Selk'nam genocide
Part of Genocide of indigenous peoples
Julius Popper standing next to an unclothed dead Selk'nam and his men (1886)
LocationTierra del Fuego, Argentina and Chile
DateLate 19th to early 20th century
Attack type
Genocidal massacre, internment, bounty killings
DeathsUnknown; population decline from c. 4,000 around 1850 to c. 100 in 1930[1]
VictimsSelk'nam tribe
PerpetratorsJulius Popper and his exploring company
Ramón Lista and his detachment of soldiers
José Menéndez and the Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego
MotiveUtilitarian genocide
Selk'nam children, 1898

The Selk'nam genocide refers to the systematic extermination of the Selk'nam or Ona people, one of three indigenous tribes populating Tierra del Fuego in South America, from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century. The genocide spanned a period of between ten and fifteen years. The Selk'nam had an estimated population of 4,000 people around the 1880s but saw their numbers reduced to 500 by the early 1900s.[2][3]

Towards the end of the 19th century, the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego attracted the interest of large livestock companies, favored by the states of Argentina and Chile through extensive networks of corruption linking political, economic and religious interests. The introduction of gigantic sheep ranches (estancias) met with indigenous resistance, against which British, European, Argentine and Chilean settlers unleashed a racist war of extermination. The companies paid their employees, shepherds and hunters, for murders and captures. The Selk'nam groups from the north of Tierra del Fuego were the first affected, beginning a migration to the south of the island to escape the massacres in the forested lands, which were suitable for livestock farming. This led to clashes in the south between the survivors. Eventually, in search of alternatives to the slaughter, the governments of Argentina and Chile gave land for the establishment of Salesian missions on Dawson Island, in the Strait of Magellan, and in the Río Grande area. The Selk'nam who survived the massacres were deported to Dawson Island and La Candelaria. The first closed after two decades, with few survivors and a large cemetery filled with crosses.

Background

The Selk'nam are one of three indigenous tribes who inhabited the northeastern part of the archipelago, with a population before the genocide estimated at between 3,000 and 4,000.[4] They were known as the "Ona" (people of the north), by the Yahgan (Yámana).[5]

The Selk'nam had lived a semi-nomadic life of hunting and gathering in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego[6] for thousands of years. The name of the island literally means "big island of Land of Fire", which is the name the early Spanish explorers gave it as they saw the smoke from Selk'nam bonfires.[6] They lived in the northeast, with the Haush people to their east on the Mitre Peninsula, and the Yahgan people to the west and south, in the central part of the main island and throughout the southern islands of the archipelago.

According to one study, the Selk'nam were divided into the following groups:[7]

  • Parika (located in the Northern Pampas).
  • Herska (located in the southern forests)
  • Chonkoyuka (located in the mountains in front of Inútil Bay), alongside the Haush.

History

The Selk'nam were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to make contact with Europeans. German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche published the first scholarly studies of the Selk'nam, although he was later criticized for having studied members of the Selk'nam people who had been abducted and exhibited in circuses in conditions of de facto slavery.[8] Two Selk'nam families were even exhibited at the 1889 Paris Exposition.[9]

The gold rush

The Chilean expedition of Ramón Serrano Montaner in 1879 reported the presence of significant gold deposits in the sands of the main rivers of Tierra del Fuego. Hundreds of foreign adventurers came to the island in search of fortune.[10] However, resources of the metal depleted rapidly.

Though gold prospectors did play a role in the violence against the Selk'nam, the genocide was a systematic campaign deployed mainly by British and European sheep farmers, with the collaboration of Argentinean and Chilean authorities and the Salesian missionaries.[11]

Julius Popper (on left) shooting, with a Selk'nam corpse visible in the foreground

The Selk'nam extermination

The large ranchers tried to drive out the Selk'nam, then began a campaign of extermination against them, with the complicity of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Large companies paid sheep farmers or militia a bounty for each Selk'nam dead, which was confirmed by the presentation of a pair of hands or ears, or later a complete skull. They were given more for the death of a woman than a man. In addition, missionaries disrupted their livelihood through forcible relocation and inadvertently brought with them deadly epidemics.

Ranching became the center of controversy in the Magellanic colony. The Selk'nam were plied with alcohol, deported, raped, and murdered, with bounties paid to the most ruthless hunters.[1] Martin Gusinde, who visited the island towards the end of 1918, recounted in his writings that the hunters sent the skulls of the murdered Selk'nam to foreign anthropological museums, actions undertaken "in the name of science."[12] The colonial authorities were aware of the indigenous group's plight, but sided with the ranchers' cause over the Selk'nam, who were excluded from their worldview which was based on concepts of "progress" and "civilization." Ranchers typically exercised their own judgement, including the financing of violent campaigns. Considerable numbers of foreign men were hired and quantities of arms were imported for these campaigns, with the goal of eliminating the Selk'nam, who were perceived as a major obstacle to the success of colonists' investments. Farm employees later confirmed the routine nature of such campaigns.

