TEHUELCHE METHODS OF HUNTING
Hunting season -- Surefooted horses -- Description of big
hunt -- Ring round game -- Splendid riding of Tehuelches
-- Horses dislike jumping -- Game killed and spared by
Tehuelches -- Difference of their hunting methods from
those of the Onas of Tierra del Fuego -- Artistic
perception of Onas -- Ill-faith of early settlers --
Indian trail -- "No place for us" -- Deterioration of
horses -- They prize piebalds -- Method of breaking in --
Perfect riders -- Helpless on foot -- Staying powers of
horses -- Dogs -- Evil of liquor trade -- National sin of
permitting this traffic -- Picture of trader -- Drinking
bout of Tehuelches -- Gambling for horses -- Fatal
weakness of Tehuelches -- Another instance.
During the latter half of October and during November, which is the
Patagonian spring, the Tehuelches hunt the guanaco _chicos_, or young
guanaco.
At this period the young have not all been dropped, and the most
prized pelts are those of the unborn young, which are obtained by
killing the mother. These pelts, being very soft and fine in texture,
are used to make the most valuable _capas_ or robes, and if sold out
of the tribes at the settlements, bring in the highest prices.
At this season the Indians move to their favourite hunting-grounds; it
is, in fact, to them the most important period of the year. Two
requisites are necessary to make their hunting a success: the first is
plenty of game, and in this there is rarely any disappointment; the
second is good ground on which to hunt it. As long, however, as the
guanaco do not take absolutely to the crags, the Indians, with the
help of their sure-footed unshod horses, are able to levy a heavy toll
on the herds.
The method of hunting adopted by the Tehuelches is interesting enough
to call for description at length. On the morning of the hunt, the
Indians saddle up a good long-journey horse apiece, they also catch
each man his fastest mount, upon which he puts a _bozal_ and
_cabresto_, as well as a bit in his mouth. The hunter rides the former
horse, and leads the latter for use later on.
[Illustration: BOLEADORES
FOR OSTRICH
FOR GUANACO
FOR HORSES
(_IN THE COLLECTION OF THE AUTHOR_)]
The big herds of guanaco have meantime been located, and the plan of
the day's hunt arranged by the _cacique_. All the hunters start forth
in couples, riding in different directions, and so form an immense
circle, into the centre of which they systematically drive the game.
They then signal their whereabouts to one another by means of smokes
until the ring round the guanaco is complete. Each hunter is
accompanied by his dogs, of which he possesses probably a score. Six
or eight gaunt hounds of no particular breed, but whose characteristic
points run chiefly to legs and teeth, follow their master. As the
circle narrows the terrified game huddle together in the centre of it,
and there may be seen hundreds of guanaco, many ostriches, and
possibly a puma or two. The guanaco bucks pace upon the edge of the
herd, and give out their neighing, half-defiant call as their human
enemies approach.
The positions assumed by guanaco when under the influence of curiosity
and fear are most singular. They will stand staring at the Indians for
many seconds, and will then dash off at a wild gallop with the strange
leaping run peculiar to them. The necks, too, swing and sway at all
conceivable angles, and whenever their ears are assailed by a sudden
sound, I have seen a whole herd, upwards of one hundred strong, sway
their necks to within a couple of inches of the ground almost in
unison.
In the meanwhile the Indians draw remorselessly nearer, dismount from
their saddle-horses, leap on their led animals, and precipitate
themselves from all sides upon the frantic herds. The horses that are
left have generally been carefully schooled to stand when their reins
are dropped forward to the ground over their heads. The Indians howl
and roar as they dash down upon the guanaco, whirling their
_boleadores_ round their heads. This _bolas_, with which they hunt the
guanaco, is very heavy, and the three balls are generally made of
stone, but they use a lighter form for the capture of the ostrich. In
the case of guanaco _chicos_, clubs are often employed.
