Lucas Bridges

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Esteban Lucas Bridges (31 December 1874, Ushuaia – 4 April 1949, Buenos Aires) was an Anglo-Argentine author and explorer. He was the third child and second son of Anglican missionary Reverend Thomas Bridges (1842–98) and "the third white native of Ushuaia" (his elder brother, born in 1872, having been the first) at the southernmost tip of South America. Ushuaia was known as Ooshooia in the indigenous Yaghan language.

His acclaimed book Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948), published one year before his death, is a chronicle that covers nearly a century of the history of his family who started as missionary settlers in Tierra del Fuego in 1871, although his father had visited, and lived on Keppel Island in, the Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego intermittently since 1856. This literary classic tells a story of the clash of three civilisations: the white men, the Yaghan (Yahgashaga in Yaghan) and the Ona (Shilknum in Ona language). Having grown up among the indigenous tribes of the island, Lucas Bridges learned the language and customs of both tribes. He was a privileged witness of their lifestyle and beliefs as well as a witness of the tragic effects the advance of western civilisation had on them. These effects also included measles, to which they, unlike people of European descent, lacked any genetic resistance; outbreaks in 1884 (following a visit by three Argentine Navy ships to raise the flag and establish a sub-prefecture at Ushuaia), 1924 and 1929 became fatal epidemics with devastating results each time for population levels. Both civilisations (the Ona and the Yaghan) have been erased from the face of the earth.

Esteban Lucas Bridges helped his father,Thomas Bridges, build the Estancia Harberton after the latter resigned his position as missionary, moving from Ushuaia to this sheltered bay chosen by the Yaghans as a safe port.

The Lucas Bridges trail was established to transport sheep from Estancia Harberton, the family home, on the coast of the Beagle Channel to Estancia Viamonte, in the north area of the island.

He went to England to enlist in the army and fight in World War I and then moved to South Africa where he established a ranch with his brother-in-law. Finally, he moved back to Buenos Aires in his home country, where he lived out his last years.

[edit] References

• Obituary: Lucas Bridges, The Geographical Journal 114 (1949) 240–241

• Bridges, Lucas, Uttermost Part of the Earth, originally published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1948. Re-issued, with an introduction by Gavin Young, Century, London, 1987, ISBN 0-7126-1493-1. Page numbers cited refer to the later edition. Republished 2008, Overlook Press ISBN 978-1585679560

Exact date of birth, position in family, etc.: p. 67. Father's dates: p. 538. Father's intermittent visits to, and residence in, Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego: pp. 42–58. Argentine Navy visit and establishing a sub-prefecture at Ushuaia: pp. 122–3. Outbreaks and effects of measles: pp. 125–7, 136, 520, 532. Indigenous population levels: p. 521.