The Tehuelche and the Mapuche: warrior peoples
These very different tribes shared the southern zone of Patagonia before the Conquest of the Desert. Originally, the Mapuche occupied the Chilean part of the Andes, but from the 18th century, the assaults of the Spanish colonists forced them to migrate to Argentine Patagonia. They mixed with the Tehuelche and even imposed their customs and language on them. The Mapuche were more modest in stature and had a more complex society. Their culture was much more developed, especially because they were hunters, but also farmers, and they lived as sedentary people on their land. They were familiar with fabrics and pottery and enjoyed their own calendar, which still governs some of their festivities today. Their god was called Nguenechen; he created everything that exists, he dominated the whole earth and allowed life and fertility. However, they had no written expression; legends and their history were transmitted orally. Ironically enough (and as in many of the colonies of the time) Mapuche writing was born with the expansion of the Spanish and the subsequent evangelization. However, the massacre of the economic conquest of the 19th century did not eradicate the Mapuche presence in this area. Renowned for their intrepid warrior qualities, the Mapuche still often claim to have resisted two great waves of colonization: the Incas and the conquistadors. Today, it is estimated that about 600 000 Mapuche in Chile and 300,000 in Argentina remain. The Tehuelche, now completely extinct, inspired the first accounts of European sailors, who called them "Patagons" ("great men" according to a Spanish work popular at the time). The development of their culture came up against a difficult climate: violent winds and harsh winters. They could not cultivate the land, which was poor in organic matter, so they led a nomadic life and established camps. Their food was mainly based on hunting guanaco and rhea, but they also collected roots and seeds, with which they prepared flour. When their nomadic excursions took them to the Atlantic coast, they also collected seafood and hunted marine mammals. They worked the leather of the marine mammals with various stone tools and made boots, blankets, or even used them to build their temporary homes.
The peoples of Tierra del Fuego: the Fuegians
The Fuegians were 7,000 in the 19th century, 600 in 1924 and then only 100 in 1940. Today, they have completely disappeared. Four tiny peoples composed of about twenty thousand individuals shared the hostile immensities of Tierra del Fuego: the Haushs (or Manekenk), the Onas (or Selk'nam), the Yaghans (or Yamanas) and the Alakalufs (or Kaweskars). Constantly facing the elements of a powerful nature, they represented a miracle of adaptation in spite of the atrocious judgments that were made about them by Cook, Darwin and Bougainville. In spite of descriptions and studies of a geographical or ethnological nature, we unfortunately know little about the history and customs of the Fuegians.
The Alakalufs lived in the current Chilean Tierra del Fuego and in the surroundings of the Magellan Strait. They moved according to the seasons and their food, which consisted mainly of cholgas (giant mussels), hence their name, taken from the yaghan halakwulup, meaning "mussel eater". Nomads of the sea, they possessed 30 words to define the winds and an exceptional maritime vocabulary to designate the tides, the currents and the climatic changes. Sailors and seal hunters, they travelled from one end of the Strait of Magellan to the other on canals. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Alakalufs were in total perdition: they became beggars, torn from their traditions, and wrongly inherited a reputation of cannibals and the contempt of the whole Western society. One family left for Paris to be exhibited at the 1878 World Fair. All the members of the family ended up dying like beasts of prey. The government eventually collected the last Alakaluf at the Puerto Eden station in the Messier Channel. Deprived of their land and their freedom, they are today only a few dozen to descend directly from their ancestors. In their book Les Nomades, Pierre Bonte and Henri Guillaume write these painful lines: "Like many nomads, most of these populations have now disappeared or have been assimilated, at the cost of their identity. In Patagonia, the last Alakalufs who used to roam the immense fjords swept by the icy winds of the southern Pacific in search of seal colonies died about ten years ago." In the 1970s, Captain Cousteau testified in his book, Life at the End of the World: "We had few illusions about what we would find when we came here [...]. But the reality exceeded our worst fears. In this camp of Puerto Eden, not only a culture disappears but a people is physically extinguished. [...] This people, once proud and jealous of its culture, now lives only by begging, a little seafood gathering, and meager trafficking with the Chileans.
