Biblioteca Patagónica

(Note: Text dealing with natives is displayed with a contrasting background colour.)

THE PICHERAYS.

The country which the Picherays, or, from the name of their country, more commonly the Terra del Fuegians, inhabit is wretched and bleak in the extreme but unlike the Eskimo land of the North, a few dwarf trees and bushes enable the inhabitants to obtain some shelter from the storm, materials to warm themselves, and means of building a canoe. Yet notwithstanding the superior advantages in natural resources of country which the Terra del Fuegian possesses over the Eskimo, in comfort and physical and intellectual character he is not comparable to the fur-clad denizen of the snow lands on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. In stature the Fuegian is stunted; his lower jaw protecting, and with long, straight, black hair hanging down his back and cheeks. For this hair he has a superstitious veneration, and conceives that the possession of a scrap of it by anyone else will entail all manner of disasters on the original owner. Everything about the Fuegian is disgusting, animal, and almost brute-like. The spectator turns away from him in the belief that surely now man, created in the image of his Maker, has reached the lowest type, or brute ascended to the highest stage. He moves about in a crouching, stooping posture, his person is covered with the filth of generations, and his long, mane-like locks, which his vanity or superstition induces him now and then to rake out with a comb made of a porpoise jaw, almost without any alteration, are crawling with a detestable insect, which, though it has family relations in the locks of people all over the world, is yet said to be of a species peculiar to this race. Though living in a country where sleet, snow, rain, and frost are of almost everyday occurrence, the male Fuegian wears no clothing, except a small piece of sealskin thrown over his shoulders, and moved now and then so as to shelter his person in the direction from whence the blast may be blowing. When in his canoe, or engaged in any active exercise, he considers even this limited amount of wardrobe altogether superfluous, and tosses it aside. The women have quite as little clothing, the claims of modesty being satisfied by the presence of an apron of sealskin. Yet the country supplies abundance of the fur-seal and various land animals, the hides of which would supply excellent materials for clothing. The skins of this race seem, however, to be almost insensible to cold, and though they seem to strangers to be always shivering and chilly, yet this must have become a second nature to them, for they may be seen moving about from place to place, or sitting in their canoes, with the whirling enow beating against their naked persons, or gathering about their limbs, seemingly without caring about it, or even being conscious of it. Boots of sealskin cover their feet, but hat of any description neither sex has ever found the necessity of. Their huts are on a par with their wardrobe, being merely a rude shelter of bent boughs covered with grass, the hole at the side which supplies the place of entrance being unclosed by anything in the shape of a door, the only deference shown to the weather being to make this opening on the side from whence the prevailing winds do not usually come.