ABSTRACT
Tierra del Fuego was the name given by European sailors to a part of the New World on whose shore, from a distance, they saw fires burning. In early cartography, which map-makers at the time understood as the ‘eye of history,’ this region appeared as an unknown land, and commentaries spoke in vague and grotesque terms of the ‘savages’ that lived there. Such was the transnational perception of the region, based on travel reports, that was handed down through the centuries. This chapter describes how visual communication about this region and its people was made meaningful at the expense of the indigenous peoples – notably the Selk’nam, who had their own sense of history – and ultimately of their very existence.
