Savage (16 page)

When the boats returned he had lost almost everything. Jemmy, too, had been stripped of most of his property, though Fuegia and York had been left untouched. The gardens had been trampled underfoot, despite Jemmy's efforts to explain their purpose and their benefits. ‘My people very bad; great fool; know nothing at all; very great fool,' he told FitzRoy when he had the chance to explain his version of events. Only Jemmy's family had behaved in a friendly fashion, although one brother had joined in the plunder.

It was clear that Matthews could not stay and carry out his work without putting himself in great jeopardy. FitzRoy agreed that he should go back with the boats to the
Beagle.
He detailed men to spread out among the natives to create the impression of strength and numbers, then ordered the remaining hands to clear what was left of Matthews's property – essentially the buried box – out of the wigwam as swiftly as possible. Hamond considered it a brave action: ‘I certainly thought that we should not have got away without a breach of the peace, for the Indians were making a great noise, and some of the chiefs making menacing gestures. However, by being very much on our guard, we got away without a row…'

When the last man was safely aboard the boat, FitzRoy handed out axes, saws, knives, gimlets and nails to the Indians and said goodbye to Jemmy and York, promising to come back once more in a few days. The two returned Fuegians stood waving on the beach still clothed in their kid gloves and button boots, breeches and tunics. The sadness of the farewell touched many of those there, and Darwin wrote in his diary,

It was quite melancholy leaving our Fuegians amongst their barbarous countrymen. There was one comfort; they appeared to have no personal fears. But, in contradiction of what has often been stated, 3 years has been sufficient to change savages into as far as habits go, complete & voluntary Europæans. York, who was a full grown man & with a strong violent mind, will I am certain in every respect live, as far as his means go, like an Englishman. Poor Jemmy looked rather disconsolate & certainly would have liked to have returned with us; he said ‘they were all very bad men, no “sabe” nothing'. Jemmy's own brother had been stealing from him; as Jemmy said, ‘what fashion do you call that'. I am afraid whatever other ends this excursion to England produces, it will not be conducive to their happiness. They have far too much sense not to see the vast superiority of civilized over uncivilized habits, yet I am afraid to the latter they must return.

Despite the sadness of saying goodbye, there was a sense of release all round. Of the experience Darwin said, in a letter to his sister Caroline, he had felt ‘quite a disgust at the very sound of the voices of these miserable savages'. Of Matthews, FitzRoy stated in the
Narratives
that he ‘must have felt like a man reprieved, excepting that he enjoyed the feelings always sure to reward those who try to do their duty…'

Sadly for Richard Matthews, life did not improve for him. In 1835, when the
Beagle
eventually reached New Zealand he joined his brother and attempted once again to become a missionary. Unfortunately he was found wanting: he behaved improperly on many occasions, causing a deterioration in the fragile relations between missionaries and natives there. One Sunday he made a Maori boy shoot a dog that had been bothering his chickens, and when the dog's owners complained, he horse-whipped them. In 1840 he was at the heart of a financial scandal in Wanganui that involved the misappropriation of missionary funds. He and his pregnant wife and children were forced to sell their property and walk 400 miles across the heart of New Zealand to his brother's home in Kataia. In 1845, seeking to make amends for his misdeeds, he opened a native school eighty miles from ‘civilisation', and was found writing to the Church Missionary Society, ‘It hath pleased the Lord that I should lose the use of one eye and with a wife and four children I am at the present reduced to the greatest distress…'

As for FitzRoy, the return to Wulaia and the chaos and ruin he found were crushing blows. He could tell himself that he had made a change to the lives of three Fuegians, but he could not fool himself that his efforts had borne great fruit. Hamond observed in his diary, ‘It was very mortifying to Captain FitzRoy who had taken so much trouble and in so disinterested a manner to better the conditions of these poor savages, to have all his plans frustrated at the very commencement.' In what was undoubtedly not meant as a metaphor, but serves the function perfectly, his next entry read: ‘All the seeds that were sown had made their appearance above ground, but I am afraid it was too late in the season for them to come to maturity. We all went to bed very much out of temper with the conduct of the Indians.'

