CAPE HORN: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE NATIVE PEOPLE BEFORE AND AFTER DARWIN'S VOYAGE

(In Press)

This is a narrative of the dramas played out from 1578 to 2000 in the Cape Horn area, Tierra del Fuego, by the native people, the navigators, the missionaries and other Europeans. Francis Drake, Captain Cook, Darwin, the sealers and whalers, the Anglican missionaries and several twentieth century "famous people" appear as time goes on. None of the "actors", or very few, are simply passing figures. The narration of events is rendered more dramatic by revealing their emotions and attitudes. This is the first attempt to present an over-view of these four centuries by following the natives back to their dwellings and the navigators to their homeports. It also personalizes the natives whom Darwin and the other Europeans encountered, especially Jemmy Button, his son called Threeboys, his daughter Hester, and his brother Tommy.

The area of Cape Horn is often flashed on the TV screen as the ultimate challenge to racing sailboats or pictured as a world beyond the world, on the back of beyond. The roles the indigenous people played in human history has largely been forgotten or is simply ignored. They were among the most maligned in the world. It is time to set the balance - to portray them as human beings, who had lived in this hostile environment for some 6000 years, their struggles, their joys, their final years and days. They are presented as vibrant individuals, not as "Indians."

In chapter four Darwin meets Jemmy Button who was taken to England and returned to his homeland, Tierra del Fuego, with Darwin and Fitz-Roy (the Captain of the Beagle). In chapter five for the first time in the vast literature concerning Darwin, he is presented meeting and talking to the natives of Tierra del Fuego. Here his reactions to them, his likes and dislikes, his curiosity about them and repulsion of them, as well as their impressions of him are vividly described. The narration follows all of his and Fitz-Roy’s encounters with the natives they simply meet and with those they come to know. My comments supplement Darwin’s "meditations" concerning these "wretched cannibals," as he called them. His touching farewell to Jemmy Button highlights his departure from Tierra del Fuego, although it is not the final event of the Beagle voyage in this area.

During the decades to come the native Yamana experience their most turbulent years, first with the missionaries and then with other outsiders. Their number of approximate 3000 in 1863 is reduced to about 200 by the turn of the 19^th century and to very few in 2000.

The text has been written for all readers. The dramatic impact of many of the chapters should suffice to create a public on almost any level of readership. Captain Cook, Darwin and other familiar figures are presented in a different light than that of textbooks, biographies and historical novels. The British public will recognize many personages because the narration is so much a part of their history. The North American average reader may be attracted to it because it offers a different view of the early competitors for world domination, of Captain Wilkes’ expedition to the Antarctic, and of the New England whalers. The traumas of native Fuegians will recall those that the Indians in the United States experienced. The notes contain not only the bibliographical references, but also my and other comments on subjects of interest to the curious readers, to students, historians, anthropologists, and Darwin scholars. However, the text can be read without turning to the notes.

The body of text consists of an introduction, and fifteen chapters. In all it comprises approximately 320,000 words. A hundred or so illustrations (engravings and photographs) have been selected. The eventual editor may not include all of them, but they are available on CDs and the necessary permissions have been obtained for most of them. Seven pages of hand-drawn maps have been completed, as it is impossible to comprehend an area having so many islands, without visualizing it.

My comments in the text are clearly distinguished from the sources and are intended to enrich the flow of the reading. Even though the text offers considerable cultural data on the Yamana and their neighbors, this is not an ethnographic study. It is certainly not an historical novel. So many dramas take place during these four centuries; there is no need to "prettify" them as a novel.

A DVD of my film, " A Homage to the Yahgan…" could be included in the book because it covers the same subject as the text and includes many shots of little known areas near Cape Horn, of birds and seals as well as some of the best photographs of the Yamana

This text should be of lasting interest to the general reader, students, professors and specialists mainly because of the subjects but also because the treatment of them and the style of writing. It begins with Drake, centers on Darwin, passes on to the Anglican missionaries and in the final chapter the Australian anthropologist, Sir Baldwin Spencer, fulfills his wish to visit "Darwin’s Tierra del Fuego" and avoid a "straw death." Fortunately Miss Hamilton, his young secretary, accompanied him. She describes scenes that he overlooked and took care of him, so to speak, to the very end.

