The Yahgan (also called Yagán, Yaghan, Yámana, Yamana, or Tequenica) are a group of indigenous peoples in the Southern Cone of South America.

Their traditional territory includes the islands south of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, extending their presence into Cape Horn, making them the world's southernmost indigenous human population.

[7] In 1871, Anglican missionaries Thomas Bridges and George Lewis established a mission in Tierra del Fuego where they raised their families.

In his 1948 book, a history of that period, he writes that the Yahgan autonym or name for themselves was yamana, meaning person, though modern usage is for man only, not women.

[9] The name Tekenika (Spanish: Tequenica), first applied to a sound in Hoste Island, simply means "I do not understand" (from teki- see and -vnnaka (v schwa) have trouble doing), and evidently originated as the answer to a misunderstood question.

[14] Although they had fires and small domed shelters, they routinely went about completely naked, and the women swam in cold waters hunting for shellfish.

[18] Royal Navy officer Robert FitzRoy became captain of HMS Beagle in November 1828, and continued her first survey voyage.

Boat Memory died of smallpox soon after arriving in Britain but the others briefly became celebrities in England and were presented at court in London in the summer of 1831.

[21]In contrast, he said of the Yahgan Jemmy Button: It seems yet wonderful to me, when I think over all his many good qualities, that he should have been of the same race, and doubtless partaken of the same character, with the miserable, degraded savages whom we first met here.

He still spoke English, assuring them that he did not wish to leave the islands and was "happy and contented" to live with his wife, described by Darwin as "young and nice looking".

[22] This encounter with the Fuegians had an important influence on Darwin's later scientific work and would be integrated into his later theories on human evolution specifically.

The Yahgan suffered disruptions to their habitat starting in the early-to-mid 19th-century when European whalers and sealers depleted their most calorie-rich sources of food, forcing them to rely on mussels chopped from rocks, which provided significantly fewer calories for the effort needed to gather and process them.

[26] The last full-blooded Yahgan, "Abuela" (grandmother) Cristina Calderón, who lived in Chilean territory, died in 2022 age 93[27] due to complications of COVID-19.