Testament of the Snow Indians.

Currently, official censuses number up to five thousand...

In the photo: όna (Selknam) children, photo from the end of the 19th century. Ahead of them lay death from a bullet or illness...

In our review we will move in the direction opposite to the one in which man came to America - from south to north.

Far south South America- Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, southern Chile - is of interest in terms of languages and ethnography of the indigenous population in several aspects. Firstly, as already mentioned in our first essay, people lived here who may have been descendants of the first Americans. Secondly, the culture of the indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego was very archaic. Thirdly, and finally, the fate of the Indian peoples of this region during the period of European colonization is very indicative.

In the extreme south of America, in south coast Tierra del Fuego, along the shores of the Beagle Channel, on the islands of Navarino, Osta and others, up to Cape Horn, lived the most southern people The lands are perhaps the most ancient inhabitants of the Far South - the Yaghan Indians (in literature they are also known by their self-name Yamana, which literally means ‘living people’). The Yagan language does not show any kinship with any of the Indian languages. Based on their way of life (like their western neighbors the Alakalufs), since the 19th century they were called indígenas canoeros - canoe natives, since almost their entire life was spent in continuous nomadism in boats, and their main occupation was hunting sea animals (mainly seals, whales did not extract, but happily used their carcasses thrown ashore by the sea), fishing and collecting shellfish in the coastal strip. At the same time, they did not know a bow and arrow; during their stays they built the most primitive dwelling in the form of a frame made of branches, covered with skins, branches and bark. Social relations were also simple: ethnographers' descriptions give a picture of complete primitive equality, the absence of any social stratification and the supremacy of women. The Yagans practically did not know clothing: only when a particularly cold wind blew, an Indian sitting in a boat could stick his head into a hole cut in a seal skin and cover himself with it as a barrier from the wind. It should be borne in mind that in those parts in January the temperature does not rise above 18o, and in July it drops to -18o, and a damp, cold piercing wind constantly blows. Seal oil and paint, which were used to cover the body, served as salvation from the cold and wind. It is interesting that Yagan women who caught shellfish constantly swam in the sea without experiencing any discomfort (although it was rare that any of the men knew how to swim). Such amazing abilities were achieved as a result of systematic hardening: a newborn child, along with his mother, was necessarily immersed in water, and then bathing continued. Researchers noted that the average body temperature of the Yagans was about a degree higher than that of Europeans.

The fate of the Yagans during European colonization was sad. Although they, unlike many other indigenous peoples of America, were not subjected to targeted extermination, direct contact with Europeans, which began with the first contact in 1828 with the sailors of the brig Beagle, on which Charles Darwin traveled, and on which they were taken to In England, several children were kidnapped from the Yagans, leading to dire consequences. European diseases (smallpox, syphilis and tuberculosis in the first place), to which the body of the hardened Sea Indians did not have any immunity, claimed the lives of most of the indigenous Fuegians. Attempts to resettle Indians into church missions led to an equally disastrous result: the European clothes that they were forced to wear provoked colds and tuberculosis in themselves and often served as a source of infection, and overcrowding and an unusual way of life contributed to epidemics. At the beginning of the 19th century, according to various estimates, there were about three thousand Yagans; in the 1970s, a couple of dozen Yagans still lived on the island of Navarino, who had completely forgotten their traditional culture; Today, apparently, only one old woman remains alive who still remembers this language.

Other "Canoe Indians", the western neighbors of the Yagans, the Alakaluf (or Kaweskar, which simply means 'people' in their language), inhabited the archipelagos and fjords from the east of Tierra del Fuego in the south to the Chilean province of Aisen in the north and led a way of life in many ways similar with the Yagans. However, their language is completely different from the language of the Yagans and, like the latter, does not show similarities with any of the languages of America. The origin of the Alakalufs, which is different from the Yagans, is also evidenced by their anthropological type: both are of short stature (150-160 centimeters) and graceful physique, but if the Yagans are similar to many other South American Indians, they have much in common with the Asian Mongoloids: massive, high-cheekboned faces, rather narrow slanted eyes, a straight, slightly protruding nose, straight, coarse hair, then among the Alakalufs there are often people with thick lips, a wide nose with a concave back, large eyes, thick eyebrows and curly hair - signs that bring them closer to representatives of equatorial types (Australian aborigines, Negritos of the South East Asia and etc.). This may indicate a very ancient origin of the Alakalufs - from those first inhabitants of America who were carriers of the most ancient undifferentiated anthropological types of East Asia.

The Alakalufs faced the same problems as the Yagans, and, despite their initially larger numbers and wider settlement, today this people is also on the verge of extinction - presumably, no more than two dozen people still remember the Kaweskar language.

Differing from the “canoe Indians” in culture, language and anthropological type were the “foot Indians” (indios a pie), who lived on Tierra del Fuego north of the Yagans - όna (this name comes from the language of the Yagans) or Selknam and related to them in language Aush or Mannequin, displaced other tribes to the extreme southeast of the island. She hunted guanacos with a bow and arrow, whose skins were used to make primitive clothing (most often just a skin thrown over the shoulders and, for men, a kind of “pie” hat). Outwardly, she differed from the short Yagans and Alakalufs in her massive build and fairly tall stature (men - 180 centimeters). She penetrated Tierra del Fuego from the north, from Argentine Patagonia, as indicated by their similarity in anthropological type and language with the original inhabitants of Patagonia - the Tehuelche Indians. Linguists group the Ona, Aush and Tehuelche languages into the Chon language group (from the Ona word meaning ‘man’). It is possible that the Chon languages are distantly related to the languages of the Mataguay and Guaycuru groups, widespread in the Chaco region (at the junction of northern Argentina and Paraguay) - Guaycuru, Mataco, Chorote, etc.