The Yamanas were also "nomads of the sea" as well as excellent craftsmen: each one manufactured his tools, made of wood and bone, but very little of stones or minerals like copper, which however abounded in the area. Their baskets were made of rushes and were used to collect mollusks, shells and fruits. On the water, the men used rough harpoons (3 m long, the point of which was formed by the coastal bone of the whale) to hunt sea wolves; it should be noted that the whale was not hunted on the high seas, but only when it came close enough to the coasts (by fatigue or injury). Penguins or cormorants were their favorite hunting grounds. Constantly on board their canoes, they moved along the coasts and spent half of the year on the sea, their terrestrial dwellings had only little importance. Finally, these populations did not really dress themselves; they dressed themselves with a kind of blanket that covered the back (called tuweaki); around the waist, men and women dressed themselves with a cover-up (taparrabo in Spanish) that was also fixed by a string. The bodies were coated with fish oil and marine mammal fat to protect the skin from the climate. Nowadays, some mestizos (mixed with Chilotes, inhabitants of Chiloé, the archipelago south of Puerto Montt) are still grouped in Villa Ukika, near Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island.
The Selk'nams and the Haushs lived in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, on the Atlantic side, in the vicinity of the present-day Rio Grande. A nomadic people, they roamed the steppe in search of ñandús (the Patagonian ostrich) and guanacos that they caught on the run! No permanent chief directed the tribes; but a certain hierarchy cemented the social bonds: the shamans were invested with the power to cure; the wise men were the depositaries of the mythological traditions; finally, the warriors were respected for their experience: in fact, their position sometimes resembled that of a chief. This is what Lucas Bridges reports: "The Onas had neither hereditary nor elective chiefs, but the men who surpassed the others by their ability almost always became the leaders . However, one day's leader was not necessarily the next day's leader, as they could change it to suit a particular purpose [...] Kankoat says, "We have leaders: all men are captains and all women are sailors." In the middle of the 19th century, gold seekers settled in the area accompanied by the infamous Julius Popper. Mainly responsible for the extermination of the Selk'nams and Haushs, this ruthless killer of Indians founded several mining exploration sites. After the arrival of the missionaries, there were only 2,000 Onas left. The Haushs disappeared without a trace. It was on Dawson Island that the missionaries and priests gathered this decimated people. They built churches, hospitals, schools, dressed their residents and educated them in Christianity. Contaminated by terrible diseases transmitted by the Europeans, the natives were weakened and in 1939, the Dawson mission was closed. The last of the Onas was named Lola Kiepja. She lived in a log cabin on the shore of Lake Fagnano. The only one who still spoke her language, no one could understand her anymore. A shaman and poet, she died in 1966.
