ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the interaction of political, economic and religious forces that produced the colonial genocide of the Selk’nam. It addresses the place of the island in the context of late-nineteenth-century Argentinian and Chilean geopolitical expansion, the juridical dispute between the two nations and its eventual settlement. The Chilean navy officer Ramón Serrano Montaner led a small party through its north-western region, under constant surveillance from different groups of Selk’nam. Between 1877 and 1885, both the Argentinian and Chilean authorities, whose actual control over the territory was very limited, succeeded in attracting capital from the Falkland Islands for investment in the southern-most tip of the continent. The Selk’nam of Tierra del Fuego were virtually exterminated by pastoral settlers in the first decade after the landing of sheep. In Tierra del Fuego there were no national armies that led the Euro-American conquest of the territory.
