Una Excursion a Los Indios Ranqueles Author:Lucio V. Mansilla, Juan Carlos Casas In Spanish. One of the great classics of nineteenth-century Argentine prose, and one of the finest and subtlest books ever written on an American frontier ?both North and South?, Lucio V. Mansilla?s "Una excursión?" was first published in Argentina in 1870 and is one of very few works in American letters that presents a vivid, firsthand account... more » of a noncombative encounter between Native American and European civilizations. Colonel Mansilla, widely traveled and cultured aristocrat was an exception among his contemporaries, as he advocated for an open dialogue as best approach to the "Indian problem". In the end the peace accord he sought to enact with the Ranquels was summarily disregarded by the Argentine government, which slowly gravitated towards a policy of ethnic cleansing and expropriation of Indian lands. Mansilla humourously calls his expedition an "excursion", elegantly downplaying the jest of visiting belligerant natives in largely unknown areas of the Argentine interior. His careful observations offer valuable ethnographic data, as Argentina?s Indians were almost totally extinguished or assimilated soon after. Mansilla?s work both in this account and elsewhere made him a leading figure in the Argentina "Generation of 1880," a group crucial in the development of Argentine literary and intellectual life.« less