Análisis de resultados de la intervención

The Selk'nam also wore body paintings during everyday life situations, special occasions and in several moments o f their male initiation ceremony, the hain. As in the Yamana case, the Selk'nam everyday life situations are the worst documented, both in terms o f the low number o f observers who recorded them, and o f the lack o f detail of the records. The everyday life situations include:

• the expression o f states o f mood (Lista 1887: 101; Gallardo 1910:152; Borgatello 1929: 182; De Agostini 1924: 276, 1945: 68; L. Bridges 1951: 367; Gusinde 1982: 207)

• beautifying and coquetry purposes (Gallardo 1910: 152; Borgatello 1929: 182; Gusinde 1982:209)

• visits (Gallardo 1910: 151; Gusinde 1982: 208)

• trips. Being terrestrial nomads, movements in land from one location to another one where the camp would be set up were part o f the everyday life o f the Selk'nam. This is what can differentiate a trip from a visit. Nevertheless, the information about both trips and visits per se, and about the body painting worn during them is very scarce (Beauvoir 1915: 206; Gusinde 1982: 208).

• hunting, camouflage (Segers 1891: 69; L. Bridges 1951: 367; Gusinde 1982: 208) • war, combat/wrestling/fights. It is very difficult to distinguish in the early texts

between the mention o f an activity such as war or combat, that is, involving the violent attack o f one group to another aggression or aggressive encounter between them, from the more sportive one-to-one combat which was documented with accuracy by the more recent observers. It is for this reason that they have been recorded together within the same category. (Lista 1887: 101; Segers 1891: 61; Payro 1898: 210; Beauvoir 1915: 206; Gallardo 1910: 151; Dabbene 1911: 263; Borgatello 1929: 182; De Agostini 1924: 272; L. Bridges 1951: 272, 318; Gusinde

1982:209, 1101-1102)

• skin protection (Barclay 1924: 214; Dabbene 1911: 224; Gusinde 1982: 206; Lothrop 1928: 58-59)

• working in the production of artefacts. As in the Yâmana case, this situation o f wearing paintings has only been documented in visual records, while there are no texts mentioning any specific use o f body painting in such circumstances. In this case, it is only one drawing, S I09 published by Gallardo, showing a young man working with a tool (on a piece o f hide?). This makes the record about the situation

even more dubious than in the Yamana cases, both because o f the nature of drawings and their implications, already discussed in chapter 1, and because o f the several attitudes already found in and about Gallardo's book in relation to the manipulation o f photographs, commented in chapter 2.

P late 3 .6 . S e lk ’nam y o u n g m an w o rk in g , w ea r in g fa cia l and b o d y p a in tin g s ( S 1 0 9 ).

The Selk'nam special occasions in which body painting was worn show various similarities with the Yamana ones. Nevertheless, there are also qualitative differences in the ways the paintings were employed by each society, which will be pointed and discussed in chapter 5.

These special occasions were:

• birth. (Lista 1887: 92-93; Payro 1898: 195; Beauvoir 1915: 208; De Agostini 1924: 283; L. Bridges 1951: 371)

• first menstruation (Gusinde 1982: 383, 390) • 'engagement' (Gusinde 1982: 307)

• wedding (Gusinde 1982: 310-311)

• shamans painting {xons) (Segers 1891: 69; Dabbene 1911: 260; De Agostini’s film; Gusinde 1982: 207-208; Lothrop 1928: 96)

• mourning (Lista 1887: 101; Segers 1891: 69; Popper 1891: 138; Gallardo 1910: 150; Borgatello 1929: 182; De Agostini 1924: 290; L. Bridges 1951: 364; Gusinde 1982:209; Koppers 1991:39)

As explained in chapter 2, the Selk'nam celebrated an initiation ceremony called

hain. Although the hain ceremony was strictly exclusively male, women also wore body

paintings at some points o f the ceremony. The information about the hain paintings comes mainly from Gusinde (1924, 1982, 1951). But there are also two previous accounts o f this ceremony by L. Bridges (1947) and by an anonymous Salesian missionary (in Belza 1974), which mainly confirm the information provided by Gusinde in relation to the paintings, although showing differences in other details, particularly the mythical contents o f the ceremony.

Persons o f male and female gender wore body paintings. In the written records, painted men are much more often mentioned than painted women (see appendix F). This panorama can be the result o f two different factors: a) that women got painted less often than men or b) that women were seen by the European voyagers less often than men because o f a possible safety attitude o f the Selk’nam towards the strangers, which would involve only a party o f men contacting them. This latter option is quite likely to have been fostered by the violent and frequently lethal aggressions o f the Westerners towards the Selk’nam. In the most modem records, it becomes clear that both women and men wore body paintings. This does not mean straightforwardly that there were no gender differences in the display o f the paintings by female and male wearers. As with the Yamana case, the most obvious difference is that related to the representation of 161

spirits in the hain ceremony, a role which was always played by painted and masked men. Other gender differences need to be searched for in detail, and are dealt with in chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Similarly to the Yamana case, the age o f the Selk’nam wearers does not appear clearly mentioned in most o f the written records. In most cases, these refer to painted ‘m en’ or ‘women’, with no details about their age, while only in very few cases are old people, children and babies mentioned. The visual records, instead, show painted persons o f all ages - although old individuals, children and babies are still infrequent.