*   *   *

Eight days after he had last seen Jemmy, York and Fuegia, on 14 February 1833, FitzRoy paid them another visit at Wulaia. He found them well and in the company of a few local people, who were fishing. All three were smartly dressed and in good spirits. Nevertheless they had had an eventful week. Jemmy had continued to lose things to general thievery, most notably a looking-glass, but York and Fuegia had fared considerably better. A large canoe that York was building sat by his and Fuegia's wigwam.

Not long after FitzRoy and his party had gone, strangers had turned up, Jemmy told the captain. There had been ‘very much jaw' and a lot of fighting with ‘great many stone'. They had stolen two women and Jemmy's people had stolen one, but all was calm now and he believed the worst was over. In the gardens the beans, peas and corn were flourishing. Jemmy's mother came to meet the captain in the dress her son had given her. It was a fond farewell, which lifted FitzRoy's spirits. In his own mind, the project still had a chance of blossoming. Perhaps it was not yet time to abandon all hope. In a letter to his sister he wrote that he ‘left them with some satisfaction … Things might have turned out worse, as well as better.'

Chapter 13

On a bright, breezy day in early March 1834, the
Beagle
dropped anchor off the shore of Wulaia Cove. It had been thirteen months since FitzRoy had said his last, optimistic goodbye. In the interim they had charted the eastern extremities of Tierra del Fuego, checked and rechecked the longitude of Patagonia, put in to Buenos Aires, Monte Video, and the Falkland Islands. Now, with the work on the Atlantic section of the survey near to completion, he took advantage of fair winds and blue skies to become the first captain to penetrate the Beagle Channel in a ship.

The Fuegians had not been forgotten, and in their quieter moments many a crew member's thoughts had turned to them – mostly with anxiety. On 3 December 1833 Darwin wrote, to his sister Susan, ‘It will be very interesting, but I am afraid likewise painful to see poor Jemmy Button and the others – I expect to find them naked and half starved – if indeed they have not been devoured during the past winter.'

The
Beagle
had reached Port Famine on the Straits of Magellan in the first days of February. From here they beat westward across Nassau Bay, through Goree Roads and into the channel. Things were very quiet. In the final stretch, seven canoes followed them and, for a short while at Wulaia, threatened a fight. But they had been driven away and all that was left was silence. From the ship it could be seen that the cove was deserted.

As FitzRoy climbed into a boat to be rowed ashore, he steeled himself for bad news. His fears were justified: the wigwams were empty and long abandoned. Their structure was undamaged but they were just shells: all their fittings and furnishings had been removed. There were no signs of the Fuegians. He walked to the gardens and shuffled disconsolately around them. A clutch of healthy potatoes and turnips had pushed their way to the surface, but the rest was frustratingly neglected. The captain ordered that they be dug up and served at his table that night. He strode back to the boat and returned to the
Beagle.

As the hours passed FitzRoy prowled the upper deck. Then, in the distance, three canoes – the foremost bearing a ragged flag – were spotted moving at speed from a small island. FitzRoy had difficulty making out the occupants through his telescope, but he could see that two were washing their faces. As they came nearer he recognised Jemmy's brother ‘Tommy Button' but, as he wrote in a letter to his sister, ‘could not make out another individual whom I was sure I knew well. At last he saw me and by the motion of his hand to his head (like a sailor touching his hat) I knew my poor little friend Jemmy – so altered…'

The young Fuegian was naked, save for a knot of cloth modestly covering his loins. He was emaciated, his hair long and matted, his eyes caked with the ash of woodsmoke. Where before he had been a stout, but neatly groomed boy, he was now a shadow of his former self. So ashamed was he of his appearance that as the canoe neared the ship Jemmy turned his back to it. Darwin noted, ‘It was quite painful to behold him … When he left us he was very fat, and so particular about his clothes, that he was always afraid of even dirtying his shoes; scarcely ever without gloves and his hair neatly cut. I never saw so complete and grievous a change.' The effect was emotionally explosive. ‘I could almost have cried,' wrote FitzRoy. ‘I was not the only one who was disposed to play the woman's part for he was a great favourite and his altered appearance was enough to move harder people than sailors.'