Holding his weapon by the shortest of the three _sogas_, or thongs,
and while going at full gallop, the Indian launches it at the long
neck of the guanaco; a doe is always selected if possible. Extremely
expert in its use, the rider's weapon probably reaches its mark, and
the quarry, maddened by the tightening of the _sogas_, bucks and
rears, until she becomes hopelessly entangled.
I have mentioned that the Tehuelches hunt in pairs. The companion of
the Indian who has thrown the _bolas_ then leaps to the ground and
despatches the guanaco. Meantime his comrade has dashed forward at the
tail of the herd, and has probably secured another animal. The dogs,
too, do their part, and as the storm of the chase sweeps across the
pampa, it leaves the ground in its path dotted with the yellow-brown
forms of the slain.
The chase tails itself out for many miles, and may be followed over
desolate leagues marked by lines of dead guanacos and dropped
_boleadores_ which have failed to carry home. I should be afraid to
say how many animals are killed at one of these singular battues. To
see the Indian hunt the guanaco is to see the art of rough-riding
exemplified. How they gallop! Down one sheer _barranca_, or cliff, and
up another. The roar of loosened stone behind them. The guanaco jink
and dodge and break back, always making for the highest ground in the
vicinity.
The dexterity with which the horses of the hunters keep their feet is
truly wonderful. They will go at full gallop anywhere, and hardly ever
fall or miss their footing. There is, however, one thing which they
universally dislike, and that is jumping in any of its forms. Here and
there in some parts of Patagonia the pampa is cut and scored with
fissures a few feet in width. To have your horse stop dead, both feet
together, on the edge of one of these and violently shy away at an
acute angle is no uncommon experience. Generally, however, a certain
amount of inducement and coercion at length takes them over in a
complicated buck.
When the chase has run itself out, the lean dogs are fed upon the
grosser parts, the pelts of the young are pulled off, and the meat,
such of it as is wanted, is cargoed or packed upon the horses, and the
hunting-party jogs back to the shelter of the wigwams, made from the
skins their fathers and their grandfathers slew before the white men
began to move southward and to overrun the land.
The Indians kill no bird save the ostrich, and this is a curious
fact, because the lagoons and pools literally swarm with great flocks
of upland geese (_Chloephaga magellanica_), which are very fair
eating. Perhaps the reason why they spare the geese arises from the
fact that they have no weapons suitable for killing them. On one
occasion when I shot a brace of geese, the Indians seized upon them
and pronounced them "good." Also, they kill few animals but the
guanaco and the puma. Had the guanaco a reasonable amount of fat upon
it, the life of the Indians would be idyllic, but in this the guanaco
fails. Of lean meat he supplies plenty, for he is a large beast, but
though he lives in a land where sheep grow fat and well-liking, the
long-necked Patagonian llama retains his leanness and his running
condition.
Although it may be slightly outside the province of this book, I
cannot help contrasting the very different methods employed by the
Onas of Tierra del Fuego, who are after all only separated from the
Tehuelches of Patagonia by the narrow Straits of Magellan, in hunting
the same animal. The Onas do not use horses, and kill the guanaco with
bows and arrows. When they perceive a herd, they surround it as the
Tehuelches do, but, of course, the circle is on a much smaller scale.
It is their aim to remain invisible to their quarry, for which
purpose, during their stalk, they are in the habit of wrapping
themselves in the skins of the animals which they have formerly
killed. Once the herd is surrounded, it is with the same accompaniment
of screams and shouts that the hunters rush in to secure their prey.
The dissimilarities between the Tehuelches and the Onas are
numerous.[17] While the Tehuelches are peaceful, the Onas are warlike.
There is a story current that the only white man who has ever lived in
the very primitive dwelling of boughs, which are all the Onas have to
shelter them from a bitter climate, was a Scotchman whom the Indians
had captured. He was with them three weeks, and his face was adorned
by a singularly luxuriant crop of orange whiskers. The Onas are
reported to have amused themselves by pulling these out in instalments
by the roots. Might not some anthropologist base a treatise upon "The
Artistic Perceptions of the Onas of Tierra del Fuego" upon this
occurrence?