The Selk’nam painted their faces, trunks, arms and/or legs. Most o f the early texts do not specify if the aborigines were wearing paintings over their bodies, and only refer to their facial paintings (e.g. Van Noort 1599 in Gusinde 1982; Nodal 1615; Labbe 1711; Banks 1768; FitzRoy 1839b; Darwin 1839 and 1845). Paintings over the body appear nevertheless on the later written sources (e.g. Lista 1887; Segers 1891; Payro 1898; Gallardo 1910; Dabbene 1904, 1911; Coiazzi 1914, etc.). The visual records show Selk’nam persons wearing both facial and also facial plus body paintings. These latter were mostly worn during the hain ceremony, which was not only cautiously kept secret from the women but also from most o f the white men; it seems likely that for this reason the painting o f the body was much less frequently recorded by the western observers than the facial paintings.

The colours used by the Selk’nam to make their body paintings are the same than those employed by the Yamana: red, white and black. This coincidence may be explained at least to an extent by the availability o f the raw mineral materials with which the paints were made and by the similar technical processes through which they were transformed into paint. Gusinde collected a series o f terms related to colours and paintings, which are listed in appendix 1. The Selk’nam had various words to name colours, clays and other colouring substances, but o f these, akel, the red sediment- pigment, was by far the most frequently quoted. The written records are very consistent in the documentation o f the use o f these three colours, which are mentioned by most o f the authors who wrote about Selk’nam persons wearing body painting; few authors mention less colours (see appendix F).

Several authors mentioned the differential use o f these colours in different situations. Moreover, in some cases the colours were described as having a communicational purpose, entailing a certain meaning. These mentions are not always coincident with each other, and are analysed per situation, in chapters 5 and 6.

cornes from less sources than in the Yamana case (Sarmiento de Gamboa [1579] 1950; Spegazzini 1882; Lista 1887; Segers 1891; Gallardo 1910; Dabbene 1904, 1911; Borgatello 1929; De Agostini 1924; L. Bridges 1951; Gusinde 1982; Lothrop 1928). Nevertheless, these written sources provide data about: a) raw materials procurement, storage, exchange and specific uses, b) paint preparation, conservation, and dilution, c) application techniques, and d) circumstances about the production process and the producers, which are the basis o f various important theoretical and analytical implications regarding various technological and economic aspects o f body painting (see chapter 4). Much o f this information comes from Gusinde’s records, part o f which were clearly intended to provide a technical description about the painting procedures, while other details are less straightforwardly technical, yet as informative as the rest.

As opposed to the Yamana case, scarification and tattooing were recorded by a number o f observers as practised by the Selk’nam. Scars were made both with ornamental and with mourning purposes (Lista 1887; Segers 1891; Gallardo 1910; Cojazzi 1914; De Agostini 1924; Borgatello 1929; Gusinde 1982: 211; Koppers 1991). The mourning scars are discussed in chapter 5, section 5.3.2.5. The ornamental scars are described by Gusinde as follows:

“During puberty boys and girls usually entertain themselves making ornamental scars called losti. A branch o fC h ilio tric h u n t’" burning without flames and o f the width o f a pencil, cut in such a way that the end is flat, is put in the interior side o f the left forearm and is slightly pressured. The more the burning penetrates the tissue, the more visible the scars will later be, o f about 8 mm. If they have resulted well rounded, they will be shown with pride. In different persons I could count between two and eight o f these scars, distributed in an uneven form; nobody lacks them.” (Gusinde 1982: 211).

Although Gusinde states that the scars were worn so frequently, these are not visible in any o f the photographs. In relation to tattooing, only Cojazzi (1914) and Beauvoir (1914) openly stated that it was not practised by the Selk’nam, while it was recorded by Lista (1887), Segers (1891), Payro (1898), Gallardo (1910), De Agostini (1924), L. Bridges (1951) and Gusinde (1982). Its purpose seems to have been mainly ornamental, and its design was very simple, formed by short faded blue parallel lines. They were made by cutting short and deep incisions on the skin with a pointed knife, after which a fine charcoal powder was introduced inside the wounds (Gusinde 1982: 211). These tattoos are not visible in the photographs, but this could be related to their very faded colour. It is clear nevertheless that both scarification and tattooing were not prominent ways o f decorating the body by the Selk’nam (even less by the Yamana), at least during the contact period, which in turn enhances the importance given to^^^

body painting.

Selk’nam object decoration was not recorded by any observer, marking a clear difference with the Yamana society. With the exception o f the painted masks (see below), the Selk’nam did not use to decorate their artefacts. Yet they did sometimes smear them with paint (Nodal 1619, Anonymous in Schindler 1995), but this seems to have been done mainly with the aim o f protecting hide artefacts from moist or making them flexible (Gusinde 1982: 1099). There is only one quotation that suggests that paint was used to “make the object or the body itself more beautiful.” (Gusinde 1982:1099), but this seems not enough evidence to sustain the existence o f this activity.

The masks worn in the hain by the men representing spirits were painted with the same colours than the bodies and with matching designs. There were two different types o f masks, tolon, (conical, made o f bark or hide) and asl, (hood-like, made o f hide). While the former are somehow similar to the Yamana masks, the latter are exclusively Selk’nam and were worn by no other Fuegian society.

P late 3 .7 . S e lk ’nam facial p ain tin gs (S 8 9 ).

P late 3 .8 . Y â m a n a facial p a in tin g s (Y 6 2 ).

3.5.3. An introduction to the visual analysis o f Yamana and Selk’nam body