Lucas Bridges

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.

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.

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