Contemporary genocide: the systematic murder of an unique people of the far south of the Americas

Before whites began to colonize Tierra del Fuego in the nineteenth century, the indigenous population and thousands of guanaco, a small deer-like animal, roamed the 17,000 square mile island. The northern half of the island was covered with grasses, ideal for the herds of guanaco. Dense forests gave way to mountains in the southwest. On the southern coast the mountains gave way to forests and, in a narrow strip along the shore, more natural grasslands.

The island's climate was described by an early settler as 65 unpleasant days per year along with 300 days of rain and storms.

The Yahgan

The Yahgan lived along the south coast of Tierra del Fuego and on the smaller islands to the south and west. Because of their location directly on the ocean, they were probably the first people contacted by European sailors, sometime in the sixteenth century. Over the centuries, contact intensified until the late nineteenth century when, according to one traveller, rarely a day that passed when a vessel wasn't within sight of Tierra del Fuego. During Captain Cook's first voyage (1768-1771) the inhabitants of the island already had a number of European goods - sail and woolen cloth, beads, nails, and glass which was used for arrow points - presumably obtained from the numerous shipwrecks in the area.

From 1850 onward, contact intensified. Ship captains traded alcohol and trinkets for pelts, and sealers and whalers hunted along the coast. At the same time the South American Mission Society (SAMS) began its attempts to work with the Yahgan, finally establishing a permanent mission at Ushuaia in 1869.

Yahgan and Ona Indigenous Population (by year, numerous sources)

Yahgan Ona

1850 3000 3500

1868 2500 3600

1872 2000

1884 1000

1890 300 2000

1900 800

1908 600

1912 175 300

1916 100 800

Between 1863 and I870, one author estimated that half of the Yahgan population died from epidemic diseases introduced to them by sailors and sealers and indirectly via the Alakalouf who live to the northwest and traded with Europeans. From the 1870s on the number of deaths surpassed the number of births. In addition to epidemic diseases, the Yahgan suffered from syphilis, suicide, internecine murders and "hysteria." Tuberculosis and measles were both common diseases in the 1880s.

A lack of food probably caused the Yahgan to be more susceptible to diseases. The seals that they hunted were depleted by sealers who wanted only their hides. The whales that beached and were eaten by the group were more occasional than before as their population, too, was depleted by whites.

Genocide in the far South of America

The decline of the native people of Tierra del Fuego began in the 19th century, and sadly in less than 100 years they were all but gone.  The usual culprits can be blamed – 

(1) disease brought unintentionally by the Europeans, to which the Fuegians had low immunity, 

(2) a decline in the coastal food source, as whalers and sealers decimated marine mammal populations, and 

(3) active extermination of local people, primarily by sheep ranchers who viewed them as a threat to their livestock or way of life. 

According to some sources (not including the Alacaluf ) only one full-blooded Fuegian is living today (from the Yaghan tribe), and only a few thousand people (at most) report to have native heritage in Tierra del Fuego. (RJV)

https://beagleproject.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/introducing-the-people-of-tierra-del-fuego/

The Yaghans. a tough people in a very difficult environment

There are few complete descriptions of this nation, who inhabited the Southern shores, islands and channels of Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) in southern South America. They were eliminated by the Argentine colonization in the late XIX century. Here we include an illustrative description presented in the beagleproject.wordpress site.

"Europeans collectively called these people Fuegians (after their home), however, there were several cultures that could be found in Tierra del Fuego. These included the Ona (Selk’nam), Yaghan (Yámana), Alacaluf (Kawésqar) and Haush (Manek’enk) peoples. Each of these tribes had their own language, though it appeared that some communication occurred between them.  All of the tribes were nomadic hunter-gatherers.

The Ona and Hauch peoples were primarily a land-based people who lived on the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego (the largest island in Tierra del Fuego).  Although they overlapped, the Ona were found mostly found on the northern and central parts of the Island , while the Haush primarily on the southeastern coast of the island. Both tribes were primarily hunters and lived off the only real large game on the island – the guanaco (a type of camel – see The Guanaco Family Tree).

The Yaghan were nomadic, coastal, hunter-gatherers who traveled via canoe among the islands of the archipelago.  Due to their home on these southern islands, they are often referred to as the “southernmost people in the world”. Unlike their neighbors to the northeast, the Yaghan primarily hunted marine mammals and fish, and gathered shellfish and other coastal foods. Since there would be a limited amount of food in any one area, they were always moving to a new bay or inlet in order to follow their food source.

The thing that amazed Europeans the most about the Yahgans (and to some degree all the Fuegians) was their adaptations to the cold. Although it rained all the time, and temperatures were often in the 30’s and 40’s, the Yaghan people seemed completely comfortable with virtually no clothes, and often slept in the open and swam in the ocean. I swam in the ocean once in the Gulf of Alaska – I gotta say, it was the coldest water I have ever encountered. And I’ve swam in front of glaciers. It was the Yaghan women who foraged in the ocean – reportedly the men never learned to swim.

Aside from just being more adapted to cold, the Yaghans had several other ways of staying warm.  For example, they reportedly coated themselves in animal grease or paint, and tended to squat on the ground reducing their overall surface area.  In addition, they built shelters (such as the wigwams Darwin observed) and built fires (even in their canoes). It was these fires, along with signal fires used for communication that most likely gave Tierra del Fuego its name. The Alacaluf people consisted of nomadic coastal tribes that had a lifestyle similar to the Yaghans.  They appear to have lived further north, including north of the Straits of Magellan, and (at least for the time being) where not encountered by Darwin. It is difficult to tell which of these cultures Darwin encountered and described un some detail last month in Good Success Bay (see First Contact with the “Fuegians”). The bay is right at the boundary between the Ona and the Haush, but it is a bay, and within the eastern limit of the coastal Yaghan people. The wigwams Darwin encountered to the west of Cape Horn were almost certainly Yaghan dwellings. Distribution of Fuegian people from Charles Wellington Furlong’s 1920 papers in the Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Congress of Americanists. The upper diagram shows the regions inhabited by the Ona (grey) and Haush (black), and the second diagram outlines the coast in bold where the Yaghan and Alacaluf lived.

The decline of the people of Tierra del Fuego began in the 19th century, and sadly in less than 100 years they were all but gone.  The usual culprits can be blamed – (1) disease brought unintentionally by the Europeans, to which the Fuegians had low immunity, (2) a decline in the coastal food source, as whalers and sealers decimated marine mammal populations, and (3) active extermination of local people, primarily by sheep ranchers who viewed them as a threat to their livestock or way of life. According to some sources (not including the Alacaluf ) only one full-blooded Fuegian is living today (from the Yaghan tribe), and only a few thousand people (at most) report to have native heritage in Tierra del Fuego. (RJV)"

From: https://beagleproject.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/introducing-the-people-of-tierra-del-fuego/