[Illustration: BEAUTIES OF TIERRA DEL FUEGO]
The Onas are also a tall people, although not equalling in height my
friends the Tehuelches, and their physical development is less
conspicuously remarkable. The Ona woman does not, as does the
Tehuelche _china_, form an attachment to a white suitor, appearing to
have no desires outside her own race and people, but under certain
circumstances the women have shared the hearthstone of the foreigner.
Polygamy is allowed and practised among them. There is something of
the spirit which characterises the Gipsy of Europe about this people;
they are quite ready to take all they can get from the alien, while
they at the same time maintain a bitter rancour against the hand that
gives. But this is not, as it is in the case of the Gipsies, the
continuance of an original dislike and implacability, but rather the
result of the infamous ill-faith which leavened the dealings of the
very earliest visitors to the coasts of Tierra del Fuego.
I must confess that all my sympathies are on the side of the primitive
races, who on coming into contact with the white man suffer those
outrages on their best feelings which, I am sorry to say, are only too
common. You must understand, however, that I in no way refer to the
settlers of this generation. My remarks must be taken to refer to the
first pioneers. At the present day--so Burbury, who has had a great
experience of Tierra del Fuego, informed me--the Indians there are
treacherous and absolutely implacable, and do endless harm in their
periodical raids upon the "white guanaco," as they call the sheep.
They do this not only when hunger presses them, but at all times out
of a spirit of revenge. Sometimes they drown the sheep and leave them
in the ice, where they keep good for weeks, during which time the Onas
feast on them.
Patagonia bears upon its length the clear-cut and long-drawn initial
of the Tehuelche race. By this I mean the Indian trail, which can be
followed from water to water, from good camp to good camp, stretching
from Punta Arenas in the south to Lake Buenos Aires in the north and
beyond it. Up and down this trail and along others, less extended,
generations of Indians have wandered with their wives and children,
their tents and horses. We struck it when travelling south from Lake
Buenos Aires, in the early January of 1901. It was hard to distinguish
the Indian road from any parallel series of guanaco-tracks, which here
line the country in numbers, and, indeed, it was only by keeping a
sharp look-out for the hoof-prints of horses that we were able to
follow the trail at all. It runs along under the Cordillera at a
varying distance of about twenty or thirty miles from their bases. It
was a sad remark that an Indian made to us while talking about the
ancient wanderings of his people. "Once," he said, "we had the sea
upon the one side of us, and upon the other the Cordillera. But this
is not so now. The white man is ever advancing upon one side and the
Cordillera remains ever unchanging upon the other. Soon there will be
no place for us; yet once the land was ours."
One would imagine that a people so dependent on their horses for the
very necessities of life would give attention and care to the breeding
and improvement of the stock. But this is far from being the case. The
Tehuelches appear to be, like other far less intelligent races of
uncivilised peoples, incapable of much forethought. They live for
to-day and make little provision for to-morrow. As a case in point,
they are allowing their horses to become very deteriorated. The
animals are, almost without exception, to use a Spanish term,
_mañero_, which means of a spoiled temper. In some localities they
have been crossed with the horses of the settlers which have a strain
of English blood, and the result is animals of spirit and of
character, but _muy mañero_. The Tehuelches prize white horses, and
_overos_, or piebalds, exceedingly. The backs of their horses are
generally badly galled, but this is no matter for surprise, as they
often ride upon a sheepskin flung anyhow across the beast. The method
of breaking-in or taming is simple and severe in the extreme. It
consists of leaping on a raw colt and galloping him to exhaustion. One
reason why their horses are falling below level certainly is that the
Indians have a foolish trick of riding two- and three-year-olds both
hard and far. A colt of this age once fairly "cooked" by an over-long
ride will never be of very much use afterwards.
