The Indian Tribes of Southern Patagonia 13 



by the exaggerated accounts of them 

 brought home by the earliest travellers 

 from Magellan's time to the beginning of 

 the present century. Of splendid phy- 

 sique, they are abundantly able to with- 

 stand the rigorous climate of the bleak, 

 treeless plains of Eastern Patagonia, 

 where they live and find ample suste- 

 nance and wholesome employment in the 

 pursuit and capture of the guanaco and 

 rhea; both of which are extremely abun- 

 dant throughout the entire extent of this 

 region. 



As a people, though not the race of 

 giants they were commonly reported to 

 be by most early writers, the Tehuelches 

 are, nevertheless, decidedly above the 

 average size. Of the three hundred 

 Tehuelches living between the Santa Cruz 

 River and the Strait of Magellan, I 

 should place the average height of the 

 men at not less than five feet eleven 

 inches, with an average weight of one 

 hundred and seventy-five pounds. While 

 the fully grown women (those above 

 twenty- four years of age) I should esti- 

 mate at five feet seven inches, and of an 

 average weight of but little, if any, short 

 of that of the men. This lack of dis- 

 parity between the physical development 

 of the sexes is paralleled also in their 

 mental development. It is noteworthy, 

 and is due very largely to the division of 

 labor among them. The labor necessary 

 for the support of the family is more 

 equally divided between husband and 

 wife, among the Tehuelches, than is com- 

 mon with the Indian tribes of North 

 America. 



That these Indians are muscular and 

 well proportioned, is seen by a glance at 

 the illustrations accompanying this paper. 

 There is a tendency to obesity rather than 

 angularity. Conscious of their physical 

 strength, like most persons of great 

 physique even among the more civilized 

 nations, they exhibit a kindly manner and 

 gentle disposition. Accustomed to the 

 free life of the plains, and living in the 

 midst of an abundance of those animals 



that for centuries have supplied all their 

 simple wants, they display that homely 

 hospitality so characteristic of well-fed 

 and well-clothed savage and semi-civil- 

 ized people in sparsely settled countries. 

 The frank, open countenance of the 

 Tehuelche at once allays any uneasiness 

 and establishes a feeling of confidence in 

 the mind of the solitary traveller who, in 

 the course of his lonely wanderings 

 throughout Patagonia may, by chance or 

 necessity, be thrown among them. 



The Tehuelches were formerly a con- 

 siderably more numerous people than at 

 present, though it is hardly possible that 

 they at any time numbered more than 

 5,000. It is doubtful if there are more 

 than five hundred of them remaining in 

 all_ Patagonia, and this small number is 

 being rapidly reduced by diseases intro- 

 duced among them through contact with 

 the whites. That they are not a prolific 

 people is strikingly evidenced by the small 

 number of children common to pure-bred 

 Tehuelche families. In cases where both 

 parents were of pure Tehuelche stock, I 

 do. not remember to have seen more than 

 three children in any one family, while 

 one or two were much more generally the 

 number, and frequently there were fami- 

 lies with no children. On the other hand 

 in those families where a Tehuelche 

 woman was married to a husband of 

 Spanish, French, or Portuguese descent, 

 such unions were, as a rule, ordinarily 

 productive of offspring, there being fre- 

 quently six or seven children to the fam- 

 ily. _ 



Firearms are quite unknown among the 

 southern Tehuelches. They rely entirely 

 upon their skill with the bolas, aided by 

 their horses and dogs, for the capture of 

 the guanaco and rhea, from which they 

 derive not only their chief sustenance, but 

 also the skins employed in -the construc- 

 tion of their clothing, bedding, and tents 

 or toldos. Formerly they used the bow 

 and arrow, but with the introduction of 

 the horse at the advent of the Spaniard, 

 the bola entirely supplanted the bow and 



