202 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bpll. fi3 



Gulf and the Chilotan Islands as among the Chonos, both peoples 

 being archipelagic and seafaring. Cultural conditions, howevei-, 

 were much more favorable among the former, who were on a decidedly- 

 higher cultural plane, and in addition were familiar with the arts of 

 ax makuig and plank cutting, arts which would easily lead up to the 

 use of wood in boat building. 



The ax was of sporadic occurrence only among the Chonos (cf. 

 Introduction under Chonos : Culture), but polished stone axes were 

 common among the southern Araucanians (cf., e. g., Medma, a). 



The alerse tree, which grew on the mainland, was so evenly grained 

 that planks could be made from its wood by mere splitting with axes 

 and wedges, and (Ud not require to be dressed mth the adze or plane 

 (Kmg, 282; Gonzalez de Agueros, 124-125; Fonck, i, 19-23). To- 

 ward the end of the eighteenth centuiy the Araucanian-speaking 

 natives of the Chilotan Archipelago commonly made their huts with 

 walls of ''laurel" planks and roofs of grass (Gonzalez de Agiieros, 

 111-112). A century and a half earlier Brouwer found the Chilotans 

 busily engaged m plank making; he describes their housc^s as l^emg 

 low, with one door, and roofs of grass (64; An. hidr., xvi, 61). Far- 

 ther north, among the Araucanians of the mainland, Pedro de Val- 

 divia had found, in 1551, "casas . . . mui bieu hechas y fuertes con 

 grandes tablazones, y muchas mui grandes, y de a dos, cuatro y ocho 

 puertas" (carta iv, in Col. Msf. CJiile, 1861, i, 55, ind m Gay, Doc, i, 

 142). Cortes Hojea in 1558 speaks of the houses of the ''province of 

 Ancud," that is, Chiloe, as being of large size and with four to six 

 dooi"s (Goicueta, 516, 519). 



The plank-making mdustry was no doubt pushed forward by the 

 Spaniards, but the use of planks in hut building among the southern 

 Araucanians pretty clearly antedates the Spanish conquest. It is not 

 surprising, therefore, that these archipelagic seafaring Araucanians 

 should have introduced the use of planks into their arts of boat 

 building. 



It may be recalled, too, that plank boats were found in abundance 

 by Cortes Hojea among the Coronados Gulf Araucanians, and are 

 merely mentioned as bemg in use among the Chonos, and that the 

 general cultural migratory drift in this territory was from north to 

 south, that is, from the Araucanians to the Chonos, not vice versa. 



For the foregoing reasons it appears much more probable, although 

 not strictly demonstrated, that the Fuegian plank boat origmated 

 among the southernmost Araucanians, from whom it passed suc- 

 cessively to the Chonos before 1553 or 1558, to the natives south of 

 Taitao Penuisula later, and to tlie Alacaluf of the Strait sometijne 

 around the middle of the eighteenth century. 



Flank boat versus bark- canoe. — Dr. Graebner maintains (o, 1018) 

 that the Fuegian bark canoe is "eiji Auslaufer des letztgemumten 



