TEHUELCHE METHODS OF HUNTING 107 



fact, because the lagoons and pools literally swarm with great 

 flocks of upland geese (Chloephaga magellanica), which are very 

 fair eating. Perhaps the reason why they spare the geese arises 

 from the fact that they have no weapons suitable for killing them. 

 On one occasion when I shot a brace of geese, the Indians seized 

 upon them and pronounced them "good." Also, they kill few 

 animals but the guanaco and the puma. Had the guanaco a 

 reasonable amount of fat upon it, the life of the Indians would be 

 idyllic, but in this the guanaco fails. Of lean meat he supplies 

 plenty, for he is a large beast, but though he lives in a land where 

 sheep grow fat and well-liking, the long-necked Patagonian llama 

 retains his leanness and his running condition. 



Although it may be slightly outside the province of this book, 

 I cannot help contrasting the very different methods employed by 

 the Onas of Tierra del Fuego, who are after all only separated 

 from the Tehuelches of Patagonia by the narrow Straits of 

 Magellan, in hunting the same animal. The Onas do not use 

 horses, and kill the guanaco with bows and arrows. When they 

 perceive a herd, they surround it as the Tehuelches do, but, of 

 course, the circle is on a much smaller scale. It is their aim to 

 remain invisible to their quarry, for which purpose, during their 

 stalk, they are in the habit of wrapping themselves in the skins of 

 the animals which they have formerly killed. Once the herd is 

 surrounded, it is with the. same accompaniment of screams and 

 shouts that the hunters rush in to secure their prey. 



The dissimilarities between the Tehuelches and the Onas are 

 numerous.* While the Tehuelches are peaceful, the Onas are 

 warlike. There is a story current that the only white man who 

 has ever lived in the very primitive dwelling of boughs, which 

 are all the Onas have to shelter them from a bitter climate, was a 

 Scotchman whom the Indians had captured. He was with them 

 three weeks, and his face was adorned by a singularly luxuriant 



* The Tehuelches are enormously above the Onas of Tierra del Fuego in the scale 

 of civilisation. A Fuegian woman has been known to live in the Tehuelchian tents, 

 but how she came there I am unable to say. On the other hand, 1 have never heard 

 of any Tehuelche living with the Tierra del Fuegians, and cannot conceive such 

 a state of things to be possible. But the Tehuelches will mix occasionally with the 

 Araucanian tribes of Northern Patagonia, and intermarriages are common. 



