Help with Food
For several millennia, Gran Chaco was a melting pot of different minority groups from all over the continent. "Chaco" roughly means hunting ground, the various groups helped each other to hunt. They drove up all the animals to a central point, they then let to the pregnant female animals and the young animals free again. Then killed off the rest. In colonial times, the Spaniards soon realzied to take over the area would not be particularly attractive: no metal extractions and the minority groups were as unfriendly as the climate.
In the late 1800s, the area explored in his major asset: QUEBRACHO forest. This special wood is very resistant and does not rot. A destruction of the forest began. The wood was used mainly for railway sleepers to lay the rails on but also to fuel the Argentine railway locomotives.
This destruction paved the way for the cotton farming boom of 1940 - and 1950's. In those days you could get two or three crops a year of the "white gold". Nowadays it is hardly profitable to harvest even once a year.
Gran Chaco's and Formosa provinces are the ones with the most inhabitants of the various indigenous minorities in Argentina.
Toba indians, also called Komlek or Qom belongs to the group called Guaraní and has a population of about 50,000 and is the largest in number of the various minority groups. They live mainly in the eastern Chaco province but also in Formosa province, and in the northern parts of the province of Santa Fe. Small groups Toba are also living in Salta and Buenos Aires provinces.
After the Toba came in contact with the Spaniards they began using horses and was known to fight hard against the Spaniards, and they expanded their areas of other indigenous groups' expense in the Chaco province.
Many of the indigenous groups living in groups in the country while others live in the suburbs of major cities like Resistencia where they live on manual labor and crafts: basket weaving, lerdrejning, woodcarving, and weaving.
Toba indians has a rich tradition of music, they play particular instruments like the fiddle nvik which is a small stringed instrument.
