Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-03-04
A CURIOUS RACE.
Lieutenant BOUe's account of the Ja1ans
in Term del Eueno.


Lieutenant BOue's account of the Jagans
in Terra del Fuego.
The Jagans impress one as a poor race.
In general the men are scarsely more than
of medium stature, while the women rare
ly reach it. The faces of this new race are
large, round and fiat, with high cheek
bones, low foreheads, large flat noses.
very black and restless eyes, wide apart,
large, humid lips and strong jaws furnish
ed with beautiful teeth. The head and
chest are disproportionately large, com
pared TO the extreme slenderness of arms
and legs, and it is marvel how the latter
can support the we'll developed trunk and
heavy head. In spite of this strange for
nation, both men and women have IN
common strength. and 1 have seen them
carry weights that would have taxed the
most robust of our sailors. No less sur
prising is the smallness of their hands and
feet, which, if beautiful, are very disadvan-
tageous to the men, who can carry only
one or two objects in their hands at one
time. They have rough, lusterless. black
hair, which they wear long, and falling
over face and shoulders. Some bind it
with strap, some let it grow to such an
extent that they look more like furies than
like human beings. The men have very
little beard, and that little they pluck out,
while neither men nor women have anv
hair On their bodies. They do not tattoo,
but Use all kinds of paint. Two or three
hues of colors on the face and few neck
laces and shells or birds bones is the
usual dress of the Fuegian.
For protection against the terrible hur-
ricanes, the SHOWS that fall ten months in
the year, and the torrential rains VIII Oh
daily visit this miserable archipel 90.
the Fuegian only wears a small mantle of
seal or guanaco over his shoulders. he
wigwams are only made of intertwined
branches fixed in some sheltered spot, but
they are too week to keep out snow and rain.
These wigwams are used by the Fuegians
who dwell near the few residents of Usciu-
maia or around the mission; the other
natives scarcely remain more than one or
two days in the same place; they live a
vagrant life in their small canoes among
the complicated canals of this broken uo
country, fishing and hunting for their sub
sistence, of which the sea furnishes the
larger part.
The women are looked upon as slaves. and
the greater part of the work falls to their
share. l have often seen the men sitting
quietly around a good fire while the poor
women were exposed in fragile skirts to the
snow, wind, and waves, fishing for their
idle and hungry husbands. The greater
the number of wives or slaves the man has
the easier for him to find a living; hence
the practice of polygamy, which is so root
ed among the Fuegians that in spite of the
efforts of the missionaries it is no rare
thing to see convert break through re-
straint and add two or more wives to the
one allowed him by his new religion. But
though a FUegian may marry as NAM
wives as he pleases, he seldom takes more
than four, and even with that small num-
Der it is difficult to preserve domestic
peace. The wigwam it the scene of daily
battles, and sometimes the prettiest of the
wives pays with her life for the preference
of her husband.
The tuegian women are very prolific.