The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 146

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146

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

Wonders. of Transforming Grace.

THE PATAGONIANS AND FUEGIANS.

When Christian missionaries first came in con-
tact with the Patagonians, they were filthy beyond
belief. They lived in wigwams or skin tents when
they were not on the march and recognized the
authority of no country. Even more degraded than
the Patagonian Indians were the Fuegians. By
those who knew them they were looked upon as the
lowest type of human beings. They were disgust-
ingly dirty, wore scarcely any clothing even in the
coldest weather, and lived on shell-fish, seaweed,
and rotten whale-flesh. The carcass of a whale was
to them a treat, and what they could not eat they
would bury for future use.

This is what Charles Darwin, the noted nat-

uralist, had to say of the Fuegians: “The different
tribes, when at war, are cannibals. From the con-
current, but quite independent testimony of a boy
taken by Mr. Low and of Jemmy Button (a Fuegian
chief), it is certainly true that, when pressed in
winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old
women before they kill the dogs. The boy, being
asked by Mr. Low why they did this, answered,
‘Doggies catch otters, old women no.’ This boy
described the manner in which the old women are
killed, by being held over smoke and thus choked;
he imitated their screams as a joke and described
the parts of their bodies which are considered best
to eat. Horrid as such a death by the hands of
their friends and relations must be, the fears of the
old women, when hunger begins to press, are more
painful to think of. We were told that they then
often ran away into the mountains, but that they.
are pursued by the men and brought back to the
slaughter-house at their own fire-sides !”

Their language, so Darwin writes, “scarcely
deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has
compared it to a man clearing his throat, but cer-
tainly no European ever cleared his throat with so
many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds.”

The Religion of the Fuegians.

believed that the world was under the rulership of
me good and two bad spirits, which, respectively,
Tesided in the sun and in the moon. They held that
souls of the good, after death, went to the sun and
f the wicked to the moon. Witchcraft was
aS “pra ised among them, notwithstanding the fact

The Fuegians had no idols or fixed worship, but

white missionaries came to them. They buried the
dead with their heads towards the west. The tent,
household furniture, animals, and every article be-
longing to the deceased that fire would consume,
was burned; all other articles, such as spears,
knives, etc., were interred with the body, which was
previously wrapped in a new mantle. They then
blew with their mouths over the grave, beating their
heads with their hands. The emblems of mourning
were various, the male part of the relations cutting
gashes in the calves of their legs, the young women
cutting their cheeks, and the old women cropping
their hair short round their heads. In the blood
that issued from their lacerated bodies they dipped
their fingers, and they sprinkled it upward towards
the sun, praying on their knees around the grave
to the Good Spirit, whom they generally called
Kek-a-once, but sometimes T'ehur.

Commander Allen F. Gardiner.

The first attempt to establish a mission among
the savage Fuegians was led by the heroic Allen
F. Gardiner, a commander in the royal navy of
Great Britain. For this reason he has been called
“The Pioneer of the Most Abandoned of Heathen.”
He was the son of a Berkshire squire, born in 1794.
At the age of sixteen he entered the British navy,
in which he distinguished himself by his bravery.
At the age of twenty he was converted and longed-
to do something for the cause of Christ’s kingdom.
At this time his duties took him to the coasts of
South America, where his sympathies became en-
listed in behalf of the Araucanian Indians, who-
lived a wild life in the fastnesses of the Andes. In
1824 he appealed to the London Missionary Society
to send missionaries to these poor people. How-

“ever, his request could not be heeded for lack

of funds.
» Gardiner in South Africa.

Time passed, and in 1834 we find Gardiner in
South ‘Africa, near. Natal, ready to push into the
interior and begin work among the Zulus. After
a wearisome and dangerous journey he reached the
kraal of a very ferocious chief named Dingairn,
a tyrant among his own people and the terror of
the whites. Gardiner gained the friendship of this:
chief and from him obtained ground to erect a mis-
sionary station. Tor three years, Gardiner carried
on this work, preaching to the older ones, teaching
the children, and aiding in the building of Durban,
the first English town in Natal. When trouble arose
between the English and Zulus and Dingairn
threatened to destroy the little settlement, Gardiner —