The introduction evokes the arrival of the Yamana to this "uttermost part of the earth" some 6,000 years ago from the gateway to America, now called the Bering Strait.

When Frances Drake’s three ships exit from the Magellan Strait in 1578, into the Pacific they are struck by "a tempestuous rage". The flagship, the Golden Hind , is carried further south than any European vessel had ever been. During the incessant storms that last fifty-two days, Drake manages to go ashore twice on remote islands and incidentally meets the native people. The reports of these encounters are the first concerning natives south of the Magellan Strait.

Nearly fifty years later, in 1624, the apparently friendly native Yamana near Cape Horn, massacre seventeen Dutch sailors of L’Hermite’s fleet, and are accused of cannibalism. This "encounter" is related in detail, in an attempt to understand why the Indians killed them, especially given the fact that all the subsequent encounters are peaceful, until 1859 (Chapter 9).

In 1774 Captain James Cook meets natives along Christmas Sound and thinks that they are "disgusting in the highest degree". A month later (January 1775) he discovers a wealth of seals in the south Atlantic, an event that coincides with near extermination of marine fauna in the Artic and initiates the rush of commercial sealing and whaling to Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic.

British and New England commercial fisheries penetrate the area (reducing the Yamana's food supply). In 1824, the sealers, James Weddell and his mate Matthew Brisbane, have friendly contact them on three islands near Cape Horn. Weddell dies in England in 1834 but Brisbane returns to Tierra del Fuego and I follow his "adventures" through to chapter 5 when an angry gaucho slaughters him.

This chapter skips a few years and ends near Cape Horn in 1829 when Captain Henry Foster’s Chanticleer arrives there. Dr Webster, the expedition’s narrator, is one of the first Europeans to take a real interest in the Yamana. Captain Phillip Parker King, commander of the Adventure comes to aid Foster in 1829.

The crews of the Adventure and the Beagle meet Tehuelche Indians on the north shore of Magellan Strait. Then the Beagle’s entire voyage is followed in considerable detail. Her commander, Captain Pringle Stokes, rescues Captain Brisbane and remainder of his crew, while navigating in the western section of the Magellan Strait. Stokes confronts so many perils there and along the Pacific archipelago that he commits suicide in Port Famine in 1828.

Following Stokes’ death, Captain Robert Fitz-Roy is assigned as commander of the Beagle.In February 1830, his best whaleboat is stolen by Alakaluf natives. He and his crew pursue them relentlessly during three weeks, only retrieve pieces of the whaleboat but capture three Alakaluf, including a girl about ten years old, and later a Yamana, Jemmy Button. Fitz-Roy takes them back to England planning to civilize them, though promising to return them to their homeland. The Alakaluf are named "Fuegia Basket", the girl; "York Minster", the oldest of the four; "Boat Memory" (in "memory" of his never-to-be-forgotten-whaleboat). The fourth is the young Yahgan, "Jemmy Button", who becomes a principal actor through to chapter 10.

Boat Memory dies of smallpox three weeks after the Beagle returns to England (mid-October 1830). Fitz-Roy feels responsible for his death. He installs the other three in a boarding school north of London, for ten months. They adapt well to their strange hosts. In June 1831 they are presented to King William IV and Queen Adelaide. Fitz-Roy doesn’t show them off to advance his cause, as others do (Chapters 10,12 and14). Fitz-Roy agrees to take young man, by the name of Matthews, who has volontered to go to Tierra del Fuego as a missionary and begin Christianizing the Fuegians.

Fitz-Roy is determined to find a naturalist to accompany him. Why is Darwin chosen? Recent biographers of Darwin, mainly Janet Browne, Adrian Desmond and James Moore, have answered this and many other questions. Darwin is anxious to embark for Tierra del Fuego, but the departure is delayed until 27 December 1831.

The return voyage lasts almost a year, during which time some seven months were spent on land; mainly in Brazil but also in Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca, Argentina. During the months on board Darwin and the Fuegians become acquainted. When the Beagle arrives in Tierra del Fuego, mid December 1832, Darwin meets the Fuegians (the Haush Indians) in Good Success Bay, along the Strait of Le Maire, He is aghast though the natives are delighted to meet him and the crew. His friendship for Jemmy Button does little to mitigate his aversion and repugnance for these "wretched cannibals." Darwin’s "meditations" on the natives, written at the end of December 1832, are presented as well as my comments on them.