Little is known of those responsible for these actions; they included many ranch owners, who were the direct superiors of the employees that participated in the ventures. Among those who hunted the indigenous people were Julius Popper, Ramón Lista, Alexander McLennan,[13] a "Mister Bond", Alexander A. Cameron, Samuel Hyslop, John McRae, and Montt E. Wales.[14][15]

Prominent landowners with responsibility included Mauricio (Moritz) Braun (sister of businesswoman Sara Braun), who acknowledged having financed some campaigns, justifying them as only intending to protect his investments (he was the employer of another known exterminator, Alexander A. Cameron); and José Menéndez, the father-in-law of Mauricio Braun, known for acting with the most severity against the Selk'nam in the Argentine territory of Tierra del Fuego.[16] The owner of two cattle ranches that occupied more than 200,000 ha (490,000 acres) in the center of Selk'nam territory, Menéndez was the boss of Alexander MacLennan. MacLennan, or "Chancho Colorado" ("The Red Pig"), known widely as a murderer of indigenous people, participated in the massacre at Cabo Peñas, where 17 indigenous people died. When he retired after 12 years of service, Menéndez gave MacLennan a valuable gold watch in recognition of his outstanding service.[17]

The shareholders of the Company for the Exploitation of Tierra de Fuego (Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego) strove to hide their actions towards native tribes from the public. This was both a means for the company to avoid questioning and a strategy to lower its controversial profile. Special attention was paid to these events after the intervention of the Salesian missionairies, who condemned the actions of the ranchers while themselves contributing in more subtle ways to the extermination of native cultures.

Beginning in the last decade of the 1890s, the situation of the Selk'nam became severe. As the territories of the north began to be largely occupied by farms and ranches, many indigenous people, besieged by hunger and persecuted by colonists, started to flee towards the extreme south of the island. This region was already inhabited by indigenous groups who had a strong sense of ownership over the land. Consequently, the fights for control of territory intensified. The predicament of the Selk'nam worsened with the establishment of religious missions, which introduced lethal illnesses to the vulnerable population.

Later conflicts between governor Manuel Señoret and the head of the Salesian mission José Fagnano[18] only served to worsen, rather than improve, conditions for the Selk'nam. Long disputes between civil authorities and priests did not produce a satisfactory solution to the "indigenous issue". Governor Señoret favoured the ranchers' cause, and took little interest in the incidents that took place in Tierra del Fuego.

Repression against the Selk'nam persisted into the early twentieth century.[19] Chile moved most of the Selk'nam in their territory to Dawson Island in the mid-1890s, confining them to a Salesian mission. Argentina finally allowed Salesian missionaries to aid the Selk'nam and attempt to assimilate them, with their traditional culture and livelihoods then completely interrupted.

Dawson Isle, Chile

About 4,000 Selk'nam were alive in the mid-nineteenth century; by 1930 this had been reduced to about 100. With the assimilation of many groups who later became Argentinians and Chileans, Selk'nam territory was conquered and the Selk'nam culture was effectively exterminated.

The last full-blooded Selk'nam, Ángela Loij, died in 1974. According to the 2010 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, the Ona language, believed to be part of the Chonan family, is considered extinct, as the last speakers died in the 1980s.[19]

Genocide trial

Years later, justice for the conflict was sought through an inquiry (1895–1904) by Judge Waldo Seguel.[20] This process confirmed that the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego had indeed been hunted. Indigenous people were captured and removed en masse, transferred to Punta Arenas, and distributed throughout the colony. It was judged that these acts were proposed by ranchers and carried out with the complicity of civil authorities, who regarded the genocide as a solution to the "indigenous issue".