The fates of her and the Tehuelche were decided in the second half of the nineteenth - the first half of the twentieth century in a completely North American democratic spirit. The fact is that, when in the middle of the 19th century on Tierra del Fuego, European colonists began to turn the hunting grounds of the on (naturally, without asking the latter’s permission) into pastures for sheep, the Indians quickly realized that sheep were easier prey than fleet-footed guanacos. Thus began a conflict that led at the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the mass extermination of the Ona Indians on Tierra del Fuego: punitive expeditions and raids were organized against them, exterminating them without exception; the owners of large farms paid their shepherds money for the ears cut off from the dead (and it happened that among living) Indians. Later, both “chemical” and “bacteriological” weapons were used: clothes contaminated with smallpox were planted on the Indians, carcasses of whales, sheep or guanacos were poisoned with poisons, etc. - in the south of America, the experience of work done several decades earlier in the USA was literally repeated. As a result, of the approximately four thousand she who lived on Tierra del Fuego in the middle of the 19th century, by the end of it there remained just over 700; in 1890, the remnants of the people were taken to Dawson Island, where almost everyone died from the epidemic that broke out there. The tragedy ended in 1974, with the death of Angela Loich, the last of her.

The Tehuelche lived on the territory of the Argentine provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz and gave the name to the entire southern part of South America - Patagonia, that is, the country of big-footed people, the Spaniards called it when they saw traces of the local Indians: firstly, given that the average height of the Tehuelche was in general Even larger than hers, their feet were already quite large, but the footprints seemed huge, since their shoes were pieces of guanaco skins wrapped rather roughly around their feet. The Tehuelches hunted guanacos and rhea ostriches in the Argentine pampa with the help of a bow and a bola - an ancient unique weapon (and a weapon that was then successfully used to fight the Spanish cavalry) in the form of three stones connected by a belt, which, when thrown at the animal’s legs, wrapped around them and threw the victim to the ground. Having mastered horse breeding at the beginning of the 19th century, the strong and numerous Tehuelche posed a greater problem for the democratic authorities of Argentina than the few rather backward foot soldiers. In addition, starting from the 18th century, the Tehuelches came under the influence of the only Indian people of America who did not submit to the Spanish colonialists - the Chilean Araucans (Mapuches), and free Araucania gradually expanded its borders in Patagonia. Remember the noble Thalcave from “The Children of Captain Grant” by Jules Verne? This Patagonian (that is, most likely, Tehuelche) bore a completely Araucanian name - compare Araucan. tralkan ‘thunder’; Likewise, the ethnonym Tehuelche itself is of Araucanian origin.

The Araucan-Patagonian Freemen were a thorn in the side of the fledgling Argentine democracy - especially in the 1870s, when the authorities of neighboring Chile took up the Araucanian problem and the proud Mapuche were finally dispossessed of their land. At the same time, Araucanian leaders in Patagonia constantly attacked Argentine border forts, destroyed telegraph lines, and robbed cattle breeders. In 1875, Minister of War Adolfo Alsina presented a plan to pacify the Patagonians, which the Argentine army, under the leadership of General Julio Argentino Roca, then implemented, hypocritically calling this act Conquista del desierto ‘Conquest of the Desert’. Quite in the style of his North American predecessors (“A good Indian is a dead Indian”), Roca expressed his intentions: “Our self-respect as a courageous people obliges us to suppress as soon as possible - by reason or force - this handful of savages who are destroying our wealth and hindering us completely to occupy, in the name of law, progress and our own safety, the richest and most fertile lands of the Republic.” Using the same methods as she did, the Tehuelche were destroyed, and the Patagonian pampa was actually turned into a desert. Currently, official censuses count up to five thousand Tehuelches - but we are talking about people who have completely lost their identity, most often the mestizos. There are no more than a dozen people who remember the language.

In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to sail from Atlantic Ocean to the Quiet Strait, which was later named after him, dividing the American continent and Tierra del Fuego. At night, Magellan’s sailors saw many lights - they were Indian fires - that’s why he called this area Tierra del Fuego, Tierra del Fuego.
Yagans(self-name -Yamana, “living people” =yaghan) - Indian people in Chile . Also called "yamara" and "tecuenche". Likewise, the concept fuegins "(aboriginals of Tierra del Fuego) previously referred only to the Yagans.
Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes written mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yagan language. It is indicated in Guinness Book of Records as “the most capacious word” and is considered one of the most difficult words to translate. It means “A look between two people that expresses the desire of each that the other will initiate something that both want, but neither wants to be the first.”

Their language seemed to him “a clamor and noise that hardly deserves to be called articulate speech.” The disparaging review of the famous scientist etched the image of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego in the minds of Europeans.

In 1881, the island was divided between Argentina and Chile. By that time, sheep farmers had already displaced the Indians from their usual hunting grounds. Unfortunately for the Indians, gold was found on Tierra del Fuego, and soon miners invaded the area. The last genocide on the American continent has begun. The Indians disturbed everyone: they hunted for sheep, not knowing what private property was, and took whatever they liked from the gold miners’ camps. In those years, scalp hunters received a pound sterling for each pair of ears cut off from killed Indians. Those same natives who managed to escape from the thugs found themselves defenseless against diseases brought by Europeans - tuberculosis, measles. The survivors were finished off by alcohol, to which they quickly became addicted. Half a century later, in 1919, the number of Indians had dropped from eight thousand to six hundred.

In 1977, old man Felipe R. Alvarez, the last purebred Yamana Indian, died on Tierra del Fuego.

The laws of the Yamana tribe were announced to young men during initiation.

