Moribund 'Savages' of Tierra del Fuego

Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan in 1520 was the first European to discover the archipelago of islands at the Southern most tip of South of America. He named it Tierra del Fuego, which denotes ‘Land of Fire’ because the numerous fires he saw lit along its littoral. The name merely added to the mystery that enshrouded the barren landscape of rugged rocks surrounded by icy cold water.

At first sight the archipelago aroused fear among mariners who traversed its waters, as the area of Cape Horn is known for its unpredictable and capricious storms that swallow ships whole or force them to crash against the numerous rocky islets. Reports by mariners of whimsical natives, windswept rocks and deep and narrow gorges only served to kindle the imagination of those circumnavigating the straits of the archipelago. The sight of smoke and fire were thought to be a sign of an inferno, where wretched souls ended up after a life of abandon, or evidence of a barbaric fire worshipping people, but later a more rational explanation emerged that the fires were lit by natives to keep warm.

Nevertheless, stories were told for generations about the heathenish ‘savages’ who were said to demonstrate unmitigated ferocity, like an untamed and sanguinary monster. Explorers frightened Europeans with drawings of the strange habiliments worn by these ‘creatures’. Naturist Charles Darwin who visited the area in 1839 on board the HMS Beagle, wrote in his diary, “I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement.”

This derogatory view and many others alike culminated the careless attitude of many European colonial governments and manifested it in their policies and publications. On a notice distributed by the Board of Trade, in April 1889, the Marine Department warns Seamen, “Mariners bound round Cape Horn should note that a settlement where shipwrecked seamen can find relief exists at San Sebastian on the North East Coast of Tierra del Fuego… “Persons shipwrecked on Tierra del Fuego should never communicate with the natives on the East Coast, as they are treacherous and hostile.”

However, during the denigration of the Fuegians for centuries, what was overlooked was their courageous and intelligent ability to adjust and survive for 12,000 years in the hostile environment in which they found themselves. The Fuegians had physically adapted to the climate, by making tents and clothing out of animal skin and by discovering the benefits of grease, which they applied to their bodies to protect themselves during cold and pluvious days.

Despite the warning of the ‘savages’, Europeans were not deterred from visiting the area. The overriding need to exploit resources was obviously worth the risk of confronting a savage. Whalers soon arrived, and missionaries came to establish churches to ‘civilise the savages’. Some visitors did however arrived accidentally, these included famished seamen marooned after a shipwreck but also those abandoned by their ship after displeasing an irascible captain.

With the rapid colonization by the Spanish that followed, western civilization was thus firmly engrafted on this barren land resulting in the appearance of new settlements, which complimented the process of Hispanisation and Christianisation of the natives. While the natives were not exterminated as in other parts of the Americas, many were decimated by the diseases that Europeans transported. Within a short, while fortune-seeking opportunists from Croatia came in droves with the sudden burst of outside interest triggered by the Gold Rush and pushed aside the indigenous natives.

For the Europeans that arrived in Tierra del Fuego to exploit the regions’ gold and other resources, denigration and demonisation of the existing natives was necessary to justify colonizing their land. The concept of demonisation is far from modern, rather it is an age-old strategy whose origin lies in an earlier Roman fixation of the Barbagians of Sardinia who were not subservient to the Roman Empire. Whether or not the Fuegians were more advanced in some ways or not is immaterial, such extremely different civilisations can scarcely be measured or compared.

If this was indeed an issue of civilisation then why did the Europeans who believed themselves to be higher in civilisation need to demonise the natives of a distant barren rock?  The derogatory view held by many Europeans stemmed not from being ‘higher in civilisation’ but from an underlying need to bolster their own image, and to justify their own exploitation of the resources of the area for economic gain. The Fuegians did have a civilisation, in the sense that their society was inter-linked to their natural environment and resources.

Failure to grasp or accept this, coupled with denigration, added legitimacy to the destruction of a non-European civilisation, and stemmed from an underlying xenophobia is still common among Western Europeans today. The belief that what is not western or European, and what is primitive is in need of ‘improvement’  (Westernization). It is this attitude that alludes to the belief that westernization is synonymous with advancement that does injustice to the understanding of other cultures and civilizations. Expectedly this attitude spills over into how Europeans view each other’s culture too and in the case of primitive civilizations, it is the epitaph of their way of life.

The results of this concept is clear in Tierra del Fuego; the Aonikenk and Selk'am natives of the archipelago are now extinct, the Yagans have only seventy members of their community, while the Kawesqar only twenty. The Yagan language also known as Yámana, has sadly no more than two speakers left. Today silent oil tankers, standard wooden houses of European settlements and a handful of folk who know a few obsolete words from the Yabai language now obscure the vestiges of a once highly intelligent civilization.