Our study suggests a different set of inferences. While we certainly agree that Darwin was troubled by his experiences in Tierra del Fuego, the difference between civilized humans and the most degraded savages was hardly narrow. Darwin had been stunned, but he did not see the Fuegians of the islands as more animal-like. Rather, he saw their meagerness and ignorance as “accident” and not “essence,” a thesis proved by Jemmy Button, Fuegia Basket, and York Minster.
