Massacre of Salsipuedes

[3] According to official reports, 40 were killed and 300 were taken prisoner, with an uncertain number managing to escape; following the massacre, the survivors were forcibly marched to Montevideo and sold into slavery, and 4 were notably sent to a human zoo in Paris.

The Banda Oriental saw relatively late European settlement due to a combination of fierce indigenous resistance along with a lack of attractive natural resources;[4] when settlers eventually did arrive by the turn of the 18th century, it was as part of the struggle between the British, Spanish and Portuguese empires for control of the La Plata Basin.

[5] Artigas and Rivera looked positively upon the Guarani and preferred to maintain peace with them, as they had become compatible with their view of an independent Uruguayan society (from the influence of the Jesuit missions) through their adoption of a sedentary way of life and progressive assimilation into the Mestizo communities.

Through a combination of land theft and colonization, their lack of amenability to assimilation, affliction by disease, and the disruption of their nomadic way of life, their fortunes were severely affected.

Preceding his assumption of the presidency, Rivera was petitioned in February 1830 by his rival Juan Antonio Lavalleja that the Charrúa, whom the latter described as "wicked people who know no restraint (...) (and could not) be left to their natural inclinations", should be confronted in order to satisfy the settlers' demands for protection.

In early 1831, Rivera summoned the leading Charrúa chiefs — Venado, Polidoro, Rondeau and Juan Pedro — and their families to a meeting on a riverbank of what is today known as the Great Salsipuedes Creek.

[8] The massacre was followed by two other attacks by the Queguay Grande River and the "La cueva del Tigre" passage respectively, in order to track down and eliminate the Charrúa that had either escaped or not been present.

On 17 June of the following year, a failed ambush at the Yacaré Cururú Creek resulted in Bernabé Rivera, along with 2 officers and 9 soldiers, being killed by a group of Charrúa that had survived the previous attacks.

Hearing of the Charrúan prisoners being put up for sale, the director of the Oriental School of Montevideo thought that the story of a nearly extinct people would spark the interest of French scientists and the public.