Here are some of them:

— When many guests come to your site and you cannot give gifts to everyone, think first about strangers; What's left, give it to family and friends.
“When you find yourself with several people in the land where you were born, and they want to settle down for the night, give up the safest place to those who have not been here. Be content with a worse place yourself. Don’t think: why should I care if strangers lose their boat?
“If you have luck hunting, let others join you.” Moreover: show them good places, where there are many seals, which will not be difficult to catch there.
- When you approach the fire, sit down with dignity, tucking your legs under you. Look at everyone gathered with friendliness. Don't pay attention to any one of them; Don't turn your back on anyone. Don't visit too often.
- If you are offered a place to stay for the night, stay. Help people in their troubles. Nobody will ask you for help. But look, maybe they don’t have enough water or firewood, or maybe the snow in front of the entrance hasn’t been cleared away. Get to work. Such people are welcomed everywhere with joy.
“Don’t immediately talk about what you heard.” It is too easy to sow untruths. Then people will wonder who was the talker - then they will look for you.
“When you find something, don’t say it’s mine.” After all, the owner may soon appear. Worth seeing him lost item in your hands, he will point others to you and say: here is a thief! The Yamana do not tolerate thieves.
- If you meet a blind man on the road, go up to him and ask: where are you going? Perhaps you will find out that he is lost. Tell him immediately: you have lost your way. He will answer you gratefully: therefore, I am lost. Then ask him: where should I take you? He will say: I want to get to my place. Take him by the hand immediately and lead him away.
- If you kill someone out of anger or recklessness, do not try to escape. Find the strength to endure everything that follows, do not force your relatives to answer for what you have done.
- Never forget these instructions. If you stick to them, everything will go well, people will be happy with you; they will say about you: you are a good person!

The German naturalist Georg Forster, who found himself in Tierra del Fuego in 1774 with the expedition of James Cook, described the character of the Fuegians as “an outlandish mixture of stupidity, indifference and idleness.” Even Charles Darwin, half a century later, called them “poor, miserable creatures... with ugly faces.” Their language seemed to him “a clamor and noise that hardly deserves to be called articulate speech.” The disparaging review of the famous scientist etched the image of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego in the minds of Europeans.

Fuegians, or fuegins (Spanish Fueguinos) is the collective name for the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. In English the term English. Fuegians initially referred only to the Yaghans who lived in the southern part of Tierra del Fuego, and only later spread to all the aboriginal peoples of the archipelago.

Yagans (self-name - Yamana, “living people” = Yaghan) are an Indian people in Chile. Also called "yamara" and "tecuenche". Likewise, the concept of “fuegins” (aboriginals of Tierra del Fuego) previously referred only to the Yagans.

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yagan language. It is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the “most capacious word” and is considered one of the most difficult words to translate. It means “A look between two people that expresses the desire of each that the other will initiate something that both want, but neither wants to be the first.”

All Fuegians were nomadic peoples and did not build permanent dwellings. The Selk'nam, who hunted guanacos, made temporary shelters from poles and skins. Coastal Yamana and Alakaluf also built temporary shelters by canoeing.

A significant part of the information about the material and spiritual culture of the Indian tribes of Tierra del Fuego, which is available to world science, is contained in the notes of the German missionary Martin Gusinde, published in 1925 in Germany, who made four expeditions to the islands in 1919-1923. Martin Gusinde visited all three Fuegian tribes, participated in their daily life, religious rituals and even underwent initiation.

In general, the material culture of the Fuegins, who were essentially living in the Stone Age by the time the white colonizers arrived, was quite primitive. She (Selknam) hunters used a simple bow and arrows with stone or bone tips, as well as a bola, which resembled the traditional hunting weapon of the Patagonian-Tehuelche; Alakaluf and Yagans beat seals, whales and fish with the same arrows and harpoons.

The extremely harsh natural conditions of the islands developed among the aborigines special methods of adaptation to such a climate and an amazing ability to survive in conditions of piercing rain, wind and severe cold. According to Martin Gusinde, the women had a specific physique with pronounced layers of fat, which helped them sleep directly on bare stones. On the other hand, such phenomenal adaptability, coupled with undeveloped social and property relations, has led a number of researchers to assume that the Fuegin Fuegins are degenerate descendants of the aborigines from the continent, perhaps the Chono or Tehuelche.

Adaptation to the cold climate brought the Fuegians closer to the Eskimos of the Arctic, and their dark-black skin tone, wide nose, wavy hair, and rudiments of swimming membranes between their fingers are a legacy of the oldest wave of migrants who had Australoid features.

The first Europeans to meet the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego were members of the round the world expedition Ferdinand Magellan. In 1578, Francis Drake's English saw them, but did not come into contact with them (unlike the Tehuelche Patagonians). At the end of 1774, during his second circumnavigation, the islands of Tierra del Fuego were explored by James Cook.

The Indians of Tierra del Fuego were “rediscovered” in 1832 by Charles Darwin, who landed on Tierra del Fuego during a trip around the world on the Beagle ship. Darwin was amazed by the primitive and primitive appearance of the aborigines:

“The sight of the Fuegians sitting on a wild, abandoned shore made an indelible impression on me. An image appeared before my eyes - this is how our ancestors sat, once upon a time. These people were completely naked, their bodies were painted, their tangled hair hung below their shoulders, their mouths were open in amazement, and a threat lurked in their eyes... I could have come from that brave monkey... or that old baboon... or from a savage who feels pleasure, tormenting enemies and sacrificing animal blood. He kills babies without the slightest remorse, treats women as if they were slaves, he does not know what the rules of decency are and is completely dependent on ridiculous superstitions.”

