The wilds of Patagonia

A DYING RACE

A keen wind whistles through the Channels, tears the stunted trees, and now and then flings a grey shower as a contribution to the yellowish bogs. On the tops of the mountains the winter snow shines against a leaden sky. Then Emilia presses her flat nose still flatter against the panes in the laboratory and says something which signifies “canoe.” By means of the glasses we perceive a black spot far ahead—our first encounter with the Indians is at hand. Darwin once said that a naked savage in his own land is a sight never to be forgotten. It was not the first we had seen, but the impression was never so strong.

The canoe we now met was typical from every point of view. Half-naked, wild-looking figures are pulling out of time; in the stern an old woman steers. Everywhere amongst the queer luggage—sticks and poles of various shapes, old sealskins, piles of shells, and pieces of blubber—barking dogs peep forth, and in the smoke from the fire, always nursed in the middle of the boat, some rough-headed children appear. Now they have caught sight of Emilia, with their dark eyes wide open they quickly exchange ideas about this elegant lady who steps about on deck with such an assurance of demeanour. She was sent to negotiate. We were under the impression that a whole sermon would be necessary to explain that we were not bad and did not want to rob them of their children; at least a long while elapsed before they could make up their minds to come on board. Not until now did we get an idea of the contents of a canoe! Out came a dozen persons—men, women, and children, the youngest carried on the back—accompanied by half a score of dogs. They look round shyly, but at the same time with much curiosity; some of them come on board after a certain hesitation. They refuse to leave their canoe alone, but one of them stops to keep an eye on us; certainly we are likely to steal the valuable contents. Only think of the delicious half-rotten whale-blubber!

Let us make nearer acquaintance with this peculiar race. Round the funnel, where it is warm, our guests have made themselves comfortable, squatting on their hams. Truly it is a funny assembly, and one is almost ready to ask if they really belong to the same species as we do. The face is round, the distance between the cheek-bones being remarkably great. The eyes have a dark and earnest expression, the nose is flat and broad, the mouth often monstrously large, with thick lips. The teeth of the younger members are white and beautiful; in the case of the older members one often finds the front teeth missing—they have gone in the process of one or other of the employments to which they have been put. The skin is of a dirty yellowish-brown colour, sometimes with a coppery tinge; the hair is very thick, coarse, and jet-black. It is worn hanging loose over the shoulders, a square-cut fringe hiding the forehead. Both sexes show a remarkable disproportion between the upper body and the legs. The trunk is well developed, the neck short and thick, the shoulders straight, and the arms long and muscular. Often one finds real features of beauty, though the body is often disfigured by an all too prominent abdomen. Their worst point is thin, bent legs; want of exercise retards their development—the Indian lives in his canoe and by his fire; he is always sitting, and when he straightens his legs the skin folds over the kneecap. The men, who are generally without any trace of a beard, are mostly of finer stature than the women; they are considerably taller, their medium height reaching 5 feet 1 inch, against 4 feet 8 inches in the case of the women. The babies are rather lovely, with skin and hair of a lighter colour and with eyes of that deep blue which is often observed in kittens.

A visit to the camp gives us the best idea of Indian life. The beach is covered with shells. The canoes have been hauled up on thin logs. A few steps from the water, and we reach the huts, that harmonise so with the surrounding forest that one does not see them until one gets close. The forest gives shelter from at least one direction; on the rocks mussels grow large and fat, and outside in the cove one can gather sea-urchins.

The inhabitants have gathered in front of their wigwams to greet us. They were just “at table,” an occupation much in favour during the daytime, or even at night. They have hastened to put on old garments, such as shawls, pieces of blankets, torn jerseys, &c., or even the original mantle of skins. This was once the only garment worn—a square mantle of fur-seal or sea-otter, sometimes completed by a fig-leaf of the same material, kept in place by strings made from sinews. The head was always uncovered. With the visits of white men modern clothes have become more or less common; but there is hardly an Indian possessing a complete suit—one has a coat, another a pair of trousers, most of them have the legs quite naked. Some wear ornaments, necklaces of shells or on the breast a flat, polished piece of bone, fixed on a neatly plaited string. Without protests they let us enter the hut—some flexible sticks in a circle, bent together and fixed with a tough, grass-like plant (Marsippospermum grandiflorum). Hardly is the Indian able to stand upright under his roof, where the smoke from the fire, which is fed with fresh green branches of evergreen beech, may seek its way out at leisure. The wigwam is covered with grass, fern-leaves, twigs of trees, or with sea-lion skins and old pieces of clothes, all according to circumstances. The large skins are naturally much appreciated; they are never left behind on a camping-place, as are all the other materials used. The hut has one great advantage: it is easily constructed, and that is the main thing for a nomadic tribe. Once or twice we saw the skeleton of a hut brought along, which of course saved trouble.

