Sea nomads of the Beagle Channel and surrounding areas

PIANA, E.; M. ALVAREZ Y N. RÚA

Antarrtic Peninsula and Tierra del Fuego. 100 years of Swedish-Argentine scientific cooperation at the end of the world

Taylor & Francis/Balkema

Lugar: Holanda; Año: 2006; p. 195 - 214

The Magellan-Fueguian channels and islands area were populated by natives adapted to this environment known as sea nomads or canoe people. Their descendents were first encountered by European explorers at the beginning of the XVIIth. Century. They called themselves Yamana and Halakwoolip, and were later known as Yahgan and Alakaluf. The Yamana country included the northern coast of the Beagle Channel from Punta Divide to Slogget Bay and the southern islands down to Cape Horn. The Alacaluf’s one covered the western islands up to the Magellan Strait. These natives soon called the European scholars’ attention for they lived naked in this extreme latitude displayed a non-complex social structure and their material equipment was simple. Most of the attention on them occurred after Charles Darwin’s visit to the region and the largest amount of written sources describing them is from the XIXth. Century. These natives were pointed as examples of “the first stages of humankind” and were thus described in many opportunities. Nevertheless, up to recent years all the scholar’s understanding was restricted to the historical information and repeated but a few recurrent concepts. They were perceived as “culturally primitive”, as “cornered in the southernmost tip” by other some how stronger cultures and as “recent” inhabitants of the area. After systematic archeological research, these assumptions probed to be wrong and it was understood that the Yamana were the end point of a successful adaptative tradition that rooted for more than six millennia. This tradition has been followed through different archaeological records since around 6.4 uncal. 14C ka BP to the XIXth. Century. They had a hunting-fishing-gathering economy based on sea mammals fat consumption. Sea lions were most important and a year round staple, and the diet was complemented with marine birds, fishes, guanaco and constant shellfish gathering. Cetaceans were a somehow hazardous resource.