69
THE YAHGAN AND ALACALUF   AN ECOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION
Peter Wo Steager
University of California, Berkeley-
Western observers have habitually shown a profound inability to under-
stand simple or primitive societies0  Indeed, the word "primitive" is not
much more tihin a convenient label applied indiscriminately to cultures that
differ very greatly from our own0 ' We consistently allow our preconceptions
about the nature of man to greatly distort what observations we do have of
simple Societies0 Sometimes this distortion interferes with the process of
data collecting itself while at other times it is apparent because the obser-
vations of a particular people do not have any obvious relationship to the
interpretations of their culture. Ethnographic description and ethnological
theory can become almost totally divorced from each other so that the worst
theorist Ymay be an extremely gifted and accurate observer0  Nowhere is this
more apparent thn in the literature concerning the Yahgan and Alacaluf Indi-
ans of South America.O
When th.e irst Europeans made .tat with these inhabitants of the
cold9 :clwy ciuast of southern Chile they were convinced that they had discov-
ered savages who were more anrimltike tha htnn      In-a land where the wind
blows tunceasingly anwd all days` are alike--dark  dismal and rainy--these sim-
ple primiatives went -about stark naked and dove in the icy sea for barnacles,
mussels9 sea urchins9 and other creatures unfit for huin consumption0  It
was acceptl;ed wiothout. question that thaese Indians lived in a state of perpet-
ual miserrY( their lack of elaborate dwellings or tools9 their nakedness, and
in general.9 the crude, almost, . mcronic simplicity of their way of life, was
clear evidence thati they were waefully 94;Smaladapted to the hostile enviromnent
in whch ther li.vedo
Mhe ?ck --  simplct?y of Yshcan and Alacaluf culture9 then, hd a
rat~her ;s imp  h~st<rcal    .C-a:?. on09 These were survivors from prehistory,
paleolidthsc me. who had been driven long ago Into a harsh, marginal environ-
ment from which they were never able to escape0  The bitter struggle for sur-
vival preyed upon them9 sapping them of their inherent potentialities for
higher culture, and they remained irn a state of ancestral primitivism0
This romantic explanation for thne simplicity of these two cultures is
nothing but a crude blend of envionmental determinism and cultural evolution
and what Is more, can be thoroughly disp.troved by the ethnographic data of the
very people who proposed 'it
For exmple-, the Yahgan and Atacaluf are traditionally described as
friendly, sociable people given to a great deal of horseplay and joking0  The
men are usually pictured as being extremely slothful and seem to have spent
most of their time doing absolutely nothing at all0  Normal food gathering
was the task of women but even they spent butl, a few hours a day at this activ-
ity0  Most. accounts describe these peopl;e as short and spindly legged with ex-
ceptionatly powerful arms and shQUlders nd photographs reveal that they were
liberally endowed with body J'E fat0t
70
Certainly none of these common observations are consistent with the
picture of the miserable, maladapted savage.  It is difficult to imagine fat
people as living on a bare sustenance level. Add to this the fact that they
were able to become fat on the food gathered during a few hours of each day
and the picture becomes almost absurd. Finally, humor and a pleasant disposi-
tion are not usually associated with the naked struggle for survival.
The ecological information has also been grossly misrepresented. The
cold, rainy, depressing climate of the south Chilean coast in no way implies
that this was an unproductive environment. Much like the northwest coast of
North America or, better still, the Aleutian Islands, there was a superabun-
dance of easily available food for those who could cope with the unpleasant
climate. It is true that the Yahgan and Alacaluf did little more than toler-
ate a climate that to us would be completely intolerable but this is only one
small aspect of their relationship to their environment.
There is now enough ethnographic information available (see relevant
bibliographies in Steward 1946) to reconstruct the aboriginal cultures of
these Indians with reasonable accuracy and there have been a number of recent
studies of the geography, climate, and ecology of the area in which they
lived (Auer 1960, Butland 1957, Godley 1960, Holdgate 1961, Knox 1960,
Kuschel 1960). Given this information, it is impossible to explain the sim-
plicity of these cultures in terms of any simple, deterministic relationship
to the environment. In fact, the real problem they present has never been
stated properly. It was not, as most people thought, that these Indians
could barely eke out a miserable existence from a hostile environment but
rather, that they had developed a marvellously productive relationship with
their environment based only on an extremely crude material culture.  In or-
der to understand much about the Yahgan and Alacaluf, we shall have -to discov-
er how such a productive relationship was possible.
