The Onas are also a tall people, although not equalling in height my friends the Tehuelches, and their physical development is less conspicuously remarkable. The Ona woman does not, as does the Tehuelche china, form an attachment to a white suitor, appearing to have no desires outside her own race and people, but under certain circumstances the women have shared the hearthstone of the foreigner. Polygamy is allowed and practised among them. There is something of the spirit which characterises the Gipsy of Europe about this people; they are quite ready to take all they can get from the alien, while they at the same time maintain a bitter rancour against the hand that gives. But this is not, as it is in the case of the Gipsies, the continuance of an original dislike and implacability, but rather the result of the infamous ill-faith which leavened the dealings of the very earliest visitors to the coasts of Tierra del Fuego.
I must confess that all my sympathies are on the side of the primitive races, who on coming into contact with the white man suffer those outrages on their best feelings which, I am sorry to say, are only too common. You must understand, however, that I in no way refer to the settlers of this generation. My remarks must be taken to refer to the first pioneers. At the present day—so Burbury, who has had a great experience of Tierra del Fuego, informed me—the Indians there are treacherous and absolutely implacable, and do endless harm in their periodical raids upon the "white guanaco," as they call the sheep. They do this not only when hunger presses them, but at all times out of a spirit of revenge. Sometimes they drown the sheep and leave them in the ice, where they keep good for weeks, during which time the Onas feast on them.
Patagonia bears upon its length the clear-cut and long-drawn initial of the Tehuelche race. By this I mean the Indian trail, which can be followed from water to water, from good camp to good camp, stretching from Punta Arenas in the south to Lake Buenos Aires in the north and beyond it. Up and down this trail and along others, less extended, generations of Indians have wandered with their wives and children, their tents and horses. We struck it when travelling south from Lake Buenos Aires, in the early January of 1901. It was hard to distinguish the Indian road from any parallel series of guanaco-tracks, which here line the country in numbers, and, indeed, it was only by keeping a sharp look-out for the hoof-prints of horses that we were able to follow the trail at all. It runs along under the Cordillera at a varying distance of about twenty or thirty miles from their bases. It was a sad remark that an Indian made to us while talking about the ancient wanderings of his people. "Once," he said, "we had the sea upon the one side of us, and upon the other the Cordillera. But this is not so now. The white man is ever advancing upon one side and the Cordillera remains ever unchanging upon the other. Soon there will be no place for us; yet once the land was ours."
One would imagine that a people so dependent on their horses for the very necessities of life would give attention and care to the breeding and improvement of the stock. But this is far from being the case. The Tehuelches appear to be, like other far less intelligent races of uncivilised peoples, incapable of much forethought. They live for to-day and make little provision for to-morrow. As a case in point, they are allowing their horses to become very deteriorated. The animals are, almost without exception, to use a Spanish term, mañero, which means of a spoiled temper. In some localities they have been crossed with the horses of the settlers which have a strain of English blood, and the result is animals of spirit and of character, but muy mañero. The Tehuelches prize white horses, and overos, or piebalds, exceedingly. The backs of their horses are generally badly galled, but this is no matter for surprise, as they often ride upon a sheepskin flung anyhow across the beast. The method of breaking-in or taming is simple and severe in the extreme. It consists of leaping on a raw colt and galloping him to exhaustion. One reason why their horses are falling below level certainly is that the Indians have a foolish trick of riding two- and three-year-olds both hard and far. A colt of this age once fairly "cooked" by an over-long ride will never be of very much use afterwards.
And yet these people are peculiarly dependent upon their horses. They will not walk ten yards if they can ride them. And they have undoubtedly carried the art of riding to the last perfection. I never knew what riding really meant until I went to Patagonia and saw the Indians on horseback. We once asked an Indian what he could do if he were left on the pampa without his horses. "Sit down," he said. This man, however, was not a Tehuelche but a Pampa Indian.
SONS OF THE PAMPA
The horses are far from large, the average running to about thirteen hands, but they are wiry, untiring beasts, and some show extraordinary speed. The manner in which they carry the heavy well-developed Indians is wonderful. They are entirely fed on grass. When the camp is made, they are simply turned out to graze upon the pampa, where frequently the grass is sparse and poor enough, though near many of the Indian camping-grounds good vegas of rich grass exist. In winter, of course, the tropillas become very thin and in poor condition, but at that season they have infinitely less work to do, as there is hardly any hunting, and the camp is usually stationary for the coldest months.
The hounds of the Indians are something like our lurcher breed. In the tents they lie about among the rugs and bedding. They are irreclaimable thieves and very cowardly. A good guanaco hound is, however, of very great value, for a pair of accomplished hounds, skilled in the chase, represent a capital upon which an entire family can live.