274 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS : GEOGRAPHY. 



natives of the west coast, while belonging to at least two distinct tribes, 

 may be very appropriately denominated, collectively, as Channel Indians. 

 All their activities cluster about the coast. They live on and about the 

 shores of the inland waters of the Fuegian Archipelago and the west coast 

 of Patagonia, never venturing inland for more than a few miles. They 

 are essentially a maritime people, and derive their chief and almost 

 only sustenance from the sea. They are small in stature and inferior 

 in physique to the Tehuelches and Onas of the Patagonian and Fuegian 

 plains, and their origin has undoubtedly been quite distinct from that of 

 the latter tribes. 



For houses, they usually erect exceedingly primitive structures formed 

 of interwoven or piled-up branches of trees, which would seem, even to 

 most semi-civilized peoples, quite inefficient protection from the storms that 

 almost constantly prevail here. They find their chief occupation in col- 

 lecting shell-fish, in fishing, and in hunting the fur-seal and sea-otters. 

 From the skins of these animals they make their scanty clothing, while 

 the flesh and blubber serve them as additional food. 



The chief food of the Channel Indians is the shell-fish that live in great 

 abundance in the waters of this coast. When a supply of these, at any par- 

 ticular cove which may have been selected as a camping-place by a party of 

 these Indians, becomes reduced, they place their few domestic utensils 

 in their canoes and proceed by water to a new encampment, where food is 

 abundant. In this manner they move about from place to place, in order 

 to procure sufficient food. They eat their food either raw, or roasted over 

 fires that are kept constantly burning on a few sods placed in the bottoms 

 of their canoes. They are not entirely carnivorous, frequently varying 

 their diet by the addition of a few species of edible fungi, that grow on the 

 beech trees of the adjacent forests. 



Their canoes are fashioned of large slabs of bark, supported by numer- 

 ous ribs of wood, and sewed together with thin strips of whalebone. 

 Sometimes they use, instead of bark, thin slabs of wood hewn out with 

 great patience. One or two instances of true dugouts have been reported 

 among the Yahgans inhabiting the eastern portion of the south coast of 

 Tierra del Fuego and the islands about Cape Horn. Their harpoons and 

 spears are almost always of bone. 



The Channel Indians are of two distinct tribes, differing in language, 

 though, for the most part, quite similar in their mode of life and the 



