It’s an incredible ethnohistory and ethnography of the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego, 1578 to 2000, and their encounters with whalers, explores and missionaries.  The Yamana or Fuegians were hunter-gatherers who who plied the tempestuous cold marine coastal waters of the Cape Horn archipelago in small, open watercraft.

The link to the Kelp highway hypothesis and the Pacific NW?  I previously highlighted Jennifer Raff’s new book on the peopling of the Americas.  Much of the compelling defense of that hypothesis has been the work of U of Oregon archaeologist Jon Erlandson and colleagues (2007, 2015; citations below).  I was convinced but unable to suppress a lingering doubt: the waters of the North Pacific coastline notoriously are difficult even for modern vessels.  Was such a prolonged migration of families in small open craft through those conditions even remotely possible?

The waters at the mouth of the Columbia River were, and remain, treacherous for mariners [online copy, Engraving of Tonquin, March 25, 1811; Oreg. Hist. Soc. Research Lib., ba006960]

Chapman’s accounts of the Yamana, in an equally difficult environment with similar or perhaps even simpler vessels changed my mind.  It is easy to under appreciate our forebearers; and a welcome feeling to discover how wrong we can be.  The journey certainly was arduous and dangerous, but the Yamana show us that with skill it was possible.

Winter storm, southern Oregon coast near Coos Bay

Citations:

Chapman, Anne. 2010. European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, Before and After Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Erlandson, Jon M., Michael H. Graham, Bruce J. Bourque, Debra Corbett, James A. Estes, and Robert S. Steneck. 2007. “The Kelp Highway Hypothesis: Marine Ecology, the Coastal Migration Theory, and the Peopling of the Americas.” Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology 2(2):161–74. doi: 10.1080/15564890701628612.

 

Erlandson, Jon M., Todd J. Braje, Kristina M. Gill, and Michael H. Graham. 2015. “Ecology of the Kelp Highway: Did Marine Resources Facilitate Human Dispersal from Northeast Asia to the Americas?” Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology10(3):392–411. doi: 10.1080/15564894.2014.1001923.