We gladly “took a seat” with them and accepted their food. They have nice things to offer—large shellfish of various kinds, raw or roasted on the cinders, just as you like. Conversation is kept up with the aid of Emilia as interpreter: she is in her element, and appears to have forgotten all her new civilisation, ready to jump in a canoe again with naked legs amongst dogs, dirt, and rubbish. The shells crackle, lips whisper. The natives have a phenomenal capacity for speaking without producing a sound. They look very earnest, their lips move quickly—nothing is heard. Suddenly the whole party starts to laugh heartily; it is evident that somebody has made a sally, and there is no doubt that we are the butt of their joke.

Mussels form the main part of their food. The big common Mytilus are simply plucked like fruit at low tide; the flat Patella is loosened with a short stick flattened like a chisel at one end. Sea-urchins are caught with a long stick, cleft in four parts at the end. But besides this they eat fish, meat, and blubber, or almost anything they can get hold of. Their weapons are very simple; the most important are the harpoons of bone, with one hook or with a long row of hooks like a saw fixed in a handle. There seems to be plenty of otter in the Channels; the skin is fine and valuable, and is the only object of barter available. Seal is not to be got every day, but one can live well on a big sea-lion for several days. And what delight when they come across a stranded whale! Feasts are held as long as anything eatable is left; from all directions the savages hasten up, eat till they are fit to burst, and pull away with loaded canoes. Several of the Indians we met had big quantities of whale-blubber. This does not contradict the fact that the Indian only lives for the day and never thinks of saving anything; he leads a wild life, with meat and blubber one day and nothing the next.

Bows and arrows seem to have fallen out of use, which is the more remarkable as nothing has replaced them. They are of the same shape as those used by the Onas, but smaller. The arrows are made of yellow berberis-wood, and have a neatly fashioned point of flint or glass; the quiver is of seal- or otter-skin. Slings are sometimes used to kill birds with, and the women are said to be clever in using them. Another weapon also is found, but we made its acquaintance only once. It was in Port Grappler. The natives had been on board, and had not shown themselves amiably disposed towards us. The next day we went on shore to see their camp. As we were on our way we saw the women and children hurry away from the huts along a narrow path that disappeared in the thick forest—such a retreat seems to have been constructed at every camping-place—and the men gathered in front of the houses threatening us with stones, sticks, and a kind of club, which at once awoke our curiosity. They would not allow us to land before we had promised them to leave a shot-gun we brought behind in the yawl; Emilia had hard work to persuade them. At the same moment the clubs disappeared. In vain we asked them, in vain we looked all round; they only shook their heads, probably suspecting that we should deprive them of their arms and then assault them. It was only after a long parley and rich presents of biscuits and tobacco that one of them disappeared behind the hut and returned with a club, which he gave us. In comparison with its length (two feet) it is very heavy, and is made from the root of the tepú (Tepualia stipularis).

