Darwin and the Fuegians Published: 19 May 2009(GMT+10) This is
the pre-publication version which was subsequently abbreviated
in Creation 32(2):42–45. In his 1871 book Descent of Man,
Charles Darwin cited the Fuegians as evidence to support of his
two-fold thesis, that “man is descended from a hairy, tailed
quadruped” and that “we are descended from barbarians”.1 This
was a considerable stimulus to racism in the 19th and 20th
centuries. So who were the Fuegians, and why did Darwin regard
them the way he did? The Fuegians were the original four tribal
groups2 who inhabited the islands which form the southernmost
tip of South America, called Tierra del Fuego, meaning “land of
fire”. It was named “land of smoke” by Ferdinand Magellan in
1520 for the hundreds of beach fires he observed, which the
natives kept burning to keep themselves warm in the freezing
climate and for cooking their staple diet of shellfish and
seafish. This was later changed to the more exotic “land of
fire”, reputedly by Charles I of Spain.3