THE FOUNDING OF BUENOS AIRES
Early in 1516 the Spanish navigator Juan Díaz de Solís
sailed into a wide estuary on the Eastern Seaboard of
South America. Wading ashore, de Solís claimed the land
for Spain, naming the river the Río de la Plata, “River of
Silver,” since the local people possessed silver. The
indigenous peoples on either side of the estuary—the
Charrúas in what is now Uruguay, and the Querandí on the
plains that were to be known as the Pampas in modern
Argentina—regarded the newcomers with hostility. These
locals were hunter-gatherers who lived in small groups
without strong centralized political authorities. Indeed it was
such a band of Charrúas who clubbed de Solís to death as
he explored the new domains he had attemped to occupy
for Spain.
In 1534 the