Fuegian palm trees, rhea and a penguin with scales

Tierra del Fuego is a large island on the southernmost tip of South America. It lies on the south side of the Strait of Magellan. It is shared by Argentina and Chile. Its name means "Land of Fire," due to the fires spotted by Magellan during the expedition, lit by the Selk'nam natives.

Its northern part is grassy, cold, and windswept, as you move south towards the Andes open forests appear and then, in the mountain range, dense, tangled Andean woods. Snowcapped mountains and glaciers line its southern flank. Freezing in winter, slightly less cold during summer.

However, the Dutch depicted it differently during their expeditions that took place in the early 1600s. They were seeking a way to the East Indies that didn't go through the Strait of Magellan, which was zealously claimed by Spain, or along the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. They explored Staten Island and found a way around the south side of the Island

The map below (online and zoomable) shows the ships of Joris van Spilbergen's expedition that navigated the Strait of Magellan in 1615. It depicts different scenes that took place in Tierra del Fuego.

Tierra del Fuego in 1615.

The image shows a penguin (marked with a letter "H") that is captioned in the text as follows: "H. Is a penguin, which are to be seen in great numbers there." Notice that it looks scaly rather than feathery! Then there is a tree that oddly resembles a palm tree (in the icy fireland!), further right there is a large bird being shot at by some Dutch sailors (caption reads "I. Are some sailors shooting birds on land.") The size of the birds is interesting. The penguin is as large as the natives. Is it some kind of giant penguin? If so, it became extinct.

The land bird to the right may be a ñandú or rhea, a flightless bird that inhabits southern South America and Patagonia, but nowadays is not found in Tierra del Fuego. Its size -as tall as the sailors- suggestss it was a rhea.

The Fuegian natives had a myth about the rhea, which they called "Ohi," indicating that it lived in the Island before it was hunted to extinction (read about this myth: the intriguing Ohi)

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

Awurwur - ostrich men

 
Today, as promised, a new post, on the mysterious awurwurs, the ostrich men.

Ostrich Skeleton, the "knee" is actually the "ankle".

Mateo Martinic in his book on the Aonikenk natives of Southern Patagonia [1] wrote about the awurwur as follows (bold mine):

The Patagonian hunters' mythology transmitted by tradition and compiled by some informants and modern & contemporary austors, mentions a "semi-legendary aboriginal group", as Escalada defined it, known under different names such as agongures, agougures, awurwur, aawurwur or auwurwan, aire or airre. They ,according to a legendary aboriginal belief (accepted by authors such as Francisco P. Moreno and Thomas Hrrington), a "Fuegian" group (occidental boat men or kawéskar) settled on the mainland of oriental Patagonia in the southern sector comprising the regions of Santa Cruz and the Strait of Magellan, whose distinctive features were that its members were very fast, because they had their knees facing backwards, like those of ostriches, and they used a tail of feathers

This is very interesting indeed, however I must point out, as you can see in the image above, the things that point backwards are not the bird's knees, they are its ankles!.

The question of the awurwurs is treated by Martinic in a very scholarly manner, and he, of course sets the bird-men aside and goes on to analyze the fuegian boat men.
However, in this blog we can afford to be a bit more extremist, and propose outlandish ideas such as the following:

Could the awurwur myth go back to the days of terror-birds? Do they embody fearful monstrous man eating predators? After all, a ñandú or South American ostrich is a very harmless creature that hides from sight camouflaged by its brown speckled feathers, which blend it into the steppe's vegetation, and its tail is not all that memorable. But what about a gigantic terror bird? (see my posts on them:
Terror birds and some images).

Could this hint at a relatively recent extinction of these giant carnivore birds?

Ok, enough for today! but it is an interesting thought isn't it?

Sources

[1] Martinic, Mateo, (1995). Los Aonikenk, Historia y Cultura. Ediciones Universidad de Magallanes. pp. 93

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall ©