Tierra Del Fuego History

History

In 1520, when Magellan passed through the strait that now bears his name, neither he nor any other European explorer had any immediate interest in the land and its people. Seeking a passage to the Spice Islands of Asia, early navigators feared and detested the stiff westerlies, hazardous currents and violent seas that impeded their progress. Consequently, the Selk'nam, Haush, Yahgan and Alacaluf peoples who populated the area faced no immediate competition for their lands and resources.

These groups were hunters and gatherers. The Selk'nam, also known as Ona, and the Haush subsisted primarily on hunting guanaco and dressing in its skins, while the Yahgans and Alacalufes, known collectively as 'Canoe Indians, ' lived on fish, shellfish and marine mammals. The Yahgans (also known as the Yamaná) consumed the 'Indian bread' fungus that feeds off the ñire, a species of southern beech. Despite frequently inclement weather, they wore little clothing, but constant fires kept them warm.

As Spain's control of its American empire dwindled, the area slowly opened to settlement by other Europeans, ensuring the rapid demise of the indigenous Fuegians, whom Europeans struggled to understand. Darwin, visiting the area in 1834, wrote that the difference between the Fuegians ('among the most abject and miserable creatures I ever saw') and Europeans was greater than that between wild and domestic animals. On an earlier voyage, though, Captain Robert Fitzroy of the Beagle had abducted a few Yahgans, whom he returned after several years of missionary education in England.

No European power took any real interest in settling the region until Britain occupied the Falklands in the 1770s. However, the successor governments of Chile and Argentina felt differently. The Chilean presence on the Strait of Magellan beginning in 1843, along with increasing British evangelism, spurred Argentina to formalize its authority at Ushuaia in 1884. In 1978 Chile and Argentina nearly went to war over claims to three small disputed islands in the Beagle Channel. International border issues in the area were not resolved until 1984 and are still the subject of some discussion.