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  Traveling to Southern Patagonia and
Tierra del Fuego (“Land of Fire”) can be a unique and exhilarating
experience. Nowadays, as it has always been, the only way to see the fjords of
the island of Tierra del Fuego is by water. The early European explorers
discovered Tierra del Fuego when they arrived by ship after a long journey
across the Atlantic Ocean. They learned that the aborigines also found the
waterways to be the most convenient way to travel to the island, its fjords and
surrounding archipelagos.
You can reach these waterways from
the north by the Strait of Magellan and from the south by the Beagle Channel.
The latter separates the main island of Tierra del Fuego from the southern
islands of Hoste and Navarino. These days there is a newly opened channel (for
commercial navigation) between these two islands, called Murray, that gives
direct access to Cape Horn from the Beagle Channel. This is precisely what the
Yamana Aborigines used to do when they visited Cape Horn on their nomadic trips
in search of new food supplies.
The early explorers that ventured in
this region were mostly financed by Spain and Britain, which were interested in
conquering this part of the world. In the first expedition, Ferdinand Magellan,
on behalf of the Kingdom of Spain, was looking for a new route to the Orient.
Magellan, ended up discovering the strait that now bears his name and
crossed the Pacific to die in the hands of natives in the Philippines.
Francis Drake, with support from the
British Crown, followed Magellan’s steps and achieved the goal of
circumventing the globe. Others followed, such as Juan Ladrilleros, who proved
the strait was sailable from the Pacific to the Atlantic; Pedro Sarmiento who
wanted to secure the strait as a passage for the Spanish Crown’ and Thomas
Cavendish, another British corsair who eventually discovered the Falkland
Islands.
 First Encounters
The first recorded encounter between
Patagonia natives and European explorers happened with the Magellan expedition
in 1520 in Bahia San Julian, at the entrance of the great Rio Santa Cruz, which
connects Lago Argentino to the Atlantic Ocean.
These aborigines were surely Tehuelches (they called themselves Aonekink)
from the northern part of Southern Patagonia.
Because of the nature of their environment, these natives were dependent
on the llama-like guanaco and other land animals that roamed what is today Los
Glaciares and Torres del Paine national parks and surrounding areas.
These two parks are so close together that on a clear day, you can see
both Fitz Roy and Paine Macizo (most important sets of mountains on both parks)
from some Estancias near El Calafate, Argentina.
Myth and reality blend when the story
is told of why Magellan called the people in this part of the world “Pataghoni.”
The myth says the aborigines were so big that the Spaniards called them pata
gones in reference to their big feet. A more likely explanation is that the
Spaniards got the name from a popular chivalric tale of the time called Primaleon,
in which a character called Patagon belonged to a tribe of “wild men who ate
raw meat, dressed only in the skins of the animals they killed and were born of
animals that lived in the mountains”.
Although these first uneventful
meetings were characterized by cordiality and trusting curiosity, they were
later followed by violent clashes provoked by the European mistreatment of
natives and defensive reactions of the latter. Examples of these were recorded
between 1578 and 1599, and were instigated by such famous explorers as Francis
Drake and others in the Strait of Magellan and northern part of the island of
Tierra del Fuego.
The southernmost habitable region of
the world is a mixture of islands surrounding Tierra del Fuego, the largest
island of an archipelago that hosted five important indigenous cultures: Yamanas
(Yahganes), Onas, Selk’nams, Haush and Alacalufes. In general, these five
cultures were nomadic family bands that mainly survived collecting foods from
the sea.
First Inhabitants
There is consistent archaeological
evidence that the ancestors of five important groups arrived in the region about
8,000 B.C. although there have been hints that they could have arrived as early
as 10,000 B.C. Between 10,000 and 13,000 B.C., the geological configuration of
the Strait of Magellan and surrounding lands was that of retreating glaciers.
This resulted in an increasing flora and fauna that made ideal conditions for
the intrusion of the first inhabitants after 9,000 B.C. Furthermore, results of
recent research indicate that crossing to Tierra del Fuego from the mainland was
possible during several periods between 14,000 and 8,000 B.C.