The Channel Indians live in families and have no idea of a community. Now and then some families keep together, probably those related to each other, as, for instance, two brothers with their wives and children. The largest party we saw, in Port Grappler, numbered thirty members, who listened to an old grey-haired rascal, whose objection to our anthropometrical instruments made him prohibit his subjects from visiting our laboratory. But, as we later found out, the different families here afterwards spread in various directions. As a rule, the canoe Indian has only one wife, but it may happen that a man with an old (how soon!) and ugly wife secures a younger one. Polygamy is connected with the position of the woman. She is subject to her husband’s will, she does the hard work. Hour after hour, with her baby on her back, she sits pulling the boat in a tiring position; half a day she wades in the ice-cold water to fill the baskets with mussels. The household furniture is very plain: knives made from shells or stones, sinews, bone-prickers, all kept in round wooden boxes, and baskets plaited with a certain skill. How hard must it be in the circumstances to give birth to the children, rear them, and teach them to struggle for life with resources smaller, perhaps, than any other people on the earth possess! We seldom saw more than two or three children in a family; it is evident that mortality must be great among these naked little beings, who are dragged about with their parents in any kind of weather. Here, if ever one may study the survival of the fittest, he who stands the test when young should be able to stand anything. I do not think they ever reach any great age. The only one that looked more than fifty was the above-mentioned cacique in Port Grappler. They have no idea whatever of their age. They do not count more than to three; any number above is much or many. We need not be astonished at their not getting old: in fact, they lead a life as hard as we can conceive. An existence in constant cold, in eternal rain, which makes it impossible to dry anything for weeks together, in icy water, in storms and frequent dangers, and, finally, the intercourse with white men, is not favourable to longevity.

That the dismal surroundings and the frightful struggle for existence should put their stamp on the mental life is easily understood. There rests a certain mournful melancholy over their souls; they are used to fearing the dangerous elements, and white men, more dangerous still. But, as true children of instinct, they forget all sorrows round the crackling fire; when they have plenty to eat their eyes sparkle, they have a merry time. Play seems to be foreign to them; not even the children play, but look earnest as old people, as if they could already behold all the terrors of the future in the dreary sky that lifts its vault above their land. I have not seen any ceremonies; probably they perform some, but refuse to before strangers. The Yahgan tribe was not without them. They have no religious ideas, they do not worship anything, but it is clear that they must fear powers of nature, which they cannot explain. They also seem to have some sort of idea that dead persons may hurt them; twice we saw natives carrying a small leather pouch with hair from a dead person, and Emilia declared them to be amulets. Anyhow their owners parted with them for a match-box.

Life makes the Channel Indian a nomad. He moves along the shores all his life, year after year, from birth to death. However plain his canoe may look, it is a masterpiece, if we take into consideration that it is made with empty hands. Formerly the principal tool was the fire. A tree was burnt at the foot till it crashed down, the log was literally burnt down to a plank, and the charred wood gradually scraped off with big sharp-edged shells or stone knives. Now axes are used, but not every family has one. Then the plank is furnished with holes along the edges, as the canoe must be bound together. The construction is simple: one bottom board bent upwards in the bow and stern to form the broad stem and the stern-post, which protrude above the sides, made of two boards fixed to each other and to the bottom. They are drawn together with the tough bast of the cypress or the stem of a runner-plant (Campsidium chilense) and tightened with moss, fat, &c.; nevertheless the canoe makes a lot of water, and the scoop of sealskin is frequently needed. Some small sticks across the gunwales make the thwarts, and it is ready—the treasure, the family fortune. Now and then we saw oars of the primitive type, made in two pieces with the blade fixed with bast on to the handle, but those who are well off and possess a hatchet make them as we do. The oar to steer with is shorter than the rest, and is handled with great ability by the women. Often they travel into the open water; and the sea inside the Channels may become heavy indeed for such a primitive craft, especially when, during a move from one camp to another, it is heavily loaded. Once we took two canoes on board, and the contents were emptied on the deck. In spite of the dreadful stench, Quensel and I made a list of the things contained in one of them: Three long oars, one short, handles for the harpoons, hatchet (modern), basket of bark for fresh water, two boxes with harpoon points, necklaces, sinews, prickers, &c., three small bags of sealskin with the same contents as the boxes, a bag of whale-hide with blubber, baskets, bailer of sealskin, a piece of slate to sharpen knives, bundles of bast, sea-lion skins, heaps of shells, pieces of blubber, various whalebones and baleens, bundles of Marsippospermum and a painter, plaited of that same plant.

