Border Clashes
To counteract the Argentine conquest of Patagonia, the Chileans supplied arms, ammunition and horses to their Indian allies.On 16 January 1883, a 10-man section of a platoon of the Argentine Army in pursuit of a large Indian war party, ran into an ambush in the Pulmarí Valley set up by Chilean soldiers, and in the engagement that followed Captain Emilio Crouzeilles along with Lieutenant Nicolas Lazcano and several privates were killed.On 17 February 1883, Lieutenant-Colonel Juan Díaz, at the head of a 16-man Argentine infantry detachment, was trailing a war party of 100 to 150 Indians. Upon reaching Pulmarí Valley, they were surrounded by the Indians and around 50 Chilean soldiers. Heavily outnumbered, the Argentine soldiers skillfully outfought their attackers, including a bayonet charge mounted by the Chilean detachment.On 21 February 1883, according to Argentine Army Major Manuel Prado, 150-200 Indians armed with Winchesters and Martini-Henri rifles attacked an Argentine Army detachment operating on the Argentine-Chilean border, and in a four-hour engagement killed or wounded 22 Argentine soldiers at a cost of some 100 warriors.
Read more about this topic: Conquest Of The Desert
Famous quotes containing the word border:
“For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)