Tierra del Fuego through the eyes of Charles Darwin

On the previous voyage of the ships Adventure and Beagle, from 1826 to 1830, Captain Fitz Roy had taken a party of natives as hostages for a missing boat, the theft of which had placed the survey party in great danger; He took some of these natives, as well as one child bought for a mother-of-pearl button, with him to England and decided to educate them and instruct them in the faith at his own expense. The desire to return these natives to their homeland was one of the main motives that induced Captain Fitz Roy to undertake the present voyage, and before the Admiralty decided to send an expedition, he generously hired a vessel to take them back himself.

The natives were accompanied by the missionary Matthews; of him and of the natives Captain Fitz Roy published a full and excellent account. Initially, two men were taken from here, one of whom died in England from smallpox, a boy and a little girl, and now we had on board York Minster, Jemmy Button (his middle name [button] expresses the “coin” for which it was acquired) and Fuegia Basket. York Minster was a mature man, short, fat and strong; He was of a reserved, silent and gloomy disposition, but if he was irritated, he flared up violently; he became very attached to his few friends on the ship; his abilities were good. Jemmy Button was everyone's favorite, but he was also hot-tempered; the expression on his face immediately spoke of an affable disposition. He was cheerful, laughed often and was surprisingly sympathetic to the suffering of others; when the sea was rough, I often suffered a little from seasickness, and he usually came up to me and said in a plaintive voice: “Poor, poor fellow!” But the very fact that a person could suffer from seasickness seemed too funny to him, accustomed to life on the water, and he was usually forced to turn aside to hide his smile or laughter, and then repeat his “Poor, poor fellow!” He was a patriot and loved to extol his tribe and his country, which, in his literal expression, was “a mass of trees,” and scolded all other tribes; he stubbornly insisted that there was no devil in his country. Jemmy was short, fat and fat, but proud of his appearance; he usually wore gloves, kept his hair neatly trimmed, and was in despair if his polished shoes got dirty. He liked to admire himself in the mirror, and one cheerful little Indian boy from the Rio Negro, who was on our ship for several months, soon noticed this and usually mimicked him; Jemmy, who was always a little jealous of the boy for the attention he received, did not like this at all, and he used to say, turning his head slightly contemptuously: “Very much of a lark!” When I thought of all his many virtues, it seemed especially surprising to me that he belonged to the same race with those miserable, lowly developed savages whom we first met here, and, no doubt, was distinguished by the same characteristics as them . Finally, Fuegia Basket was a sweet, modest, reserved young girl with a rather pleasant, although sometimes gloomy, expression on her face; She very soon learned everything, especially languages. This ability was evident in how quickly she learned to speak a little Portuguese and Spanish while she was left for short periods ashore in Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, and in her knowledge in English. York Minster was very jealous of any attention that was given to her: it was clear that he decided to marry her as soon as they settled on the shore.

Despite the fact that all three spoke and understood English well, it was extremely difficult to obtain from them detailed information about the customs of their countrymen; this is partly because they were clearly difficult to choose between even the simplest alternative concepts. Anyone who has dealt with very young children knows how rarely it is possible to get from them an answer even to the simple question whether something is black or white: the concepts of black and white seem to alternately fill their minds. This was the case with these Fuegians, and therefore it was generally impossible to find out by cross-questioning whether we understood correctly what they said. Their vision was amazingly sharp; It is well known that sailors, as a result of long practice, are able to distinguish distant objects much better than land inhabitants, but York and Jemmy in this respect left far behind all the sailors on board; several times they announced what kind of object was visible in the distance, and, despite general doubt, their correctness was confirmed when they resorted to the help of a telescope. They were quite aware of this ability of theirs, and Jemmy used to say, when he was at odds with the officer on watch: “Mine sees the ship, mine doesn’t speak.”

It was curious to observe, when we landed, the behavior of the savages towards Jemmy Button; they immediately noticed the difference between them and us and talked a lot with each other about this. The old man addressed Jemmy with a long speech, in which, apparently, he invited him to stay with him. But Jemmy understood their language very poorly, and, moreover, he was completely ashamed of his compatriots. When York Minster then came ashore, they received him in the same way and told him that he should shave, although he did not have two dozen hairs on his face, while all of us had not even trimmed our beards. They looked at the color of his skin and compared it with ours. When one of us exposed his hand, they expressed lively surprise and admiration for its whiteness, exactly like the orangutans that I observed in zoological gardens. It seemed to us that they took two or three officers who were shorter and lighter, despite the beards that adorned them, as women of our detachment. The tallest of the Fuegians was clearly very pleased when we noticed his height. When he was placed back to back with the tallest of the crew of our boat, he tried in every possible way to climb to a higher place and stand on his tiptoes. He opened his mouth to show his teeth, turned his head to show himself in profile, and did all this with such readiness that I am sure he considered himself the first handsome man in Tierra del Fuego. After our first feeling of intense amazement had passed, the strange mixture of surprise and imitation that these savages displayed every minute seemed only extremely funny.

The next day I tried to somehow penetrate into the interior of the country. Tierra del Fuego can be imagined as a mountainous country that was partially submerged in the sea, causing deep bays and coves to occupy the places where valleys should have been. The slopes of the mountains, with the exception of the open western shore, are completely covered with forest from the water itself. The trees reach an altitude of 1,000 to 1,500 feet, where they give way to a band of peat with very small alpine plants; the latter in turn gives way to a belt of perpetual snow, which, according to Captain King, descends in the Strait of Magellan to a height of from 3,000 to 4,000 feet. In any part of the country even an acre of level land is a rarity. I remember only one flat piece of land, near Hunger Bay, and another, somewhat larger one, near the Gure roadstead. In both places, as indeed everywhere, the surface is covered with a thick layer of marshy peat. Even in the forest, the soil is not visible under the mass of slowly rotting plant matter, saturated with water and therefore falling under the foot.

