Banda Oriental - The Indigenous Tribes and The 16th Century

The Indigenous Tribes and The 16th Century

Before the arrival of the Spanish and the Portuguese, several tribes of indigenous people were living in this area as nomads. The principal ones were the Charrúas, the Chanás, the Guayanas and the Guaraníes. Juan Díaz de Solís discovered this territory in 1516. During the conquest of the Río de la Plata area by the "Adelantados" (1535 - 1590), the main concern was to reach the interior in search or precious metals, so this region remained mostly ignored. The first ephemeral Spanish attempts to start populated centres in this territory happened between 1527 and 1577. These were the Fortín de San Lázaro (actual Carmelo) and the Puerto de San Salvador (1527-1530) by Sebastián Gaboto, the Real de San Juan (1542-1553) and the Real de San Gabriel y Ciudad de San Salvador (1573-1577) by Juan Ortiz de Zárate.

In 1542 the Crown of Castile established the Viceroyalty of Peru, a colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima. The Banda Oriental was therefore officially under the administration of the Viceroyalty of Peru from 1542 up to 1776. Although the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) limited the Portuguese colonies to the east of the 46th meridian, in practice, the Portuguese were free to advance in most of the territory that was not colonized by the Spanish, which included most of the Banda Oriental.