“Let them live their healthy natural lives in the way that
Our Lord certainly intended when he placed them where they are.”
- Willy Andersson Grebst, A Honeymoon in Tierra del Fuego
Lars Olof Grebst would have been familiar with his Uncle Willy’s published books. To me, that’s a no-brainer. Surely he would have read them all and sat through many family gatherings dominated by his extroverted uncle waxing lyrical about reselifvet [the travelling life]. Perhaps his uncle’s erotic poems and tales of love in the Pacific helped set him on the road to becoming the chauvinistic womaniser he was in his adult life. Putting all speculation aside, the best indications we have that Lars Olof was familiar with Willy’s books are the strong similarities between their views on the work of European missionaries in the New World. They were both highly critical of missionary work and its often tragic results for the newly converted.
In A Honeymoon in Tierra
del Fuego, Willy Grebst describes his first encounter with the Yaghan
Indians:
We had cast anchor before we had a
visit. A clumsy canoe appeared from the largest of the islands. It quickly
closed on us. We could see that it was cut out of a single tree trunk. Between
the stick seats a little fire burned in a bed of shells, pebbles and dirt. And
the crew consisted of three Yaghan Indians.
We stood on the bridge and watched
them. They were the ugliest, dirtiest, most wretched “red skins” I had ever
seen. They wore greasy shirts, caps and trousers. As they neared, they held up
some arrows with glass tips made from bottles, some fishhooks and a pair of
braided grass baskets. They wanted to trade them for tobacco and snaps.
We let them come on board in order to
get a closer look at them. They had small builds and crooked bones. Their faces
were remarkably dull, almost animalistic. We could well understand how Darwin
could believe that in them he had discovered Humanity’s lowest order or even
“the missing link.”
The Yaghan Indians were originally a
hardy people. They live along the southern part of Tierra del Fuego’s islands
and exist on mussels, fish, seal meat, berries and mushrooms. The food is not
consumed raw without cooking as with some other hunters and gatherers. Birds
for example are gutted and filled with hot stones and then bedded down in hot
ashes. Their houses are fixed hovels and they live in groups of twenty to
thirty families. They go naked even during the severe winter. Generation upon generation
of hardy ancestors have made them so resistant that they soon endured it and
stayed healthy. But then the Spanish “civilization” arrived. They were hunted
down like dumb animals and mass murdered. Then the English missionaries
followed. They received clothes and died of pneumonia and consumption. They
learnt how to drink themselves to death. Their population plummeted. Around
1870 there were estimated to be around three thousand. Fourteen years later
only nine hundred and fifty were left. And today the tribe is only a fraction
at two hundred and fifty.
Nearly all Yaghan Indians are nominally
Christian. The Bible is translated into their language which is curiously rich
and has around forty thousand words. In return for their Christianity which
they never learned to understand, they got to work for the missionaries. The
only practical wages they earn are food and clothing. And they only receive
them scantily. The later years, as I said before, have been directly harmful.
The whole system invites much reflection. What’s the use in converting these
heathens? Are there not other more worthy fields for bettering and educating
work? Doesn’t the white race have its own social proletariat that could draw
more use from its help than these otherwise doomed and wretched half-humans?
We went in the canoe back to shore. On
the beach stood two wigwams covered with animal skins and turf. Outside was a
dirty woman in a ragged skirt and blouse. Her hair hung unkempt over her neck.
She was afraid and didn’t want to be photographed. It took much discussion and
a whole peso before she would agree. Then she collected up the children under
her wing. When the solemn occasion was luckily over, she seemed more than
pleased.
Senor Villegas showed us some mussel
banks on the beach. All the mussels were gone.
“The Yaghans have lived here for many
years,” he said. “These banks are a sure sign of that. They are never far from
the camping grounds.”
My wife wanted to go back on board. She
thought it was distressing to see these miserable people.
“It is doubly bad when we ourselves are
fortunate,” she said. “Give them something, something that will help keep them
going.”
Her utterance delighted me. It was fine
and beautiful. How many of us sympathise with our fellow humans’ ill fortune
and misery while we ourselves are fortunate? Fortune leads to selfishness. It
is most often first an accident to oneself that teaches one to understand that
there are also others who suffer.[1]
On the same journey, Grebst was more impressed with the Ona Indians but just as disapproving of the efforts of the missionaries:
We went out with Lucas Bridge and soon
found ourselves among the Indians. They were on a hill under some mighty trees
and looked to be holding some sort of meeting. The men were big, strong, broad
shouldered fellows, red-brown like bronze and with far from unpleasant faces.
Lines were marked, eyes big and round. Their teeth were faultless. Their jaws
were powerful. They were naked except for a little cap of guanaco hide on the
head and a cover of the same material which they threw over their shoulders and
held in place with their hands. Their hair hung in a rough, straight fringe
down to the eyes. Their hands and especially their feet were very large. The
men carried bows that were as tall as themselves with strings of guanaco sinew.
The women held their little children on their arms under the guanaco hide. They
wore necklaces of pips, seeds and mollusc shells around their necks and sinew
bracelets around their wrists. They had happy smooth faces but yet not always
as pleasant as the men. They became grimly serious while we studied them with
wonder. Is it really possible, we thought, that these wiry giants in comparison
with which one such as the stately Fortunatis appears small, have so little
powers of resistance when they become “civilised”? Is it not such a shame that
they do not get to stay as they were? Is it not sad that our white “culture
bearers” cannot spare them and let them live their healthy natural lives in the
way that Our Lord certainly intended when he placed them where they are?
