Fuegian Monster Sculpture by the Chonos (?) in the 1820s

William Low is mentioned by FitzRoy his account of the voyages of the ships Adventure and Beagle (1826 and 1836). Low was a British sealer and ship captain who shared information with FitzRoy when they met in the Falkland / Malvinas Islands in 1833.

Low provided FitzRoy with plenty of useful tips on the Patagonian natives, Southern Chile, and the geography, weather, culture, etc. Of interest is what FitzRoy wrote in his book about a "sculpture" done by the Chono people (See p. 194).

He says that Low took a young boy, who spoke English, on board his ship, the Adeona. The child acted as pilot and interpreter during the 18 months Low surveyed the area. He was named Bob by the sealers that hunted in the region. FitzRoy says he was "one of the Chonos tribe ... Niqueaccas".

The wooden effigy of an evil spirit is mentioned in the underlined text in the quote below:

"The boy Bob had been taken on board the Adeona, in consequence of some dispute with the natives, who had stolen things from the vessel. Mr. Low intended to keep him as a hostage until the missing property should be restored; but the tribe decamped, and as Low was obliged to sail, he carried the boy away with him. At the return of the vessel, about eight months afterwards, the boy saw something on shore, at the entrance of the harbour, which he looked at for some time very earnestly, and then gave Mr. Low to understand that the natives had declared war against him and his ship, and intended to attack her at her return. No natives being visible, Low went ashore with the boy, to see what it was that had attracted his attention, and found a number of spears, arrows, and clubs, roughly cut out of wood, painted red, and stuck into the ground, across a point of the island, and having in the middle a large block of wood, roughly carved into a strange figure (said by the boy to be that of their evil spirit) curiously painted, with long red teeth, and having a short halter of hide (seal-skin) round the part intended to represent a neck. Notwithstanding this outward demonstration of anger and intent to revenge, not a native was seen in the neighbourhood during the many months which Low passed there, and in consequence he had no opportunity of restoring the boy to his own tribe; but he was afterwards kindly received, and treated as Low's son, among the Patagonians of Gregory Bay"

This is the first reference of a wood sculpture among Southern Patagonian tribes. I wonder, which is this animal depicted by the wood block, the "strange figure... evil spirit... curiously painted, with long red teeth, and... short halter of hide... round the neck"?

This is the first description of the image of a demon or spirit in Southern Patagonia. The artistic expressions of the Patagonian natives were painting on their guanaco hides, or quillangos, and the rock art of the ancient Paleoindians. They seldom carved stone other than for utilitarian purposes, and the use of wood for making whittled effigies is unheard of. In 2014 I posted about some "sculptures" done by Fuegian natives, none resemble the one described above. Below is an example found in a museum.

Kaweskar (Alakaluf) mask. See the 3-D version online at the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Chile

Was it a mythical beast, or a depiction of some real creature. As you can see in the image above, the Alakaluf boat people made wooden masks, they were coarse, but perhaps colored with white (ash) and red (ochre) like the ones used by the Selk'nam Fuegians in their Hain initiation ceremonies (see a colored postage stamp series below based on real black and white photos taken by Father M. Gusinde in the early 1900s).

I have read many articles and books, and this is a first. This is different from the Rewe or wooden totems of the Mapuche, who lived 1,600 km (1,000 mi.) further north, and were more civilized than the Chono people (living in houses, farmers, with domesticated llamas -chilihueque). The Chono were canoe people, who were hunter-gatherers and lived on the edge of the Ocean in a rainy region, with coarse tents made of seal skin. Not one reference mentions their art or sculpted wood.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Americas: the language diversity problem

Ten years ago, I posted on the high diversity of languages in America, and a recent paper has added some interesting information on the subject.

The paper was published last month (June 28, 2025). It confirms the diversity and its uniqueness among the languages around the World. Furthermore, the authors can't explain why (see the bold text that I highlighted in the quote below):

"Linguistically, the Americas remain one of the most diverse parts of the world, despite the loss of many languages since European colonization (Campbell 2024). Within the Americas, the diversity of South America exceeds that of North America as measured both by the number of distinct languages as well as by the number of singular linguistic lineages (“language families”). Within South America, in turn, the Amazonian lowlands are generally more diverse than the Andes and the Southern Cone, though the uneven demographic and cultural impact of European conquest may have contributed to accentuating the observed diversity cline. About 60% of South American lineages are isolates (Seifart and Hammarström 2017), that is, consist of only one extant member whose ties with related lineages were severed at a point of time that exceeds the time horizon that can be reached by historical linguistic methods (under ideal conditions ~8000 years). This indicates high rates of linguistic diversification and cladogenesis already in an early phase of human presence. The causes of this remain poorly understood. South American languages are also characterized by extreme heterogeneity concerning their evolved sound systems and grammars—a third parameter of linguistic diversity that contributes to the overall complexity of the linguistic situation in the continent."