Convinced that my attempts to make my way through the forests were almost hopeless, I followed the flow of a mountain stream. At first I could hardly make my way forward because of the waterfalls and the many fallen trees; but soon the bed of the stream became somewhat more open, as the floods eroded its banks. For an hour I continued to move slowly forward along the rugged rocky banks and was richly rewarded by the grandeur of the scene before me. The gloomy depth of the gorge was in complete harmony with the traces of upheaval visible everywhere. Irregular hulks of stone and overturned trees lay everywhere; other trees, although they were still standing upright, were already rotted to the very core and were ready to fall. This tangled mass of plants full of life and dead reminded me rainforests; but there was also a difference: in these quiet wilds, apparently, the spirit of Death, and not Life, dominates. I followed the current until I reached one place where a large landslide had cleared a path straight down the mountainside. Along this road I climbed to a considerable height, from where a vast panorama of the surrounding forests opened up. All trees belong to the same beech species - Fagus betuloides; the number of other beech species, as well as Drimys wintcri, is very small2. This beech (Fagus betuloides) retains its foliage all year round, but it has some special brownish-green color with a yellow tint. The entire landscape, painted in this color, has a gloomy, dull appearance, especially since it is not often enlivened by the rays of the sun.

20th of December. - One side of the bay is formed by a mountain about 1,500 feet high, which Captain Fitz Roy named after Sir J. Banks, in memory of his ill-fated excursion, which cost the lives of two of his companions and almost killed Dr. Solander. The blizzard - the cause of the misfortune - occurred in the middle of January, corresponding to our July, and at the latitude of Durham! I really wanted to climb to the top of this mountain to pick alpine plants, because there are very few flowers of any kind below. We followed the same stream along which I had walked the day before until it dried up, after which we were forced to make our way blindly between the trees. The trees were stunted, thick and hunched due to the harsh winds. At last we reached a place which from a distance appeared to be a carpet of fine green grass, but, to our chagrin, turned out to be a continuous mass of small beeches, from four to five feet in height. They stood close to each other, like a beech tree to a garden hedge, and we had to make our way along this flat, but deceptive-looking surface. After some more work we reached a peat bog and then an outcropping of shale rock.

This hill was connected by a ridge to another, several miles away and higher, so that patches of snow could even be seen on it. Since it was not too late, I decided to walk there and collect plants along the way. This would be very difficult if there were not a straight path here, trodden by the guanacos: these animals, like sheep, always follow the same path. Having reached the hill, we discovered that it was the highest in the immediate vicinity and the waters flowed from it to the sea in opposite directions. The surrounding countryside opened wide before us: to the north lay a marshy swamp, but to the south a wild, majestic landscape befitting Tierra del Fuego opened up. There was some kind of mysterious grandeur about it: mountain rose after mountain, they were cut through by deep valleys, and everything was covered with a dense, dark forest. Even the air in this climate, where one storm of rain, hail and sleet follows another, seems darker than elsewhere. When you look directly south from the Bay of Hunger in the Strait of Magellan, the distant channels between the mountains seem so gloomy, as if they lead beyond this world...

However, Darwin's compatriot, English explorer William Parker Snow, who visited Tierra del Fuego in 1855, came to completely different conclusions about the inhabitants there. Describing them unkempt appearance and primitive habits, Snow notes: “...many Fuegians living on Eastern Islands, have a pleasant and even attractive appearance. I understand that this goes against what Mr. Darwin described in his writings, but I am only talking about what I saw myself...” Later, the scientist discovered that the Aborigines “live in families”: “I witnessed manifestations of deep love and tenderness in towards their children and towards each other,” he writes. Snow also testifies that local women are modest, and mothers are very attached to their children.

Romanian avant-brist Julius Popper, who was the first to find countless reserves of gold, near the body of a murdered Indian from the “On” tribe.

The beginning of the colonial era in Tierra del Fuego put an end to the original culture of the local Indians. After the Romanian adventurer Julius Popper found gold on Tierra del Fuego in 1886, thousands of profit seekers from Europe and America began to arrive here. It took the colonialists a lot of effort to break the resistance local population, which, before their arrival, had successfully resisted infiltration attempts from the “mainland” for more than 50 years.

In 1977, old man Felipe R. Alvarez, the last purebred Yamana Indian, died on Tierra del Fuego.

The laws of the Yamana tribe were announced to young men during initiation.

Here are some of them:

- When many guests come to your site and you cannot give gifts to everyone, think first about strangers; What's left, give it to family and friends.
- When you find yourself with several people in the land where you were born, and they want to settle down for the night, give up the safest place to those who have not been here. Be content with a worse place yourself. Don’t think: why should I care if strangers lose their boat?
- If you have luck hunting, let others join you. Moreover: show them good places where there are many seals, which will not be difficult to get there.
- When you approach the fire, sit down with dignity, tucking your legs under you. Look at everyone gathered with friendliness. Don't pay attention to any one of them; Don't turn your back on anyone. Don't visit too often.
- If you are offered accommodation for the night, stay. Help people in their troubles. Nobody will ask you for help. But look, maybe they don’t have enough water or firewood, or maybe the snow in front of the entrance hasn’t been cleared away. Get to work. Such people are welcomed everywhere with joy.
- Don’t immediately talk about what you heard. It is too easy to sow untruths. Then people will wonder who was the talker - then they will look for you.
- When you find something, don’t say: it’s mine. After all, the owner may soon appear. As soon as he sees the lost thing in your hands, he will point others to you and say: what a thief! The Yamana do not tolerate thieves.
- If you meet a blind man on the road, go up to him and ask: where are you going? Perhaps you will find out that he is lost. Tell him immediately: you have lost your way. He will answer you gratefully: therefore, I am lost. Then ask him: where should I take you? He will say: I want to get to my place. Take him by the hand immediately and lead him away.
- If you kill someone out of anger or recklessness, do not try to escape. Find the strength to endure everything that follows, do not force your relatives to answer for what you have done.
- Never forget these instructions. If you stick to them, everything will go well, people will be happy with you; they will say about you: you are a good person!

