The subject has never been documented in history. Apparently this is not due to lack of interest of the first European visitors who arrived in America in order to study the ancient cultures, but to the Tehuelches who considered it a supreme (and misterious) order to not reveal the legend to foreigners.
All this suggests that the myth had a strong oral tradition amongst them but that, because of the fear that it instilled in them, they avoided as much as possible any discussion on the subject.
I heard word of it for the first time along time ago on a cold night of my childhood. I can´t remember well why I was spending a few nights in the house of my greatgrandfather Tomás but I think I remember that it had something to do with the big wedding celebrations that were taking place there in the middle of the Patagonian plain. Everyone, down to the most distant relatives of the bride, who I believe was the third cousin of by father, had been invited to the celebrations. What is certain is that one night- the night before the wedding- a very old indian looking man (he seemed much older than my great-grandfather who was then 90 years old) spoke about ´the Red Men´. The father of my paternal grandfather was angrily adament that it was not a true story.
I remember the two old men siting face to face drinking mate and unaware of my silent but attentive presence. I stayed with them because I didn´t want to go to be bed alone as I was scared of the possessed wind that made the wooden hut tremble.
I probably didn´t understand very clearly what the old man was saying, but one image has fixed itself in my memory: that of ferocious giant men with red hair who, completely naked, lived in those regions during an important period of history.
I was obsessed by the subject for years and years later I started to study it when I again heard a similar story from an old indian woman who was living in the outskirts of Puerto Deseado. Those that heard her made fun of her words, of her intoxication and her madness. I, on the other hand, felt deeply moved when I again heard that enigmatic legend that had been on my mind since childhood like a misterious old intrigue that had been laying dormant.
That day I decided to devote my time to investigating it. With great ardour and for several months, I searched for facts but found nothing. Then, making use of my time not working, I decided to travel to Patagonia to interview some of the old Indians- those men and women who were now old, normally alone and poor, who lived in the margins of a society that they didn´t understand and to which they meant nothing. I must have spoken to around a hundred of them. When I was on the verge of giving up asking, an old toothless peasant from Caleta Olivia, who was apparently Chilean, miraculously mentioned that when he was a boy, he had heard people talk about ´the Red Men´ as though they were a misterious and evil myth of his ancestors. The most important piece of information that he told me was that there was an old witch that knew all about the subject who lived alone on a ranch far from the town. It would be both boring and unsuitable to explain how, as a result of different confusing pieces of information, I finally managed to find myself there a few days later. A rickety wooden hut without windows in the middle of a brown immensity, surrounded for as far as the eye could see by nothing more than bushes and sheep. There the old woman was living, whose name nobody knew and which I didn’t dare ask.
She was inside the little house, propped up on the head board of something that resembled a bed, in the way that ill people often are. She was surrounded by numerous dogs and milliones of rags and indefinable objects that covered the bed and almost the entire floor. The walls were hardly two metres tall and had been blackened by the soot from the wood fire. The shining patagonian sun filtered through the cracks in the planks of wood and through the madly fitted board that acted as the only doorway to the house.
Afterwards, when I told the people in the town that I had been with her, with great surprise I noted that the majority of them thought that she had died many years before. Only one or two of then said that they had personally met her and they were the strangest of them (to an almost unbelievable degree) since they were very old men who said that they had seen her many years ago and that then she was already very old.
The woman was hardly more than a round and spongy face poking out from the dirty blankets. She had brown, greyish skin with thousands of wrinkles. He eyes were like two grapes sunken beneath her forehead. Below them was a whistling, toothless hole which was all that was left of what had once been her mouth. From this hole a tongue flickered in and and out in the same way that a lizards does. Her hair was like a white shell. Time had removed all possibility of distinguishing her gender, and if I keep refering to her as ´the old woman´, this is only because I arrived in search of a woman. Strictly speaking it would have been impossible to recognise the sex of that ancient and forgotten being. I had known various people who were a hundred years old and if I had been told that this woman was three hundred, I would have believed them.
After an effort to overcome the inhuman and repulsive image that I had in front of me, and a short almost monosyllabic conversation in which, perhaps without needing to, I tried to explain my incongrous presence in her house, I mentioned ´the Red Men´. The old woman spoke a dialect that hardly resembled Spanish, but the enormous excitement that filled me when I noticed that she knew what I was talking about, meant that I was able to understand her reply and even forget about her frightening image.
-The Red Men, she said to me, no longer exist. Nobody believes in the story.
With great patience, I linked together the conversation, despite her constant tendency to wander of the point. I admit, with a little shame, that when night fell, I was afraid to stay in that pigsty, surrounded by dogs of every type which listened to every word of their mistress as though they also were interested in investigating the matter. Furthermore, as the hours passed, it seemed that my presence was making them more and more unsettled. Without stopping listening to the conversation, they started to move around and every now and again they let out a growl which was half way between being absent minded and threatening.
I waited many years to write my testimony because I spent the rest of my life trying to find some concrete fact, which obviously I never found. Now, given my circumstances, I can´t put it off any longer.
Before, however, I need to imperiously declare that I am completely convinced that the legend existed; and that my spirit has never stopped suspecting that, maybe, it originated from an omnious reality, hidden in the darkness of the remote and unknown past.
The Red Men were incredibly tall, smooth skinned in both the body and face, with a coppery skin even in the eyes of the copper coloured Tehuelches. Both the men and the women had red coloued manes that grew down to their waists if not further. Their genitals, with no pubic hair, were grossly visible. They didn´t use any type of clothing, jewellery, utensils weapons nor tools. They coped with the patagonian climate completely naked. They had large mouths with powerful sharp teeth which were suitable for their exclusively carnivore, and at times, cannabilistic diet.
So as not to eat one another, when they couldn´t get hold of fresh human meat, they would feed on ńandúes and guanacos which are native patagonian animals.
The Tehuecles considered them ferocious animals with a human appearance and they instilled great panic in them even though they didn´t use any weapons. On occasions, the Indians sacrificed their newly born by abandoning their crying babies so as to feed the Red men. In doing this, they hoped to avoid attacks, the possibility of which terrified them.
Apparently, as well as fear, the Red Men instilled a sense of guilt on the Tehuelches people. They saw it as a type of punishment by the Gods for some monstrous mistake commited by their ancient ancestors. From both these sentiments, the reason for not talking about the Red Men, or the legend that they left when the Conquerers arrived, becomes clear.
The Red Men were afraid of the sea and of the night sky. They lived far from the coast, on the Patagonian plateau and at night they would sit down to sleep side by side in big groups. It was during these hours that the smell that they exuded became especially nauseating. They didn´t know how to use fire and they didn´t wear any accesories or tattoos on their bodies. They were never interested in taking from the Indians their weapons, furs nor anything else. They only wanted their meat, and preferably young flesh.
As I understand it, the Red Men rose- according to the myth- from the heart of the fire of a large mountain and it was back into this fire that they went, or fell, before disappearing forever. It is possible that they were escaping from something but noone knows what it was.
Up to this point I have written everything that I was able to reconstruct. I am hoping that, at some point, someone else may be able to throw more light on the question.
R.B.V
Buenos Aires 1940