They finally had the secret of a richer and more astonishing past than we thought at the time: it is the story of the courage of a people who had to fight to survive and who, alas, have totally disappeared. For more than three centuries, they prevented the penetration of the colonists on their territory. They were finally defeated, although one people still resists: the Mapuche. Their descendants have kept their culture and language alive and still work daily to maintain them. Today they demand the restitution of their lands and the respect of their way of life: claims that have not been answered by the Chilean government, even though the indigenous law of October 5, 1993 recognizes the existence of indigenous peoples as "an essential part of the roots of the Chilean Nation. They would be the only exception - or almost the only exception - to Chilean miscegenation.A mixed population
Following the indigenous genocide, the land was successively occupied by immigrants dreaming of the New World. Argentina experienced a very large wave of immigration in the mid-19th century. This was mainly European and included large numbers of Italian, French and Spanish immigrants. While Buenos Aires had only 20,000 inhabitants in 1770, it had 150,000 in 1840. Then, starting in 1860, Europeans arrived en masse via the Río de la Plata: at least 4 million immigrants, mainly Italians (half), Spaniards (a third), Germans, Russians, Eastern Europeans, French Basques, etc., settled permanently between 1870 and 1930. Argentina then became one of the fastest growing countries in the world. Chilean society, on the other hand, is the result of the interbreeding of different immigrant and indigenous populations. Immigrants to Chile were Spanish (first Andalusia and Extremadura, then Castile), Germans (from 1850), Italians, Yugoslavs (in Punta Arenas at the beginning of the 20th century), English, French, Syrians and Lebanese). Compared to Argentina, this immigration was small in number and very progressive. In Patagonia, among the European immigrants there are some particular settler communities. First of all, the Welsh were among the first European settlers to settle in the province of Chubut, as early as 1865. The reasons for this immigration are mainly historical and cultural: at the time, the Welsh felt threatened by England, Scotland and Ireland and feared that their community and customs would disappear in the face of British domination. That is why they decided to move overseas to preserve their identity and culture. They settled on the Atlantic coast and founded the cities of Puerto Madryn and Rawson. Over the decades, these cities developed and adopted a mixed identity, far removed from the Welsh culture. We must start from the side of Gaimán, stronghold of Welsh culture in Argentina, to find the testimony of immigration: religious festivals commemorate Wales, the Welsh language has been reintroduced and the architecture as well as the flag clearly express the identity of the small village. But the expansion of the Welsh did not stop there, as they continued to invest the southern territories as far as the Andes: they also founded Esquel and Trevelín. Finally, although Argentina is very often seen as a land of asylum for former Nazis on the run, the first wave of German immigration to Patagonia dates back to the end of the 19th century. The census of Buenos Aires in 1853 counted no less than 2,000 Germans and the city of Bariloche also welcomed a strong wave of German settlers at the time of its creation. On the Chilean side, they mainly occupied the region of Valdivia and around Lake Llanquihue. At the same period, the French represented 10% of the Argentinean population, most of them were Breton, Savoyard, Basque or Béarnais. They imported with them many culinary, agricultural and artistic influences that would later take root in Argentine culture.
Che boludo!
Beware of those who think they dominate the Spanish language! The campesino accent coupled with the Argentine accent can confuse even the most novice... and in Chile, it's another story! The Chileans use and abuse terms that only exist at home, grouped under the expression chilenismo. Among them: sipo! (yes), pololo (boyfriend), huevón (used as an insult or in an affectionate way to say "idiot"), bacàn (great) ... The origins of these words and expressions are quite unclear, but are rooted in the fusion of Castilian with European languages and varieties of indigenous words and expressions. Indeed, the Mapuche and Aymara have left their mark on today's "Chilean", marked by different sounds and ways of speaking. You may hear this phrase, now close to the saying "If you understand the Chilean accent, you will understand any accent! ». In addition, everyone talks very fast, which is not done to make conversation easier, slang comes up very frequently and some people eat the "s" at the end of the word. You get used to it, but it's not convenient at first. Cachai? (Do you understand?) Finally, Argentina also has some specificities concerning castellano . The first rule is the following: the "ll" followed by a vowel is pronounced more or less "ch". Therefore, caballo (horse) is pronounced "cabacho". This distinction will make it very easy for you to spot an Argentinean in any Spanish-speaking country. Another notable change, which may confuse you at first: the Spanish tú is replaced by yours, which is accompanied by a special conjugation. Thus we will say your crees instead of tú crees or your querés instead of tú quieres! The conjugation allows itself some fantasies: your tenés of the verb tener, or even your sos of the verb ser... instead of tú tienes or tú eres. It's a bit of a mess, but, on the plus side, this grammatical mutation is always respected and you get used to it after a while. You might even end up starting your sentences with a " Che! "or " Che, loco! "(Or "Che, boludo! ").
