World’s End, Words End: Sustaining Cross-Cultural Interactions over Very Long Distances in the Patagonian Archipelagoes, 1760–1767

This article analyzes two versions of the Jesuit José García’s diary narrating an exploration and evangelization voyage to the Western Patagonian archipelagoes during the austral summer of 1766–67. This article argues that recently converted Indigenous canoeing groups resettled in the Jesuit mission at Cailín, in the Chiloé Archipelago, were crucial auxiliaries and intermediaries whose labor made possible missional expeditions to the Patagonian archipelagoes during the mid-eighteenth century. Spanish dependence on Indigenous auxiliaries for navigating the Patagonian archipelagoes, intermediation with unconverted groups, and general translation duties, moreover, lays a blanket of doubt over a variety of ethnographic information presented in contemporary sources as self-evident. In this sense, Jesuits such as José García only understood the material and social layout of the Patagonian archipelagoes inasmuch as their Indigenous auxiliaries provided them with usually incomplete information under significant friction imposed by physical and cultural distance. Ultimately, this article shows how Indigenous groups in the Patagonian archipelagoes leveraged their spatial mobility, interpersonal networks, and knowledge of different languages as bargaining chips with a colonial system whose possibilities of exerting coercion and projecting power were very limited.