Yaghan People - The Early Yaghans

The Early Yaghans

The Yahgan may have been driven to this inhospitable area by enemies to the north but were famed for their complete indifference to the bitter weather around Cape Horn. Although they had fire and small domed shelters, they routinely went about completely naked in the frigid cold and biting wind of Tierra del Fuego, and swam (women only) in its 48-degree-south waters. They would often sleep in the open completely unsheltered and unclothed while Europeans shivered under their blankets. A Chilean researcher claimed their average body temperature was warmer than a European's by at least one degree.

Yaghans established many settlements within Tierra del Fuego; for example there is a significant Yaghan archaeological site at Wulaia Bay, which C. Michael Hogan terms the Bahia Wulaia Dome Middens.

But the Yahgan, who never numbered more than 3,000 individuals, were decimated by diseases brought by Westerners. They allegedly became sick immediately if the missionaries persuaded them to put on some clothes. In the 1920s some were resettled on Keppel Island in the Falkland Islands in an attempt to preserve the tribe, as described by E. Lucas Bridges in Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948), but continued to die off. The second-to-last full-blooded Yaghan, Emelinda Acuña, died in 2005. The last full-blooded Yahgan is "Abuela" Cristina Calderón. She is also the last native speaker of the Yahgan language.