Tehuelche people

As Patagonians ( from the Spanish patagon about Großfüßer ) is called the southern Indian tribes in South America in the area of Patagonia, now part of Argentina and Chile. The name comes from the explorers who traveled the region in the 16th century and were impressed by the large footprints of these Indians. The southern groups among them who live on the island of Tierra del Fuego are also called Fuegians.

The ethnic groups

The Patagonians were ethnically not uniform but consisted of several strains that significantly differed in language and culture for part of each other. In particular, differences between the tehuelche on the mainland and the north of Tierra del Fuego and the Seenomadenvölkern the area find the Beagle Channel. The Southern groupings of Het (also called Querandíes or Pampas ), which were the tehuelche very similar and in the 18th century took their culture, were included in part in the group of Patagonians.

The tehuelche included four larger groups. The Gennakenk or northern tehuelche lived in what is now the western province of Buenos Aires, Río Negro, the Aonikenk in the area of the Río Chubut, and the Selk'nam (also Ona ) and Haush (also Mánekenk ) in the interior of Tierra del Fuego. They hunted with bow and arrow guanacos, small game and birds.

The Seenomadenvölkern the Yámana and Kawesqar included (also Alakaluf ), the nomadisierten with canoes along the coast of Tierra del Fuego and the southern Patagonian islands. They lived by catching fish and seals and from the collecting bird eggs and shells.

Despite the differences in lifestyle, there were mingling among two ethnic groups, particularly between the sub- groupings of the Haush and Yámana.

History

While the tehuelche in northern Patagonia first in the course of Araukanisierung in the 18th century took on the language and culture of the Mapuche from the Andes and were subjected to in the 19th century in several campaigns by the new Argentine state by force, the Fuegians end of the 19th century were prospectors and sheep ranchers tracked and almost completely wiped out by introduced diseases and systematic genocide by European immigrants. To the extinction of Selk'nam as an ethnic unit also contributed to the practice to take away their children away and to grow up in ( Salesian ) schools as cultural " whiteness". The descendants of the last Yámana, Selk'nam and Kawesqar have been merged into the non-Indian population of Tierra del Fuego.