Sailing east of Tierra del Fuego
In October 1520 Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet marked a turning-point in its voyage of circumnavigation by passing through what became known as the Magellan Strait, out of which we sailed yesterday evening shortly after embarkation in Punta Arenas. To the south, they saw a barren land lit with bonfires and named it, Tierra del Fuego. The firelighters were the Yahgans: the most southerly inhabitants of the earth. None of these aborigines wore much clothing, wrapping their naked bodies in animal skins for cover. Their women swam in the icy waters of the south Atlantic with their babies on their backs, in defiance of our understanding of physiognomy. Their menfolk were skilled fishermen using dugout canoes in which they lit the fires that they lit everywhere.
In 1826, Captain Fitzroy, master of HM Survey Ship Beagle found his way through a more southerly channel than the Magellan Strait subsequently named after his ship. He too caught sight of the Yahgans, and for some reason decided to capture some aboriginal specimens. In consequence, four Yahgans were taken back to England to be civilized. Fitzroy passed the time on his return transatlantic crossing interrogating them thoroughly. Either because of a misunderstanding – they had no language in common for these conversations – or because the tired and confused Yahgans simply gave the answers they thought their interrogator wanted, the Yahgans appear to have admitted to the practice of cannibalism. No evidence to support their cannibalism has ever been found.
When the Beagle set sail from England again in 1831, it had on board not only the young Charles Darwin but also three surviving Yahgans. They were dressed in early-nineteenth century European finery, and were accompanied with agricultural implements and a huge amount of clothing collected, with the best of intentions, by English parish church congregations. For the 'Fuegian Indians,' especially their cannibalism, had captured the English church-going public’s imagination. Would they now succeed in diffusing civilized values amongst their compatriots upon their return? The project provides a resonant context for Darwin’s meditations as he progressed south across the Atlantic: Nature or Nurture? Would the fittest survive? On arrival in Tierra del Fuego, the young Darwin found the sight of the native Yahgans traumatically distasteful. The three Anglicized Yahgans were reunited with their compatriots and the Beagle sailed on. When the Beagle returned, Darwin was doubly distressed to find that these Yahgans had reverted entirely to their native ways and customs. But what did this prove? That they were inherently inferior, or that the power of environment had overwhelmed them?
A generation after the Beagle voyage, the mindset of Victorian England was much more certain about the issues that had troubled Darwin when he first encountered the Yahgans. The British Empire was increasingly confident of its superior ways and of the blessings that would come from exporting its values to native peoples fortunate enough to be brought under its protection. This mindset could be readily shared by evangelical Christians keen to follow the Gospel command: “Go preach my Gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth…and when my gospel is preached … then shall the end come.” In 1864, Thomas Bridges was invited to lead a Patagonian Mission Society that had Tierra del Fuego, clearly identified as 'the uttermost parts of the earth,' at the heart of its mission field.
By the 1880s commercial vessels were becoming a regular sight in Tierra del Fuego as the nitrate trade took off. More and more Europeans were calling by with the consequence that in 1884 the Yahgan Indians fell victim to Tierra del Fuego’s first measles epidemic against which they had no immunity. Following the epidemic, the Yahgan population had been reduced to one third of its number at the time of Darwin’s visit. When the twentieth century dawned, by which time there were only a couple of hundred Yahgans left alive, the irony of the working out of the Anglican plan for their salvation was all too clear. A census in 1932 put the number of Yahgans remaining in Tierra del Fuego at 43.
Thomas Bridges had two sons, another Thomas – the first European to be born in Tierra del Fuego, was born in 1874, followed by his bother Lucas the following year. The extinction of the aboriginal population of Tierra del Fuego gives the work of Thomas Bridges Jr. both its significance and its poignancy. In common with all other protestant missionaries he felt impelled to learn the native tongue so that portions of the scriptures might be translated thereby furthering the eschatological scheme of things and hastening the glorious arrival of the end time. What came as a surprise to Bridges, as his knowledge of the language of these primitive Yahgans deepened, was its complexity, range of vocabulary and richness of idiom. Bridges had stumbled on a useful truth for all travelers in time and place: that peoples who are technologically our inferiors are not necessarily our moral or intellectual inferiors. Producing a Yahgan-English Dictionary was to be his life’s work. Today Thomas Bridges' dictionary, a copy of which was displayed in the anthropological museum we visited yesterday in Punta Arenas, is a memorial to a language now essentially extinct. The display of native artifacts side by side with exhibits on the missions was as instructive as the statute of the Last Indian in the town's cemetery (photo), clustered with ex votos from the devout local Catholic population, was disturbing.