On the following pages I shall attempt to treat the Yahgan and
Alacaluf as populations closely regulated by, and adapted to, a very specific
ecological niche. Looked upon in this light, much of what has been described
as crude or prLimitive becomes part of a beautifully organized, highly adap-
tive form of behavior. This is not to say that these Indians did not have ex-
tremely simple cultures for there is no question that they did. All that I
hope to show Is that this simplicity was no more maladaptive than most as-
pects of our own behavior.
In talking about adaptation we must always remember that we are deal-
ing with a compromise. No population is perfectly adapted and cultural pat-
terns persist only because they manage to produce new generations of viable
offspring. Perhaps this compromise as seen among the Yahgan and Alacaluf or,
indeed, among all primitive cultures, strikes us as totally unsatisfactory
but this is only because we are used to something different. Certainly the
lack of precise control over the environment was the source of death, suffer-
ing, and just plain discomfort among all simple hunter-gatherers but many of
these cultures, like the Yahgan and Alacaluf, persisted for hundreds or even
thousands of years and allowed men to survive in extremely difficult environ-
ments. And from an ecological and evolutionary standpoint this is a measure
of their success.
71
Although the Yahgan and Alacaluf spoke unrelated languages there
seems to have been little more than this that separated them culturally. To-
gether, they occupied the rainy archipelago that stretches along the south-
western coast of South America from approximately 420S to the tip of Tierra
del Fuego. This entire long stretch of coastline is characterized by extreme-
ly similar terrain, climate, and rainfall along its entire extent. Within
this area, the Yahgan reamed the coast of Tierra del Fuego while the Alacaluf
lived north of the Straits of Magellanbut. there was some overlap in their
ranges.
The ent'ire archipelagic area is characterized by a mean annual tem-
perature that hovers somewhere between  80-?500F. There is very little varia-
tion in temperature so that extremes of below freezing or above 650F. are
very rare. Rainfall varies from place to place depending on the topography
but. it is uniformly high everywhere, ranging from 80 to over 200 inches per
yearq and Is a"stsributed uiiformly7 th'roughout the year. Violent storms and
high winds sour daflty and in the extreme south snow fa.ls occasionally. The
cloud corer is very low and is seldom broken so that sunny days are exception-
ally rare. As a general rule the clmate of the area has been correctly char-
acterized as cold, wet. dark, and exceedingly dismal.
The Andes rise almost vertically from the sea along the coast of
southern Chile so that the shoreline rises precipitously to 10,000-14,000
feet anid is broken only by steep canyons with small, rocky beaches at their
mouths0  There are countless islands packed closely together along the coast
which are really nothing more than the tops of mountains rising out of the
Pacific.
From ChIloeo Island to just south of the Taitao Peninsula most of the
land that is not vertical is covered with dense temperate rain forests with a
bewildering variety of plant species; but south of this, most of the species
reach the southern limits of their distributions. The forests become dense
stands of the Magellanic beech (Nothofa    betuloides) associated with only a
few other plant species,  Much ofmore exposed and level coastline is cov-
ered with bog-like communities called Magellanic Moorland characterized by an
almost complete absence of trees,
In both the forests and moorland there is an extreme scarcity of mam-
mals. Deer occur from the Taitao Peninsula to'Chiloe Island but the terrain
is so rugged that hunting was almost impossible. F'ar to the south along the
great inland channels of Tierra del Fuego the Yahgan extended their range out
upon the edge of the great plains. Here hunting was fairly important and
there was considerable cultural borrowing from the neighboring plains hunters,
the Ona.  Over most of the long coastline, however, the Indians were simply
not land hunters.
At certain times of the year edible berries, herbaceous plants, and
fungi were available and eaten by the Indians but vegetable material formed
only a minor portion of their diet0 In general, the land was exceedingly
sterile and the Indians devoted their undivided attention to the sea.
