The Tehuelche and the Mapuche: warrior peoples
These very different tribes shared southern Patagonia before the Conquest of the Desert. Originally, the Mapuche occupied the Chilean part of the Andes, but from the 18th century onwards, the onslaught of Spanish settlers forced them to migrate to Argentine Patagonia. They mingled with the Tehuelche and even imposed their customs and language on them. More modest in stature, the Mapuche had a more complex society. Their culture was much more developed, notably because they were hunters, but also farmers, and lived sedentary lives on their land. They knew about fabrics and pottery and had their own calendar, which still governs some of their festivities today. Their god was called Nguenechen; he created all that exists, dominating the earth and enabling life and fertility. However, they had no written expression; legends and history were transmitted orally. Ironically enough (and as in many other colonies of the time), Mapuche writing was born with the expansion of the Spanish and subsequent evangelization. The massacre of the economic conquest in the 19th century did not, however, eradicate the Mapuche presence in the area. Renowned as fearless warriors, the Mapuche still often claim to have resisted two great waves of colonization: the Incas and the conquistadors. Today, some 600,000 Mapuche remain in Chile, and 300,000 in Argentina. The Tehuelche, now completely extinct, inspired the first accounts by European navigators, who named them "Patagons" ("great men", according to a Spanish work popular at the time). The development of their culture was hampered by a difficult climate: violent winds, harsh winters. As a result, they were unable to cultivate the land, which was poor in organic matter; in fact, they led a nomadic life, setting up camps. Their diet was essentially based on hunting guanaco and rhea, but they also gathered roots and seeds, from which they made flour. When their nomadic excursions took them as far as the Atlantic coast, they also collected seafood and hunted sea mammals. They worked the latter's leather with various stone tools to make boots and blankets, or even used it to build their temporary homes.
The peoples of Tierra del Fuego: the Fuegians
The Fuegians numbered 7,000 in the 19th century, 600 in 1924 and only 100 in 1940. Today, they have completely disappeared. The hostile immensities of Tierra del Fuego were shared by four tiny peoples numbering around twenty thousand: the Haushs (or Manekenk), the Onas (or Selk'nam), the Yaghans (or Yamanas) and the Alakalufs (or Kaweskars). Constantly confronting the elements of a powerful nature, they represented a miracle of adaptation, despite the atrocious judgments passed on them by Cook, Darwin and Bougainville. Despite geographical and ethnological descriptions and studies, little is known about the history and customs of the Fuegians.
The Alakalufs lived in present-day Chilean Tierra del Fuego and around the Strait of Magellan. They moved with the seasons and their diet, which included cholgas (giant mussels), hence their name, taken from the yaghan halakwulup, meaning "mussel eater". Nomads of the sea, they possessed 30 words to define the winds and an exceptional maritime vocabulary to designate tides, currents and climatic changes. Seafarers and seal hunters, they travelled from one end of the Strait of Magellan to the other in canoes. By the early 19th century, the Alakalufs were in total perdition: turned beggars, torn from their traditions, they wrongly inherited a reputation as cannibals and the contempt of the whole of Western society. One family embarked for Paris to be exhibited at the 1878 Universal Exhibition. All the members of the family ended up dead. The government eventually took in the last Alakaluf at Puerto Eden, in the Messier Canal. Deprived of their land and their freedom, there are now barely a dozen of them who are direct descendants of their ancestors. In their book Les Nomades, Pierre Bonte and Henri Guillaume write these painful lines: "Like many nomads, most of these populations have now disappeared or been assimilated, at the cost of their identity. In Patagonia, the last Alakalufs who roamed the immense fjords swept by the icy winds of the southern Pacific in search of seal colonies died a decade ago." In the 1970s, in his book La Vie au bout du monde (Life at the End of the World ), Captain Cousteau wrote: "We had few illusions about what we were going to find when we came here [...]. But the reality exceeded our worst fears. In this Puerto Eden camp, not only is a culture disappearing, but a people is physically dying out. [...] This people, once proud and jealous of their culture, now live only on begging, a little seafood gathering, and meagre trade with the Chileans".
The Yamanas were also "nomads of the sea", and excellent craftsmen: each made his own tools from wood and bone, but very little from stones or minerals such as copper, which abounded in the region. Their baskets were made of rushes and used to collect molluscs, shellfish and fruit. On the water, men used crude harpoons (3 m long, the tip of which was formed by the whale's inshore bone) to hunt sea wolves; it should be noted that whales were not hunted on the high seas, but only when they came close enough to the coast (through fatigue or injury). Penguins and cormorants were their favorite game. Constantly on board their canoes, they moved along the coasts and spent half the year at sea, their terrestrial homes being of little importance. Lastly, these populations didn't really dress themselves; they wore a kind of blanket covering their backs (called a tuweaki); around their waists, men and women wore a cover-up(taparrabo in Spanish) that was also fastened with a string. Bodies were smeared with fish oil and sea mammal fat to protect the skin from the harsh climate. Today, a few mestizos (mixed with Chilotes, mainly inhabitants of Chiloé, the archipelago south of Puerto Montt) still live in Villa Ukika, near Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island.