When Europeans, Chileans and Argentines began to explore the islands in the mid-19th century, European diseases, such as measles and smallpox, from which the Fuegians had no immunity, also came to Tierra del Fuego. In addition, their traditional lack of the concept of private property played a significant role in the extinction of the Aborigines. So, for example, according to Martin Gusinde, the Sheknam hunters suffered greatly from the sheep herds brought to the islands by the colonialists, which intensively ate grass - the main food of the guanaco. After the disappearance of the latter, they were forced to start hunting the sheep themselves, thus coming into conflict with their owners, armed with firearms. As a result, the numbers of both Selk'nam and Yagans sharply decreased from several thousand in the mid-19th century to several hundred at the beginning of the 20th century.

It is possible that the loss of their main sources of food (whales and seals) also played a significant role in their extinction due to the fact that European and American sailors mastered their prey. Currently, there are no purebred fuegins; the last Indian died in 1974, the last Yagan in 1999.

The Fuegians spoke several unrelated languages. The Kaweskar and Yagan (Yamana) languages are considered isolates, while the Selk'nam, like their Tehuelche cousins on the mainland, spoke the language of the Chon family.

The Fuegian languages were distinguished by their richness. The Indians managed to convey what was happening in the world around them, their own feelings and abstract ideas in the form of metaphors. Thus, for the state of mental depression, the Yagans used a word that meant the period in the life of a crab when it had already shed its old shell, but a new one had not yet grown. The concept of “adulterer” was suggested to them by the falcon, which, having found a victim, hovers motionless over it. The concept of “wrinkled skin” coincided with the name of an old shell, and “hiccups” coincided with the name of a blockage of trees that blocked the path.

The Fuegians were able to express the various nuances of natural and human life. Thus, “iya” meant “to tie a boat to a thicket of brown algae,” and “okon” meant “to sleep in a moving boat.” Completely different words were used to describe concepts such as “sleeping in a hut,” “sleeping on the shore,” or “sleeping with a woman.” The word "ukomona" meant "throwing a spear at a school of fish without aiming at any of them." As for the self-name of the Yagans “Yamana”, this word meant “live, breathe, be happy.”

Listen to how funny they sang:

Other unusual folk songs of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego can be heard

The Aborigines of Australia are believed to have appeared on the continent at least 50,000 years ago. The process of settlement took place during the last Ice Age from Southeast Asia, although some believe from India. Local Aborigines are considered "prototypes" ancient man You can be convinced of this just by looking at a few photographs - huge facial features that are not characteristic of a modern person, a languid look, a large disproportionate body.

The Aborigines lived there until Europeans arrived at the end of the 18th century and began fighting for territory and water. During that period, a considerable part of the local population died, and the conquerors brought “European” diseases, which killed more than half of the local population.

As a result of the wars, many of the Aborigines ended up on reservations and did not have civil rights. Only in 1967 were indigenous people recognized as citizens, reservations disappeared, historical lands began to be given away, names were renamed, and attention began to be paid to art.

This civilization is considered the least studied and primitive currently existing on our planet, and scientists call the aborigines the most backward (naturally, from our point of view) people. Although, I won’t hide it, I would agree with them.
“Whites”, in the absence of their own culture, open art galleries, sell paintings of aborigines for very immodest money (from 3,000 to 40,000 dollars), create workshops where you can come and paint a picture together with the aborigines. The aborigines themselves rent out lands, for example the famous Uluru. Nowadays, modern Australian aborigines make an impression that is not just terrifying, but somehow enters the scene. Dressed in stretched Chinese T-shirts and pants, unkempt women, all this is repulsive. They are completely different, they walk in crowds, from side to side, from store to store. In cities they look very ridiculous, local residents they try not to pay attention to them, it seems that even the most recent immigrant from a foreign country will be closer to Australian “white” citizens than the local aborigine.
What are they doing now? It’s hard to say; the Australian state now pays them sufficient benefits on which they can live well. You can often find an aborigine drinking alcohol, or lying in a park or spending the night in a dry river bed (in Russian, “bum”)

For the first time in my life, I was uncomfortable and scared to photograph someone, either their gaze was inadequate, or it seemed that such a colossus could simply hit me with my fist. I photographed them mostly in secret, sometimes from the car. A couple of times they asked for money for a photo... 20 dollars. To the question, “Can I take a picture of you?” They answered that take a picture of him and pointed to the neighbor.

On a March day in 1923, 60 Indians in boats moored to the shore of the Beagle Channel. It was late summer in Tierra del Fuego, the rain had subsided a little, and the air had warmed up to plus nine. Mile after mile the Indians made their way through the labyrinth of islands and channels, just to see for the last time their friend, the only European whom they accepted into their tribe.

This man's name was Martin Gusinde, he was German, originally from Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland). He brought food and gifts to the shore of the strait. That day he said goodbye forever to the Yamana Indians and took his last photographs. At the last minute, he “shuddered, looking at this handful of people,” Martin wrote these words in his diary that evening; for four years he led it day after day.

The people standing before Martin were the few remaining of the Yamana tribe that had inhabited the southern tip of America since prehistoric times. The natural conditions of these places seem to be directed against humans: endless storms and snowfalls, eternal cold, but the Indians adapted to them. No white man could compare with them in endurance. They had an unusually expressive language. And yet, and yet... “A terrible fate was counting down last years their lives,” Gusinda wrote.