This chapter begins during the first two weeks of January 1833 when furious gales strike the Beagle near Cape Horn, and she nearly sinks. When Darwin and Fitz-Roy encounter the Yamana in Jemmy Button’s territory. Jemmy’s mother had no idea where he had been or if he would ever return. The "happenings" during the week Fitz-Roy and Darwin spent there create the illusion that the reader is among them, in that present.

Fitz-Roy takes Darwin on a ten-day’s cruse down "glacier lane", the Northwest Arm of Beagle Channel. They flee from intrusive Yamana. While they are having lunch on shore near one of the glaciers, their boat is nearly swept away by waves caused by a thick slice of a glacier thundering into the water. Darwin pulls their boat on to shore just in time . He is the hero of the day. While returning to Jemmy’s campsite they come across other Yamana whom they suspect have robbed their three "protégés" and the would-be-missionary Matthews, who was left alone in Jemmy’s campsite for the ten days. They rush back and realize that their suspicions were unwarranted. Everyone is peaceful except the volunteer missionary, who refuses to remain among such " utter savages". This event marks the initial attempt to convert the Yamana to Christianity.

Several years after the three Fuegians return to Tierra del Fuego, York Minster is killed by one of his countrymen. Through the years, Fuegia Basket recalls her visit to England with pleasure while Jemmy remembers the names of his British friends, including Darwin, sends presents to them and teaches English to his family, to the best of his ability.

Chapters 4 and 5 form the nucleus of the book. Darwin’s extensive texts in his Journal, Diary and letters on the "Fuegians" (the Yamana and the Haush ) allow me to extend my comments beyond the narrative.

Both Charles Wilkes, the commander of the United States expedition, and James Ross, commander of British expedition, encounter the Yamana on several occasions. Wilkes comments favorably on the same people (on Wolllaston Island, near Cape Horn) whom Darwin had observed with much disdain. Although Ross finds them cheerful and good tempered, he is not particularly impressed with them because he compares them to the Eskimos he knew near the Artic and much admired. Brief mention is made of a lasting controversy. Who discovered (or first reported) that the Antarctic is a continent – land, not merely ice and snow like the Artic: Wilkes or another navigator?

Wilkes returns to New York harbor after four years of tedious explorations with only two of his six original vessels, many less crew members (some had left legally, others deserted) but with quantities of scientific documents and paintings of unknown people as well as samples of their cultural productions. He also returns to pending court-martials and an unfriendly congress. Ross is more fortunate: he is welcomed home with the flags flowing high. He discovered "the great barrier," in the Antarctic, the famous wall of ice and snow four hundred miles long which fronts the sea named in his honor. He also breaks Weddell’s record by sailing further south than he, but the South Magnetic Pole eluded him as well as Wilkes.

The saga of Allen W. Gardiner, a retired navy officer and self-appointed savior of the "heathens," begins in 1834 and terminates in 1851 with his six volunteer missionaries. One of them, Dr Richard Williams, senses Gardiner’s neurotic obsession to Christianize the heathens but feels helpless to oppose him. Their diaries and other texts draw the reader into their frustrating contacts with the Yamana, their final flight from them and the months of anguish as one after the other slowly perish from starvation in a solitary bay east of Beagle Channel. Despite this tragedy, or because of it, the newly formed South American Missionary Society in Bristol decides to carry on, in honor of the "martyr Allen W. Gardiner".

Three years later (1854) an experienced seaman, Captain William Parker Snow, is hired by the Anglican Mission to begin the constructions for mission base on Keppel Island (off the north shore of West Falkland Island) and then proceed to Tierra del Fuego to locate Jemmy Button, the only native man who speaks English. Snow and his wife fraternize with the Yamana and win their friendship but lose that of the missionaries. Snow fails to persuade Jemmy Button to allow some of boys of his group to be taken to the Keppel Island mission. Meanwhile Rev. George P. Despard arrives in Keppel with his family, that includes his adopted son, Thomas Bridges, who will become the head missionary until he retires in 1886 (Chapter 13).

