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Esteban Lucas Bridges (December 31, 1874, Ushuaia – April 4, 1949, Buenos Aires) was an Anglo-Argentine author, explorer, and rancher. After fighting for the British during World War I, he married and moved with his wife to South Africa, where they developed a ranch with her brother. He was the third child of six 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) in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, at the southernmost tip of South America. He wrote ''The Uttermost Part of the Earth'' (1948) about his family's experiences in Tierra del Fuego, but it was particularly about the Yahgan and Selk'nam indigenous peoples and the effects on them of colonization by Europeans. ==Early life and education== Stephen Lucas Bridges, also called Esteban and going by Lucas, was born to Thomas and Mary Ann Bridges in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego. The third of six children and the second of three sons, he grew up speaking English, Yahgan, and Selk'nam. Their father was an Anglican missionary who ministered to the indigenous Yahgan and Ona peoples. Lucas Bridges learned the languages and cultures of both tribes from a young age. He was the only European to be made a blood brother of the Selk'nam and invited to witness their council. He also compiled a vocabulary of the Haush or ''Manek'enk,'' a small indigenous tribe located to the east of the Selk'nam, at the end of Mitre Peninsula.〔 Bridges witnessed the effects of change as immigrants from European cultures flooded the area beginning in the late 19th century. There were gold and sheep booms in the region, attracting many new immigrants. The indigenous peoples were decimated by militia working for the large sheep ranchers, with the complicity of Argentine and Chilean states. The armed parties committed a Selk'nam Genocide, hunting down the people for bounties. Eurasian infectious diseases such as measles caused high fatality rates. Outbreaks in 1884 (following a visit by three Argentine Navy ships), 1924 and 1929 became fatal epidemics for the indigenous peoples, with devastating results.〔Bridges, Lucas, ''Uttermost Part of the Earth'', Second edition, with an introduction by Gavin Young, London: Century, 1987, ISBN 0-7126-1493-1. pp. 125–7, 136, 520, 532〕 The Ona and Haush became extinct in the 20th century, and the number of Yahgan much reduced.〔Bridges (1987), ''Uttermost Part of the Earth'', p. 521〕 In 1886, his father resigned his position as missionary. After the government gave his father a large grant of land, Lucas helped him build Estancia Harberton (named after his mother's hometown in England), the residence of a sheep ranch, in a sheltered bay on the coast of the Beagle Channel. The location was chosen by the Yahgan as a safe port. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lucas Bridges」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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