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Introduction. The first europeans
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Its indigenous population was composed by three groups: the "canoe people" (Yamana and Kaweskar) who depended basically on marine resources and lived on the Fuegian archipelagos, the "foot people" (Selk'nam and Haush) who were terrestrial hunters in the mainland of Tierra del Fuego and the Tehuelches (see pic on the left), also terrestrial and nomadic hunters, divided in southern Tehuelches (Aonikenk) who lived in southeast patagonia, and the northern tehuelches (Gununa'kena) who lived in northeast Patagonia. Before the coming of the Europeans, the calculated populations of these tribus were: Tehuelches: 2500-3000, Foot people: 3000-4000, Canoe People: 6000+. Now all that is left is a handful of Tehuelches. Lola Kiepja, the last fuegian aborigin, died in Ushuahia in 1975. |
The first europeans to sail along the patagonian costs were Ferdinand of Magallanes and his crew in 1520. Their first meeting with the aborigins (Tehuelches) was recorded by Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of the expedition, in a by now famous passage: "One day, when no one was expecting it, we saw a giant, completely naked, by the sea. He danced and jumped and, singing, spread sand and dust over his head...He was so tall that the tallest among us reached only to his waist. He was truly well built [1]...The captain named these kind of people Pataghoni. They have no houses but huts, like the Egyptians. They live on raw meat and eat a kind of sweet root which they callThe long lasting legend of the Patagonian Giants was born. On the pic on the right you can see the "giants" depicted in the tip of South America on a map of 1562 (notice that Tierra del Fuego was still not known to be an island). It is a common belief that the name Patagons aluded to the apparently outstanding foot size of the Tehuelches (who were in fact rather tall: 1.8 m. on average), but it is more likely that it be related to the name of a giant in a spanish chivalric romance fashionable at that time, |
Later meetings between europeans and indians are said to have been rather bloody, as those involving the crews of Francis Drake in 1578 and of Oliver van Noort (the first european to sail across cap Horn) in 1599. John Narborough, at the command of a scientific expedition in 1670, is one of the first to have made peaceful contacts with the indians. This kind of effort was pursued to various degrees by french navigators in later years. Bougainville remarked that the Tehuelches were not giants but "what seemed gigantic to me was their great built."[3] Other recorded contacts with the patagonic indians were made by the Nodal brothers in 1610 and by James Cook in 1769.
In 1830 Captain James Fitzroy, at the command of the first expedition of the famous Beagle, decided to take four young fuegian hostages all the way to England "to become useful as interpreters, and be the means of establishing a friendly disposition towards Englishmen on the part of their countrymen." [4] The names given to them by the crew were: York Minster, Jemmy Button, Fuegia Basket and Boat Memory. Their original names were, respectively: el'leparu, o'run-del'lico and yok'cushly. boat memory died of smallpox shortly after his arrival to England, and so his name is lost. In London, Fuegia Basket got a bonnet from Queen Adelaide herself. One year later the Beagle returned the three fuegians home, along with a young naturalist, Charles Darwin. Once in Tierra del Fuego, Darwin was appalled at Jemmy's reticence to returning to England, and prefered to relate that to the presence of his "young and nice looking wife". Some years later a group of Christian missionaries was massacred at Wulaia Bay by the indians, supposedly lead by Jemmy and his family.
Jemmy Button | Fuegia Basket | Charles Darwin |
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When he returned to England, Darwin wrote of the fuegians:
"The perfect equality among the individuals composing the Fuegian tribes must for a long time retard their civilization. ...In Tierra del Fuego, until some chief shall arise with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantage, such as the domesticated animals, it seems scarcely possible that the political state of the country can be improved. At present, even a piece of cloth given to one is torn into shreds and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he might manifest his superiority and increase his power."[4]