[1] Its historical importance lies in having been a refuge for the Charrúas as a result of the gradual Spanish colonial expansion, then during the revolutionary independence period and finally in the first decades of independent Uruguay, until their almost total extermination in the Massacre of Salsipuedes in 1831.
[citation needed] According to the historian Carlos Maggi in his book El Caciquillo, this may have been one of the places where José Gervasio Artigas lived during his "years in the desert", the name usually given to the long period when Artigas was between 14 and 33 years of age.
In February 1805 Artigas requested and obtained from Commander Francisco Javier de Viana, representative of the Viceroy, over 105,000 hectares (260,000 acres) of land in Arerunguá.
[2] This, then, would be the place chosen by José Gervasio Artigas, Protector of the Free Peoples, as the center of operations and headquarters of the Ejército Oriental (Eastern Army) during the period of the Gesta Artiguista in the Río de la Plata.
These characteristics place Arerunguá as a region of enormous historical value, given that it was where substantial elements of the "orientality" that distinguishes the essence of the Uruguayan nation emerged and matured.