I have mentioned that the Tehuelches hunt in pairs. The companion of the Indian who has thrown the bolas then leaps to the ground and despatches the guanaco. Meantime his comrade has dashed forward at the tail of the herd, and has probably secured another animal. The dogs, too, do their part, and as the storm of the chase sweeps across the pampa, it leaves the ground in its path dotted with the yellow-brown forms of the slain.
The chase tails itself out for many miles, and may be followed over desolate leagues marked by lines of dead guanacos and dropped boleadores which have failed to carry home. I should be afraid to say how many animals are killed at one of these singular battues. To see the Indian hunt the guanaco is to see the art of rough-riding exemplified. How they gallop! Down one sheer barranca, or cliff, and up another. The roar of loosened stone behind them. The guanaco jink and dodge and break back, always making for the highest ground in the vicinity.
The dexterity with which the horses of the hunters keep their feet is truly wonderful. They will go at full gallop anywhere, and hardly ever fall or miss their footing. There is, however, one thing which they universally dislike, and that is jumping in any of its forms. Here and there in some parts of Patagonia the pampa is cut and scored with fissures a few feet in width. To have your horse stop dead, both feet together, on the edge of one of these and violently shy away at an acute angle is no uncommon experience. Generally, however, a certain amount of inducement and coercion at length takes them over in a complicated buck.
When the chase has run itself out, the lean dogs are fed upon the grosser parts, the pelts of the young are pulled off, and the meat, such of it as is wanted, is cargoed or packed upon the horses, and the hunting-party jogs back to the shelter of the wigwams, made from the skins their fathers and their grandfathers slew before the white men began to move southward and to overrun the land.
The Indians kill no bird save the ostrich, and this is a curious fact, because the lagoons and pools literally swarm with great flocks of upland geese (Chloephaga magellanica), which are very fair eating. Perhaps the reason why they spare the geese arises from the fact that they have no weapons suitable for killing them. On one occasion when I shot a brace of geese, the Indians seized upon them and pronounced them "good." Also, they kill few animals but the guanaco and the puma. Had the guanaco a reasonable amount of fat upon it, the life of the Indians would be idyllic, but in this the guanaco fails. Of lean meat he supplies plenty, for he is a large beast, but though he lives in a land where sheep grow fat and well-liking, the long-necked Patagonian llama retains his leanness and his running condition.
Although it may be slightly outside the province of this book, I cannot help contrasting the very different methods employed by the Onas of Tierra del Fuego, who are after all only separated from the Tehuelches of Patagonia by the narrow Straits of Magellan, in hunting the same animal. The Onas do not use horses, and kill the guanaco with bows and arrows. When they perceive a herd, they surround it as the Tehuelches do, but, of course, the circle is on a much smaller scale. It is their aim to remain invisible to their quarry, for which purpose, during their stalk, they are in the habit of wrapping themselves in the skins of the animals which they have formerly killed. Once the herd is surrounded, it is with the same accompaniment of screams and shouts that the hunters rush in to secure their prey.
The dissimilarities between the Tehuelches and the Onas are numerous.[17] While the Tehuelches are peaceful, the Onas are warlike. There is a story current that the only white man who has ever lived in the very primitive dwelling of boughs, which are all the Onas have to shelter them from a bitter climate, was a Scotchman whom the Indians had captured. He was with them three weeks, and his face was adorned by a singularly luxuriant crop of orange whiskers. The Onas are reported to have amused themselves by pulling these out in instalments by the roots. Might not some anthropologist base a treatise upon "The Artistic Perceptions of the Onas of Tierra del Fuego" upon this occurrence?
BEAUTIES OF TIERRA DEL FUEGO