Cut off from the mainland, Isla Grande developed its own
indigenous cultures. The first bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers
crossed a temporary land bridge that formed during glacial
fluctuations of the Pleistocene era, some 11,800 years ago. These
were probably the direct antecedents of the Mannekenk and
Selk'nam (or Ona ) tribes that survived until the
twentieth century. Later, indigenous groups living a predominantly
maritime existence colonized the southern Fuegian channels: the
forefathers of the Kawéskar (Alacaluf) who inhabited territory that
is now Chilean; and the Yámana (Yahgans), the canoe people
of the Beagle Channel. Archeological finds near Ushuaia attest to
their presence from at least 4000 BC. No one is certain about the
provenance of these people: new theories postulate seaborne
migrations from the Pacific west; but current consensus still
favours the idea that they evolved from the same ethnic base as the
terrestrial groups, in spite of considerable ethnographic and
linguistic differences.
Early contacts between indigenous groups and European
explorers were sporadic from the sixteenth century onwards,
even with the advent of commercial whaling and sealing in the
eighteenth century. In the latter half of the nineteenth century,
this changed dramatically, with tragic results for the indigenous
population. When FitzRoy came here in the Beagle in the
1830s, an estimated three to four thousand Selk'nam and Mannekenk
were living in Isla Grande, with some three thousand each of Yámana
and Kawéskar living in the entire southern archipelago. A hundred
years later, these cultures had been effectively annihilated, with
the years 1870 to 1920 proving the watershed. By the 1930s, the
Mannekenk were virtually extinct, and the other groups numbered no
more than fifty individuals apiece.
Whereas the sophisticated subsistence cultures of indigenous
groups developed through a principle of adaptation in the face of a
hostile environment, the white settlers who followed came with the
intent to dominate that environment, driven by motives of profit or
progress. White settlement came in three phases. Anglican
missionaries began to catechize the Yámana in the south, and
Thomas Bridges established the first permanent mission on Ushuaia
Bay in 1871. From the late 1880s, the Italian Roman Catholic
Salesian Order began a similar process to the north of the Fuegian
Andes, consolidated with the foundation of their first mission near
the Río Grande river in 1893. Alluvial gold was discovered
on the island in 1879, and soon thereafter the Rumanian-born
adventurer, Julius Popper, established a fiefdom based around Bahía
San Sebastián, which he ruled as a despot between 1887 and 1893,
issuing his own gold coinage and periodically gunning down the
indigenous inhabitants with the help of his bands of men. From the
mid-1890s came a new colonizing impetus: the inauspicious-looking
northern plains proved to be ideal sheep-farming territory,
and vast latifundias sprang up, owned by people such as José
Menéndez. Croat, Scottish, Basque, Italian, Galician and Chilean
immigrants arrived to work on the estancias and build up their own
landholdings. Today, the sheep-farming industry is in crisis, with
the price of wool at an all-time low, and the island's economy is
more dependent on the production of petroleum and natural gas,
fisheries, forestry and technological industries such as television
assembly plants, which were attracted to the area by its status as
a duty-free zone. Luxury items are comparatively cheap, but basic
items such as food are much more expensive than in other parts of
the country due to the huge distances involved in importing them.
Hopes run high for the fast-expanding tourist industry centred on
Ushuaia, and you'll find many people there who've relocated from
Buenos Aires in search of a more relaxed style of life.
In 1991, the region gained full provincial status and is now
known as the Provincia de Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas
del Atlántico Sur . Its jurisdiction is seen to extend over all
territories of the south, including the Falklands Islands or Islas
Malvinas, which lie 550km off the coast, and Argentinian
Antarctica.