Conquest of the Desert
From the mid-19th century onwards several Argentine and European settlements, some of them sporadic, appeared at the edges of the desert. The most important was established at Chubut River's outflow by Welsh immigrants in 1860. Perito Moreno explored the desert in the 1870s. In the 1870s the Argentine army undertook the Conquest of the Desert campaign, massively defeating Mapuche warlords. The Conquest of the Desert was followed by a sharp decline in the indigenous population of the desert; some were chased into Chile and peripheral areas in the Andes. It is estimated that the Conquest of the Desert caused the death of about 1,000 Native Americans. Additionally 10,000 Native Americans were taken prisoner of whom 3,000 ended up in Buenos Aires separated by sexes to avoid their procreation. The boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina bought most of the desert under definitive Argentine sovereignty; previously Chile had claimed varying now Argentine areas under claims of inherited colonial titles.