94 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. YI., No. 130. 



but the more usual offerings are the clothing and 

 other wares which form their simple household wealth. 

 These are usually hung upon trees, which, perhaps from 

 their rarity, are deemed to have a sacred character. 



Leaving these gentle giants, we cross the Straits of 

 Magellan, and encounter what seems at first view 

 to be a very different people. Yoyagers who have 

 touched at Tierra del Fuego have been accustomed to 

 represent the natives as a hideous race, dwarfish and 

 repulsive in appearance, and degraded in mind and 

 morals almost to the level of beasts. This represen- 

 tation, in our author's view, is not a just one. Ac- 

 curate measurements show that the average stature of 

 the Fuegians somewhat exceeds five feet five inches 

 English; which, the author remarks, actually sur- 

 passes a little that of the Araucanians. This aver- 

 age, of course, includes both sexes. Their squat 

 appearance is due to their mode of sitting, in their 

 canoes and their small dwellings, with their legs 

 doubled under them. The limbs, retained long in 

 this compressed position, become thin and bent. 

 Otherwise the men are well formed, with broad 

 chests and strong arms, and their features are not 

 particularly unsightly. A large face, rather round 

 than oval; prominent cheek-bones; a forehead wide 

 and low; projecting brows; eyes small, black, bright, 

 and restless; a short but nearly straight nose; a wide 

 mouth with thin lips and strong white teeth, — com- 

 pose a visage somewhat of the Tartar cast, not hand- 

 some certainly, but not specially forbidding. 



Their nourishment is drawn mainly from the sea, 

 with some variety from land-birds, and from penguins 

 and other water-fowls. They spend much of their 

 time in their canoes, which are ingeniously made of 

 birchbark. The smallest are fashioned from a single 

 piece taken entire from the tree, while the largest 

 are composed of five or more pieces skilfully sewn 

 together, and caulked with a species of resin. The 

 large canoes are sometimes fifteen, and even twenty 

 feet long. For transportation the pieces can be taken 

 apart, and at the end of the portage can readily be 

 rejoined and the caulking renewed. They usually 

 carry a small fire at the bottom of the canoe, on a 

 hearth of hardened clay. Their w^eapons and means 

 of procuring food are the lance and sling, the harpoon, 

 and the bow, the latter unknown to their Patago- 

 nian neighbors. The Fuegian bow is by no means 

 the child's plaything which some voyagers have 

 deemed it, who probably never saw it in use. One 

 of the Fuegians in Paris could send an arrow, with 

 simply a sharpened point of wood, through a board 

 one-fourth of an inch thick at the distance of seven- 

 teen yards. Another arrow, discharged at the same 

 distance, was buried so deeply in a tree that it could 

 not be withdrawn without breaking. These arrows 

 are usually pointed with flint, or, where it can be 

 obtained, with glass. In the manufacture of these 

 points, they display much skill. The only instrument 

 employed is a long and narrow bone. The workman, 

 holding this bone in his right hand, takes in his left 

 the bit of flint or glass, which he presses firmly on 

 his knee, and rasps violently with his implement, 

 striking off a small fragment at every blow. Thus 



breaking away, bit by bit, the edges of the object 

 which he holds, he brings it to the desired shape. 

 Twenty minutes ordinarily suffice to complete the 

 arrow-head. In all their other arts, of which they 

 have not a few, the Faegians show the same quick- 

 ness and ingenuity. They have no pottery; but they 

 make rush baskets, drinking-vessels of leather or of 

 bark sewn water-tight, and little bags made of bladder, 

 in which they carry their paints and their tinder. 

 There is nothing in all this which seems to indicate 

 in these natives any intellectual inferiority to the 

 other aborigines of this continent. 



The author holds that the Fuegians are mainly of 

 the Araucanian race, but the scanty specimen which 

 he gives of the language of those whom he saw seems 

 rather to connect them with the eastern Patagonians. 

 This, however, is a subject for future investigation. 

 What is clear is, that the difference between them and 

 their northern neighbors is due simply to the differ- 

 ence in their position and surroundings. Inhabiting 

 a broken country, — an archipelago composed partly 

 of marshy plains, and partly of rugged mountains; a 

 region deluged by almost incessant rains, and swept 

 by frequent and violent storms, — they have, of 

 necessity, ceased to be hunters, and have become a 

 race of fishermen, deriving a scanty and precarious 

 subsistence from the tempestuous seas which encircle 

 them. Scattered in small bands, composed each of a 

 few families, they have no occasion for chiefs, or for 

 a regular form of government. In this respect they 

 resemble the Eskimo; and, like them, they retain, in 

 spite of this isolation, some of the best qualities of 

 social man. They are pacific in temper, are fond of 

 their children, and hold age in much respect. Like 

 the Eskimo, when brought to a civilized country, they 

 display an intelligence and a good disposition which 

 surprise and gratify their hosts. 



Every now and then we receive accounts of savages, 

 who, in intellect and moral qualities, as well as in 

 aspect, are but little above the brutes. Unscientific 

 observers, imbued with the pride of race and the 

 prejudices of civilization, or theorists viewing every 

 thing through the colored medium of an hypothesis, 

 who cast upon these savages a hasty glance, pronounce 

 them to be a sort of connecting-link between man 

 and the lower animals. These unfortunate creatures 

 are found at one time in Australia, at another in the 

 Andaman Islands, and again in South Africa. Some- 

 times they are Negritos in the East-Indian archi- 

 pelago, and sometimes Botocudos in Brazil. Then 

 comes the patient missionary, or the discerning and 

 impartial man of science, like the author of this 

 memoir, and enables us to see that these despised be- 

 ings are simply men of like nature and capacities 

 with ourselves — restricted and hampered, of course, 

 by their environment, but capable, under better au- 

 spices, of rising to the same level of enlightenment 

 which has been attained by the more favored races. 

 The important truth embodied in the motto of the 

 Societe d' ethnographic (surrounding three figures of 

 different race-types) — ' Corpore diversi, sed mentis 

 lumine fratres^ — is strikingly illustrated by the 

 facts set forth in this valuable essay. H. Hale. 



