Ona Hunter Ready for Action.
It has never fallen to my lot to listen to a language so odd, so strikingly peculiar, as that of the Ona. Some of my companions on the Belgica used to amuse themselves at my expense by declaring that from a distance the talk of a group of Onas was like that of a group of Englishmen. To this I have protested, for that statement is certainly a libel upon English. This might be said, with considerable truth, of the Yahgan tongue, which is smooth and easy, but of the grunting, choking, spasmodic talk of the Onas it is decidedly untrue. Many of the words are not difficult of pronunciation, nor is the construction of sentences hard, but in every fifth or sixth word there is a sound impossible of reproduction by any one who has not had years of practice. These sounds offer sudden breaks in the flow of words and the speaker, by efforts which suggest the getting of sounds from the stomach, struggles for something far down in his throat. He hacks, and coughs, and grunts, distorting his face in the most inhuman manner momentarily, and then passes on to the next stumbling block, or hot potato, or whatever it is which makes the poor mortal suffer such tortures of speech. I always felt like giving an Ona an emetic when I heard him talk.
Like all the American aborigines the Onas feed principally upon meat, and this meat was, in former years, obtained from the guanaco. The guanaco roamed about in large herds upon the pampas and grassy lowlands; regions now in use as sheep-farms. The guanaco, like the Indian, is forced to the barren interior mountains, where life is a hard struggle against storms and barrenness and perennial snows. Owing to the present greater difficulty of hunting these animals and their reduced numbers, the Ona has taken most naturally to the sheep which have been brought to occupy these lands. That the sheep are owned by other men is a fact not easily recognised by Indians, to whom the world of Fuegian wilderness has always been free. The many thousands of guanaco blanco, as the Onas call sheep, grazing peacefully upon the Indian hunting-grounds, make a picture full of irresistible temptation, as the aborigines, hungry and half naked, look from icy mountain forests down over the plains. Shall we call them thieves if, while their wives and children and loved ones are starving, they boldly descend and, in the face of Winchester rifles, take what to them seems a product of their own country?
Unfortunately, the Indians have had so many causes for revenge against the white invaders, that they no longer capture sheep, as they did primarily, to satisfy the pangs of hunger, but to obtain vengeance. The wholesale manner in which they do this, however, would make a beggar of an ordinary farmer in a single night. In the neighbourhood of Useless Bay they have been known to round up two thousand sheep in one raid, and they seldom now take less than a few hundred at a time. While stopping at a farm on the Rio Grande I had an opportunity of being in close proximity to this kind of warfare. Two Indians came in and asked for an interview with the chief of the farm. The man in charge was a bright young fellow who knew the Indians very well. He treated the delegation kindly, fed and clothed them, and listened to their story.
A Bull Sea-Lion at Rest.
(Otaria Jubata.)
Den of Sea-Lions, Staten Island.