![]() The Selk'nam had lived a semi-nomadic life of hunting and gathering in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego for thousands of years. They were known as the Ona (people of the north), by the Yaghan (Yamana). 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. 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. The genocide spanned a period of between ten and fifteen years. ![]() 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. Lucas Bridges' book, Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948), provides sympathetic insight into the lives of the Selk'nam and Yahgan. 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, one of his three sons, did much to help the local cultures. He was given a large land grant by the Argentine government, where he founded Estancia Harberton. Thomas Bridges, who had been an Anglican missionary at Ushuaia, retired from that service. 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. 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. 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. He compiled a 4000 word vocabulary of the Selk'nam language, and 1400 phrases and sentences, which was published in 1915. Father José María Beauvoir explored the region and studied the native Patagonian cultures and languages between 18. Salesian missionaries worked to protect and preserve Selk'nam culture. To receive their bounty, such groups had to bring back the ears of victims. 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. The Selk'nam, who did not have a concept of private property, considered the sheep herds to be game and hunted the sheep. 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 had little contact with ethnic Europeans until settlers arrived in the late 19th century. Cook believed the glass had been a gift from the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, indicating potentially several early contacts. James Cook described meeting a peoples in Tierra del Fuego in 1769 that used pieces of glass in their arrowheads. ![]() It was the bloodiest recorded event in the strait until then. 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. ![]() Selknam people in 1930 Lifestyle įurther information: Selk'nam genocide and Tierra del Fuego Gold Rush Their territory in the early Holocene probably ranged as far as the Cerro Benítez area of the Cerro Toro mountain range in Chile. Thousands of years ago, they migrated by canoe across the Strait of Magellan. 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. The exploration of gold and the introduction of farming in the region of Tierra del Fuego led to genocide of the Selk'nam. In the mid-19th century, there were about 4000 Selk'nam by 1919 there were 297, and by 1930 just over 100. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be encountered by migrant Europeans in the late 19th century. 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. Argentina and Chile (294 in Tierra del Fuego).ĭistribution of the pre-Hispanic people in the Southern Patagonia
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