In sharp contrast to the land, the sea along the southern coast of
Chile abounds in life, There is an enormous invertebrate fauna in the litto-
72
ral zone, most of which was eaten by the Indians. Mussels are particularly
abundant, occurring in dense beds in the middle intertidal. Limpets and
snails also abound as do crabs, and from the low intertidal to a depth of
over 30 feet, there are enormous beds of sea urchins. There are large kelp
beds offshore which support a rich variety of fish, seals and sea lions are
common along the shores as well as numerous species of birds, and porpoises
and whales often enter the narrow channels between islands.
The general picture then, as far as man is concerned, is a hostile,
unproductive land mass and an extraordinarily productive marine environment.
It is the littoral zone, the edge of the sea uncovered twice a day, that is
most available to a people with a simple technology and it is to this zone
that Yahgan and Alacaluf culture was oriented.
These Indians ate nearly everything that they could gather off the
ocean floor. Most of this was gathered from the rocks at low tide but sea
urchins and crabs were speared from canoes with long poles and the women dove
in shallow water gathering invertebrates from the bottom. Mussels are the
most abundant large invertebrates in the intertidal and formed the major item
in the Indian's diet. Occasionally they would hunt birds, seals, or sea
lions but these were not routine events. Now and then a whale was washed a-
shore and this, too, was duly consumed. But looming above everything else
was the ubiquitous mussel, the staple food E   excellence.
Beaches where the Indians could camp were small and large numbers of
people would have rapidly exhausted the shellfish supply at any one of them.
However, the Indians were organized into small, nomadic extended families of
six to eight persons and one such unit could occupy a beach for a number of
days before the food supply would be exhausted. Apparently families moved
every two or three days so that beaches were probably deserted before they
had been completely decimated.
The littoral zone was a superb source of food for the Indians. A few
hours of collecting would supply most of the day's needs and if anyone became
really hungry, he had only to walk to the beach, gather some mussels or what-
ever else he could find, and return to the hut to cook his meal. The only
pressing necessity was to keep an abundant source of food within easy reach
and this was insured by never remaining in one place for very long and by col-
lecting in shallow water as well as in the intertidal. Aboriginal popula-
tions were probably exceedingly small, for reasons which we do not understand,
and there was little danger of exhausting the food supply. An extremely nour-
ishing high protein diet was, for all practical purposes, available in limit-
less quantities.
The extreme ruggedness of the land necessitated travel by sea. For
this purpose the Yahgan and Alacaluf used large bark canoes which were absurd-
ly leaky and fragile by our standards. However, the Indians kept to the
small channels between islands and seldom had to venture far into open water.
The large kelp beds kept the sea close to shore fairly calm so that the stormy
conditions out at sea did not hold for the area through which the Indians wan-
dered. Canoes were usually anchored offshore to kelp beds instead of being
beached and this added greatly to their life span. They were easy to build
with very simple tools and families sometimes kept reserve supplies of beech
73
bark weighted down in streams with stones so that the bark remained flexible
and could be used at once, The bark canoe was an adequate, though inelegant,
form of transportation made from readily available materials and probably car-
ried a family for many hundreds of miles0
The necessity for frequent travel by canoe had an enormous effect on
Yahgan and Alacaluf technology. Everything from tools to dwellings had to be
either carried by canoe with the family or discarded during moving and posses-
sions that had to be transported were kept to a bare minimum. The Indians
were experts at utilizing what was immediately at hand and made most of their
tools only when they were needed.
Dwellings were small, dome-shaped structures composed of a framework
of saplings covered with bark, sealskins, and ferns. Skins or slabs of bark
were carried in the canoe but the dwelling itself was built anew at each camp-
site and abandoned when the family moved.
The only permanent utensils were baskets and skin or bark buckets--
pctterywas unknown. The number of tools necessary for this simple economy
were very few indeed. Awls and wedges used for sewing skins and removing
bark from trees were made of bone. The cutting and scraping tool par excel-
lence was the shell of the chorro, a very large mussel (species unclear).
These were often hafted to a stone and could be ground to a razor-sharp edge
on a wet rock. Shell is soft and dulls easily but sharpening was no problem
and when the shell became too worn, it was simply discarded.