And yet these people are peculiarly dependent upon their horses. They
will not walk ten yards if they can ride them. And they have
undoubtedly carried the art of riding to the last perfection. I never
knew what riding really meant until I went to Patagonia and saw the
Indians on horseback. We once asked an Indian what he could do if he
were left on the pampa without his horses. "Sit down," he said. This
man, however, was not a Tehuelche but a Pampa Indian.
[Illustration: SONS OF THE PAMPA]
The horses are far from large, the average running to about thirteen
hands, but they are wiry, untiring beasts, and some show extraordinary
speed. The manner in which they carry the heavy well-developed Indians
is wonderful. They are entirely fed on grass. When the camp is made,
they are simply turned out to graze upon the pampa, where frequently
the grass is sparse and poor enough, though near many of the Indian
camping-grounds good _vegas_ of rich grass exist. In winter, of
course, the _tropillas_ become very thin and in poor condition, but at
that season they have infinitely less work to do, as there is hardly
any hunting, and the camp is usually stationary for the coldest
months.
The hounds of the Indians are something like our lurcher breed. In the
tents they lie about among the rugs and bedding. They are
irreclaimable thieves and very cowardly. A good guanaco hound is,
however, of very great value, for a pair of accomplished hounds,
skilled in the chase, represent a capital upon which an entire family
can live.
One of the strongest feelings which I brought away with me from
Patagonia was a hatred of the trader who battens upon the failings of
the Tehuelches. If he hears of a festival or any tribal ceremony, he
arrives upon the spot with drink. He sells liquor in exchange for
horses, and when his customers are well steeped in the poison he
brings, he makes some magnificent bargains. His influence is
far-reaching and fatal as far-reaching to the picturesque and harmless
race out of whose degradation and death he makes his living. Savage
races may survive war and internecine struggles, and the decimation
not infrequently caused by a cruel rule such as was T'Chaka among the
Zulus, but they never survive the Civilisation of the Bottle. The
horrors of the wars of history would pale beside the cold-blooded
slaughter, the gradual, malignant, poisoning processes which the most
self-satisfied and religious nations of the world allow to continue
year after year, I should say century after century, among the
aboriginal tribes, who live nominally under their protection. The
pioneer trader with his stores of cheap maddening liquor is free to
sell as much as he pleases, although it is a well-known fact that such
trading means ruin and extermination to the unhappy ignorant folk who
buy. The sin after all is national rather than personal, for the
trader has his living to earn, whereas the nation which is responsible
for allowing him liberty to traffic puts out no hand to stay the evil.
I do not in the least bring any charge against the Argentine
Government; we British are guilty of the same crime or carelessness,
and in some of our dependencies terrible object-lessons of precisely
the same kind can be observed.
Let me draw a picture of one of these traders for you. A lean stooping
man of Paraguayan extraction, dressed out in store clothes which he
but half filled. A plump face of the caste peculiar to the lowest type
of the Latin peoples, with a full greasy-lipped animalism stamped upon
it, after the manner of his kind. The lean body and fat face formed a
contrast that struck you with repulsion as an actual deformity. This
fellow played a very old trick upon a batch of Indians and
considerably enriched himself thereby.
The Indians had come in upon the outskirts of a coast-town, rich with
the sale of a six-months harvest of ostrich feathers, guanaco-skins
and other such merchandise as they gather from the pampas. After some
drinking and a variety of games of chance, our friend the trader
started an argument as to which of the Indians owned the swiftest
horse. A race was soon decided upon, the trader most liberally
offering a prize in the shape of a bottle of drink. The race was to be
ridden bare-back, as is usual in contests of this description among
the Indians. The trader further suggested that the race should be run
off in heats. A horse with a white blaze and a very fine head won, and
his proprietor, a tall Indian in a black poncho, received the prize,
which he, with help, soon disposed of. After this the talk fell
naturally upon the merits of the respective horses.
"Your _picaso_ is a good horse," said the trader to the tall Indian,
"but I have a horse in my troop that could leave him far behind."
At first the Indian laughed, but the trader's boasting and insistence
presently stung him to resent the aspersion on his mount, and he said
he should like to see the thing done.
