The Deadly Selva Paraguay’s Northern Indian Frontier

The Role of the hostile Indian in nineteenth century Paraguay would be difficult to exaggerate, yet it is virtually unknown. The trail of agony so clearly expressed in the thousands of documents in the Asunción and other archives deserves to be better understood. This article can do little more than suggest the scope of the problem and describe how the Indian wars of the Paraguayan north did more to define and determine Paraguayan history during the years of the dictatorship of Dr. Francia (1814-1840), than has been previously noted by historians. In 1810, Paraguay had as its real, if not legal border in the north, the Río Apa, a broad, sluggish tributary of the Río Paraguay, its banks choked in dense, humid vegetation. North of the river was a no-man's land claimed by both Portugal and Spain and thinly occupied by the former. West of the Río Paraguay was the Chaco, a region of desolate scrubjungle, where Spanish and hence Paraguayan claims were virtually unchallenged save by the Indians who lived there. Fort Borbón, in the Chaco, Paraguay's northern outpost, was situated some hundred miles north of the Apa border on the Río Paraguay.