WHERE THE SEAS CLASH: THE LAND OF THE ANCIENT HAUSH, TIERRA DEL FUEGO

In the world today there are very few uninhabited areas which formerly had been inhabited by human beings. In Argentina there is one. The southeast of the Great Island (Isla Grande) of Tierra del Fuego, on the Atlantic coast (from Thetis bay around the tip of the island, along the Straits of Le Maire to Bay Aguirre near the entrance of Beagle Channel has been uninhabited since the last century, when a people called the Haush "disappeared". Some were killed by the Whites while others died of the diseases brought by them. The American Indian adapted to this zone; the European and Latin American have not been able to do so. But the former succumbed to the latter and his land became vacant. Now one now lives there. Hardly any goes there except crews or passengers of ships which occasionally anchor in its bays. The last commercial seal hunters abandoned the region years ago.

Until the nineteenth century the Haush and another groups called the Ona (Selk'nam is their authentic name) shared most of the Isla Grande.N.1. Both groups had arrived from continental Patagonia: the Haush first. How many thousands of years or centuries before the Selk'nam? This is a question that only the archaeologists can answer. The Haush had probably occupied most of the island but eventually they were "pushed" to its southeastern tip by the Selk'nam, the more aggressive newcomers. Neither group went further south, to the coast of Beagle Channel, Navarino Island and the archipelagos to Cape Horn. All this territory, and the southern Pacific shore line was inhabited by other Indians: the Yahgan (Yámana) and the Alakaluf (Kaweshkar or Halakwúlup).

Staten Island ( Isla de los Estados) forms the east coast line of the Strait of Le Maire, where the two great seas clash. Although a relatively small island (sixty-five kilometers long, and from sixteen to only a half a kilometer wide), it was densely populated by marine animals, as Captain Cook discovered when he stopped over there in 1775. It had been occupied, abet temporarily, by the Yahgan (see Chapman 1987), N.2 However, apparently, no one was there when the Europeans discovered it in the early seventeenth century, nor has it been inhabited since, with the exception of a base established there by the Argentine Infantry.

The majority of the first inhabitants of America crossed the Bering Sea, on a "land bridge" which united Siberia and Alaska. Periodically during thousands and thousands of years this "bridge" would disappear under water, ice and snow and then emerge again, as a consequence of the advances and retreats of the glaciers during the protracted Ice Age. About twelve thousand years ago it submerged again and became what today is called the Bering Straits. According to archaeology the first human migrations into America may have occurred some twenty-four thousand years ago and there are indications suggesting they may have taken place as far back as forty thousand years. In any event at least by eleven thousand years ago humans were living on the continental side of the Magellan Strait. And they had crossed the Strait and arrived on the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego, at least nine thousand years ago N.3

They were hunters and gatherers, without agriculture, which was impossible at this latitude, and without writing. You might say that they did not need writing for they learned from observation, their experience and their traditions, passed on and modified through countless generations. A few of each generation, probably the most intelligent, had extraordinary memories. Among the Selk’nam (and Haush) they were shamans, the "fathers of the word" (the chan-ain, the prophets) and the "fathers of lailuka", the sacred knowledge. There were also some such "mothers of lailuka", though far less. Although the Selk'nam (Ona) and Haush spoke different languages, the former had assimilated much from the Haush, above all of their ritual and mythological tradition.

Staten Island, called Jáius by the Selk'nam, was probably never visited by them nor the Haush, mainly because they were non-seafaring. They had no canoes. The island is, however, clearly visible (on a sunny day) from the shores of the Isle Grande, along the Strait now called Le Maire. The Selk'nam, and probably the Haush, imagined that there were four great cordilleras, at the limits of the universe, at each cardinal direction and that the cordillera of the East, on Staten Island, which was located beyond their known world, was conceived as the seat of the mayor "power" of the universe. The Strait of Le Maire, called Sati in Haush or Selk’nam, was also dramatized in their mythology. A powerful seer or magician of the West whose name was Wind (Shenu) and another great magician, Sea (Kox), of the North, engaged in terrible battle, which produced a prodigious storm. Finally Wind defeated Sea. In revenge Sea brought together two female cannibal "monsters" , the Che'nums, to engage in another combat, also in the Strait of Sati. The one associated with the North seized her enemy, the West monster, with such force that she burst. Her blood spurt out over the land from the strait to the Irigoyen river (near the limit of Haush territory}. This is why, according to the myth, the rivers of this entire area have a reddish tint (also because they flow from inland peat-bogs).

These female Che'nums, were perched high on the bluffs along the coasts. With their irresistible stare, they attracted their victims (people of the Primeval World) , who were swept helplessly along the beach into their grasp and were devoured. The Che'nums also monopolized the rivers and all the sources of water, until "one day" the great magician Wind, destroy them all. Then they were transformed into the cliffs and precipices which span the coasts in this area.

The North cannibal Che'num still lives in the waters of the strait. At times she incites the seas to engage in violent combats. This is the strait feared by all seamen, the route to Cape Horn, along whose coasts lie the wrecks of ships that were vanquished by the battles between the Sea and the Wind.

The wife of the Sea, who was the sister of Wind, gave birth to many daughters, the whales. Sea, their father, created the great oceans in order to save his daughters from being devoured by powerful enemies. He carried his daughters in his arms and let them free, hoping they might live in peace forever in the seas. Another version of this myth tells that the Strait of Le Maire had been a lagoon and that Sea opened it up to save his daughters from the magicians who were pursuing them. N.4

Along the forty kilometers of the shores of the strait (on the coast of Isla Grande) , the silhouette of the jagged mountains of Staten Island can be seen across the strait. As they are almost always shrouded in fog and their profile seems to fill the horizon and through the fog they appear as a distant rampart of immense and mysterious fortress, guarding the access to a region beyond the world. For the Selk'nam (and undoubtedly the Haush) that "beyond world" was East sky, Pémaukel, locality of the greatest "power" of the universe. The Selk'nam called the mountains of Staten Island, K'oin-Harri (Cordillera-Root), which evoked the concept of the island as the root of the world. The shaman uttered this name when he felt penetrated by supernatural power and imagined himself struggling to ascend the greatest heights of these mountains, which reffered to the slippery cordillera. N.5.

Having hear so much about the Strait of Le Maire and Staten Island from my Selk'nam friends, especially Lola Kiepja and since her death (in 1966), my principal informant, Angela Loij, I was anxious to go to the southeastern tip of the island and hoped to be able to explore at least part of Staten island itself.

Esteban Ishtón, estancia Nueva Argentina 1968. Photo: Ann Chapman

In 1968 when I was talking to Esteban Ishton, one of the last men whose parents were Selk'nam, I was pleased when he offered to accompany me, through the southeastern area. Some thirty years before he had made the trip, on horseback, as a guide in an agronomist. They returned safely, within a month, but three of their horses died from suffering along the way. One day in March of the next year while I was in Río Grande, I received news that Esteban had been hospitalized in Ushuaia, on the opposite side of the island. I rushed to visit him but he had already passed away when I arrived. I was only able to offer my condolences to his sister, Rafaela Ishton.

In 1969, I was able to make part of the trip on horseback to the Policarpo sheep farm (estancia) in Caleta Falsa (False Cove) and beyond to Thetis Bay.N.6 But the uninhabited region interested me particularly because the terrain had remained much as the Haush had left it when the last few had died, even though the seals and other fauna had been seriously diminished by commercial hunters.