Selk'nam people

Selk'nam people
The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be encountered by migrant Europeans in the late 19th century. In the mid-19th century, there were about 4000 Selk'nam; by 1919 there were 297, and by 1930 just over 100.
They are considered extinct as a tribe. The exploration of gold and the introduction of farming in the region of Tierra del Fuego led to genocide of the Selk'nam.
While the Selk'nam are closely associated with living in the northeastern area of Tierra del Fuego, they are believed to have originated as a people on the mainland. Thousands of years ago, they migrated by canoe across the Strait of Magellan. Their territory in the early Holocene probably ranged as far as the Cerro Benítez area of the Cerro Toro mountain range in Chile.
Lifestyle
Traditionally, the Selk'nam were nomadic people who relied on hunting for survival. They dressed sparingly despite the cold climate of Patagonia. They shared Tierra del Fuego with the Haush (or Manek'enk), another nomadic culture who lived in the south-eastern part of the island. Also in the region were the Yámana or Yahgan.
Relations with Europeans
In Late 1599 a small Dutch fleet led by Olivier van Noort entered the Strait of Magellan and had a hostile encounter with Selk'nam which left about forty Selk'nam dead. It was the bloodiest recorded event in the strait until then.
James Cook described meeting a peoples in Tierra del Fuego in 1769 that used pieces of glass in their arrowheads. Cook believed the glass had been a gift from the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, indicating potentially several early contacts.
The Selk'nam had little contact with ethnic Europeans until settlers arrived in the late 19th century. These newcomers developed a great part of the land of Tierra del Fuego as large estancias (ranches), depriving the natives of their ancestral hunting areas. The Selk'nam, who did not have a concept of private property, considered the sheep herds to be game and hunted the sheep. The ranch owners considered this to be poaching, and paid armed groups or militia to hunt down and kill the Selk'nam, in what is now called the Selk'nam Genocide. To receive their bounty, such groups had to bring back the ears of victims.
Salesian missionaries worked to protect and preserve Selk'nam culture. Father José María Beauvoir explored the region and studied the native Patagonian cultures and languages between 1881 and 1924. He compiled a 4000 word vocabulary of the Selk'nam language, and 1400 phrases and sentences, which was published in 1915. He included a comparative list of 150 Ona-Tehuelche words, as he believed that there were connections to the Tehuelche people and language to the north. German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche published the first scholarly studies of the Selk'nam, although he was later criticized for having studied members of the Selk'nam people who had been abducted and were exhibited in circuses.
Relations with Europeans in the Beagle Channel area in the southern area of the island of Tierra del Fuego were somewhat more cordial than with the ranchers. Thomas Bridges, who had been an Anglican missionary at Ushuaia, retired from that service. He was given a large land grant by the Argentine government, where he founded Estancia Harberton. Lucas Bridges, one of his three sons, did much to help the local cultures. Like his father, he learned the languages of the various groups and tried to provide the natives with some space in which to live their customary lives as "lords of their own land." However the forces of change were against the indigenous tribes, who continued to have high fatality rates as their cultures were disrupted. Lucas Bridges' book, Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948), provides sympathetic insight into the lives of the Selk'nam and Yahgan.
Selk'nam Genocide
The Selk'nam genocide was the genocide of the Selk'nam people, one of three indigenous tribes populating Tierra del Fuego in South America, from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century. The genocide spanned a period of between ten and fifteen years. The Selk'nam had an estimated population of 4,000 people around the 1880s but saw their numbers reduced to 500 by the early 1900s.
Background
The Selk'nam are one of three indigenous tribes who inhabited the northeastern part of the archipelago, with a population before the genocide estimated at between 3,000 and 4,000. They were known as the Ona (people of the north), by the Yaghan (Yamana).
The Selk'nam had lived a semi-nomadic life of hunting and gathering in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego for thousands of years. The name of the island literally means "big island of Land of Fire", which is the name the early Spanish explorers gave it as they saw the smoke from Selk'nam bonfires. They lived in the northeast, with the Haush people to their east on the Mitre Peninsula, and the Yaghan people to the west and south, in the central part of the main island and throughout the southern islands of the archipelago.
According to one study, the Selk'nam were divided into the following groups:
Parika (located in the Northern Pampas).
Herska (located in the southern forests)
Chonkoyuka (located in the mountains in front of Inútil Bay), alongside the Haush.
History
The last full-blooded Selk'nam, Ángela Loij, died in 1974. They were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to be reached by Europeans. According to the 2010 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, the Ona language, believed to be part of the Chonan family, is considered extinct, as the last speakers died in the 1980s.
About 4,000 Selk'nam were alive in the mid-nineteenth century; by 1930 this had been reduced to about 100. With the assimilation of many groups who later became Argentinians and Chileans, Selk'nam territory was conquered.
The natives were plied with alcohol, deported, raped, and exterminated, with bounties paid to the most ruthless hunters. Martin Gusinde, who visited the island towards the end of 1918, recounted in his writings that the hunters sent the skulls of the murdered Selk'nam to foreign anthropological museums, actions undertaken "in the name of science".
