Lucas Bridges

Stephen Lucas Bridges (Esteban) (born December 31, 1874 in Ushuaia , Argentina ; † April 4, 1949 in Buenos Aires , Argentina) was an Argentine writer , ethnographer and farmer, best known for his book Uttermost part of the earth .

Life

Lucas Bridges was the third-born child of the Anglo-Argentine missionary, linguist and landowner Thomas Bridges . Growing up on his father's farm, the Estancia Haberton , he came into close contact with a group of the Haush who had withdrawn to the farm area on their flight from the colonialists and the hostile Indian tribes of the Selk'nam . Lucas Bridges first met the Selk'nam himself in 1894, accompanied them on their hunting expeditions, learned their language and studied their way of life. When the pressure on their hunting areas increased due to the growing sheep farms of the white settlers and they were increasingly exposed to persecution, Lucas Bridges acquired land on the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego and founded the Estancia Viamonte there , where he provided shelter and work for the Indians seeking protection .

Lucas Bridges campaigned in vain for the preservation of the author's rights to the dictionary of the Yámana language , which his father, who died in 1898, had given to the polar explorer Frederick Cook and which was published by him under a false name.

In 1914 he joined the Royal Field Artillery, took part in the Battle of Flanders and in 1920 acquired farmland in South Africa from the British South Africa Company . After financial failures he came to Patagonia , this time to Aysén on the Rio Baker, where he succeeded in building the Estancia Chacabuco under the most adverse conditions. After several heart attacks, Lucas Bridges returned to Buenos Aires , where he finished his work on the autobiography "Uttermost part of the earth" in 1948. In this he not only processed autobiographical elements, but also dealt extensively with the genocide against the peoples of the Yámana and Selknam as well as the socio-political consequences of the colonization of the region.

Lucas Bridges died on April 4, 1949 in Buenos Aires and is buried there at the Chacarita Cemetery in Recoleta. His merit lies in the effort to understand and testify to the living situation of the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego, which once comprised over 10,000 people, but through the consequences of the colonization of Tierra del Fuego (persecution by immigrant settlers, diseases introduced, deprivation of livelihoods) until the middle of the dwindled to a few people last century.

Both Estancia Haberton and Estancia Viamonte are still managed by direct descendants of Lucas Bridges. Both properties are connected by the so-called Senda Lucas Bridges , on which sheep were once transported between the Beagle Channel and the Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego. Today it is mainly used for tourist purposes (trekking).

Works

• Stephen L. Bridges: Uttermost of tierra del fuego and their Fuegians . Rookery Press, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-5856-7956-0 (reprinted from New York 1949 edition).

swell

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• British Families in Southern Patagonia.

Web links

• Estancia Viamonte
• Critics of Uttermost Part of the Earth by time.com