Savage (20 page)

By now, sixty or seventy people were floating in canoes around the ship, and the captain, worried that they would be overrun, gave orders that nobody should be allowed on board except Jemmy, an uncle, two brothers and a man about to be married to Jemmy's daughter. For the time being the shifting crowd below remained calm, but Jemmy advised Snow that there were one or two bad men in the canoes, men ‘not of his country', and said that the captain should stay on his guard.

As soon as he discovered that there was an ‘Ingliss lady' on the ship, the Fuegian demanded clothes. Snow fetched a pair of his own trousers and a shirt and handed them to Jemmy who, although only five foot three, was so fat that they were too small. Snow, insultingly and out of character, commented that in his clothes Jemmy looked like ‘some huge baboon dressed up for the occasion'. Jemmy said, ‘Want braces,' and, after a pair was brought, he began to relax.

It quickly became clear that for somebody who had not spoken the language for over twenty years his English was remarkable. He found fluency of speech difficult but managed ‘broken sentences, abrupt and pithy. Short inquiries, and sometimes painful efforts to explain himself were made, with, however, an evident pleasure in being able to converse with some one in the “Ingliss talk”.'

Jemmy was taken to the captain's cabin, where he met Mrs Snow, and was offered food and tea. He sat at the table, took a knife in hand and asked for meat, but when it arrived the moment overwhelmed him, and he was unable to eat. Snow, who had also lost his appetite, tried to engage Jemmy in conversation, to question him on his life, what he remembered of the
Beagle
and England. The answers came back thick and fast, disjointed, confused and sometimes barely intelligible. ‘Yes: me know – Ingliss conetree: vary good,' he said. ‘You flag, me know; yes: much good – all good in Ingliss conetree – long way – me sick in hammock – vary bad – big water sea – me know Capen Fitzoy – Byno – Bennet – Walamstow – Mit Wilson – Ingliss lady you wife?' Snow's wife had a ‘lovely colour' and ‘vary good looks', said Jemmy. ‘Ah! Ingliss ladies vary pretty! vary pretty!'

Jemmy had two wives, and was father to several children. Snow met three of Jemmy's grown up offspring and one young child. His eldest son was married and his eldest daughter, who was ‘mild and gentle in her manner', was betrothed to a much older man despite being no older than fourteen. He had put on a great deal of weight, but was otherwise as FitzRoy had found him on their last visit, with long, matted hair and eyes impeded by the sting of woodsmoke. He confirmed that he had never lived again on Wulaia after the initial invasion by Oens-men, but added that, yes, the gardens were fertile. There had been no ships in the area since the departure of the
Beagle,
he said, and when Snow expressed disbelief he replied, ‘No: – no ship – Capen Fitzoy – you.'

As they talked Snow tested FitzRoy's vocabulary of Fuegian words, published in the appendix to the
Narratives of the Voyage of the Beagle,
and found them accurate. He showed Jemmy the two portraits of himself that had also been included in the
Narratives,
one of the civilised young man of English cultivation, another drawn after his return to the wild. Jemmy laughed, then looked sad as he thought back over his life, asking himself, Snow reckoned, ‘which, after all, was the best – the prim and starch, or the rough and shaggy? Which he thought, he did not choose to say; but which I inferred he thought was gathered from his refusal to go anywhere again with us.'

Over the course of their conversation, Snow spoke of the mission station being built in the Falklands, and how important Jemmy might be to its work. Would he, asked the captain, consider returning to the Falklands with him? Jemmy said no. Snow persevered. ‘I expressly put the question in every possible and attractive form … but a decided and positive negative was the reply…'

The evening was getting on, daylight was fading, and Snow was anxious to secure the ship. Out on a canoe Jemmy's wife was calling, ‘Jamus, Jamus.' Before they parted for the night, Snow gave him a short tour of the ship, showing him his library, the ship's instruments, guns, photographs, ladies' fancy articles and perfumes. Jemmy was delighted, putting names to many of the objects. He asked Snow to fire his guns, but the captain demurred, fearing it might alarm the other Fuegians. When he requested a book, Snow handed over a set of religious tracts and a copy of the
Voice of Pity.
‘A fine musical box gave him intense pleasure; and when I played a Harmonium … he stood beside me as if entranced. He said it was “Oh! vary good – all Ingliss vary good!”'

Snow led Jemmy onto the main deck and told him it was time for him to leave but that in the morning he would hand out clothes and presents. Jemmy assured him that there would be no problems during the night, that the people around here were good, and with that he and his brothers climbed over the side of the ship and into their canoes.

*   *   *

It was a quiet night, the stillness broken only by the distant yapping of dogs, and at four in the morning Snow arose to prepare presents that he had brought from Bristol. As soon as the sun appeared on the horizon, the Yamana came to the ship, this time as many as a hundred, their canoes ‘covering the water like wherry-boats round an important launch at home'. It was not long before Jemmy and his brothers, in the company of some other men, had scrambled on board. Their mood seemed to have changed: they were more aggressive, more demanding, and not a little intimidating. Jemmy looked ‘more hideous and deplorable' than Snow could have previously imagined, for despite returning in the clothes he had been given the night before he had obviously been sleeping on the ground and he was covered in red mud.

