COOPER] BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TEIBES OF TIERRA DEI^ FUEGO 225 



It is easily possible that some or many cultural elements might 

 have been lost, but it is unlikely, to say the least, that all elements 

 of a hypothetical earlier higher culture should have vanished without 

 leaving a trace in material or at least in psychical culture. 



The plank boat, the one advanced material element, is of foreign 

 and comparatively recent origin. The chipped fhnt arrowhead is 

 probably of Patagonian-Onan provenance. The Yahgan masked 

 dances were not unlikely borrowed from the Onas. On the other 

 hand it seems improbable that a people like the Yahgans would have 

 given up the use of such valuable artifacts as the ax, the fishhook, 

 and the net had they ever possessed them. 



Internal evidence, therefore, is, as far as it goes, indicative of the 

 true pruuitivity of Alacalufan and still more of Yahgan culture, and 

 affords no tangible proof of degeneration. 



There are, however, some grounds, though not very solid ones, for 

 suspecting that the Onas may have lost some elements of a former 

 higher cultm*e. The prominence of metempsychosis beliefs, the 

 masked dance, the somewhat greater tendency to exogamy, the 

 strict separation of the men into two distinct groups in the council 

 hut (Furlong, verbal communication), might be regarded by some 

 as rudimentary survivals of an earher, more clearly marked, tribal 

 division, and possibly of an earlier totemic or quasi-totemic system. 

 It may be recalled that there is some evidence for regardmg the older 

 Patagonians, the Oitas' cousins, as totemic (cf. Outes, a, 251-252). 

 Still all this is, for the present at least, largely speculative. Besides, 

 we do not know enough as yet of Ona social institutions. 



(c) The Fuegian Canoe Indians are of the most archaic South 

 American physical type. This somatological kinship with the 

 primordial South Americans in itself would not be proof of cultural 

 primitivity, but should be viewed in, the light of the fact that the 

 nearest kin both physically and culturally of the Fuegians are the 

 distant Botocudos. This parallel coincidence of archaic physical 

 type with very low culture in the two lowest South American groups 

 suggests that they may have preserved in the main not only their 

 common bodily type but their common earlier culture as well. 



{d) The geographical position of the Alacaluf and Yahgans makes 

 for the same conclusion. Isolated among the archipelagos of the 

 tip of the continent and leading a life so different from that of most 

 of the mainland peoples, they were cut off from and impervious to 

 the cultural currents of the rest of the contuient, and in addition 

 received little stimidus to advancement from their unfertile en- 

 vironment, theu" enforced nomadic way of living, and their usually 

 easily gathered sea-food supply. It is in just such isolated regions — 

 jungle or mountain fastnesses, distant island groups, or the ends of 