Martin Gusinde was interested in ethnography and photography. This successful combination allowed him to capture the daily life of the Indians, which he observed for several years. He knew that the hour of their death was approaching, and could not prevent it. He only tried to preserve their customs and way of life in the memory of mankind with his photographs and his notes. In addition, he wanted - one might say, alas, after the fact - to change the bad reputation that had developed about them in Europe.

In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean along the strait that was later named after him, dividing the American continent and Tierra del Fuego. At night, Magellan’s sailors saw many lights—these were Indian fires—that’s why he named this area Tierra del Fuego, Tierra del Fuego. Both he and subsequent navigators were convinced that the places they discovered were the outskirts of the legendary South Earth, a continent that, as was then believed, occupied the territory around the South Pole.

Only in 1616, two Dutch captains rounded Cape Horn and established that Tierra del Fuego was an island. For a long time no one was interested in this abandoned piece of land, where it always snowed or a hurricane raged; Huge waves beat against its coast, and the land was inaccessible due to glaciers and forests overgrown with ferns. Only two centuries later did Europeans become better acquainted with the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.

In 1881, the island was divided between Argentina and Chile. By that time, sheep farmers had already displaced the Indians from their usual hunting grounds. Unfortunately for the Indians, gold was found on Tierra del Fuego, and soon miners invaded the area. The last genocide on the American continent has begun. The Indians disturbed everyone: they hunted for sheep, not knowing what private property was, and took whatever they liked from the gold miners’ camps. In those years, scalp hunters received a pound sterling for each pair of ears cut off from killed Indians. Those same natives who managed to escape from the thugs found themselves defenseless against diseases brought by Europeans - tuberculosis and measles. The survivors were finished off by alcohol, to which they quickly became addicted. Half a century later, when Martin Gusinde first came to Tierra del Fuego in 1919, the number of Indians had dropped from eight thousand to six hundred.

Martin was then 32 years old. He was a missionary and taught at a private German school in Santiago. And in his free time he passionately engaged in ethnographic research. To do this, I had to take a vacation at my own expense. Everything to explore remote corners lost islands, Martin Gusinde spent a total of 22 months. In 1925 he returned to Europe and published his notes in three volumes. To date, his books remain the most extensive source of information about the life of the Fuegians.

The island was inhabited by three nationalities. The tribe, which called themselves Selknam, hunted and roamed the interior, following the paths along which the guanacos, the main object of their hunt, moved. The Europeans called this tribe Ona. The most important part of their equipment was a bow and arrows, a flint for striking fire, and a thick cape made of guanaco skins. To escape the cold, she rubbed her naked bodies with clay and guanaco fat. At night they slept in huts made of logs and moss, huddling close to a smoldering fire.

In addition to them, sea nomads also lived on Tierra del Fuego: the Yamana (they are also called the Yagana) and the Halakvulup (in scientific literature Alakaluf). Every day they sailed in boats through the labyrinths of straits and channels. Alakalufs inhabited the western coast, Yamana numerous islands near Cape Horn. The whole family fit in the boat. The husband sat in the bow with a harpoon in his hand, intently looking out for seals. At the other end of the boat, the wife rowed continuously. In addition, her duty was to dive into icy water for sea urchins, and in the evening tie the boat near the shore that’s why the islanders taught only girls to swim. Wind, dampness, cold - even at sub-zero temperatures, the Indians remained completely naked. Do not consider a piece of seal skin the size of a handkerchief, with a belt, as clothing. He was moved along the body to the most frozen places.

Due to the eternal cold and dampness, the sea nomads needed to tirelessly maintain the fire. Every morning, dismantling their pitiful barriers from the wind, they carried smoldering coals in a wicker into the boat and sparingly fed the fire with moss and branches until they landed ashore in the evening.

Gusinde visited all three tribes. He lived with them in the camps, participated in their weddings and funerals, studied with a healer and even underwent an initiation ceremony. Anticipating that he was becoming the last eyewitness of the dying traditions, Gusinde, like a man possessed, wrote down all the details of what he saw.

First of all, it was necessary to overcome the Indians' fear of the camera. He knew that the natives called him “shadow catcher”, and therefore he filmed very carefully. Among the shots he took, there are rare ones taken with a hidden camera. In most cases, the Indians being photographed specially prepared for the shooting, so that the resulting photographs were portraits. Having carefully chosen their decorations and taken the appropriate pose, the islanders peered with deep seriousness into the lens that was to preserve the last memory of them.

Of all Gusinda’s journeys, the most difficult was the fourth, which lasted more than a year. Four months of which he lived among her. He slept on brushwood, ate half-raw guanaco meat, washed himself with snow and was completely covered in lice. Then the ethnographer spent two months in the labyrinth of islands off west coast Tierra del Fuego, trying to find the remaining Alakaluf Indians. By that time there were 250 of them. All this time, it rained incessantly, with only occasional glimpses of the sun.

According to his observations, in all three tribes the family formed an independent nomadic unit with a strict division of responsibilities between man and woman. Life went on in constant search food. They were interrupted only by holidays dedicated to birth and initiation, weddings and funerals. Everyday life was also diversified by ritual ceremonies, when people turned to the spirits of nature.

The Indians attached particular importance to raising children. Gusinde discovered that Yamana mothers kept the dried umbilical cord of their children for four years. Then they caught a small bird - a wren - and brought the child its umbilical cord and the caught bird; the child tied the umbilical cord around the wren's neck and released it into the wild. It is amazing that, despite all the difficulties of nomadic life, the Indians managed to preserve these fragile ribbons for four years. Doesn't this speak about the care with which mothers treated their offspring?

