Welcome to the Kawésqar Region. Here you will find interesting information about this Chilean Indigenous People.
The region contains four main subjects: People (History, Social Organization, environment), Language (Gramma, Vocabulary), Customs (Spiritual World, Rituals, Mythology) and Art. Use the Interactive Map to take an animated tour of this people´s region. The teachers and students will find contents (texts and images) that be able for Printing.
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The nomads of the ocean, Kawésqar and Yagáns people, physically were short, long arms and strong people. Their legs, however, were shorter and weaker.
The bodies of these Fueguian canoeists had adapted to the hunting and harvesting of marine products.
Their main activities, rowing, hunting, or diving, required greater strength in the arms and torso than in the legs.
As an average, men measured 1,60 meters and women, 1,47 meters.
Their height was one of the main differences with the Patagonian hunters: the Aonikenk (Tewelches) and Selk'nam (Onas) people could be up to two meters high.
The canoes were called Kájef and were made of bark, with tools of bone and stone.
The building technique was as follows: they flattened the bark under the water, laying great stones on top of it.
To achieve the required form, they softened them with fire.
The bark was sewn in spirals, with vegetal strips that allowed the assembly of the pieces.
A compact mixture, made with roots and mud, was used as caulking for the canoe.
They had several types of harpoons and lances, some with detachable tips that were let loose after striking the animal.
Hand stones, garrottes and small boleadoras, were their main weapons for marine hunting.
Among their tools, the three-pronged harpoon for fishing may be mentioned. In order to cut meat and firewood, they used large sharp mussel shells ».
The cold and dry climate of the Austral Patagonia, was not always so harsh. According to paleo-environmental studies, this same territory was warmer and more humid during a long period of time (between 6,000 and 1,000 BC).
Since 3,000 B.C., the climate is supposed to have begun to change, becoming less warm and humid and more cold and dry, until reaching the present conditions.
Guanacos, red foxes, cururos and a great diversity of birds, are only a part the native fauna found in the territory.
Fueguino hunters took advantage of the roots, diverse fungi and wild fruits provided by the forest and the steppe.
The chroniclers left accounts of these nomadic marine people in their stories and testimonies:
« They have no houses nor towns, they have canoes made of the bark of cypresses and other trees. In which the women and children travel, and with thin branches and the bark of trees that they bring in their canoes, where ever they disembark they build small shelters, to protect them from water and the snow. We did not see any weapons...»
Ladrillero, 1880.
On the other hand the chronicler, Diego de Rosales, (1877), describes the Kawésqar canoes:
« They are made of bark, sewn with whale nerves, on top of one another, like a shell...»
Layers of animal skin were the only clothes used by the kawésqar.
There were two types of layers: a rigid one of sealskin, made of a single piece of leather, and another looser and enveloping, made of several sewn skins.
Necklaces of seashells and molluscs or beads of polished bone, was the adornment of the women.
They also braided fine cords by hand.
The Kawésqar painted their bodies with a mixture of coloured dirt and fat of seals; black, red and
white lines were drawn.
This painting, besides being an adornment, it also protected their skin from the cold and frozen wind.
Lautaro gave military training to his fellow Kawésqar and made them work on improving their living conditions.
After a month he returned to Santiago and remained in the capital for two more years. He married a Chilean nurse and, in 1949, he returned with his wife to his native land.
In Puerto Edén he took charge of the radio station, while she took care of the policlinic.
One day something unusual happened: Lautaro disappeared in company of a Kawésqar woman. He had escaped from civilisation in a canoe to return to the nomadic life. Other kawésqar followed, and under his direction they installed a new indigenous community in San Pedro. Once there they hunted sea lions and otter and sold the fine pelts.
During three years the Kawésqar returned to their old way life as organised nomadic hunters under the guidance of a chief.
At the beginning of 1953 Lautaro along with the other Kawésqar, drowned in Puerto Calatur, the estuary of the Baker River. It was a misfortune for these people and the survivors returned to Puerto Edén.
The first inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego arrived from the north of the American continent and due to the end of the last ice age, they could travel by land, until reaching the South end of the continent, at the Strait of Magallanes.
The oldest signs of human inhabitants in Tierra del Fuego are located in the archaeological site of Marazzi, discovered in 1960, that has established two dates of human presence: one dating from 7,640 BC and a more recent one dated at 3,600 B.C.
According to the earliest findings of this important site, during a first stage, its inhabitants would have been mainland hunters, since there were boledoras and the remains of terrestrial animals whose age was determined by the Carbon 14 method.
To the south of the Gulf of Penas, in the Messier Channel, the Wellington, Serrano and Gueyeneco Islands are located. After crossing the canal called Angostura Inglesa, Wellington Island is reached; a small barren island that hides the small cove where Puerto Edén is located. This is a small bay surrounded by high mountains with abundant vegetation on the lower skirts. Puerto Edén has a meteorological station belonging to the Chilean Navy, a Salesian mission and a group of cabins where the modern day Kawésqar live.
In 1940, in the days of Chilean President Don Pedro Aguirre Cerda, a young Kawésqar of Puerto Edén, about ten years of age and very intelligent, was taken to Santiago to study in the Chilean Air Force Academy.
The idea was to civilise him and return him to his place of origin so that he might help with the progress of his community.
His was named Lautaro Edén Wellington. In 1947, Lautaro - godson of President Aguirre Cerda - returned to Puerto Edén on vacation as a mechanic sergeant major of aviation.
Like the Yagán people, the Kawésqar people reflected in specific words each marine species, bacause of its sensibility to the environment.
For example, the different types from marine ducks in Spanish are distinguished by the last name that take, whereas kawésqar it individualizes them with a single word for each species:
Anteojillo duck: qarqáyes
Barrero duck: wasána/ qaltalk
Lile Duck: ayyárak
Quetro duck: qárwes
Flying duck: yérye
When somebody in the community became seriously ill, after being cared for by the healers, the person was left alone in his/her final moments. He was left in solitude for several hours until he exhaled his last breath. Soon the body was deposited in a flexed and lateral position on a white cloth, between four beams. Later the body was set to sea in a canoe with stones so that the body returned to the marine depths. The bodies could also be deposited in some rookery or within a cavern.
Among their remedies are included the breaking of a lance over the back of the patient and squeezing the ill part of the body, then sucking and finally blowing it towards the sky.