In 1858, Gardiner’s son, an apprentice missionary, convinces Jemmy to go to the Keppel mission with his family. While still in Jemmy’s territory Gardiner Jr. barely avoids open conflict with the neighbors of the Yamana, the aggressive Selk’nam (the Oens-men whom Jemmy Button fears).

Jemmy, his oldest wife and their three children enjoy five months visit in the Keppel mission. The following year twelve other Yamana visit the Keppel mission for several months. Despite such an auspicious debut, in November 1859, a young missionary and all the members of the crew, except the cook, are assassinated in Jemmy’s territory (Wulaia) in his presence. This event is described in detail as it occurs. The cook spends over two months in Wulaia and is well treated by the natives. Finally a boat sent from the Keppel Island mission rescues him. Jemmy volunteers to go to the Keppel mission because the cook accuses him of being the ringleader of the massacre. The following year he is declared innocent by the colonial government in the Falklands.

My identification of the perpetuators of the massacre and their motives will probably surprise the readers, as well as the specialists.

Rev. Despard, the director of the Keppel Island mission, intensifies his work, following the 1959 massacre. He is supported by the presence of Okoko, a Yamana youth, who volunteers to come to Keppel with his young family. Two years later Rev. Waite H. Stirling replaces Despard. Jemmy dies in 1863, during the epidemic (thought to be tuberculosis) when so many Yamana lives are lost that the population drops from approximately 3000 to about 2000. The origin and extent of this epidemic are unknown but it marks the beginning the Yamana’s loss of autonomy.

The personalities and destinies of some several young Yamana assume predominant roles in the dramas that began with Jemmy Button ( chapter 3) and continue long after his death (to chapter 14). Okoko, mentioned above is a loyal though a troubled convert. He does his utmost to convert his countrymen, without success and intimidates his fellow Yahgans by his preaching. Some become so angry with him that they threaten to kill him . Jemmy’s daughter, called Hester, is remembered as a happy child when she visited the Keppel mission in 1858 (Chapter 9). Her turbulent life is traced to end of the 19^th century (Chapter 14) By 1864 Jemmy’s son, called "Threeboys", has become a bright star and is being tutored for a future role in the mission. Otatosh, another young Yahgan, aids Rev. Stirling to establish the first mission station in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego (Chapter 11). Sisoi refuses to disobey his father despite his desire to join the missionaries though later he becomes Thomas Bridges’ main linguistic informant, working with him to elaborate a Yamana-English dictionary that finally comprises over 32,000 words (Chapter 13). Urupe, who is almost still a child, is also anxious to join the missionaries, despite his father’s misgivings. Another Yahgan child called Jack becomes Rev. Stirling’s favorite.

Stirling visits England in 1864 to raise funds for the mission, and takes along Threeboys, Urupe, Jack and another Yahgan "lad". Urupe dies following a long illness during the return voyage aboard the ship, shortly before they reach Falkland Islands. Threeboys arrives near his home and endeavors to sooth Urupe’s father’s grief and anger for the death of his son, but Threeboys himself is gravely ill (tuberculosis), succumbs soon afterwards and is buried on the East Falkland Island beside Urupe.

This chapter describes the attempts of the missionaries from 1865 to 1868 to establish a base in Tierra del Fuego. Thomas Bridges returns to England (having spent 13 years on Keppel Island) is ordained as a deacon, marries and returns to the Keppel mission in 1969 with his bride and assistant missionaries, including John Lawrence who remains in Tierra del Fuego until his death in 1929.

Early 1869 Stirling finally does establish a mission station in the Bay of Ushuaia (Yamana territory. Thomas Bridges becomes the leading missionary during the following years amidst the turmoil of the native people trapped between two worlds. While the missionaries condemn the Yamana’s way of life, they are unable to provide them with the essential techniques and means to survive in this "new world". The missionaries’ insistence on civilizing as well as Christianizing them creates havoc among them even before the onslaught of the final epidemics.

Sealers continue to roam the area. Gold prospectors, mostly from central Europe, flock there beginning about 1880. Fuegia Basket visits Ushuaia and meets Thomas Bridges in 1881. Later this year eleven Alakaluf are kidnapped and shipped to Europe where they are exhibited in Paris as savages, while being studied by anthropologists in Paris, Zurich, Munich and Berlin. In Paris an anthropologist, Léonce Manouvier, is unusually sympathetic to their plight. The only baby in the group dies there. The youngest woman, Lise, dies in Munich, and four or five succumb in Zurich. One may have died on the ship homeward bound. Four are returned to Ushuaia: among them, a young man Pedro will appear again in the next chapter.

