An officer of the steamer I was on said the land was given under the impression that it was to be used by the missionary for the benefit of the tribe, and that even then Mr. Bridges would not have got it had the government known that the "wonderful improvement" in the condition of the Yahgans, of which the lecturer spoke, had been confined to a handful of individuals, while the tribe, as a whole, had dwindled from 3000 healthy heathen to a few hundred diseased beggars.
However, Mr. Bridges had told just what he came for--to get land "to create a farm and employ native labor," and so supply a want for agricultural products "which we (the missionaries, of course,) have long felt." Mr. Bridges supplies agricultural products for a price, and he employs some Yahgans, who, as he believes, are better off when sawing logs by hand into fence rails for his ranch than they were in the old days sitting around an open fire eating whale blubber and telling stories. As to the prices he charges, it must be said that he merely shows good business tact. They are always considerably less, even according to those prospectors who do not like him, than charged by Ushuaia merchants, though still from three to five times as much as charged at Punta Arenas (Sandy Point), in the Straits of Magellan.
The prospectors, disposed to criticise Mr. Bridges for making the best business possible of his farm, alleged, without offering any proof of their charge, that Mr. Bridges got his money for stocking the farm by taking clothing which generous people of England sent to the mission for gifts to the naked savages and trading it to the Indians for furs, which he sold for his own private benefit. I do not believe he did that. It appears from the missionary record (see page 56, _South American Missionary Magazine_ of London, March, 1879, and page 39, February, 1881, for instance), that the missionaries did trade with the Indians for furs, and that the clothing which the Indians received was usually, but not always, paid for with either labor or furs. The missionaries did sell clothing sent out to be given to the Indians, but they made no secret of it, and the donors learned the facts in the magazine. The missionaries did not want to pauperize the Indians, they said, by giving gifts. But the profits of these trades went to the society. In 1881 Capt. Willis of the mission schooner in a letter spoke dolefully of the prospect for buying skins on the society's account, "as there are so many sealing vessels out." Capt. Willis spoke also (see page 233 of the magazine) of three canoe loads of Indians who "exchanged otter skins for clothes, and were eager for tobacco."