In mid-August, although the climate in the south of the East Bank Republic is still cold, in the north in the Yakui River Valley, the weather has gradually begun to warm. While the animals were still hibernating, the industrious East Coast migrants had already begun their intense work: they set fire to large tracts of reeds and barren meadows in the vicinity, and then began to distribute the land one by one under the measurement of officials sent by the Dingxi County Agricultural Bureau, which had been in full swing since the beginning of autumn, and was now in late winter, and with the arrival of the last Ming immigrants who had completed quarantine this year, this work was also in its final stages.

This is the Whetstone, an ordinary new village near the small town of Valliverdi in what was later Brazil. Although it is already a township-level settlement on the immigration map of the Government Council of the Republic of China, it has just been developed, and there is a shortage of population and materials, so it is indeed a larger village in terms of actual scale.

The village was built last month by 600 Ming immigrants to support the elderly and children (since 1644, when they started their own migration activities, the main source of immigrants on the east bank is no longer the displaced people, but the people who have been plundered after the county town was broken). For humanitarian reasons, the people of the east coast tried to take the family as a unit when immigrating, supplemented by some Qing prisoners and the manpower of various rebels, the ratio of men to women was roughly between 2:1 and 3:1, and young and middle-aged people accounted for nearly half) came here, and then used the wood brought by the cart to build guard towers, warehouses, and turrets, and at the same time carried sickles to the swamp and the banks of the small river to harvest huge reeds, and build temporary shelters for themselves.

Because there is a huge whetstone at the entrance of this village, almost everyone sharpens their sickles here. So the team drivers from Dingxi County who were responsible for transporting supplies here. I called this place a whetstone. Later, the Government Council and the North Duck Lake District Administration also officially confirmed the name. A vast area including this village was named Whetstone Township, which was temporarily placed under the trusteeship of Dingxi County.

Half a month after the arrival of the Ming people, the superiors sent two hundred Moldavian slave girls, as well as twice as many young men and women of sixteen or seventeen years old. These 400 young people come from the three old counties of Dongfang County, Zhenhai County, and Ping'an County, and they are basically new young people born on the east coast, the so-called "generation that grew up under the red flag". Their family backgrounds are also different, some are from peasant families, and some are from working families. There are those who come from civil servant families, and of course, there are also those who come from professional military families. And no matter what family background, one thing they have in common is that they are not the firstborn!

In other words, they are both second sons and second daughters who do not have the right to inherit family property. After completing the compulsory education mandated by the state (five years of primary school and two years of junior high school), these people were grouped together for short-term skills training, and then they were relocated to Whetstone Township by the state to serve as the first pioneers of this wild territory.

And because of the scarcity of outside immigrants in the early years of the founding of the East Bank (1630-1633) - a few years together there were only about 1,000 European immigrants - the 400 young men and women who came to the Whetstone were about a large part of the "East Coasters" born in those years. Moreover, all of these people received a full seven years of compulsory compulsory education, regardless of the quality of education (few teachers). How about going to the Corps Fort to teach, training cadres and various talents) and real study time (the children generally have to help the family work, and also undergo military and discipline training). At least they have received a superficial systematic education, and they have knowledge that exceeds the average level of ordinary people in this era, and their characteristics are not the same as ordinary people. Therefore, it would be more efficient to use them to open up wasteland than immigrants - and this is an attempt advocated by some members of the Executive Committee.

The new young men and women were organized by the equally young Corps Fort graduates, and the women cut the reeds and grass, while the men worked as heavy workers such as transporters, lumberjacks, and builders, and were also responsible for clearing the fields and preparing for the spring ploughing after the beginning of spring - there was not much time to spare. In addition, some of them had to be assigned to some people who were usually better at training, and they were stationed in the turret to guard them with muskets issued by their superiors. After all, the Ming immigrants, who had only been in the country for a few months, could not resist the Guarani barbarians who had been elusive in the forest.

Without one or two years of systematic and rigorous militia military training, these new immigrants will not be able to undergo a qualitative transformation physically and psychologically. In this part of the East Coast, if you can't quickly transform from an honest, timid mud-legged man to a composed, capable, resilient pioneer, then your life will probably not be very good - there is no need for cowards here.

This is by no means alarmist! As the people of the eastern bank continued to move west along the Yakuyi River, the conflict with the Guaraní people, who had lived there for generations, suddenly became more intense than ever. Disputes over arable land, pastures, forests, rivers and lakes have provoked the anger of the Guaraní people who are extremely dissatisfied with the "humiliating land purchase price" given by the government on the east coast, not to mention the fact that the land purchase fee they offer is still a pile of "pieces of paper" (bank acceptances).

