The last Selk´nam were photographed by Salesian priests before their disappearance.
A Salesian museum in Punta Arenas keeps the graphic testimony of their last days.
Hidden behind a rock he considered his arrow holding his breath. Tied to a straight branch, the symmetrical tip balanced the weight of the weapon. But he was not alone anymore, other hunters covered in guanaco skins to resist the cold, which came after him, formed a deathly semi circle that was closing in gradually. Until the arrows rained down.
They caused damage and many guanacos perished. The stone tips were so sharp and symmetrical that it did not seem they were hand made. Converted into perfect deathly weapons, they were product of the knowledge of many generations of hunters that dated back to the Paleolithic era. It looked like prehistory, but it was the year 1900 in the South of Chile. The Selk´nam hunters prepared the still warm bodies of the camelidaes for the march and returned to the village. At a distance, several columns of smoke rose above the sparkling surge of the Straits of Magellan. They did not know it, but soon they would face their extinction. Because far from signifying more social justice, the new century would bring a holocaust to Tierra del Fuego.
In 1840 the shock of cultures was deathly for the so called Sons of Earth. With the slow but inexorable advance of colonization, the landowners gradually took over the lands of ethnic groups. Sheep become like white gold to the Europeans and occupy the territories where the guanacos grazed; therefore the natives cannot feed themselves anymore. Having no understanding of private property, they start to hunt sheep. The colonizers, on their part, retaliate by hunting natives. The white hunters, contracted by the powerful landowners, the new diseases and alcohol, brought by the Europeans, would wipe them out. In a few years, the extermination of the Aónikenk or Tehuelche, settled between the Santa Cruz River and the Straits of Magellan, in addition to 4 ethnic groups of Tierra del Fuego, the Selk´nam or Ona, the Kawéskar or Alacacalufe, the Haush or Manekenk, and the Yámana or Yagán, became a reality.
Aware of the inevitable, armed with heavy photographic cameras, tripods and accessories, two Salesian priests registered the final years of the last native families. Maria Alberto de Agostini and Martín Gusinde rescued their daily life and traditions in hundreds of plaques considered an anthropological treasure, an invaluable testimony in the care of the Museo Maggiorino Borgatello, in Punta Arenas.
I had brought the necessary for the developing and with the darkness of night I finished the plaques and the next morning I let the curious ones see the negatives. Soon they called me by the name Mink’, which translates as The Shadow Hunter, or image hunter, like paraphrasing the photographer, and since then I have not lost it.
With the remembrance of these memories of father Martín Gusinde, called The Shadow Hunter, I walk through the vigorous Chilean city of Punta Arenas which colors itself in shades of ochre during a magnificent austral sunset. The sun warms although the wind roars. From a hill that dominates the city of Punta Arenas life animates itself after the long Patagonian winter. Below, clean and well traced streets and avenues extend, colorful, lined by the Straits of Magellan sailed by ships of various sizes. In the main square, the monument in honor of Ferdinand Magellan gathers tourists.
This mass that evokes the discovery of the pass between two oceans, includes the image cast in bronze of a gigantic Selk´nam Indian that shows the most touched foot in the world. It is a local custom that each traveler that intends to come back to this remote city must touch the famous foot to see their dream come true. Before its remarkable big toe, bright for all the handling, are prostrated Americans and Europeans, Asians, Latinos, Chileans, sweethearts, children, and even soldiers, in a surrealist manifestation of international acknowledgement. Behind are beautiful avenues under the shade of lines of tall trees which bent uniformly due to the mandate of the tenacious wind. Inside the Museo Marggiorino Borgatello, the collection of the Salesian photographer-priests gives life to the artifacts and historical relics that were rescued from forgetfulness. The Salesian brothers have been a good example for the people of the new South. They know memory requires stimulation to awaken the past, so that the remembrances serve as a guide in the search of a better future.
Therefore, in the display cabinets and walls of the aged museum, like an act of magic, but thanks to photography, the spirits of the Sons of Earth come back to life: hunters on the lookout, proud families, the heat of the huts, painted bodies, shamans, games of force, customs in sepia, century’s old looks, and hundreds of faces. |
)
)
)
