20 



The National Geographic Magazine 



and where the annual precipitation is just 

 sufficient to support a few species of short 

 but succulent grasses, with occasional 

 clumps of low, scrubby, and usually 

 thorny bushes, characteristic features of 

 semi-arid regions. 



The natives of the Pacific coast differ 

 from those of the Atlantic quite as much 

 as do the climate, vegetation, and physio- 

 graphic features. The natives of the west 

 coast, while belonging to at least two dis- 

 tinct 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 essen- 

 tially a maritime people, deriving their 

 chief and almost only sustenance from the 

 sea. They are small in stature and in- 

 ferior 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 exceed- 

 ingly primitive structures formed of inter- 

 woven 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 

 collecting shell-fish, in fishing, and in 

 hunting the fur-seal and sea-otters. From 

 the skins 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 abun- 

 dance in the waters of this coast. When 

 the supply of shell-fish of any particular 

 cove which may have been selected as a 

 camping-place by a party of these Indians 

 becomes reduced, they place their few do- 

 mestic necessaries 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 slightly 

 roasted on fires that are kept constantly 

 burning on a few sods placed in the bot- 

 toms of their canoes. They are not en- 

 tirely 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 numerous 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 in- 

 stances of true dugouts have been re- 

 ported 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 in the arts employed by them 

 in the gaining of a livelihood. The more 

 numerous and more warlike and power- 

 ful of these tribes are known as the Alac- 

 ulofl:s. They occupy all the west coast of 

 the mainland together with the adjacent 

 islands, the western stretches of the Strait 

 of Magellan, southern and western Tierra 

 del Fuego as far east as Beagle Channel, 

 and the islands lying to the southwest. 

 The remaining south coast of Tierra del 

 Fuego and the adjoining islands as far 

 south as Cape Horn are the home of the 

 Yahgans, formerly the most powerful of 

 all the Indian tribes of this region, but 

 now nearly exterminated by the combined 

 attacks of the Onas and AlaculofTs, aided 

 by diseases, chiefly pulmonary, introduced- 

 among them through the mistaken kind- 

 nesses of over-zealous missionaries, them- 

 selves exceedingly deficient in the first 

 principles of hygiene. 



The Yahgans are doubtless only a rem- 

 nant of a once powerful people that in- 

 habited the region now occupied by the 

 Alaculoffs. They have been crowded into 