German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche published the first scholarly studies of the Selk'nam, although he was later criticized for having studied members of the Selk'nam people who had been abducted and exhibited in circuses in conditions of de facto slavery.
The gold rush
The Chilean expedition of Ramón Serrano Montaner in 1879 reported the presence of significant gold deposits in the sands of the main rivers of Tierra del Fuego. Hundreds of foreign adventurers came to the island in search of fortune. However, resources of the metal depleted rapidly.
Among those who hunted the indigenous people were Julius Popper, Ramón Lista, Alexander McLennan, a "Mister Bond", Alexander A. Cameron [es], Samuel Hyslop, John McRae, and Montt E. Wales.
The beginning of the Selk'nam extermination
Ranching became the center of controversy in the Magellanic colony. The colonial authorities were aware of the indigenous group's plight, but sided with the ranchers' cause over the Selk'nam, who were excluded from their worldview based on "progress" and "civilization". Ranchers typically exercised their own judgement, including the financing of violent campaigns. Considerable numbers of foreign men were hired and quantities of arms were imported for these campaigns, with the goal of eliminating the Selk'nam, who were perceived as a major obstacle to the success of colonists' investments. Farm employees later confirmed the routine nature of such campaigns.
Little is known of those responsible for said actions; they included many ranch owners, who were the direct superiors of the employees that participated in the ventures. Among them was Mauricio Braun, who acknowledged having financed some campaigns, justifying them as only intending to protect his investments (he was the employer of another known exterminator, Alexander A. Cameron). Another figure is the father-in-law of Mauricio Braun, José Menéndez Menéndez, one of the men who acted with the most severity against the Selk'nam in the Argentine territory of Tierra del Fuego. The owner of two cattle ranches that occupied more than 200,000 hectares in the center of Selk'nam territory, Menéndez was the boss of Alexander Mac Lennan. Mac Lennan, or "Chanco Colorado", known widely as a murderer of indigenous people, participated in the massacre at Cabo Penas, where 17 indigenous people died. When he retired after 12 years of service, Menéndez gave Mac Lennan a valuable gold watch in recognition of his outstanding service.
The shareholders of the Company for the Exploitation of Tierra de Fuego (Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego) strove to hide details from the public. This was both a means for the company to avoid questioning and a strategy to lower its controversial profile. Special attention was paid to these events after the intervention of the Salesians, who condemned the farmers' actions.
Beginning in the last decade of the 1890s, the situation of the Selk'nam became severe. As the territories of the north began to be largely occupied by farms, many indigenous people, besieged by hunger and persecuted by colonists, started to flee towards the extreme south of the island. This region was inhabited by groups who had a strong sense of ownership over the land. Consequently, the fights for control of territory intensified as livestock occupation became increased in the north of the island. The predicament of the Selk'nam worsened with the establishment of once religious missions, which introduced illnesses to the vulnerable population.
Later conflicts between governor Manuel Señoret and the head of the Salesian mission José Fagnano only served to worsen, rather than improve, conditions for the Selk'nam. Long disputes between civil authorities and priests did not allow a satisfactory solution to the indigenous issue. Governor Señoret favoured the ranchers' cause, and took little interest in the incidents that took place in Tierra del Fuego.
Genocide trial
Years later, justice for the conflict was sought through the indictment (1895–1904) by Judge Waldo Seguel. This process confirmed that the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego had indeed been hunted. Indigenous people were captured and removed en masse, transferred to Punta Arenas, and distributed throughout the colony. It was judged that these acts were proposed by ranchers and carried out with the complicity of civil authorities, who regarded the genocide as a solution to the indigenous issue.
The judicial process, however, ruled that only a few farmworkers were at fault, and these were released just a few months after the trial. The perpetrators of the expeditions, such as owners and stakeholders of farms belonging to Mauricio Braun, José Menéndez Menéndez, Rodolfo Stubenrauch, and Peter H. MacClelland, were never fairly prosecuted. Even official figures and civil servants, like governor Señoret and José Contardi, who theoretically had the greatest responsibility to guard the sanctity of the law, were never investigated. The book "Harassment Inflicted on the Indigenous People of Tierra de la Fuego" ("Vejámenes inferidos a los indígenas de Tierra del Fuego") by author Carlos Vega Delgado shows that Judge Waldo Seguel covered for ranchers who committed acts of genocide. The judge falsely recorded that he could not obtain a statement from the Selk'nam individuals who witnessed the genocide because there were no interpreters between the two languages. However, such translators did exist, including various priests of the Salesian mission and sisters of María Auxiliadora who had learned the native dialect in the missions, as well as Spanish-speaking Selk'nams, like Tenenésk, Covadonga Ona, and even a deacon of the church.
Ranchers and farmers
The large ranchers tried to drive out the Selk'nam, then began a campaign of extermination against them, with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Large companies paid sheep farmers or militia a bounty for each Selk'nam dead, which was confirmed by the presentation of a pair of hands or ears, or later a complete skull. They were given more for the death of a woman than a man.
Repression against the Selk'nam persisted into the early twentieth century. Chile moved most of the Selk'nam in their territory to Dawson Island in the mid-1890s, confining them to a Salesian mission. Argentina finally allowed Salesian missionaries to aid the Selk'nam and attempt to assimilate them[when?], with their traditional culture and livelihoods then completely interrupted.
