Some
history...
The first inhabitants
All the conquest of Fireland has been made by sailors,
except for the very first inhabitants of the main island
who arrived on foot when the ice allowed them to cross the
Magellan Strait: the Haush and the Selk'nam Indians. These
two tribes were pedestrian nomads and guanaco hunters. They
had beautiful legends as welle as the Yamana and Kaweskar
Indians, two other tribes with similar customs. The Yamana
occupied all the coats, from the Beagle Channel to Cape
Horn, and the Kaweskar lived northward up to the Golf of
Penas. Nomads of the sea, the explorers saw them as savages,
miserable creatures hardly worthy of the appellation of
human beings. Nevertheless, they were incredibly well adapted
to life in these regions carrying in their canoes only the
strict minimum to hunt, fish and provide their daily needs. |
Yamana canoes
Picture from the Mission Scientifique Francaise du Cap Horn |
The discovery
Fireland, at first called land of the smokes, was officially
discovered in 1520 by Magellan looking for a path westward proving
that the earth was really round... In a hurry to leave this region
after a hard winter and a mutiny, he didn´t even see the Indians,
but the route is open and the attention attracted to the south.
Worried with the arrival of the British corsairs who could attack
the Viceroyalty of Peru, Spain sends Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa to
settle a colony in the Magellan Strait in 1584. It was a complete
failure and the next attempt of colonisation will happen only 300
years later. Fireland, the strait of Magellan and Cape Horn discovered
in 1616 by the Dutch Shouten and Lemaire, become a mere passage
towards the Pacific. Many of the commercial, exploration or pirate
boats attempting to round Cape Horn are shipwrecked, thrown to the
coast by violent winds and currents.
Exploitation and beginning of the civilisation
The marine charts became more precise, and the number of sealers
and whalers seeking oil and skins increased around Fireland and
the Falkland (Malvinas) islands. Their arrival is dramatic for the
Yamana and Kaweskar populations for the alcohol and diseases they
bring with them, and the extermination of the animals, the Indian's
main food. In 1832, Captain Fitz Roy discovers the Beagle Channel,
a new passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. During the
19th century, commerce and exchanges with the young Chilean and
Argentine republics will increase with the first steamers and Punta
Arenas is founded on the Magellan Strait.
Julius Popper hunting the shelk'nam
indians |
But the cohabitation with the Indians is not easy, because
white people refuse to get alone with the "savages",
and the Indians strongly reject these men who invade their
domain and trouble their balance. Missionaries, trying to
evangelize the natives begin to show interest in these populations
and try to pacify the relations. Settling a small mission
on the Ushuaia bay, Reverend Stirling and later Thomas Bridges
are the first white men to live among the Indians, showing
that life is possible for the civilised man in these inhospitable
regions. The north of the island begins to be explored.
Gold is discovered and Julio Popper produces up to 1 kilogram
per day. In 1881, the border between Chile and Argentina
is defined and it becomes essential for both countries to
people these lands. Staten island, first establishment chosen
by the Argentines is abandoned to found Ushuaia in 1884.
Large sheep farms that still exist nowadays, are established
in the vast northern plains. |
Today
The beginning of the 20th
century marks the decline and the disappearance of the natives,
unable to adapt to sedentary lives, decimated by diseases
or purposely exterminated. The plains and coasts where it
was common to meet hunters and canoes become desert. The population
concentrates in a few developing towns: Punta Arenas thanks
to the traffic of the boats in the Magellan Strait, Ushuaia
round its military prison during the first half of the century,
Rio Grande on the Atlantic coast following the rhythm of thesurroundong
sheep farms.
Recently, Fireland has been declared a free tax area offering
numerous advantages for the establishment of factories, provoking
a real demographic explosion.
|
Working with the sheep |
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