The paper, explored genetic and language similarities, and as you'd expect, they found "strong similarities in language and morphology between the Selk'nam and Qawaskar", the boat-people that lived in the seas of Tierra del Fuego and SW Chilean Patagonia. They were the human beings who lived furthest south in the whole World!

The Mapuche have an Amazon-Chaco origin

The paper also found affinities between Chacoan people (called Quom) and the Mapuches of Chile.

In my book, I mentioned many myths and legends of the Mapuches that are similar to myths of the natives that lived in Southern Amazonia, and the Chaco region (the Guaraní people). But the homeland of the Mapuche and the Chaco-Amazon region are nearly 1,500 miles (2,400 km) apart, with the Andes rising 6,000 m (20,000 ft.) high between them.

I also wrote a post on the subject see: Mapuche natives and their possible link to the Guarani.

The Mapuche don't like the idea of being considered as "recent" arrivals in Chile, migrants from the central South American jungles. They prefer to believe they have always lived in Chile. However, the facts are quite the opposite. This paper says:

"The Qom and Mapuche exhibit the strongest genetic similarities among the groups we studied. The Qom are a lowland group from the southern Chaco, while the Mapuche historically inhabited northern Patagonia, later expanding to the Pampas. Recent genetic studies on the Mapuche suggest that their genetic profile reflects an ancient ancestry linked to early migration waves (SNA2), followed by prolonged isolation before recent gene flow from the Central Andes (Arango-Isaza et al. 2023; Capodiferro et al. 2021). In fact, mtDNA affinities between Chaco and Andean populations have led some scholars to suggest a shared evolutionary history (Cabana et al. 2006; Russo et al. 2018). This is consistent with previous genetic studies, which have reported close biological affinities between the Qom and Mapuche (Cabana et al. 2006; Demarchi and García Ministro 2008; Sevini et al. 2013) despite the fact that they are not geographic neighbors."

Read the paper online: Menéndez, L. P., and M. Urban. 2025. “ Tracing Human Diversity in South America's Southern Cone: Linguistic, Morphometric, and Genetic Perspectives.” American Journal of Biological Anthropology 187, no. 3: e70077. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.70077.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Amerindians navigated to Polynesia before the Polynesians arrived there

An article in Nature (Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement, Ioannidis, A.G., Blanco-Portillo, J., Sandoval, K. et al. Nature (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2) finds evidence that there is Amerindian admixture in Polynesian people due to an early "one-time-only" event that took place around 1150-1230 AD in eastern Polynesia.

The Amerindians didn't sail to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) which is the point where America and Polynesia are closest. Instead they moved across the equatorial region -like Thor Heyerdahl had suggested in the 1940s- and reached the Marquesas islands, which at that time were uninhabited.

Then came the island-hopping Polynesians from the west and they met there, admixed and then spread across the Pacific.

The authors find similarities between the DNA sampled in Polynesia with the DNA of Colombian and Ecuadorian Native Americans.

A plausible alternative is that the Amerindians never set sail across the ocean. Instead the Polynesians kept on sailing eastwards and reached America, here they fraternized with the locals and returned with Amerindian DNA back home.

The Polynesia to America route has been proposed before (Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar American Antiquity, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 457-484 DOI: 10.2307/40035309). And I have posted about Polynesian DNA in South America (here) regarding the Botocudo people and a possible route for peopling America via the Antarctic (read more ), but for pre-Polynesian people -I was thinking about Aboriginals from Australia or even pre-sapiens hominins (here), not Polynesians who are the latecomers to the region.

Alternate Hypothesis

Perhaps the Amerindian signal has another origin. Let's take a look at the map in Nature's paper:

See large size map

The "Polynesians" supposedly have a strong imprint of Amerindian -green- DNA. And the Chilean Mapuche people (brown) are found in large amounts in Easter Island, which is coherent with the Spanish from Chile visiting the islands with native servants-laborer, and from there back migrated into western Polynesia in historic times. They also occupy the Chilean-Argentine area of South America. The ancestral Kaweskar people who were "canoe people" have a high prevalence of the "green" signal. They were the first to reach southern South America.

The strong Mesoamerican signal may (green) may indicate that these people (Mixe, Zapotec, Maya, Northern South American Amerindians and the ancestral Kaweskar) came from Polynesia -from Asia via Polynesia. They also settled there in their migration from Asia to America. Later came the (pale blue) wave of Polynesians and replaced them.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-20204 by Austin Whittall ©