The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and PatagoniaSpears, John Randolph
History
The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia
Spears, John Randolph
Patagonia (Argentina and Chile) -- Description and travel
However, Mr. Bridges had told just what he came for--to get land "to
create a farm and employ native labor," and so supply a want for
agricultural products "which we (the missionaries, of course,) have long
felt." Mr. Bridges supplies agricultural products for a price, and he
employs some Yahgans, who, as he believes, are better off when sawing
logs by hand into fence rails for his ranch than they were in the old
days sitting around an open fire eating whale blubber and telling
stories. As to the prices he charges, it must be said that he merely
shows good business tact. They are always considerably less, even
according to those prospectors who do not like him, than charged by
Ushuaia merchants, though still from three to five times as much as
charged at Punta Arenas (Sandy Point), in the Straits of Magellan.
The prospectors, disposed to criticise Mr. Bridges for making the best
business possible of his farm, alleged, without offering any proof of
their charge, that Mr. Bridges got his money for stocking the farm by
taking clothing which generous people of England sent to the mission for
gifts to the naked savages and trading it to the Indians for furs, which
he sold for his own private benefit. I do not believe he did that. It
appears from the missionary record (see page 56, _South American
Missionary Magazine_ of London, March, 1879, and page 39, February,
1881, for instance), that the missionaries did trade with the Indians
for furs, and that the clothing which the Indians received was usually,
but not always, paid for with either labor or furs. The missionaries did
sell clothing sent out to be given to the Indians, but they made no
secret of it, and the donors learned the facts in the magazine. The
missionaries did not want to pauperize the Indians, they said, by
giving gifts. But the profits of these trades went to the society. In
1881 Capt. Willis of the mission schooner in a letter spoke dolefully of
the prospect for buying skins on the society's account, "as there are so
many sealing vessels out." Capt. Willis spoke also (see page 233 of the
magazine) of three canoe loads of Indians who "exchanged otter skins for
clothes, and were eager for tobacco."
The missionaries should not be accused of misappropriation of goods
simply because the thrifty society wanted to increase its cash income by
trading at a tremendous profit with the Indians, for whose eternal
welfare it had been created.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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