Abstract
I approach few authors (Darwin, Mantegazza, Herskovits, Willems and Bastide) as key-anthropologists in taking the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul as an ethnographic field. Presenting original texts from these early anthropologists, I analyze the main features of what came to be identified as a cultural area. The issue of cultural difference in contrast with a alleged homogeneous national culture is the central point that organizes and identifies the South as an anthropological construct.