Vol 25, no 3, October - The Linnean Society of London

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THE LINNEAN 2009 VOLUME 25(3)
Indians and what would today be called caboclos in much more sympathic and
respectful terms, noting particularly how beautiful the women of the region were!
(See the NOTE at the end of this essay.)
Let us follow Darwin’s account further:
“In the morning, the Captain sent a party to communicate with the Fuegians. When we
came within hail, one of the four natives who were present advanced to receive us, and
began to shout most vehemently, wishing to direct us where to land. When we were on
shore the party looked rather alarmed, but continued talking and making gestures with
great rapidity. It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I had
ever beheld. I could not have believed how wide was the difference, between savage
and civilized man. It is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, in as much
as in man there is a greater power of improvement.”
The extraordinary thing about this passage is not really the snobbery of comparing
a ‘savage’ with a wild animal, in comparison with a ‘civilized’ man who is compared
with a domesticated animal. It is rather that, as Darwin would later show in On the
Origin of Species, in the course of man’s domestication of animals and plants from
wild precursors, their original ‘natures’ are lost, and replaced by artificial races that
can no longer survive in nature. The latter owe their existence entirely to the species
Homo sapiens sapiens; they are wholly dependent upon man, having been manipulated
through breeding to yield what man wants, and to be tame, obedient, and subservient
to man. In a sense of course, they are no more nor less ‘natural’ or ‘artificial’ than wild
species, and no less ‘free’ or ‘unfree’. The only relevant criterion within the theory of
evolution is survival. Nevertheless, it is strange that this man, Charles Darwin, should
prefer being similar to a domesticated animal than to a ‘wild’, ‘authentic’, ‘natural’
one, especially when it is he who will unlock the great secret of biology, the theory of
evolution, as driven by ‘natural selection’. That human ‘improvement’ within
‘civilization’ should seem analogous to being shaped into an obsequious and dependent
condition by others purely for their exploitative convenience, might in fact be a very
apt insight into the condition of the vast majority of people in civilizations based on
social classes and hierarchical domination; yet for the fearless, rebellious scientist
who was to enter with his mind into the wildest truths of organic nature, in an era still
largely dominated by religious dogmas and unquestioned traditions, it cannot but appear
amazing.
Darwin continues:
“The chief spokesman was old, and appeared to be the head of the family; the three
others were powerful young men, about 6 feet high. The women and children had been
sent away. These Fuegians are a very different race from the stunted miserable wretches
further to the westward, They are much superior in person, and seem closely allied to
the famous Patagonians of the Strait of Magellan. Their only garment consists of a
mantle made of guanaco skin, with the wool outside; this they wear just thrown over
their shoulders, as often leaving their persons exposed as covered. Their skin is of a
dirty coppery red colour.”
Darwin‘s observations become contradictory here: though these people are
according to him ‘superior’ to the ‘stunted miserable wretches further to the westward’
(in fact the first group must have been Haush or Selk’nam, the second Yámana). They