Nowadays the Channel Indians are distributed from the Magellan Straits to the Gulf of Penas, over a distance of six degrees. Generally they keep inside, but sometimes travel out in the opening, and are said to use larger canoes for such journeys. We did not see any of this larger kind, but in Port Gallant found a third construction made from a single log. That sort is a product of late years. To the east the natives once travelled as far as Useless Bay and Magdalena Channel; opposite our camping-place in Admiralty Inlet we found the old huts. They are often seen in Last Hope Inlet, and sometimes in Skyring Water. As I have told above, we had heard of a road made by the natives from Obstruction Sound to Skyring, and we spent a day during our Skyring expedition in order to visit the place. Our yawl passed the bar at the entrance of Excelsior Sound, and we soon reached its inner extremity, and seemed surrounded everywhere by a wall of rocks and green foliage. At first we looked in vain. There is no beach of sand or gravel; the water reaches the very peat and the roots of the trees, and it was a mere chance that we found the landing-place, so well is it hidden. The road follows a narrow gorge, where a vault of green leaves closes above one’s head. It is four hundred yards long, and laid with short sticks across, with a distance of from three to six feet between them. At the other end we found a lagoon with fresh water, and from a hill we saw another lagoon separating us from Obstruction Sound. The sticks greatly facilitate the transport of the heavy canoes. What the Indians find to do in Skyring is not easy to tell. There are no shells or seals, and to judge from their old huts they carry provisions with them. Formerly they probably used to go there hunting guanacos, or more especially deer, and now perhaps to beg at the settlements. Several other passes, “portages” as they are sometimes called, are known in the Channels.

The Yahgan tribe, which inhabits Tierra del Fuego down to Cape Horn, and the remnants of which are collected on a small mission station, leads a life in every way corresponding to that of the Channel tribe. Their canoe, however, is of a very different type. This is not remarkable; much more so is it that their languages are entirely different, not one word being the same, or even anything similar. It was possible for me to discover this, but how explain the difference? They cannot have had any great intercourse with each other, though they must have met, as no natural boundaries separate them. In the Patagonian Channels at least two different dialects are spoken; Emilia could not quite understand the Grappler people, but those in Smyth Channel spoke exactly as she did. The language can hardly be called beautiful. In the ears of a white man it sounds like a mixture of inarticulate, hoarse, and guttural sounds. The numerous consonants piled upon each other are characteristic, the peculiar sh and ch sounds, two kinds of r, and the impure vowels, which it is scarcely possible to pronounce. Their vocabulary is deficient in words for abstract things, but very rich in names of natural products, such as plants, animals, and even such as are of no use. Since their acquaintance with white people they have created many new words, such as for steamer, knife, matches, &c. We were surprised to know that they did not use the words for man and woman to indicate white people, but had made quite new names for them.

Thus they have lived for thousands of years, have been born, eaten mussels, endured hardships, and died. Soon no descendants will walk in their footsteps; they will all die out. With every year their small tribe melts. Perhaps a few hundreds are now left, but soon only the fragments of canoes and skeletons of wigwams will bear witness to them. They will die, but not because they have succumbed to a stronger race, which is able to gain wealth, unknown to them, from their land. When they have disappeared their vast land will remain deserted; it offers means of life for nobody else. There we, the white men, are the weaker race. But why, then, are they condemned to extermination?

Well, why did the Yahgans disappear? Nobody hungered for their country—it was for the care of their souls. The mission gathered them, took them away from their huts and canoes, set them to read the Catechism and knit stockings. They languished and died. And in this case the difficult problem, how the white intruder should treat the savages, was simple enough: leave them alone; receive those who wish it, absorb them if possible, but do not transplant them roughly to a new soil. I believe there is a scheme to collect the rest of the Channel Indians into the mission stations. Well, in this case it will only hasten the inevitable end. It is dreadful to see how the white men who passed through the Channels and regarded the natives as strange animals, amusing to look at for a while, have been able to spread death and destruction among these innocent children of nature. Syphilis and phthisis especially ravage, and if we remember the influence of the first-mentioned disease on the offspring it is easy to tell the future result. The natives certainly have not the slightest idea of what a contagious disease is.

Perhaps all assistance would come too late now. But if I had the power I would erect a sort of central station where the poor fellows could come for a doctor and for other help, but without giving them a chance of a parasitic life of idleness. There is a small possibility that this peculiar tribe, one of the very lowest on earth, may be saved from total extermination. But who is the man to do it?