The Nomadic Alternative – Page 133

and kept the fire alive, for fire was the only cultural artifact

the Yaghan guarded obsessively. If the fire went out they could

rekindle it with iron pyrites using dried puff-ball fungus as tinder.

But they preferred to fan the glowing embers even at sea. "All life",

Gusinde wrote, "is impossible without fire. The women are like the

ancient Vestals and never allow it to go out in their frail canoes."

This interlocking division of labour did not simply share the load

of responsibility; it harmonized relations between the sexes, uniting

man to woman in a balance of mutual dependence.

The Yaghan had invested in freedom of movement, not in things.

Therein lay their sense of well-being. Those who abandon a settled

existence may feel the flickerings of such liberty, but this is a

poor substitute for the liberty of those innocent of the alternative.

The Yaghan - in common with other hunting and gathering peoples -

knew that settlement entails hoarding, and hoarding the genesis of

a hierarchy. Settlement robs men of the risks that give a sense

of accomplishment to the processes of life. Their lives were dan-

gerous enough already and they had no need to invent artificial

dangers. Their requirements were few and easily supplied, for their

strategy was the strategy of the minimum. As an act of policy they

had remained in the State that Rousseau recognized as being best

for man. This was not the State of Nature, extolled by the Romantics,

a condition we would now describe as sub-human passivity. This

state demands man fully formed, fully equipped with an intelligent

brain, fully satisfying his material and intellectual needs, each

for himself within the framework of society of equals.