Two Christian missions were established to preach to the Selk'nam. They were intended to provide housing and food for the natives, but closed due to the small number of Selk'nam remaining; they had numbered in the thousands before Western colonization, but by the early twentieth century only a few hundred remained. The last ethnic Selk'nam died in the mid-twentieth century.
Alejandro Cañas estimated that in 1896 there was a population of 3,000 Selk'nam. Martín Gusinde, an Austrian priest and ethnologist who studied them in the early 20th century, wrote in 1919 that only 279 Selk'nam remained. In 1945 the Salesian missionary, Lorenzo Massa, counted 25. In May 1974 Ángela Loij, the last full-blood Selk'nam, died. There are probably surviving descendants of partial Selk'nam ancestry. According to the Argentine census of 2001, there were 391 Selk'nam (Ona) living in the island of Tierra del Fuego, and an additional 114 in other parts of Argentina.
Culture and religion
The missions and early 20th-century anthropologists collected information about Selk'nam religion and traditions while trying to help them preserve their culture. Missionary José Beauvoir compiled a dictionary of the Selk'nam language.
Language
The Selk'nam spoke a Chon language. The last native speaker died in 1974.
Religion
Selk'nam religion was a complex system of beliefs. It described spirit beings as a part of the past, in creation myth. Temáukel was the name of the great supernatural entity who they believed kept the world order. The creator deity of the world was called Kénos or Quénos.
Many of their tales recounted shaman-like characters. Such a has supernatural capabilities, e.g. he can control weather.
Initiation ceremonies
Selk'nam male initiation ceremonies, the passage to adulthood, was called Hain. Nearby indigenous peoples, the Yahgan and Haush, had similar initiation ceremonies.
Young males were called to a dark hut. There they would be attacked by "spirits", who were people dressed as supernatural beings. The children were taught to believe in and fear these spirits at childhood and were threatened by them in case they misbehaved. Their task in this rite of passage was to unmask the spirits; when the boys saw that the spirits were human, they were told a story of world creation related to the sun and moon. In a related story, they were told that in the past women used to be disguised as spirits to control men. When the men discovered the masquerade, they, in turn, would threaten women as spirits. According to the men, the women never learned that the masked males were not truly spirits, but the males found out at the initiation rite.
The contemporary ceremonies used this interplay in somewhat of a joking way. After the first day, related ceremonies and rituals took place. Males showed their "strength" in front of women by fighting spirits (who were other males but the women supposedly did not know it) in some theatrical fights. Each spirit was played with traditional actions, words and gestures, so that everyone could identify it. The best spirit actors from previous Hains were called again to impersonate spirits in later Hains.
Apart from these dramatic re-enactments of mythic events, the Hain involved tests for young males for courage, resourcefulness, resisting temptation, resisting pain and overcoming fear. It also included prolonged instructional courses to train the young men in the tasks for which they would be responsible.
Before European encounter, the various rites of the Hain lasted a very long time, perhaps even a year on occasion. It would end with the last fight against the "worst" spirit. Usually Hains were started when there was enough food (for example a whale was washed onto the coast), a time when all the Selk'nam from all the bands used to gather at one place, in male and female camps. "Spirits" sometimes went to female encampments to scare them, as well as moving around and acting out in ways that related to their characters.
The last Hain was held in one of the missions in the early 20th century, and was photographed by missionary Martin Gusinde. It was a shorter and smaller ceremony than they used to hold. The photos show the "spirit" costumes they created and wore. Gusinde's The Lost Tribes of Tierra Del Fuego (2015) was published in English by Thames & Hudson, and in French and Spanish by Éditions Xavier Barral.
Heritage
Pictures of Selk'nam people taken by the missionaries are displayed at the Martin Gusinde Anthropological Museum at Puerto Williams. There are also a few books on the subject, including Selk'nam tales, collected by the missions, and a dictionary of the Selk'nam language. Due to early contact by missionaries, they collected much more information about the Selk'nam people than about other people of the region.
Austrian priest and ethnologist Gusinde tried also to collect information about other local nations, but he found their numbers much reduced. He was able to write more about traditional Selk'nam culture because it was still being lived.
The 2010 National Population Census in Argentina revealed the existence of 2,761 people who recognized themselves as Onas throughout the country, 294 of them in the province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Islands (Land of Fire).
See also
Kawésqar
Kawésqar language
References
Further reading
Luis Alberto Borrero, Los Selk'nam (Onas), Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2007
Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth, London, 1948
External links
Glenn H. Shepard Jr., "Specters of a Civilization:" review of Martin Gusinde's Lost Tribes of Tierra del Fuego, New York Review of Books, 9 August 2015, review includes early 20th-century photographs of the Selk'nam by Gusinde
Documentary about Joubert Yanten, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2 July 2001
"The young man who is reviving a dying language", BBC News, 2 August 2015
About the Ona Indian Culture in Tierra Del Fuego, Victory Cruises.
Hunter-gatherers of South America
Indigenous peoples in Tierra del Fuego