However, the judicial process ruled that only a few farmworkers were at fault, and these were released just a few months after the trial. The perpetrators of the expeditions, such as owners and stakeholders of farms belonging to Mauricio Braun, José Menéndez, Rodolfo Stubenrauch, and Peter H. MacClelland, were never prosecuted. Even official figures and civil servants, like governor Señoret and José Contardi, who theoretically had the greatest responsibility to guard the sanctity of the law, were never investigated.[21] The book "Harassment Inflicted on the Indigenous People of Tierra de la Fuego" ("Vejámenes inferidos a los indígenas de Tierra del Fuego") by author Carlos Vega Delgado shows that Judge Waldo Seguel covered for ranchers who committed acts of genocide. The judge falsely recorded that he could not obtain a statement from the Selk'nam individuals who witnessed the genocide because there were no interpreters between the two languages. However, such translators did exist, including various priests of the Salesian mission and sisters of María Auxiliadora who had learned the native dialect in the missions, as well as Spanish-speaking Selk'nam, like Tenenésk, Covadonga Ona, and even a deacon of the church.[22]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Gardini, Walter (1984). "Restoring the Honour of an Indian Tribe-Rescate de una tribu". Anthropos. 79 (4/6): 645–47. JSTOR 40461884.
  2. ↑ "Selk'nam: Tierra del Fuego's last forgotten tribe". Chimu Adventures Blog. 2016-10-29. Retrieved 2022-08-18.
  3. ↑ Chapman 2010, p. 544.
  4. ↑ Prieto 2007.
  5. ↑ Chapman2010, p. XX.
  6. 1 2 Gilbert 2014.
  7. ↑ Chile Precolombino (ed.). "Pueblos Originarios: Selk'nam" (in Spanish). Retrieved 24 July 2019.
  8. ↑ Ballestero, Diego (2013). Los espacios de la antropología en la obra de Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, 1894-1938 [The spaces of anthropology in the work of Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, 1894-1938] (PhD) (in Spanish). Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
  9. ↑ Pantoja, Miguel (2017). El Genocidio Selknam (in Spanish).
  10. ↑ Spears, John (1895). The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn. A study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. New York. ISBN 9-7805-4834-724-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  11. ↑ Harambour, Alberto (2019). Adhikari, Mohamed (ed.). 'There Cannot be Civilization and Barbarism on the Island’: Civilian-driven Violence and the Genocide of the Selk’nam People of Tierra del Fuego. Routledge. ISBN 9781003015550.
  12. ↑ Riquelme, Cristhian; Bratti, Simón. "Recopilación etnológica de una identidad étnica" [Ethnological compilation of an ethnic identity]. Revista del Departamento Sociología y Antropología Antropología de los pueblos indígenas (in Spanish). Universidad de Concepción Chile. Retrieved 24 July 2019.
  13. ↑ Kelly, James. "In Search of Paradise Lost in Tierra del Fuego". Earth Island Journal. Earth Island Institute. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
  14. ↑ According to Federico Echelaite's account in the documentary film Los onas, vida y muerte en Tierra del Fuego (by A. Montes, A. Chapman, and J. Prelorán).
  15. ↑ Gusinde, Martin (1951). Hombres primitivos en la Tierra del Fuego (de investigador a compañero de tribu) [Primitive men in Tierra del Fuego (from researcher to fellow tribesman)] (in Spanish). Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla. pp. 98–99. Retrieved 28 March 2012.
  16. ↑ Harambour, Alberto (2019). Soberanías Fronterizas. Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1830-1922) (in Spanish). Valdivia: Universidad Austral de Chile. ISBN 978-956-390-091-0.
  17. ↑ "Memorabilia: Alexander McLennan". patbrit.org: The British Presence in Southern Patagonia. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
  18. ↑ Emery, Carlo (1894). ""Viaggio del Dr. E. Festa in Palestina, nel Libano e regioni vicine. XI Descrizione di un nuove Campanotus"" ["Journey of Dr. E. Festa in Palestine, Lebanon and neighboring regions. XI Description of a new Campanotus".]. Bollettino dei musei di zoologia ed anatomia comparata della Reale Università di Torino (in Italian). 9: 1–2. doi:10.5962/bhl.part.8049.
  19. 1 2 Adelaar 2010, p. 92.
  20. ↑ Martinic, Mateo (2006). ""Documentos Inéditos Para La Historia De Magallanes 'De Marinero a Estanciero' Recuerdos De Josef Schmitt (1906-1986)."" ["Unpublished Documents For The History Of Magellan 'From Sailor To Farmer' Memoirs Of Josef Schmitt (1906-1986)."]. Magallania (Punta Arenas) (in Spanish). 34. doi:10.4067/S0718-22442006000100012.
  21. ↑ Giraldo Diaz, John (1 July 2021). "El exterminio de la isla de Papayal: etnografías sobre al Estado y la construcción de paz en Colombia, de Juan Felipe García Arboleda" [The extermination of the island of Papayal: ethnographies on the State and the construction of peace in Colombia, by Juan Felipe García Arboleda]. Revista Colombiana de Antropología (in Spanish). doi:10.22380/2539472x.1980. ISSN 2539-472X. S2CID 237743280.
  22. ↑ Lozada, Martín (2019). "Capítulo 3. El genocidio como figura autónoma en el complejo de los crímenes de lesa humanidad" [Chapter 3. Genocide as an autonomous figure in the complex of crimes against humanity]. Crímenes de lesa humanidad y genocidio [Crimes against humanity and genocide] (in Spanish). Editorial UNRN. pp. 53–65. doi:10.4000/books.eunrn.3213. ISBN 9789874960146. S2CID 203281057. Retrieved 2 March 2022.

Bibliography

  • Prieto, Alfredo (2007). "The Struggle for Social Life in Fuego Patagonia". In Chacon, Edward (ed.). Latin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence. University of Arizona Press. p. 213. ISBN 978-0816525270.
  • Adelaar, Willem (2010). "South America". In Moseley, Christopher (ed.). Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (3rd Revised ed.). UNESCO. pp. 86–94. ISBN 978-9231040962.
  • Chapman, Anne (2010). European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, Before and After Darwin (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521513791.
  • Gilbert, Jérémie (2014). Nomadic Peoples and Human Rights. Routledge. p. 23. ISBN 978-0415526968.

Further reading

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