Betreff: MISSING TIERRA DEL FUEGO Absender: "Aroundalone" Empfänger: Datum: 04. Mar 2003 16:20 MISSING TIERRA DEL FUEGO One of the great misfortunes of a race around the world is that you get to miss seeing some of the most incredible places on the planet. One of the most interesting is the area that the Around Alone yachts have passed, or will pass over the course of the next week. I have visited Tierra del Fuego a few times and sailed the remote fjords in Southern Chile. What follows is an excerpt from my new book to be released in April*. It recounts a hike I did up a mountain just north of Cape Horn. Der Beagle Channel nördlich Cap Hoorn Photo: Brian Hancock Tierra del Fuego is a land of high, rugged mountains and flat, grassy plains, that stretches from the fifty-second parallel south to Cape Horn. It is flanked on its northern border by the Straits of Magellan, the west by the Pacific Ocean, and the east by the Atlantic. The area was named Tierra del Fuego by Ferdinand Magellan, who saw columns of smoke rising from the shoreline. "It looked as if the land was on fire," he was reported to have said, and so it became Tierra del Fuego - Land of Fire. The smoke was in fact from the cooking fires of the Fuegan Indians who lived along the shore. They hunted and gathered for food, cooked over open fires and kept warm huddled around smoldering embers. They are gone now, wiped out by disease brought to the area by the missionaries that followed Magellan. Mark Twain had it right when he wrote: "Soap and education. It's as lethal as guns. It just takes a little longer." As we trudged higher I thought about the Indians, and their melodic names rolled around my tongue. The tall Ona Indians hunted guanaco with carefully made bows and arrows. They used the skins for clothing and shelter, and feasted on meat. The Ona were the most powerful of the tribes and would occasionally attack the others, but mostly they lived in peace, keeping to themselves. I wondered about the Yahgans who wore little or no clothing and scrounged a living along the shore. They used spears and harpoons to hunt otter, fish, and seals, and carried fire with them in their dugout canoes. I smiled at the thought of wooden canoes nosing their way through kelp beds with a blazing fire to keep the occupants warm. The Yahgan men never learned how to swim, and would leave it up to their wives to anchor their canoes out in the channel. The wives would then have to swim ashore! The Huash were the oldest of the Indian tribes, and were pushed to the eastern tip of Tierra del Fuego by the more numerous Ona and Yahgan. They also hunted and gathered for their food, and lived in huts made of sticks and branches. It was the Alacaluf with whom I identified. They roamed the northern plains dressed warmly in guanaco skins, rigging sails in their canoes and navigating the deep waters of the Straits of Magellan. Their practicality should have helped them survive, but all the Indians are gone now, along with their colorful history. Tierra del Fuego is also Darwin country. It was here a century and a half earlier that Charles Darwin and Robert Fitzroy passed through aboard the HMS Beagle. It was the first trip for Darwin; Fitzroy was returning to repatriate three Indians he had seized on a previous trip. Fitzroy had traded a shiny button from his tunic for the youngest Indian, and named him appropriately, Jemmy Button. When they returned to England, Jemmy Button became an immediate celebrity. They clothed him (for the first time in his life), paraded him in front of British aristocracy and generally assimilated him into British society. He was even granted an audience with the King. Jemmy Button adapted well to his new celebrity and cultured lifestyle, and soon learned the language. Fitzroy's motives, however, were not all charitable. He had plans for Jemmy Button. He and Darwin would use Jemmy Button as a conduit to the rest of the Indians. Jemmy would translate, and it would only be a matter of time before the godless Indians became god-fearing Christians. As they sailed up the Beagle Channel Jemmy Button set eyes on his homeland for the first time in three years. He was wearing a British naval tunic adorned with bright shiny buttons, looking every bit the part of cultural ambassador. Darwin was fascinated with the Indians and wrote: "It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld. I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement." Using Jemmy Button to understand the Indians would be key, but Jemmy had other plans. The moment the H.M.S Beagle made contact with the Yahg ans, Jemmy stripped naked and bolted. He disappeared into the thick Tierra del Fuego bush and was never seen again. Darwin's efforts were not totally in vain. The Indians were as curious about the rest of the world as the rest of the world was about them, and Darwin set about studying their language. He was surprised to find among their vast vocabulary of more than 30,000 words, no words to describe a higher power. "They were the original Godless nation," he stated. In their primitive ways he found no signs of civilization of any kind. It has been said that excess production is a basis upon which a society becomes civilized. There must be at least a little surplus food to support a chief, a priest, an artist or an artisan, but the Indians had none of even the simplest requisites. They had existed without any contact with the outside world, and as such were "unspoiled." They were perfect for Darwin's purposes. Climbing in Tierra del Fuego I felt a deep connection with Darwin and the Indians. There is something immensely primitive about the landscape. Something about the massive peaks whose sheer presence is timeless. It's a rugged wilderness that has escaped man's overwhelming need for more room on an already overcrowded planet and I felt immensely privileged to be there. "The Risk in Being Alive" by Brian Hancock is published by Nomad Press and will be released in April 2003. Advance copies can be ordered by emailing Brian at the address below. Brian Hancock great.circle@verizon.net Copyright © 1996-2016 - SEGEL.DE