José Gervasio Artigas, Leader of the independence movement

WHEN SPANIARDS DISCOVERED the territory of present-day Uruguay in 1516, they found only a rolling prairie populated by groups of Indians living in primitive conditions. When confronted by the Spaniards, the Indians fiercely defended their freedom and their independent way of life. their continued ferocious resistance to Spanish conquest, combined with the absence of gold and silver, discouraged settlement in this region during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Colonization by Spain began to increase, however, when  »» More