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colour; their countenance is dull, and devoid of expression. For protection against the rigours of these inclement regions, their clothing is miserably suited; being only the skin of a seal, or sea-otter, thrown over the shoulders, with the hairy side outward.
    They also smeared themselves with seal oil and blubber, which “combined with the filth of their persons, produced,” to Captain King, “a most offensive smell.” This seemed manifest lowliness, the benighted savage rolling in filth. The Englishmen didn’t realize it was an effective weatherproofing, something perfectly suited to the climate. No contemporary clothing, no oiled or painted canvas, could keep the densely wet weather of Tierra del Fuego from reaching the body. The English sailors’ habit of wrapping themselves in clammy, moisture-retaining layers ensured constant misery: “Our discomfort in an open boat wasvery great, since we were all constantly wet to the skin,” they complained.
    Stokes carefully noted the natives’ diet—shellfish, seal, sea-otter, porpoise and whale, wild berries, and certain seaweeds—and the fact that they weren’t particular.
    Former voyagers have noted the avidity with which they swallowed the most offensive offal, such as decaying seal-skins, rancid seal, and whale blubber, &c. When on board my ship, they ate or drank greedily whatever was offered to them, salt-beef, salt-pork, preserved meat, pudding, pea-soup, tea, coffee, wine or brandy—nothing came amiss.
    Of the Fuegians’ typical shelter, which Europeans generally called “wigwams” and characterized as “the last degree of wretchedness,” Stokes again was not content with second-hand descriptions but brought to them his own accurate eye.
    To their dwellings have been given, in various books of voyages, the names of huts, wigwams, &c; but, with reference to their structure, I think old Sir John Narborough’s term for them will convey the best idea to an English reader; he calls them “arbours.” They are formed of about a couple of dozen branches, pointed at the larger ends, and stuck into the ground round a circular or elliptical space, about ten feet by six; the upper ends are brought together, and secured by tyers of grass, over which is thrown a thatching of grass and seal-skins, a hole being left at the side as a door, and another at the top as a vent for smoke.
    In other words, like the North American Indians (as Europeans, with the lingering cultural memory of the motivations of the first westbound explorers, still referred to aboriginal peoples everywhere west of the Atlantic), the Fuegians had evolved methods and techniques well-adapted to their environment andclimate. But this was rarely appreciated by Europeans, who invariably interpreted what they saw as squalor and ungodly sloth.
    To a degree greater than anyone else on first acquaintance, Stokes saw in them some of the sweeter traits of the universal human family.
    Their manner towards their children is affectionate and caressing. I often witnessed the tenderness with which they tried to quiet the alarms our presence at first occasioned, and the pleasure which they showed when we bestowed upon the little ones any trifling trinkets…. I took a fancy to a dog lying near one of the women…and offered a price for it…. She declined to part with it…. at last my offers became so considerable, that she called a little boy out of the thick jungle (into which he had fled at our approach), who was the owner of the dog. The goods were shown to him, and all his party urged him to sell it, but the little urchin would not consent.
    They were all too human. And the history of their relationship with the technologically advanced white men who came from over the horizon followed the same ineluctable course it did everywhere else. Years of trading with sealers had given them a taste for, in the beginning, beads and mirrors, and