Chilean naval officer Enrique Simpson Baeza (1835-1901) conducted four expeditions, exploring the Patagonian coast, and its rivers in the 1870s. In those days, the sources of these rivers, and the geography of the inland region was unknown. Simpson had a great career, and eventually attained the rank of Admiral.
He recorded his expeditions in meticulous journals. In them, he mentions the Chono mummies.
Chonos
The Chono people were canoe people, they lived nomadic life, boating in their three-plank canoes (dalcas) in the Pacifc Ocean south of Chiloé Island, in the islands north of Taitao Peninsula.
They fished, collected shellfish, and hunted sea wolves, sea lions, gathered seaweed (kelp), and also bred long-haired dogs with which they wove crude blankets.
Their lifestyle was similar to the Fuegian canoe people, the Yagans and Alakaluf, but being closer to the Spanish colony in Chiloe, they were soon affected by European disease, raids, forced relocation (with the good intention of civilizing them, a labor conducted by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries). This led to the loss of their culture. They died out or were absorbed by the "Chilote" mestizo population in Chiloe by the mid 1700s.
Simpson wrote about them, the remains he saw of their huts and burials. During his third expedition (1871-72) he recorded the folloiwng (source):
"Their homes were caves, and sometimes circular huts whose pegs I have seen. Sometimes they buried their dead close to these homes; but usually they preferred to place them in caves, covering them with branches. In many of them, the naval pilot, in the past, found mummies placed in coffins of cypress bark, shaped like eggs, but they have all been removed or destroyed."
During his fourth expedidion (1872-73) he added more information (source):
"In this channel there is an inlet that I have named Mummies, because it has, in a cliff, about two meters above the water [6.1 ft.] some small caves where remains of the Chono Indians race have been found. Now only some bone fragments can be seen, because the skeletons have been extracted perfectly, years ago, by sealers and sold to museums."
Chono mummies were reported in Victorian magazines and one entry in F. Ratzel's The History of Mankind: The cultured races of America, published in 1897 mentions caves with mummies and stone tools had been found on the Guaitecas Islands.
Report on a Mummy
The Smithsonian Institute's annual report of 1862-63 contained an article about a mummy (pictured above) found at "Refujio Bay", 44°S on the Coast of Chile, in a cave, one-hundred feet above the water level. There were many skeletons there with different degrees of preservation. It states that two skeletons were sent to the National Museum in Santiago, Chile, one to the Ratisbon Museum in Bavaria, and the fourth, to the Smithsonian. It was found in a sitting position, and, surprisingly it wasn't of average to small size as the usual Chono native. Instead it had "a height of something like five feet eight inches, thus almost justifying the somewhat poetical epithet of "gigantic", as applied to the Patagonians in general."
I can't help but recall the mummy discovered in 1877 by Francisco Moreno at Gualicho Cave, close to the modern town of El Calafate, and the Perito Moreno Glacier, on the shores of Lake Argentino. Also found in a sitting position.
There is a sketch of a Chono mummy, drawn by a German artist, Carl Alexander Simon (1805-1852), who visited Chile in 1850, and did many drawings in Chiloe in 1852 shortly before his death. On the Island of Quehi, he drew a mummy, painted in situ, in a cave. The mummy is gone, but a replica has been created. (Source).
The sketch can be seen at the Ancud Museum in Chiloe. It is a watercolor with pencil, on paper. The text is in sepia-colored ink reads "Momias Chiloe", some illegible text and numbers (the size of the body?), his name and date "A Simon Quehuy, 18 marz 1852". The image is shown below.
The amazing part is that the Chilean Patagonian coast is buffeted by rain most of the year, it is damp, cold and wet. How did they manage to mummify their dead?
Further north, in the Atacama Desert region of Chile, the Chinchorro culture, who were also a seafaring people, mummified their dead in the arid and extremely dry desert climate. These are the oldest deliberately mummified remains in the world, dating back to 9,000 years ago. Far older than any Egyptian mummy.
In a future post we will explore the Chinchorro people, the Chango people, who probably descend from them, and if there are links between the coastal people of the Americas with the first peopling wave into the continent.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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