The Yahgan and Alacaluf made little use of stone tools. These were,
for the most part, unnecessary although very crude percussion-flaked axes
were occasionally produced. Only the southernmost Yahgan who hunted and had
contacts with the Ona made pressure-flaked projectile points. The only stone
implement found in every Indian campsite was a large, flat, worn stone used
for cracking shellfish and bones0
Tools used for hunting and gathering were the most elaborate items
produced by the Indians. The bow and arrow was used by some of the Yahgan
who hunted but spears of various types were found everywhere. Those with
barbed bone points were used for hunting seals and a very long type, with a
stellate wooden point, was used for spearing crabs and sea urchins on the
sea floor from canoes. Long wooden clubs were used in hunting and fighting,
pole snares were constructed for hunting birds, and wide-meshed nets were
sometimes used for seal hunting. The fishhook was unknown and fish were some-
times netted, sometimes trapped in tide pools, and occasionally lured to the
surface with a baited line and grabbed with the hands.
These Indians, then, traveled with little baggage and what they had
took little in the way of skill or craftsmanship to produce.
With waterproof, disposable dwellings, efficient canoes, and a simple
tool kit, the only remaining necessity for these nomadic hunter-gatherers was
fire. This could-have proven to be a problem in such an excessively wet envi-
ronment. However, the t     tree (Tepualia stipularis), which grows abundantly
in the areas of highest rainfall, possesses the unusual property of igniting
easily when it is damp and green and producing a bed of long lasting coals.
74
The Indians exploited this tree extensively and actual techniques of fire mak-
ing were very crude. Most families carried in their possession a waterproof
bag of sealskin or seal intestine containing some pieces of flint, pyrite,
and a bit of dried fungus which was used as tinder. However, concerted ef-
forts were made to keep fires burning continuously; they were never allowed
to go out inside of the dwellings and were transported on sod hearths from
camp to camp.
I have already mentioned that these Indians were crude and ineffec-
tive fishermen. Fish were seldom eaten and the Indians showed little inter-
est in them. This has bothered people a great deal although it should not
for fishing is a complex activity and there was a superabundance of food a-
vailable for gathering in the intertidal. Fish were an extremely inaccessi-
ble source of food considering the Indian's simple technology and were total-
ly unnecessary in a simple hunting and gathering economy.
The Yahgan and Alacaluf also went about stark naked regardless of
what the weather was like and yet anything but elaborate waterproof clothing
would have been worse than useless in constant rain. There is some evidence
that they were physiologically adapted to withstand cold (Holdgate 1961) and
they showed little evidence of discomfort in weather that was capable of kill-
ing most Europeans. Remember that they were also well endowed with body fat
and had the habit of smearing their bodies with oil, a practice well-known to
modern swimmers.
The preceding synopsis of Yahgan and Alacaluf culture, although brief
and somewhat biased, reveals that the stark simplicity of their way of life
can be related to at least two factors: the enormous productivity of the lit-
toral zone, and the demands that utilization of this placed upon them in
terms of tools and in terms of mobility. The effective exploitation of the
littoral required little in the way of complex tools and the pressures of ex-
treme nomadism, which always tend to minimize tool complexes, effectively pre-
vented this simple technology from expanding. The nomadism of these Indians
is clearly a highly adaptive form of behavior as long as we consider them as
exploiters of the large invertebrate fauna found between the high tide mark
and the ocean floor out to about 30 feet in depth. This was a highly special"
ized, not a primitive, economy and the Indian's relationship to this narrow
zone was immensely productive. They seem to have rarely, if ever, suffered
from hunger and this alone sets them apart from most primitive cultures.
I have mentioned that one measure of the success of a cultural pat-
tern-is the length of time during which it persists. There is some evidence
(Bird 1938, Lothrop 1928) that the shellfish gathering tradition is extremely
old in southern Chile. Both Bird and Lothrop have attempted to estimate the
age of shell heaps along Beagle Channel in southern Tierra del Fuego using en-
tirely different methods and both arrived at a figure of 1,800-2,000 years.