Gusinde received his deepest understanding of the worldview of the Indians during initiation. He was the first European to be allowed to participate in this ritual, which marked the transition from childhood to adulthood. Over the course of several months, the subjects were told the testaments of their ancestors, ethical principles, and were initiated into the practical skills of their tribe. They had to endure difficult trials. They spent a long time in a particularly uncomfortable position: their heads were bowed, their arms crossed on their chests, their knees tucked up; sometimes for ten days in a row they were not allowed to relax or stretch their legs; They even had to spend several hours of sleep turning on their sides in the same position. But how they knew how to relax, even when crowded together on a tiny piece of land!

For the first time, the Yamana did not allow Gusinda to take notes. But a year later, during another initiation, the Yamana for the first time allowed him to record on paper the commandments of the Fuegians.

However, not all scholars have the same appreciation for the quality of his extensive records. Although Gusinda managed to win the trust of the Indians, who voluntarily answered his countless questions, he did not have time to study the language of each of the three tribes. Therefore, he depended on a translator who was not always knowledgeable. In addition, by the beginning of this century, the way of life of the Fuegians had already changed due to contacts with farmers and missionaries. In many families, ancient customs and myths existed only very fragmentarily.

Using these pieces, Gusinde reconstructed, so to speak, an “ideal picture of the pre-European past,” the validity of which no one could verify. And it is quite natural that this picture, despite the ethnographer’s sober and tenacious observation, nevertheless retained much of his own ideas about what the Indians should have thought and felt. As he himself admitted, he was motivated by the idea that the Indians of Tierra del Fuego “as representatives of the so-called primitive peoples belong to the oldest human groups accessible to us today... My goal was to find and preserve the primordial human values preserved by these people.”

The missionary Gusinde adhered to the doctrine of the supreme deity, believing that it was in backward cultures that the most ancient religion was preserved: faith in the supreme deity who created the world and maintained the world order.

However, the greatest place in his writings is occupied by strictly objective descriptions of the daily life of the Indians and their holidays. These records contain many accurate realities and are therefore as unique as numerous photographs.

With the help of his translator, Gusinde became acquainted with the languages of the Indians, about which Charles Darwin said - alas! so dismissive. In reality, the languages were incredibly rich - this applies to all three languages. With amazing imagination, the Indians managed to convey what was happening in the world around them, their own feelings and abstract ideas in the form of metaphors.

For the state of mental depression of the Yaman, for example, they used a word that meant the most painful period in the life of a crab, when it had already shed its old shell, but the new one had not yet grown. The concept of “adulterer” was suggested to them by the falcon, which, having found a victim, hovers motionless over it. The concept of “wrinkled skin” coincided with the name of an old shell, and “hiccup” with the name of a blockage of trees that blocked the path.

The Fuegians were able to express the subtlest nuances of the life of nature and man. Thus, “iya” meant “to tie a boat to a thicket of brown algae”, “windows” “to sleep in a moving boat.” Completely different words were used to describe concepts such as “sleeping in a hut,” “sleeping on the shore,” or “sleeping with a woman.” The word "ukomona" meant "throwing a spear at a school of fish without aiming at any of them." As for their self-name “yamana”, this word meant “live, breathe, be happy.”

On that March day in 1923, Gusinde said goodbye to the 60 surviving Yamana people. Although the governments of Chile and Argentina put an end to the extermination of the Indians, the deadly influence of alcohol and diseases brought by visitors could no longer be contained. At the beginning of the forties, only about a hundred Indians remained on Tierra del Fuego.

Gusinde's ethnographic interest in primitive peoples and after he returned to Europe did not fade away, the researcher made more trips to the pygmies in the Congo, to the Bushmen in the Kalahari, to the Indians of Venezuela and the Papuans of New Guinea. He published over 200 scientific papers, gave lectures on the radio, and taught at universities in Japan and the USA.

Martin Gusinde died at the age of 82 in 1969 in Austria. And eight years later, old Felipe R. Alvarez, the last purebred Yamana Indian, died on Tierra del Fuego.

Based on materials from foreign press, prepared by A. VOLKOV Photo from Geo magazine

The laws of the Yamana tribe announced to young men during initiation and written down by Martin Gusinde

Here are some of them:

When many guests come to your site and you cannot give gifts to everyone, think first about strangers; What's left, give it to family and friends.
When you find yourself with several people in the land where you were born, and they want to settle down for the night, give up the safest place to those who have not been here. Be content with a worse place yourself. Don’t think: why should I care if strangers lose their boat?
If you are lucky on a hunt, let others join you. Moreover: show them good places where there are many seals, which will not be difficult to get there.
When you approach the fire, sit down with dignity, tucking your legs under you. Look at everyone gathered with friendliness. Don't pay attention to any one of them; Don't turn your back on anyone. Don't visit too often.
If you are offered accommodation for the night, stay. Help people in their troubles. Nobody will ask you for help. But look, maybe they don’t have enough water or firewood, or maybe the snow in front of the entrance hasn’t been cleared away. Get to work. Such people are welcomed everywhere with joy.
Don’t immediately talk about what you heard. It is too easy to sow untruths. Then people will wonder who was the talker - then they will look for you.
When you find something, don’t say: it’s mine. After all, the owner may soon appear. As soon as he sees the lost thing in your hands, he will point others to you and say: what a thief! The Yamana do not tolerate thieves.
If you meet a blind man on the road, go up to him and ask: where are you going? Perhaps you will find out that he is lost. Tell him immediately: you have lost your way. He will answer you gratefully: therefore, I am lost. Then ask him: where should I take you? He will say: I want to get to my place. Take him by the hand immediately and lead him away.
If you kill someone out of anger or recklessness, do not try to escape. Find the strength to endure everything that follows, do not force your relatives to answer for what you have done.
Never forget these instructions. If you stick to them, everything will go well, people will be happy with you; they will say about you: you are a good person!