Epecuen Lagoon

Epecuen Lagoon lies within the Pampas, the extensive grassland country of southern South America. Its historical setting is the wider frontier of the Argentine plains, rather than a documented sequence of events on the lagoon shore. Spanish settlement at the Río de la Plata and the foundation of Buenos Aires in the sixteenth century brought confrontations with Indigenous peoples, especially the Querandí. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Salado River marked the divide between the colonial settlements and Indigenous territories. Livestock and mounted travel shaped relations across that frontier. Mapuche raiders carried cattle taken from European settlements across the Andes into Chile, using the principal route called Camino de los chilenos. The plains thus connected settlements east of the mountains with markets and communities beyond the passes. Around 1830 the Mapuche leader Calfucurá crossed from Chile into the Pampas. These movements belong to the regional history surrounding Epecuen, where grassland, animals and overland routes mattered more than the later agricultural boundaries of the Argentine provinces.