Ghosts at the Edge of the World

     At the southernmost tip of South America, the Andes mountain range plummets into the ocean and collides with the pampas plains of Argentina. Here, on the island of Tierra del Fuego, the wind whips across the landscape, the Straight of Magellan churns; the beauty of nature collides with the harsh realities of an Antarctic climate. For thousands of years, the Ona tribe called this place home. But as European settlers expanded throughout South America, they took the land the Ona lived on, systematically killed the Ona, and diminished their way of life. Finally, in the 1970s, the last person of full Ona ancestry died.  

The land of Tierra del Fuego, 2007.

Images above and left from Charles W. Furlong's article on the Ona and Haush from 1915. 

     This Thanksgiving, as Native Americans are fighting for clean water and clean air here in the United States, I wanted to feature images of the Ona, with some historical and cultural context, as a reminder of the cultures and ways of life that have been destroyed because of a lack of understanding and respect for people that are labeled different and other.

     The Ona, sometimes referred to as Selk'nam, lived on the eastern half of Tierra del Fuego, part of Argentina. They hunted guanaco, primarily with bows and arrows, which provided a source of food and clothing. They also fished and gathered edible berries as they moved around the island, staying at a location for a couple of weeks, and then walking to a new area. 

     In 1907, Charles Wellington Furlong went on assignment for Harpers to write about the people at the edge of the world. He was definitely a Victorian man, with a "noble savage" view of the four tribes he encountered, writing that the Ona were, "man as he lived in pristine days...living today the life of the Stone age." He respected them, and saw how they had been mistreated, commenting that the tribe's population had dwindled from over 3,000 to 500 in 30 years "because they possessed the land the white man coveted for his sheep and had courage strong enough to oppose him." What he doesn't spell out is that during that 30 year period at the turn of the 20th century, Europeans systematically killed Ona by basically hunting them. And as much as Furlong respected the Ona and their traditions, he believed that Christianity and morals, along with land and guanaco, could "the people would be saved and the tribe preserved." 
     Items he collected in Patagonia are now at the American Museum of Natural History. 

     Three  other men around the turn of the century created amazing visual records of the Ona: Samuel K. Lothrop, Alberto Maria De Agostini, and Martin Gusinde.
​     Lothrop was an anthropologist and archeologist who specialized in the cultures of South America. In 1924, he travelled to Tierra del Fuego to view the Ona and the other indigenous tribes. His images show the Ona living traditionally, yet with a mix of traditional and European clothes and tools. 

Photos taken by Samuel Kirkland Lothrop, 1925. Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Institution. 

     Father Roberto Maria de Agostini was born near the Alps in Italy, and after becoming a priest was sent to Punta Arenas in Chile. There, he started working to preserve the culture of the Ona. His photographs feature the body-painting that Furlong described: "The nearest approach to writing is drawing, which in a crude way they apply to their faces, bodies, and limbs. This is done with three colors -- black, cream-white, and a dull orange red ochre." 

Photos taken by Father Alberto Maria De Agostini, 1935. Courtesy National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian Institution. 

     This last set of photos is the most beautiful, and the most haunting. Taken by Martin Gusinde in the 1920s, they depict some of the ceremonies of the Ona. Furlong wrote, "There are certain mystic rights and necromancy pracised by the Ona, which up the present time I am not at liberty to reveal." I can't be sure if he was being coy because he didn't know or didn't understand the rituals or was simply making things up, or if he had in fact seen rituals that he didn't feel was appropriate to discuss. Gusinde, a German priest and ethnologist, did view these ceremonies and took over 1000 photos of the Ona, Yamana, and Kawesqar. 
     Warning - one of the reasons that Furlong might not have discussed these rituals is because they involve nudity, so the photos might not be appropriate to view at work. 

If you want to see more, consider the photographs of Martin Gusinde, collected in The Lost Tribes of Tierra del Fuego, watch ​"The Ona People: Life and Death in Tierra del Fuego," or listen to the haunting songs and voices of Ona alive in 1966, interviewed by Anne Chapman and Alan Lomax.