Jemmy scampered aboard the
Beagle,
greeted his old companions affectionately and was rushed below deck to be scrubbed and clothed. Within half an hour he was dining at the captain's table ‘using his knife and fork and behaving in every way as if he had only left us the preceding day'. His English, too, was as good as it had ever been; he remembered everyone and expressed pleasure at the reunion, singling out Benjamin Bynoe and James Bennet for particular attention. He handed out presents he had been keeping for them: two carefully preserved otter skins, one for FitzRoy, the other for Bennet; a bow and a quiver full of arrows for Mr Jenkins, the schoolmaster back in Walthamstow; and two spear-heads he had made for Darwin. FitzRoy was touched and made a special note in a letter to his sister Fanny, ‘These things, from their clean appearance, had been, I am certain, laid by ready for our expected arrival. Whatever could the poor little fellow do more?'

But Jemmy was not seeking sympathy. Life was good, he proclaimed. Since leaving the
Beagle
he had not had a day's illness; to the contrary, he felt fitter than ever. ‘I am hearty, sir, never better,' he told the captain, who from the Fuegian's appearance had surmised that he had been ill. His only complaint was that he had been eating far too much. ‘Plenty fruits, plenty birdies, ten guanacoes in snow time, and too much fish,' he said, patting his malnourished stomach.

When urged to return to England with the ship, to take up where he had left off, he replied that he had no wish to return or to change his way of life. He would stay here, where he belonged. The refusal surprised those around him. Darwin wrote to his sister Catherine, ‘He was quite contented; last year in the height of his indignation, he said “his country, people no sabe nothing; – damned fools.” Now they were very good people, with too much to eat and all the luxuries of life.'

In the days immediately following FitzRoy's departure the theft of property had continued and Jemmy had occupied his days with carving a canoe out of a large log and making daily inspections of the gardens for vegetables. The first frosts of winter had followed quickly in the wake of the departing boats. Within a month or two the returned Fuegians had found themselves chilled to the bone and isolated in their new, impractical homes, which had proved too large, too high and almost impossible to heat. They had moved back into the relative warmth of a Fuegian wigwam.

At the same time news of the encampment at Wulaia had spread to the furthest reaches of Tierra del Fuego – to the Oens-men. They crossed the Beagle Channel in stolen canoes and ran swiftly over the mountains, descending on Wulaia from the heights behind the cove. In the skirmish that followed, Jemmy killed one of the attackers before joining with his people in fleeing to the sanctuary of nearby islands. One might have expected him, as the most ‘civilised' Fuegian, to have been particularly disturbed by the fighting, but it was York who had been most gravely unsettled: in the heat of battle he had stood at the door of his home with a raised spade, threatening to decapitate anybody who came near. Soon after the attack he persuaded Jemmy and his mother to go with him on a visit to his land in the west. By this time, Jemmy said, York had become a daunting figure, ‘very much jaw … pick up big stones … all men afraid'. He had felt obliged to accompany him.

They left in four canoes heading west. At Devil Island, near the junction of the north-west and south-west arms of the Beagle Channel, they had met York's brother and a party of Alakaluf Fuegians. That night, the Alakalufs had robbed Jemmy of his clothes, his tools, everything they could get their hands on, except a large knife that hung round his neck. Fuegia was implicated in the treachery and helped York to ‘catch his clothes during the night'. The last time Jemmy had seen her she had been smiling and laughing as usual and she and York had been well clothed. He had subsequently heard that, having passed through the Beagle Channel to Christmas Sound, they had reached their home territory safely.

Jemmy's abandonment yet again – for the second time in a matter of months – on a lonely shore, this time as naked as he had come into the world and with only his mother to help him, was the final straw. As York stripped him of his clothes – the crisp white shirt and the stiff breeches, the kid gloves and the button boots – he took from him the last vestiges of Englishness. Frightened, cold and lost, this was when Jemmy realised his isolation. He could choose to maintain the charade that he was something else, that he had a mission to achieve, a new way of life to pass on, or he could accept that he had been cast aside by all but those closest to him. Now, a Yamana Indian, he chose the only path that was open to him. He returned to his people.