To begin the argument, it must be said that the missionaries, who had no interest in making the untutored Yahgan appear in a better light than that in which he was found, say that he was a polite and affectionate husband and father, faithful in the care of widows and orphans, a generous neighbor, and an ardent lover. Food was abundant, and hard labor rarely necessary. He delighted in what civilized people call the higher pleasures, the joys of good stories, witty sayings, quick repartee, and he had almost unlimited opportunity for cultivating the faculties which gave him greatest pleasure. How could such a man be hideous?
The answer to the allegation made by the explorers who called the Yahgan so is not far to seek. They never saw the Yahgan. They only saw the coating of paint and whale oil that covered him, and because this was offensive to them they called him hideous. The Yahgan when washed clean, did not look like the Yahgan clothed in whale oil, smoke from the ever-present fire, ashes, powdered iron ore, pipe clay—what not. When washed he was not black; he was not even copper colored. He was as white as the quarter bloods one sees in the Cherokee nation and as well featured. The young women were very like those of mixed blood who grace the halls of the female seminary at Tahlequa, the Cherokee capitol. The modern tourist camera proves it. Yahgans had straight black hair, great dark eyes, full red lips, breasts like a Greek Venus, rounded limbs, and small hands and feet. Better yet, they had a merry, hearty laugh that was irresistibly infectious. They flushed with pleasure, and blushed and drooped as if from a blow when shamed.
If ever the moans of outraged Indian maidenhood were charged up by the Recording Angel against the brutality of the civilized man, it was when the sufficient arm that protected the Yahgan girl was withdrawn through a misapplication of the gospel of peace.
Just how the Yahgan maiden lost that protecting arm—just how it happened that the forecastle brutes came to be free to go and come as they pleased among the Yahgan homes—will be told in the next chapter, but what that arm was is found in the tales of seamen cast on these shores in the old days, or caught napping there when seeking fuel or water for their ships.
When a band of Yahgans saw a crew of white men ashore in former times, their course of action was governed entirely by the numbers of the whites, or, rather, by the comparative strength of the two parties. If the whites were stronger, the Indians were peaceable; when it was safe to do so, the Indians set out to exterminate all the whites but one. Leaping into their canoes some of the Indians would paddle out to cut off retreat toward the sea, and when they were in place, the rest would rush down on the seamen, and if possible save all alive for the time being. Then all the clan gathered about the captives and selected one of the whites—saved him alive, but forced him to witness the dying struggles of the rest. Very often those doomed to death were made to stand in a row facing the one that was saved, that he might the better witness their despairing faces and see the blood gush from their wounds. Eventually the one who was saved was taken to the Straits of Magellan, and there placed on board the first ship that appeared. It was perfectly plain that a man from each crew was thus sent back to the whites that he might tell other whites of the fate that befell all foreigners who landed in Yahgan land. They wanted the whites to keep away from them, and they took a most effectual means to keep them away. With certain death staring in the face, any crew that was outnumbered by the natives, even the sealers, took care to avoid going among the Yahgans. The Yahgan's deliberate ferocity—ferocity that was exercised with a purpose—was the sufficient protection of the Yahgan maidens.
As has been said, the Yahgans had an abundance of food in the old days. The cold waters about Cape Horn swarmed with whales. So numerous were the fur seals that one sealing schooner got a "first knock down" on one island of 11,000 head. The hair seal, the otter, and the sea lion were found by the thousand. Swans, geese, ducks, penguins, gulls, beat the air and ploughed the waters in uncounted hosts. There were fish in the sea and guanacos on the land. For a vegetable food there was "a bright yellow fungus," "elastic and turgid," that had "a mucillaginous, slightly sweet taste, with a faint smell like that of a mushroom." There were wild currants and strawberries that tasted more like a raspberry than like its northern namesake. There was a berry that grew on a thorny bush (berberis). But the mainstay of the Yahgan was the shell-fish. Mussels and clams covered every rock under water, and these were alone sufficient in number and in food qualities to preserve life for long periods.
The explorers say the Yahgans ate guanaco meat raw. The Rev. Thomas Bridges denies this. He says, in a lecture on the Yahgans, prepared for delivery before white folks:
They toasted whale or seal blubber on pointed sticks stuck in the ground, and caught the oil in large mussel shells placed underneath. As these filled they poured the oil into bladders for future use. They dried out fish fat by putting it in large shells and placing heated stones or shells on it. They cooked large birds whole by burying them in the coals with hot stones placed inside. They baked eggs by placing them, after a small hole had been made in each shell, on end close to the embers and turning them from time to time. They uniformly ate the blood of animals, but always cooked it in shells first. I have never seen or heard of the Yahgans eating any kind of meat or fish raw except certain kinds of limpets. I have occasionally heard of their heating water by dropping hot stones into it, but they did not cook their vegetable food. In winter, however, they warmed the frozen fungi that formed a part of their diet.
A thousand other interesting facts and characteristics of this long-despised tribe remain untold here.
There was their habit of carrying dry bird's down to catch the spark when they struck fire with the iron ore they found on one island only.