Although neither author places any great faith in his estimate, it is certain-
ly probable that a shellfish gathering tradition has existed in the area for
a very long time. This tradition is already present with the first inhabit-
ants of the shores of Beagle Channel and artifacts found in the lowest levels
of these shell middens differ only slightly from those left by the historic
Alacaluf. The Yahgan were very late arrivals (Bird 1938) and even they show
almost no change. in tool types up to the time when their way.of life was 'to-
tally disrupted by contacts with the western world.
There is no evidence that the coast between the Straits of Magellan
and Chiloe Island was ever inhabited by anyone but simple gatherers similar,
if not identical, to the historic Alacaluf (Bird 19383. -Unfortunately, there
are not even estimates for the antiquity of man in this area.
The homogeneity and stability of the cultural tradition in southern
Chile is an impressive phenomenon. The culture of the historic Yahgan and
Alacaluf seems to stretch back in an unbroken continuum to the earliest in-
habitants of the rainy archipelago that stretches from Chiloe to the tip of
Tierra del Fuego. Certainly this sort of stability and age indicates that
we are dealing with a highly adaptive way of life. However, another factor
influencing stability must have been extreme isolation.
There is little or no evidence of cultural contacts with peoples
north of.Chiloe until shortly before the arrival of the Europeans (Bird 1938)
and the Andes form an. impenetrable barrier to contacts with people to the
east except along the great inland channels in the extreme south. Here, the
only contacts would have been with nomadic, plains-living hunters such as the
historic Ona, Tehuelche, and Puelche, people with a level of technology
scarcely higher than that of the Yahgan or Alacaluf. This plains complex has
a history of over 8,000 years just north of the Straits of Magellan (Bird
1951, Emperaire et al 1963) and had little to offer shellfish gatherers.
There is no question that there were contacts between these two groups of'
Indians (Barth 1948).-. The point is that the Yahgan and Alacaluf had no knowl-
edge of technologies geared to the sea anry more complex than their own.
It is highly probable that the ancestors of the Yahgan and Alacaluf.
were themselves'very primitive people. If this is true thence can say that
the enviromnent influenced this cultural pattern in that it placed only cer-
tain resources at the Indian's disposal. A settled, fishing society might
have evolved but it did not. Instead, the people took to shellfish gather-
ing because this was within their capabilities while fishing was not. It may
have-been the level of technology of these early people, as much as anything
else, that determined what resources would be utilized. If this is so, then
the simplicity and stability of Yahgan and Alacaluf culture is as much an
historical as an ecological problem.
REFERENCES
AUER, V.
1960   The Quaternary history of Fuego-Patagonia. Proc. Royal Society,
Series B, 152:507-516.
BARTH, F.
19h8   Cultural development in southern South America:-? Yahgan and
Alakaluf vs. Ona and Tehuelche. Acta Americana 6:192-199.
BIRD, J. B.
1938   Antiquity and migrations of the early inhabitants of Patagonia.
Geographical Review XVIII:250-275.
76
BIRD, J. B.
1951   South American radiocarbon dates. American Antiquity XVII
(1, part 2):37-49.
BUTLAND, G. J.
1957   The human geography of southern Chile. Institute of British
Geographers, Publ. No. 24.
EMPERAJRE, J., A . LAMING-EMPERAIRE, and H. REICHLEN
1963   La Grotte Fell et autres sites de la Region volcanique de la
Patagonie Chilienne.  Journal de la Societe des Americanistes,
n.s., LII:.167-253.
GODLEY, E. J.
1960   The botany of southern Chile in relation to New Zealand and the
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HcLDGATE, M. WI
1961   Man and environment in the south Chilean islands.  Geographical
Review CXXVII:401-h61.
KNOX, G. A.
1960
KUSCHEL, G.
1960
LOTHROP, S.
1928
STEWARD, J.
1946
Littoral ecology and biogeography of the southern oceans. Proc.
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Terrestrial zoology in southern Chile. Proc. Royal Society,
Series B, 152:540-550.
K.
The Indians of Tierra del Fuego. Contributions, Museum of the
American Indian, No. 10, Heye Foundation.
H., ed.
Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. I, The Marginal Tribes.
Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institute.