The Selk'nam and Haush lived on the Atlantic side of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, near present-day Río Grande. A nomadic people, they roamed the steppe in search of ñandús (the Patagonian ostrich) and guanacos, which they caught on the run! No permanent leader ruled the tribes, but a certain hierarchy cemented social ties: shamans were invested with the power to heal; sages were the repositories of mythological traditions; and warriors were respected for their experience: in fact, their position sometimes resembled that of a chief. According to Lucas Bridges: "The Onas had no hereditary or elective chiefs, but the men who surpassed the others in skill almost always became the de facto rulers. However, one day's leader was not necessarily the next day's leader, as they could change to suit a particular purpose [...] Kankoat says: "We have chiefs: all the men are captains and all the women are sailors." In the mid-19th century, gold prospectors moved into the region, accompanied by the infamous Julius Popper. Mainly responsible for the extermination of the Selk'nams and Haushs, this ruthless Indian killer founded several mining prospecting sites. By the time the missionaries arrived, only 2,000 Onas remained. The Haush disappeared without a trace. It was on Dawson Island that missionaries and priests gathered this decimated people. They built churches, hospitals and schools, clothed their residents, settled them and educated them in Christianity. Acculturated and contaminated by terrible diseases transmitted by the Europeans, the natives were weakened and in 1939, the Dawson mission was closed. The last of the Onas was called Lola Kiepja. She lived in a log cabin on the shores of Lake Fagnano. The only one still speaking her language, no one could understand her anymore. A woman shaman and poet, she died in 1966.
In the end, they held the secret to a richer and more astonishing past than we thought at the time: the story of the courage of a people who had to fight to survive, and who, alas, have totally disappeared. For over three centuries, they prevented settlers from penetrating their territory. In the end, they were defeated, although one people is still holding out: the Mapuche. Their descendants have kept their culture and language alive, and still work daily to maintain them. Today, they are demanding restitution of their lands and respect for their way of life: demands that have gone unanswered by the Chilean government, despite the fact that the Indigenous Act of October 5, 1993 recognizes the existence of indigenous peoples as "an essential part of the roots of the Chilean Nation". They would appear to be the only exception - or almost the only exception - to Chilean miscegenation.
A mixed population
Following the indigenous genocide, the land was successively occupied by immigrants dreaming of the New World. Argentina experienced a huge wave of immigration in the mid-19th century. This was mainly European, with large numbers of Italian, French and Spanish immigrants. While Buenos Aires had just 20,000 inhabitants in 1770, it had 150,000 by 1840. Then, from 1860 onwards, Europeans arrived en masse via the Río de la Plata: at least 4 million immigrants, mainly Italians (half), Spaniards (a third), Germans, Russians, Eastern Europeans, French Basques, etc., settled permanently between 1870 and 1930. Argentina became one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Chilean society, for its part, is the result of the intermingling of different immigrant and indigenous populations. Immigrants to Chile included Spaniards (first from Andalusia and Extremadura, then from Castile), Germans (from 1850), Italians, Yugoslavs (at Punta Arenas in the early 20th century), English, French, Syrians and Lebanese.) Compared to Argentina, this immigration was small in number and very gradual. Among the European immigrants to Patagonia, there were a number of specific settler communities. First of all, the Welsh were among the first European settlers in the province of Chubut, as early as 1865. The reasons for this immigration were mainly historical and cultural: at the time, the Welsh felt threatened by England, Scotland and Ireland, and feared that their community and customs would disappear in the face of British domination. So they decided to move overseas to preserve their identity and culture. They settled on the Atlantic coast, founding the towns of Puerto Madryn and Rawson. Over the decades, these towns developed and adopted a mixed identity, far removed from Welsh culture. You need look no further than Gaimán, a stronghold of Welsh culture in Argentina, to find evidence of immigration: religious festivals commemorate Wales, the Welsh language has been reintroduced and the architecture and flag clearly express the identity of the small village. But the expansion of the Welsh did not stop there, as they continued to invest the southern territories as far as the Andes: they also founded Esquel and Trevelín. Finally, although Argentina is often perceived as a safe haven for former Nazis on the run, the first wave of German immigration to Patagonia dates back to the late 19th century. The 1853 census of Buenos Aires counted no fewer than 2,000 Germans, and the city of Bariloche was also home to a large wave of German settlers when it was founded. On the Chilean side, they mainly occupied the Valdivia region and the area around Lake Llanquihue. At the same time, the French accounted for 10% of the Argentine population, most of them from Brittany, Savoy, Basque or Bearn. They brought with them a number of culinary, agricultural and artistic influences that would later become anchored in Argentine culture.
Che boludo!
Beware of those who think they've mastered Spanish! The campesino accent coupled with the Argentinian accent can confuse even the most novice... and in Chile, it's a different story! Chileans use and abuse terms that exist only in their country, grouped together under the expression chilenismo. These include: sipo! (yes), pololo (boyfriend), huevón (used as an insult or affectionately to mean "idiot"), bacàn (genius)... The origins of these words and expressions are rather vague, but they are rooted in the fusion of Castilian with European languages and the varieties of indigenous words and expressions. Indeed, the Mapuche and Aymara have left their mark on today's "Chilean", marked by different sounds and ways of speaking. You may even hear the saying "If you understand the Chilean accent, you'll understand any accent". What's more, everyone speaks very fast, which doesn't make conversation any easier, slang comes up very frequently and some people eat the "s" at the end of words. You get used to it, but it's not easy at first. Cachai? (Do you understand?) Last but not least, Argentina also has a few specificities when it comes to castellano. The first rule is that the "ll" followed by a vowel is pronounced more or less "ch". Thus, caballo (horse) is pronounced "cabacho". This distinction will enable you to spot an Argentinean very easily in any Spanish-speaking country. Another notable change, which may confuse you at first, is that the Spanish tú has been replaced by vos, which is accompanied by a special conjugation. So we'll say vos creés instead of tú crees, or vos querés instead of tú quieres! Conjugation also allows for a few quirks: vos tenés from the verb tener, or even vos sos from the verb ser... instead of tú tienes or tú eres. It's a bit of a mess, but on the plus side, this grammatical mutation is always respected, and you get used to it after a while. You may even end up starting your sentences with " Che! " or " Che, loco! " (Or " Che, boludo! ").
