasingly water-deficient, while to the east the Humid Pampa ultimately benefits from as much as 800 mm of rain a year (Plate 23). The Uruguayan Savannah forms a third ecological subdivision that includes areas with palms and some forest enclaves. Generally, the Pampas comprise a gently sloping plain covered by extensive grasslands, but drier-adapted shrub occurs in the west and a wedge of forest penetrates their centre from the north. The Sierra de Tandilia and Sierra de la Ventana south of Buenos Aires are rare areas of higher relief. Climate is temperate, but surface water is often scarce, stone for tool-making rare, game dispersed.
Geology of the West Branch North River and the Bothan Brook Plutons of the South-Central Cape Breton Highlands, Nova Scotia