Through the Heart of Patagonia

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

The women are not, according to our European ideas, beautiful, and such comeliness as they may sometimes possess in youth blossoms and fades quickly. They are, however, strong, and much of the camp work falls to their share. The older women can boast of a brand of ugliness all their own. Age to these ladies brings several vices in its train. Most noticeable is a craving for strong waters, a weakness from which the younger women are entirely free.

The morality of the Tehuelches is, on the whole, admirable. Unfaithfulness in the wife is rare, and not often bitterly revenged. A point as regards the morality of the women is to my mind rather luminous. While the younger chinas are unexceptionable in their moral virtues, the older women cannot be so highly commended. They are rather apt to wander from the stricter paths of decorum. When the husband of one of these elderly houris dies, as soon as the due period of mourning is past, the bereaved one will take up with any male in her tribe for either a longer or a shorter period. For ugliness sheer and unrivalled these grandmothers of the tribes stand alone. Also, as they get on in years, these ladies often run to fat. I remember one immense woman in the toldos on the pampas between Lake Argentino and Gallegos, who had put on flesh in a manner and to an extent almost unbelievable.

The younger women, while the flush of girlhood is still upon them, possess a certain comeliness which I can only describe by the adjectives "savage" and "stolid." Yet the abundant coarse black hair hanging round the heavily quiet faces, in which the features, though flattened, are still slightly aquiline, the wide-open, patient eyes, the healthful colour, and the strong, white, even teeth, which their slow smiles disclose to you, make them, on the whole, a personable race.

The half-bloods, as is usual, often possess real beauty, the alien strain giving them that vivacity which the pure race seems to lack.

Some of the pictures show an unsightly slit of the lip in the case of a few paisanos.[8] This hare-lip is by no means universal, but is an hereditary peculiarity that appears in many of the members of one special household. The arrival of a stranger in the camp makes the women retire shyly within themselves, and it is only by chance—as it is in the case of wild animals—that the new-comer ever sees the unaffected and natural character shine out. When in contact with whites the Tehuelche man also becomes reserved, the whole expression of his countenance changes, and he is very suspicious of being laughed at, a point on which he is very susceptible, and which he deeply resents.

I cannot but think that the constant accusations of uncleanliness that have been brought against the Tehuelche Indians are due to the single fact that their dogs are allowed to live in the toldos. The result in a country where scab is common may be left to the imagination. But, apart from the crawling things which inhabit his toldos, the Indian is fairly cleanly, bathing each day and swimming in the lakes and lagoons. The women make excellent mothers, and the father is inordinately proud of his offspring, especially of his sons. Of how many races can so many good things be truthfully said?

They have a singular custom of bandaging the heads of infants in such a manner as to produce a flattening of the back of the skull. It might be worth the while of physiologists to go deeper into the matter, with a view to discovering how far this alteration in the brain-space determines the character of the individual operated upon. Interesting results might thus be obtained and some vexed problems solved.

A certain stage in the life of each girl is celebrated by a festivity in the camp. An ornamented toldo is put up temporarily for the girl's occupation, and the young men of the tribe march round it singing while the women howl, probably with a view to exorcising any evil spirit who may be lingering about the camp.[9] The ceremony is followed by a feast, and the evening winds up with a dance. The men alone take part in this, and it consists in circling round the fire, pacing sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. A few dance at a time, accompanying their movements with a constant bowing or nodding of the head, which is adorned with tufts of ostrich feathers. When one party is tired out another takes its place.

Wives, of course, are bought and sold, but when a lady is purchased by a suitor whom she happens to dislike, there is trouble for the bridegroom, and conjugal obedience is only enforced after struggles, of which the not infrequent result is that the mark of the lady's teeth remains permanently upon her lord.

The price of a wife varies, as must be expected in the natural course of things. Strangely enough, a girl's value often depends upon the number of her brethren, who must receive two horses apiece. To buy a bride with means or rather animals of her own, an heiress in fact, who comes of well-to-do people, as much as a hundred mares have been given—or shall I say paid.[10]