Abstract

After finishing his second trip to Tierra del Fuego and after having established contacts and developed studies between the Selk'nam and the Yaghan, Martin Gusinde begins to plan his entry into the Kaw & eacute;sqar world. He considered that as part of the celebrations of the fourth centenary of the discovery of the Strait of Magellan he could obtain support from the Government to carry out a larger expedition. The journey was planned as just another trip, permits and support was obtained, only that the experience "was not successful", since he could not meet the Kaw & eacute;sqar as he wanted, for reasons beyond his control. Despite the difficulties, he became member of the Hicken-Reichert Expedition to Laguna San Rafael. The results of this expedition are a notable example that things do not always turn out as planned, that "imponderables" are a substantive part of fieldwork and that we must confess in our ethnographies, as Bronislaw Malinowski teaches us, "ignorance" and "failures". In this work we provide all the available information gathered about Martin Gusinde's forgotten trip to Western Insular Patagonia and its particular characteristics.