In October 1520 Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet marked a turning-point in its voyage of circumnavigation by passing through what became known as the Magellan Strait, out of which we sailed yesterday evening shortly after embarkation in Punta Arenas. To the south, they saw a barren land lit with bonfires and named it, Tierra del Fuego. The firelighters were the Yahgans: the most southerly inhabitants of the earth. None of these aborigines wore much clothing, wrapping their naked bodies in animal skins for cover. Their women swam in the icy waters of the south Atlantic with their babies on their backs, in defiance of our understanding of physiognomy. Their menfolk were skilled fishermen using dugout canoes in which they lit the fires that they lit everywhere.
In 1826, Captain Fitzroy, master of HM Survey Ship Beagle found his way through a more southerly channel than the Magellan Strait subsequently named after his ship. He too caught sight of the Yahgans, and for some reason decided to capture some aboriginal specimens. In consequence, four Yahgans were taken back to England to be civilized. Fitzroy passed the time on his return transatlantic crossing interrogating them thoroughly. Either because of a misunderstanding – they had no language in common for these conversations – or because the tired and confused Yahgans simply gave the answers they thought their interrogator wanted, the Yahgans appear to have admitted to the practice of cannibalism. No evidence to support their cannibalism has ever been found.
When the Beagle set sail from England again in 1831, it had on board not only the young Charles Darwin but also three surviving Yahgans. They were dressed in early-nineteenth century European finery, and were accompanied with agricultural implements and a huge amount of clothing collected, with the best of intentions, by English parish church congregations. For the 'Fuegian Indians,' especially their cannibalism, had captured the English church-going public’s imagination. Would they now succeed in diffusing civilized values amongst their compatriots upon their return? The project provides a resonant context for Darwin’s meditations as he progressed south across the Atlantic: Nature or Nurture? Would the fittest survive? On arrival in Tierra del Fuego, the young Darwin found the sight of the native Yahgans traumatically distasteful. The three Anglicized Yahgans were reunited with their compatriots and the Beagle sailed on. When the Beagle returned, Darwin was doubly distressed to find that these Yahgans had reverted entirely to their native ways and customs. But what did this prove? That they were inherently inferior, or that the power of environment had overwhelmed them?
A generation after the Beagle voyage, the mindset of Victorian England was much more certain about the issues that had troubled Darwin when he first encountered the Yahgans. The British Empire was increasingly confident of its superior ways and of the blessings that would come from exporting its values to native peoples fortunate enough to be brought under its protection. This mindset could be readily shared by evangelical Christians keen to follow the Gospel command: “Go preach my Gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth…and when my gospel is preached … then shall the end come.” In 1864, Thomas Bridges was invited to lead a Patagonian Mission Society that had Tierra del Fuego, clearly identified as 'the uttermost parts of the earth,' at the heart of its mission field.
By the 1880s commercial vessels were becoming a regular sight in Tierra del Fuego as the nitrate trade took off. More and more Europeans were calling by with the consequence that in 1884 the Yahgan Indians fell victim to Tierra del Fuego’s first measles epidemic against which they had no immunity. Following the epidemic, the Yahgan population had been reduced to one third of its number at the time of Darwin’s visit. When the twentieth century dawned, by which time there were only a couple of hundred Yahgans left alive, the irony of the working out of the Anglican plan for their salvation was all too clear. A census in 1932 put the number of Yahgans remaining in Tierra del Fuego at 43.
Thomas Bridges had two sons, another Thomas – the first European to be born in Tierra del Fuego, was born in 1874, followed by his bother Lucas the following year. The extinction of the aboriginal population of Tierra del Fuego gives the work of Thomas Bridges Jr. both its significance and its poignancy. In common with all other protestant missionaries he felt impelled to learn the native tongue so that portions of the scriptures might be translated thereby furthering the eschatological scheme of things and hastening the glorious arrival of the end time. What came as a surprise to Bridges, as his knowledge of the language of these primitive Yahgans deepened, was its complexity, range of vocabulary and richness of idiom. Bridges had stumbled on a useful truth for all travelers in time and place: that peoples who are technologically our inferiors are not necessarily our moral or intellectual inferiors. Producing a Yahgan-English Dictionary was to be his life’s work. Today Thomas Bridges' dictionary, a copy of which was displayed in the anthropological museum we visited yesterday in Punta Arenas, is a memorial to a language now essentially extinct. The display of native artifacts side by side with exhibits on the missions was as instructive as the statute of the Last Indian in the town's cemetery (photo), clustered with ex votos from the devout local Catholic population, was disturbing.
