Historically Barefoot Ancud

While on the island of Chiloé we visited two of the historical centers in Ancud, the island’s northernmost city. Just as it is for most places, there were a lot of barefooted people there in the past.

One of the big historical interests on Chiloé is their wooden churches. For some reason the island doesn’t have much in the way of good stone for building, so instead the chilotes learned to get very good at using the local wood.

One way this shows up is in the construction of their churches, which have a distinct style. Ancud is the starting point for “La Ruta del las Iglesias Chiloé” (The Route of the Chiloé Churches), a tour to visit them all.

The Chiloé churches are a United Nations UNESCO World Heritage Site, just like Easter Island is. I knew going in that Easter Island was a World Heritage Site, but didn’t know about the Chiloé churches. So I got to visit two for the price of one.

Here’s a reminder of what the island looks like, and where Ancud is.

Chiloé

Here we are heading up to the Ancud church, which has been converted into a museum about the churchbuilding.

Going to Church

[Photo credit: Alan Bruens]

This gives you an idea of the number of churches and how they are distributed over the island of Chiloé.

The Historic Churches of Chiloé

The nave of the church was set up to see the various woodworking techniques used to build the churches. Of course, with that woodworking skill, they also did a lot of very good boatbuilding. Here’s a model of a typical Ancud sailing vessel that was on display, again showing the construction.

Velero Chilote

We were also able to climb up into the steeple of the church. Here’s the view looking WNW.

The View from the Steeple

I was really glad to be barefoot to do the climbing, both up and down. The stairways, and holes through which they went, were quite narrow. Here’s the view from the top looking down at the layers of alternating stairs.

The View IN the Steeple

You can also get a feel for the intricacies of the woodworking.

There was also a gift shop that contained some historical photographs of the area. We should be surprised that not that long ago kids went to school barefoot.

Girls’ School

The sign says, “School for Women, No. 44, Tenaún”.

Tenaún is in the next county (actually, “commune”, but in Chile that’s pretty-much like a county) south from Ancud, near the city of Castro.

There was also a museum right on the water in Ancud. One of their exhibits is the skeleton of a blue whale.

A Whale of a Skeleton

[Photo credit: Alan Bruens]

They also had a replica of the schooner Ancud, built in 1843 for Chile to claim sovereignty of the area around the Strait of Magellan. There is that woodworking again.

The Schooner Ancud

While the museum had plenty of other interesting exhibits, the ones I captured on camera showed just how barefoot the population went.

This picture shows native Chileans as depicted from a 1643 expedition by the Dutch captain Hendrick Brouwer.

Holandeses y chilenos con chiliweke, 1646

It’s easy to tell the Dutch on the right (shod) from the natives on the left (barefoot).

Charles Darwin visited Ancud in 1834 while on the Beagle. (As I mentioned in On the Road to Chiloé, before the Panama Canal was built, Ancud was a major port and stopping point for ships headed into the Pacific.) There the expedition recorded the use of “breast ploughs”.

Habitantes de Chiloé arando a luma, 1834

Toes look really useful for that.

There’s another historical picture from around 1854 (depicting the San Carlos Plaza in 1835—San Carlos became Ancud).

Plaza de San Carlos, 1835

[Click on this picture—and most of the pictures—for larger versions.]

Almost the entire population is barefooted.

You can see it better in this expanded detail of the three men on the right.

Detail from Plaza de San Carlos

It was fun and interesting to visit Ancud (Thanks, Machi!). It was even more interesting to see how people in that part of the world also had no qualms about going barefooted. It was what worked.