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The Yahgan (also called Yagán, Yaghan, Yámana, Yamana, or Tequenica) are a group of Indigenous peoples in the Southern Cone of South America. Their traditional territory includes the islands south of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, extending their presence into Cape Horn, making them the world's southernmost Indigenous human population.
In the 19th century, the Yahgan were known in English as "Fuegians." The name is credited to Captain James Weddell, who supposedly created the term in 1822. The term is now avoided as it can also refer to several other Indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego, for example the Selkʼnam.
The Yahgan language, also known as Yámana, is considered a language isolate. Cristina Calderón (1928–2022), who was born on Navarino Island, Chile, was known as the last full-blooded Yahgan and last native speaker of the Yahgan language. It is now regarded as an extinct language. Most Yahgan now speak Spanish language.
The Yahgan were traditionally nomads and who traveled by canoe between islands to collect food. The men hunted and the women dove to collect shellfish. They also scavenged whale meat, and gathered local vegetation, including berries and mushrooms.
The Yahgan share some similarities with the more northern Chono people and Kawésqar (Alacaluf) tribes. These groups share behavioral traits; a traditional canoe-faring hunter-gatherer lifestyle and physical traits such as short stature, being long-headed (dolichocephalic), and having a "low face".Trivero Rivera 2005, p. 42. Despite these similarities, their languages are completely different.Trivero Rivera 2005, p. 33.
Bridges' second son, Lucas Bridges, also learned the language and was one of the few Europeans to do so. In his 1948 book, a history of that period, he writes that the Yahgan autonym or name for themselves was yamana, meaning person, though modern usage is for man only, not women. The plural is yamali(m)). The name Yahgan was first used by his father, Thomas Bridges, abbreviated from the name of their territory, Yahgashaga, or Yahga Strait. They called themselves Yahgashagalumoala, meaning "people from mountain valley channel" (-lum means 'from'; -oala is a collective term for 'men', the singular being ua). Thomas Bridges first learned the language from the inhabitants of the Murray Channel area, Yahgashaga.Bridges, p. 62
The name Tekenika (), first applied to a sound in Hoste Island, simply means "I do not understand" (from teki- see and -vnnaka (v schwa) have trouble doing), and evidently originated as the answer to a misunderstood question.Bridges, p. 36
The Yahgan established many settlements in Tierra del Fuego, temporary but often reused. A significant Yahgan archaeological site from the Megalithic period has been found at Wulaia Bay. C. Michael Hogan has called it the Bahia Wulaia (Dome Middens).C. Michael Hogan (2008) Bahia Wulaia Dome Middens, Megalithic Portal, ed. Andy Burnham
The Yahgan domesticated a culpeo known as a Fuegian dog.
Magellan came upon the area around Tierra del Fuego in the early 16th century, but it was not until the 19th century that Europeans became interested in the zone and its peoples. The Yahgan were estimated to number 3,000 people in the mid-19th century, when Europeans started colonizing the area.
The Yahgan left strong impressions on all who encountered them, including Ferdinand Magellan, Charles Darwin, Francis Drake, James Cook, James Weddell, and Julius Popper.Murphy 132
Royal Navy officer Robert FitzRoy became captain of in November 1828, and continued her first survey voyage. On the night of 28 January 1830, the ship's whaleboat was stolen by Fuegians. During a month of fruitless searching to recover the boat, FitzRoy took guides and then prisoners - who mostly escaped - eventually taking hostage a man known as York Minster, estimated age 26, and a young girl known as Yokcushlu, estimated age nine. A week later, he took another Fuegian hostage, known as Boat Memory, estimated age 20, and on 11 May captured Jemmy Button, estimated age 14. As it was not possible to easily put them ashore, he decided to bring them back to England instead. He taught them "English..the plainer truths of Christianity..and the use of common tools" and took them on the Beagles return trip to England. Boat Memory died of smallpox soon after arriving in Britain but the others briefly became celebrities in England and were presented at court in London in the summer of 1831. On the famous second voyage of HMS Beagle, the three Fuegians returned to their homeland along with a trainee missionary.
They impressed Charles Darwin with their behaviour, in contrast to the other Fuegians Darwin met when the Beagle reached their native lands. Darwin described his first meeting with the native Fuegians in the islands as being:
In contrast, he said of the Yahgan Jemmy Button:
A mission was set up for the three Fuegians. When the Beagle returned a year later, its crew found only Jemmy, who had returned to his tribal ways. He still spoke English, assuring them that he did not wish to leave the islands and was "happy and contented" to live with his wife, described by Darwin as "young and nice looking". This encounter with the Fuegians had an important influence on Darwin's later scientific work and would be integrated into his later theories on human evolution specifically. (2025). 9780140439120, Penguin Classics. ISBN 9780140439120
The Yahgan were eventually decimated by the infectious diseases introduced by Europeans. The Yahgan suffered disruptions to their habitat starting in the early-to-mid 19th-century when European whalers and sealers depleted their most calorie-rich sources of food, forcing them to rely on mussels chopped from rocks, which provided significantly fewer calories for the effort needed to gather and process them. The Yahgan had no concept of property; in the late 19th century when waves of European immigrants came to the area for the nascent gold rush and boom in sheep farming, the Yahgan were hunted down by ranchers' for poaching sheep in their former territories.
In Sailing Alone Around the World (1900), Joshua Slocum wrote that when he sailed solo to Tierra del Fuego, European-Chileans warned him the Yahgan might rob and possibly kill him if he moored in a particular area, so he sprinkled tacks on the deck of his boat, the Spray.
In the 1920s, some Yahgan were resettled on Keppel Island in the Falkland Islands by Anglicanism missionaries in an attempt to preserve the tribe, as described by Lucas Bridges in Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948), but they continued to decline in population. The second-to-last full-blooded Yahgan, Emelinda Acuña, died in 2005. The last full-blooded Yahgan, "Abuela" (grandmother) Cristina Calderón, who lived in Chilean territory, died in 2022 age 93 due to complications of COVID-19. She was the last native speaker of the Yahgan language.
In 2017, the Chilean census from the National Statistics Institute recorded a Yahgan population of 1,600.
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