Travellers of old described the Ona
Indians as being a completely unnatural size. This is an exceptional case. On
average, they are one and three quarter metres tall which is more than among
some white races. But in spite of their exceptional height, they are not as one
would want to think inharmoniously developed. All the parts of the body are
coordinated and possess a vitality and endurance that is remarkable. This is
also due to the life they lead. They are always on the move and on the lookout
moving from one place to the next. As a result, their belongings are also as
primitive as can be. Hut, tent, wigwam or whatever you want to call their
shelters consist of a number of thin stakes pushed into the ground and covered
with twigs and branches and some guanaco skin against the direction the wind is
blowing from. Under this simple protection, they spend even the coldest of
nights, nights that in winter are often extremely stormy and only fourteen or
fifteen degrees.
The Ona Indians’ clothes are as simple
as their shelters. The cloak is of either guanaco skin or fox. When the men
warm themselves around a fire, they take them off and drape them around the
hips. Really old people in the families who live well inland are said to also
make use of a kind of sock made from bound guanaco skin. Other kinds of clothes
are neither known nor needed so hardened have the Indians become over many
generations. The women decorate themselves with adornments of bone and shell or
feathers and seeds and pips. But these adornments are extremely simple. The
rest sit wholly artless apart from twined guanaco sinew draped around the
throat and hands and feet.
The domestic objects the Ona Indians
use are easily counted. They cook on bare earth. The fire is lit with the help
of a piece of flint, some tinder and a little bit of pyrite. Their diet
consists mainly of guanaco tuco-tuco and whale meat. Even fried rat is not
rejected, the same with birds that are caught in traps made of whale bone. For
variety in the meat diet, they have fish. They set particular value upon
mussels. They also have birds’ eggs, mushrooms, berry stems of different plants
and roots. All this is washed down with water. They don’t know any other drink
– at least not in their natural state. Even in a “civilised” state, they have
gone no further than having knowledge of whiskey and stronger drinks.
Among household utensils of note are
baskets of braided grass and bone eating forks that can also be used as knives.
An odd little board about two feet long that is pushed down into the ground is
used when the mothers have things to do such that they cannot hold their little
ones on their arms. They tie the little ones securely to the board and so keep
them there safely while they finish their other activities.
Intellectually, the Ona Indians are not
as low as one would perhaps want to suppose. Certainly they have no
understanding of god and practise polygamy. Mr Bridge informed us that they had
a strong and pronounced adaptability and a good ear for language. He had
employed many Indians of both sexes. It had never taken them long to know what
was being demanded of them. They were willing and good-natured. If they had
received a punishment, they took it ad
notam if it was just, not showing any desire for revenge. The whole time they were “civilized” to a large extent. It was only to
their harm that this was not discovered earlier.
But the white men who first came in
contact with the Ona Indians were rough gold diggers and other ruthless
adventurers. They treated the natives with vicious disregard. Not understanding
their customs and outlook, they inflicted on them the cruellest of acts for
things that, in the Indians’ eyes, were not intended to be wrong or unfriendly.
The Ona men had always deferred even when they were in good numbers. What could
they achieve with their arrows against the white man’s bullets and gunpowder?
What did they know about war making? How could they despite their wonderful
ability to run quickly over long distances escape when the white invaders set
after them on horseback? There is no use
anyone denying that the white race is a cruel race. The whole history of
discovery gives witness to this. The whole world colonisation. The white man
has beaten his way through with the sword. A wide river of innocent spilled
blood marks the pathway he trod to spread his civilisation. Then, when it was
too late, he shifted to more gentle exploitative methods. The issue needs
examination and I come back to what I suggested before: what is it about a
civilisation that acts by demanding that all races should adopt its customs,
its clothes, its mindset whether they fit the conditions or not? When one knows
the consequences, can it be called anything other than murder? Oh how Our Lord in heaven must have been happy with
the poor dark lost souls that the missionaries won for him. But I wonder if He
– the God of Love – did not then weep bitterly for all those that perished of
diseases through the power of nature and which the missionaries were the direct
cause of.[2]
Grebst’s reaction to the native Tierra del Fuegans is a mixed bag and quite similar to Charles Darwin’s reaction when he met the Yaghans 74 years earlier. Darwin viewed them as “miserable, degraded savages” but was amazed at the change in three individuals being repatriated on the Beagle after a civilizing visit to England. Grebst was shocked by the misery of the natives’ existence but at the same time impressed by their ability to survive in such a severe environment. They went around practically naked in a climate that could plummet to minus ten degrees Celsius in winter. Counter-intuitively, he reports that the missionaries providing clothes to the natives was damaging to their health rather than beneficial. The use of clothing, he says, was a precursor to getting pneumonia and consumption. The very same argument was used by Lars Olof Grebst in his attack upon the missionaries of Central Australia in 1935: “The missionaries, with mistaken solicitude, are killing [the Aborigines] off by degrees. They give them clothes and the blackfellow is very proud of his clothes. He will wear them until they nearly fly off him. He gets diseased and, when he takes them off, he gets a cold and then consumption and dies.”[3]
Another notable similarity between the outlook of uncle and nephew is their attention to the “curious” richness of the native languages. Willy Grebst found much to admire in the fact that the harsh environment of the animal-faced “half-human” Yaghans hadn’t kept them stupid: they had developed a 40,000-word language. Writing as Eskil Sundström in Göteborgs Posten, Lars Olof acknowledged linguistic research in Africa indicating that the “black man” possessed language capabilities just as sophisticated as those of the European. Both Grebsts agreed that the European colonization of the New World resulted in a murderous exploitation of native peoples and was a challenge to the conscience of the Christian world.
Could this be mere coincidence? Or could it be the travels of a nephew verifying the experiences of his beloved uncle and then matching his outspokenness? Clearly the latter, methinks.
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