USHUAIA, THE ANCIENT LANDS OF THE YAGHAN PEOPLE

Today, The Stones and The Grandma are visiting Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur Province. The family is enjoying this visit to one of the most amazing places in the world.

Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur Province, Argentina, and the southernmost city of the country. 

Ushuaia claims the title of world's southernmost city. Ushuaia is located in a wide bay on the southern coast of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, bounded on the north by the Martial mountain range and on the south by the Beagle Channel. It is the only municipality in the Department of Ushuaia, which has an area of 9,390 km2.

It was founded on October 12, 1884, by Augusto Lasserre and is located on the shores of the Beagle Channel surrounded by the mountain range of the Martial Glacier, in the Bay of Ushuaia. Besides being an administrative center, it is a light industrial port and tourist hub. Ushuaia is located roughly 1,100 kilometres from the coast of Antarctica and 245 kilometres from the Chilean city of Punta Arenas.

The word Ushuaia comes from the Yaghan language: ush and waia (bay or cove) and means deep bay or bay to background. The act creating the subprefecture in 1884 cites the name Oshovia, one of the many orthographic variations of the word. Its demonym is Ushuaiense.

The name is often pronounced u-sua-ia, an exception to the orthographic rules of Spanish, since the s forms a syllable with the following u despite the intervening h. The pronunciation Usuaía, accented on the i, is erroneous: the prosodic accent is on the first a, which is why the word is written without an accent mark. 

More information: Welcome Argentina

The Selk'nam Indians, also called the Ona, first arrived in Tierra del Fuego about 10,000 years ago.

The southern group of people indigenous to the area, the Yaghan (also known as Yámana), who occupied what is now Ushuaia, lived in continual conflict with the northern inhabitants of the island.

For much of the latter half of the 19th century, the eastern portion of Tierra del Fuego was populated by a substantial majority of nationals who were not Argentine citizens, including a number of British subjects.

Ushuaia was founded informally by British missionaries, following previous British surveys, long before Argentine nationals or government representatives arrived there on a permanent basis. The British ship HMS Beagle, under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy, first reached the channel on January 29, 1833, during its maiden voyage surveying Tierra del Fuego.

The city was originally named by early British missionaries using the native Yámana name for the area. Much of the early history of the city and its hinterland is described in Lucas Bridges’s book Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948).

The name Ushuaia first appears in letters and reports of the South American Mission Society in England. The British missionary Waite Hockin Stirling became the first European to live in Ushuaia when he stayed with the Yámana people between 18 January and mid-September 1869. 

In 1870 more British missionaries arrived to establish a small settlement. The following year the first marriage was performed.

During 1872, 36 baptisms and 7 marriages and the first European birth, Thomas Despard Bridges, in Tierra del Fuego were registered.

 

The first house constructed in Ushuaia was a pre-assembled 3 room home prepared in the Falkland Islands in 1870 for Reverend Thomas Bridges. One room was for the Bridges family, a second was for a Yámana married couple, while the third served as the chapel.

During 1873, Juan and Clara Lawrence, the first Argentine citizens to visit Ushuaia, arrived to teach school. That same year Julio Argentino Roca, who later served as Argentine President twice, promoted the establishment of a penal colony for re-offenders, modeled after one in Tasmania, Australia, in an effort to secure permanent residents from Argentina and to help establish Argentine sovereignty over all of Tierra del Fuego.

During the 1880s, many gold prospectors came to Ushuaia following rumors of large gold fields, which proved to be false.

 

More information: Inter Patagonia

On 12 October 1884, as part of the South Atlantic Expedition, Commodore Augusto Lasserre established the sub-division of Ushuaia, with the missionaries and naval officers signing the Act of Ceremony. Don Feliz M Paz was named Governor of Tierra del Fuego and in 1885 named Ushuaia as its capital.

In 1885 the territory police was organized under Antonio A. Romero with headquarters also in Ushuaia. But it was not until 1904 that the Federal Government of Argentina recognized Ushuaia as the capital of Tierra del Fuego.

Ushuaia suffered several epidemics, including typhus, pertussis, and measles, that much reduced the native population. But because the Yámana were not included in census data, the exact numbers lost are not known. The first census was held in 1893, which recorded 113 men and 36 women living in Ushuaia. By 1911 the Yámana had all practically disappeared, so the mission was closed. The population grew to 1,558 by the 1914 census.

In 1896 the prison received its first inmates, mainly re-offenders and dangerous prisoners transferred from Buenos Aires, but also some political prisoners. A separate military prison opened in 1903 at the nearby Puerto Golondrina.

The prison operated until 1947, when President Juan Perón closed it by executive order in response to the many reports of abuse and unsafe practices. After the prison closed, it became a part of the Base Naval Ushuaia, functioning as a storage and office facility until the early 1990s. Later it was converted into the current Museo Maritimo de Ushuaia.

The naval base at Ushuaia was active during the Falklands War of 1982. The Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano, subsequently sunk by the British Fleet, sailed from the Port of Ushuaia, where a memorial was erected in February 1996.

More information: Turismo Ushuaia

 People need to be cautious
because anything built by man
can be destroyed by Mother Nature.

Russel Honore