At Home with the Patagonians

It was Charles Darwin's account of his experiences in Patagonia's terra incognita that caught the imagination of a young George Musters, an officer in the Royal Navy. On April 17, 1869, he landed at Gregory Bay, and over the course of the next 11 months traversed across the Patagonian steppes, from the Rio Santa Cruz to the Rio Negro. During this odyssey, Musters lived and travelled with the Teheulche tribes, and found in these "South Sea giants" a gentle and deeply intelligent people. Unlike Darwin or any of the other anthropologists who had walked this "untrodden ground," Musters' work is devoted entirely to the lifestyle of the Teheulche, their rituals and their hierarchies, an empathetic account of their fascinating lives. First published in serial form in the Buenos Aires Standard, At Home with the Patagonians is regarded as "an ethnographic monument," providing, as it does, a first-hand insight into the ways and days of a vanishing people.