Tierra del Fuego, officially the Province of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica and South Atlantic Islands, is the southernmost, smallest, and least populous Argentine province. The provincial capital city is Ushuaia, from a native word meaning "bay towards the end".
View from the Tierra del Fuego National Park in Argentina across the Beagle Channel to Isla Hoste in Chile
Period impression of HMS Beagle navigating along Tierra del Fuego, 1833
A member of the Selknam people, 1904. The Selk'nam, or Ona, who traditionally placed great value on amiability, were the island's most numerous native people until their numbers were reduced by disease and genocide in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Local sheep ranch, 1942. Sheep, the most important part of the economy by the turn of the 20th century, have been eclipsed by the decline in the global wool market and the rise in petroleum extraction.
Selk'nam people
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The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be encountered by migrant Europeans in the late 19th century. In the mid-19th century, there were about 4,000 Selk'nam; in 1916 Charles W. Furlong estimated there were about 800 Selk'nam living in Tierra del Fuego; with Walter Gardini stating that by 1919 there were 279, and by 1930 just over 100.
Selk'nam children, 1898
Selk'nam people
Julius Popper during a manhunt of the Selk'nam people. In the late 19th century estancieros and gold prospectors launched a campaign of extermination against the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego.
Julius Popper (on left) shooting, with a Selk'nam corpse visible in the foreground