The people of the east coast apparently did not have the patience to listen to the "anger" of the Guaraní, who, with a sense of the superiority of civilized people, went around plundering the developed fields of the Guaraní and their livestock. In the process, if the Guaraní resisted, they were undoubtedly doomed, first by a judge from the east coast who read out a "ridiculous and incorrect verdict" (in Spanish) denying the Guaraní their natural possession of the land, and then declaring their cultivation of the land "illegal". The next step was logical as armed patrols, militia, and even the regular army of the east coast arrived, forcing the Guaraní to succumb and move westward into the denser forests. Only there can they get a moment of respite, but it is destined to be only a moment.

Of course, not all Guarani people will give in! Leaving aside the intricate relations between the various Guarani tribes living here and the division of territories, the hatred between some Guarani people who have livestock or property stolen by the East Coast and relatives who have been plundered or killed by the East Bank people is so great that they voluntarily stay in the vicinity and use rudimentary weapons and equipment to wage a long-term struggle against the East Bank military police and militia in order to kill and injure the East Bank personnel and damage their morale, hoping to delay or even stop the East Bank pioneers from advancing westward.

This was the case with the settlements of Dingxi County, which had previously expanded westward along the Yakuyi River, where early pioneers engaged in a bloody tug-of-war with the Guarani before finally driving out the barbarians. As a result, 378 pioneers are buried in this beautiful land covered with pine trees – more than even the local pioneers who died of various diseases. Of course, the losses of the barbarians were greater, and in the blows of the easterners, more than two thousand Guaraní were killed head-on; In the process of being forced to relocate due to the looting of land, livestock and food, it has also lost a considerable number of people; In addition, there are also those who were exiled abroad after returning to the East Coast, and died of diseases after increasing contact with the East Coast people, and the total number of people added up to seven or eight thousand, which can be described as shocking when calculated.

After Dingxi County was officially established and all of them were on the right track, the three township-level settlements of Shifangdian, Laojunmiao and Whetstone, which are located further west, are now on the front line to bear the hatred of the Guaraní people. All three settlements were built after the war (Second East-West War) when the easterners moved westward, which broke the tacit understanding with the Guaraní people that had lasted for several years, provoked their anger and provoked their fierce revolt.

When the first lumberjacks arrived in Shifangdian Township, the Guaraní used all their skills to engage the cavalry troops on the east coast who were escorting the immigrants here, and ended in heavy casualties. However, it also reminded the people on the east bank that the reclamation operation in the area west of the Taquari River had seriously touched the bottom line of the Guaraní people, and that they would face their wrath and casualties among the pioneers from now on.

Since the beginning of last year, 126 pioneers have been killed or injured in Shifangdian and Laojunmiao, and most of them were killed or injured while working in the field. Even Zhao Yan Zhao Zhenren, a high-level Taoist and one of the four real people, was hit by an arrow in the buttocks, and finally lay in bed for several days, very unlucky.

In a way, the casualties had damaged the morale of the pioneers and created panic among them, making the construction of the new settlements much behind schedule. In order to reverse this unfavorable situation, with the approval of the Executive Committee, the War Department officially ordered the dispatch of three companies of the 3rd, 5th, and 6th infantry, two companies of the 2nd and 3rd cavalry, and the 1st artillery company, totaling more than 1,000 infantry and cavalry artillery; At the same time, local mobilization was carried out in Xiayihe County and Zhongshan County, and 2,000 people from the county militia brigade that had not yet been on the battlefield were brought over to participate in the crusade against the Guaraní people.

The target of the campaign was a large Guarani tribe near what would become the city of Santa Cruz do Sul in Brazil, which was marked on the War Department's map as "Yiling," meaning the hills occupied by the Guaraní people. This hill was now the "axis of evil" within a radius of one or two hundred kilometers in the vicinity, where many Guarani people settled and farmed, and where almost all the supplies for the Guarani rebels in the wild came from. After all, those guerrillas are not immortals, they have to eat and rest, and even the lost bows and arrows have to be replenished from here, so after the end of this large Guarani stronghold, I believe that the rebels in the field will stop for a long time.

In the past, I didn't fight here because the investigation was not enough, and secondly, because it was too far away from the actual control area of the people on the east coast, but now that the investigation has been clear, the starting point of Laojunmiao Township has also been stabilized, and the materials are almost complete, just waiting for the expedition to be exterminated. (To be continued......)