The Yamanas and the Haush were almost
strictly dependent on sources of food from the sea: sea mammals, mussels and sea
birds. They roamed mainly in the islands around the Beagle Channel and southern
shore of Tierra del Fuego. There are several locations in Tierra del Fuego and
Navarino Island where accumulated discarded shells can be identified as former
mussel gathering sites. The Yamanas apparently recognized the need for
conservation and would move on to other locations once the yield of the mussel
colonies at a particular location diminished.
The groups that inhabited further
north in the island of Tierra del Fuego and closer to the mainland, the Onas and
Selk’nams, had a more diversified subsistence pattern because they split their
time between hunting and fishing. Thanks to their hunting skills, these two
cultures characteristically wore guanaco skins, as did their northern cousins,
the Tehuelches. There is less data available to study the Alacalufes but they
are known to have lived in the archipelago northwest of the Beagle Channel along
the coast of Chile as far north as the Golfo de Penas.
Wilhelm Schouten and Jacques LeMaire
completed the next significant expedition. These Dutch sailors set sail to prove
that Tierra del Fuego was not an extension of the southern pole and that,
indeed, another east-west passage existed. Once they sighted Tierra del Fuego on
January 23, 1616, they continued south until they found Cape Horn and the merge
of the oceans south of the Cape on January 29. They named it Cape Horn in honor
of their departing city of Hoorn in the Netherlands.
Myth and reality blended again as
Cape Horn’s discoverers attempted to keep its new passage
a secret from other countries in an attempt to maintain its control. They
tried to convince potential conquerors that the legend of Terra Australis, which
claimed that anything south of the Strait of Magellan was part of the Antarctic
Continent, still held truth. But as
the truth was revealed, an explosive series of expeditions took sail at the
beginning of the 18th century. (There was a price to pay for all this
interest in the region. The confluence of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans
creates the most dangerous navigational waterway of the world. An estimated 700
to 800 ships are buried in these waters.)
Darwin and the Fuegians
The 19th century’s most important
set of expeditions into Tierra del Fuego, headed by Britain’s Fitz Roy,
brought back four aborigines to England in 1827. After five years in England,
these individuals were returned to Tierra del Fuego on the HMS Beagle, an
exploration ship that was carrying a head scientist named Charles Darwin. During
this journey, Darwin described the Fuegian aborigines negatively, calling them
“savages and resembling the devils,” among other things. Years later, Darwin
retracted these statements.
The 19th century also brought
missionaries and ethnographers, like Martin Gusinde and Alberto D’Agostini,
whose objective was to help the small number of descendants of these cultures
survive. These efforts were not successful as the preceding explorers had
introduced European deceases that had reduced native populations to the point of
near extinction. These missionaries contributed in recording data of the natives
for further study. Anthropologists
and historians in their research and study of these cultures have used much of
this data.
Sailing the waters surrounding Tierra
del Fuego can be viewed as both a cultural and ecological experience. To access
the ice field called the Darwin Mountain Range, a vessel must be able to sail
inside fjords as long as 25 miles and as narrow as 600 meters (2,000 feet). Once
you approach the ice field, you can see some of the most beautiful landscape in
Patagonia: a combination of snowy peaks
(the southernmost of the Andes), magellanic forests of beech and monkey puzzle
trees, and canyons formed when the glaciers retreated more than 13,000 years
ago. Gorgeous cascades release water from the glaciers, giving the limited
audience an incomparable show of nature.
Visiting these sites can be rewarding
as you can reflect back to the times when the aborigines traveled freely in
search of subsistence. Today all we find is the regional fauna that has been
left to live freely around these islands. Among the animals that can be
appreciated are colonies of elephant seals, penguins, cormorants and sea lions.
Also along these beautiful waterways passengers can enjoy dolphins and other sea
mammals, including a few whales that find their way inside the strait.
 Sailing the fjords of Tierra del
Fuego is a perfect complement to visiting the national parks north of the Strait
of Magellan. Torres del Paine in Chile and Los Glaciares in Argentina are only a
few hours and a land transfer away. Today, there is even a way to fly from
Ushuaia, the Argentinian city on the shores of the Beagle Channel, 600
kilometers (375 miles) northwest into El Calafate, the main town near Los
Glaciares, making it easier to combine both ends of southern Patagonia.
Note:
See this month's National Park, which
is
Torres del Paine.
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