The trader jumped at the opportunity. The Indians had had sufficient
drink to destroy their ordinary cautiousness, and were ready to take
up any challenge.
"The loser to forfeit his horse to the winner," continued the trader,
who had laid his plans beforehand. He then called a Chileno lad, who
soon appeared leading a big lean _alazan_. It was easy for any seeing
eye to recognise that the animal had been tied up the night before and
was in quite fair racing trim; besides which, the Indian's _picaso_
was already tired with the previous races. The Chileno boy swung up
and the two horses came thundering along their course. The Indian's
weight also told as compared with the lightness of the Chileno boy,
and the result was altogether a foregone conclusion.
[Illustration: TEHUELCHES VISIT GALLEGOS]
But this by no means ended the business. The Indians were excited and
ripe for any amount of gambling, and being skilfully handled by the
trader they did not leave the settlement until he had stripped them of
all their possessions. The tall Indian, who had come in with eighty
dollars and five horses, returned to his camp with a two-kilo bag of
_yerba_ and on a horse which he had been forced to buy for the return
journey from the trader at, of course, the trader's own price.
There are many Indians who avoid the coast-towns, but although these
do not go to the trader, the trader, as I have mentioned in another
chapter, comes to them.
Throughout Patagonia, upon the rim of civilisation, are scattered
_boliches_, or frontier drink-shops, whose liquor sales consist
chiefly of "champagne cognac," whatever that potion may be. These
establishments hold out a perpetual temptation to the passing Indians.
The frequent presence of silver gear, such as the Tehuelches possess
when fortune smiles upon them, that is almost always hanging from the
ceiling of the neighbouring store, tells its own tale. An Indian has
rarely enough money to "look upon the wine when it is red," or rather
upon the unwholesome jaundice tinge of "champagne cognac," so he pays
in kind; and when once the craving for drink grips him he will gamble
away everything to satisfy it. This infatuation appears to lay a
fatally strong hand upon the uncivilised peoples. They have no
principles to stay them, no scruples to overcome, they have found a
short cut to a wild species of happiness, and one cannot wonder that
they seek its extraordinary pleasures as often as possible. So it is
that liquor has destroyed whole races, wiped them clean off the face
of the earth. Some one has written:
Oppression and the sword slay fast,
Thy breath kills slowly but at last,
and it is certainly a terrible truth in this connection.
I can call to mind two Indians, whom I saw ride up to a _boliche_ near
Santa Cruz. They offered a contrast to one another which it is not
easy to forget. The first was an Indian with a close-shut mouth and
the dark and ponderous dignity of the big Tehuelche. His gear was
richly studded with silver, and his saddle covered with embroidered
cloths. His head was bare, save that his brows were bound with a band
of red finery. He made a picturesque and imposing figure as he
cantered up on his white horse with its glinting eyes. Followed the
second. He, too, was an Indian, but his gear was guiltless of silver,
his _bozal_ was worn and blackened with age. The best thing he
possessed was his horse. He wore an ancient tail-coat, once black but
now green, this in conjunction with a _chiripa_, or Indian loin-cloth,
gave him an appearance sufficiently incongruous. Instead of the
quiet dignity of the first man, his face expressed little save
vacuity. He was a pitiful object in the strong pampa sunshine, his
health evidently broken by frequent orgies. And no doubt he had been a
self-respecting Indian enough--before the trader came within the
province of his knowledge.
[Illustration: THE TEHUELCHE TOLDOS]
FOOTNOTE:
[17] The Tehuelches are enormously above the Onas of Tierra del Fuego
in the scale of civilisation. A Fuegian woman has been known to live
in the Tehuelchian tents, but how she came there I am unable to say.
On the other hand, I have never heard of any Tehuelche living with the
Tierra del Fuegians, and cannot conceive such a state of things to be
possible. But the Tehuelches will mix occasionally with the Araucanian
tribes of Northern Patagonia, and intermarriages are common.