of Argentina. Culture and religion The missions and early 20th-century anthropologists collected information about Selk'nam religion and traditions while trying to help them preserve their culture. Missionary José Beauvoir compiled a dictionary of the Selk'nam language. Language The Selk'nam spoke a Chon language. The last native speaker died in 1974 but Joubert Yanten Gomez, a linguistic prodigy from Santiago, Chile, taught himself the language in the early 21st century while still a teenager. He calls himself by a Selk'nam name, Keyuk. He studied the lexicon published in 1915 by Beauvoir, studied recordings of the language made by anthropologist Anne Chapman forty years earlier, in order to learn its sound. He speaks several other indigenous languages and is learning Yagan. Religion Selk'nam religion was a complex system of beliefs. It described spirit beings as a part of the past, in creation myth. Temáukel was the name of the great supernatural entity who they believed kept the world order. The creator deity of the world was called Kénos or Quénos. Many of their tales recounted shaman-like characters. Such a has supernatural capabilities, e.g. he can control weather. Initiation ceremonies Selk'nam male initiation ceremonies, the passage to adulthood, was called Hain. Nearby indigenous peoples, the Yahgan and Haush, had similar initiation ceremonies. Young males were called to a dark hut. There they would be attacked by "spirits", who were people dressed as supernatural beings. The children were taught to believe in and fear these spirits at childhood and were threatened by them in case they misbehaved. Their task in this rite of passage was to unmask the spirits; when the boys saw that the spirits were human, they were told a story of world creation related to the sun and moon. In a related story, they were told that in the past women used to be disguised as spirits to control men. When the men discovered the masquerade, they, in turn, would threaten women as spirits. According to the men, the women never learned that the masked males were not truly spirits, but the males found out at the initiation rite. The contemporary ceremonies used this interplay in somewhat of a joking way. After the first day, related ceremonies and rituals took place. Males showed their "strength" in front of women by fighting spirits (who were other males but the women supposedly did not know it) in some theatrical fights. Each spirit was