In 1881 Chile and Argentine agree to divide the entire area of Tierra del Fuego in two parts. Meanwhile, in Ushuaia, the missionary John Lawrence becomes aware of the first signs of the coming epidemics.

Dr. Paul D. J. Hyades, a member of the French expedition to Cape Horn, diagnoses the epidemic in Ushuaia as tuberculosis, in December 1882. His writings rise the reporting on the Yamana to a new level. His sympathy extends to them as well as to the missionaries though he becomes aware that their strategy is tearing the Yamana out of their tried and proven mode of living. Among the Yamana contacted by the French, Karmankarkipa is frequently photographed because of her youthful beauty. She dies in 1884 in Ushuaia from a measles epidemic. The handsome Athlinata also cooperates with the French and is often photographed. He will be met again about1915 (Chapter 15).

Thomas Bridges visits Fuegia Basket in 1883, who is fatally ill though well cared for by her adult children. In 1884 an Argentine military expedition arrives in six ships to Ushuaia and inaugurates the local government there. Their crews bring more civilization, along with more alcoholism and a devastating epidemic (measles) though apparently none of their crewmembers were sick. Measles will virtually extinguish the Yamana as it combines with other contagious diseases.

Later this year Bridges visits England, and spends a day or two in Paris where he meets Hyades again. He retires after returning to Ushuaia in 1886.

The epidemics infect nearly all the Yahgan, reducing the population from about 2000 souls in 1881 to some 200 at the close of the century. The missionaries abandon Ushuaia in 1888 and establish an outpost on Bayly Island, not far from Cape Horn. The behavior of the head missionary is as surprising as that of the Yamana, though for different reasons.

Another group of natives, this time the Selk’nam (the Onas, Jemmy’s Oens-men), are kidnapped, along the Magellan Strait in 1889. The hostages are again exhibited in Europe, especially in Paris. While the anniversary of French revolution is being celebrated, the Selk’nam languish, caged in a building near the Eiffel Tower. Their "guardian", Maurice Maître, a Belgian and former sealer, entertains the public by keeping his prisoners hungry and throwing pieces of raw horsemeat into their cage to illustrate their "cannibalistic instincts". As occurred during and after the 1881 abduction: seven succumb and four are returned to their homeland.

Jemmy Button’s daughter Hester, "makes it" into the new century: Okoko, now a childless widower, almost.

The Yamana take refuge in the next-to-last Anglican mission on Hoste Island, south of Beagle Channel. It closes in 1905. The last Anglican mission on Navarino Island, does so in 1916. Here Athlinata reappears, dressed in pants and a jacket, and defends the presiding missionary, John Williams, from an attack by drunken Yamana.

A few years later Father Martin Gusinde, a German ethnologist, arrives in Tierra del Fuego and begins four periods of fieldwork (1919 to 1924). His subsequent publications, eight volumes (entirely translated into Spanish and partially into English) and numerous articles (in German), will remain the indispensable references for the ethnology of the Yamana and Selk’nam.

During the 1920s and 1930s three famous visitors relate how they meet the surviving Yamana: Rockwell Kent a well-known American artist, Sir Baldwin Spencer, the dean of Australian anthropologists, mentioned above, and Professor Ricardo Rojas, an Argentine historian and a political prisoner jailed in Ushuaia.

The only Yamana who still speak the native language, Cristina Calderón, her sister Ursula and Emelinda Acuña, become my friends and record the last performances of the Chiexaus, the great Yamana ceremony, which they witnessed as young girls in the 1930s.

During these years the few remaining natives and the mestizos make a living as temporary workers mainly on the sheep farms and selling seal and otter skins in Ushuaia. Most live a reservation in Mejillones Bay on Navarino Island (Chile) and later (1958) settle in a hamlet called Ukika, where they are given medical attention and their children attend school in the nearby town-military base, Puerto Williams. Some continue working on the sheep farms and canneries while others sell their handicrafts to eventual tourists. By 2000 Ushuaia, a former Yamana camp site, has become a city of 50,000 inhabitants.