Nevertheless, Snow welcomed him and suggested he bring his wife and daughter on board to meet Mrs Snow. Jemmy shouted for them to come up and, after a show of reluctance, they climbed up the side of the ship and were taken to the captain's cabin where they were dressed by Mrs Snow in cast-off clothes. To Jemmy, Snow gave a small mountain of gifts, including a clasp knife, an axe, blankets and shirts, and the Fuegian's mood seemed to mellow, but as they all chatted on deck the atmosphere changed again. Captain Snow had sent a party of men in a boat to tow the ship out of the cove and was giving the order to raise the second anchor, when four or five Fuegians, including two of Jemmy's brothers, set upon him, pushing and pulling him. They grabbed at his jacket and tore at his waistcoat, crying, ‘Ingliss come – Ingliss give – Ingliss plenty.' More Indians scrambled up the ship's side. From the middle of the mêlée, Snow shouted again for the second anchor to be lifted, but the mate with ‘the worst feeling of obstinacy' ignored his instructions. In the boat the men strained to pull the anchored ship away. Snow called on Jemmy for help but found that ‘he could not or would not prevent his brothers' and companions' rudeness'. Forestalling any further danger, and gambling that if the Fuegians felt they were about to be carried away they would flee, Snow shouted for the sails to be loosed. They billowed in the light draught and the ship lurched forward. ‘One and all, but Jemmy first … after an affecting farewell, scrambled back over the ship's side as they saw her slowly moving, while a Babel of tongues and cries resounded everywhere about us,' wrote Snow. With the ship moving, he looked back towards Button Island and saw Jemmy and wife struggling with an overloaded canoe and the unwelcome attentions of fellow Fuegians. Snow raised his cap one last time and waved it.

Chapter 16

The trip to Tierra del Fuego did little to ease relations among the mission party, despite its success in finding Jemmy Button. Phillips, who had attempted to persuade the Fuegian's wife to give up her young daughter to the mission, felt that Snow should have tried harder to encourage the Fuegians to join them in the Falklands. For his part Snow argued that he had done all he could – and, besides, he still had the governor's admonitions on kidnapping and liability ringing in his ears. At some point, whether because of the governor's warning, or because of unease brought on by his distrustful relations with the mission's personnel, Snow began to question the tenets of his work. He would later write:

Jemmy Button had tasted the sweets, or, as they might be to him, the bitters of high civilization: he at all events knew what it was, and all about going away; yet what was his answer, when I and the catechist asked him if he, or any of his boys, would accompany us only a little way? Why, a positive negative! and, therefore, if I were to hear of 10 or 50 Fuegian boys as being at the mission station in the Falklands, I would never believe, until I knew that the Fuegians had learned our language, that those poor lads had gone there as only a religious society ought to let them go, namely, with a full and perfect knowledge of what it was for. Evil must not be done that good may perchance, and only perchance, come.

Moreover, he argued, conditions at Cranmer were nowhere near ready to accept an influx, no matter how small, of Fuegian Indians. Despite reports in the Society's journals to the contrary, it was clear to those who saw the station that the work had not been done. The main house was unfinished, there were no cottages for workmen, no corrals for cattle, and just one little storehouse. Work had yet to begin on a road connecting the settlement with the sea and no landing place or pier had been finished. Conditions were made worse in January 1856 when the carpenter and the mason announced that they could no longer tolerate the behaviour of Ellis and demanded to be taken away from Keppel Island.

*   *   *

In England things were proceeding far from smoothly for the Patagonian Missionary Society. Contradictory messages coming from the Falklands, the time delay built into the mail system, and the need to get a positive message out to the Society's burgeoning membership, which now had thirty-one associate branches, all created new perceptions, expectations and pressures. Impatience was creeping in here too: members and officers alike of the Society, oblivious to the problems of its advance party at Cranmer, craved news of contact with the Fuegians and could not understand what was delaying such a meeting (the story of the discovery of Jemmy Button did not appear in
Voice of Pity
until 1856).

In May 1855, two days before the ship bearing the intended missionary Mr Verity had been due to sail, police boarded it and arrested him as an accomplice in a breach of bankruptcy law. Chaos reigned, and the search for a missionary had to begin all over again. On 9 October the Society chairman wrote to Snow, ‘No clergyman has as yet appeared suitable … Reports have reached me from respectable sources showing that Mr Verity would have entirely ruined the Society had he been permitted to be connected with it…' In a letter of 7 December 1855, George Packenham Despard, the organisation's secretary, offered his services:

Mr Verity failed us – and so did advertising – to bring the suitable head for our stations. It came from many quarters; the Mission is tottering, the interest is waning; your work is becoming frustrate. A voice within said, you are a suitable person in some respects; at all events you have the confidence of people at home – witness £6,400 gathered through you in almost only three years, and you have the affection of Snow and others abroad …

The matter was agreed, the Society could breathe a sigh of relief. Despard was to be the first mission superintendent in the Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego. In January 1856 a young German called Schmidt, who had lived in Despard's home for a year, was sent to the Falklands to act as the Society's linguist, responsible for compiling a new vocabulary of the Fuegian tongue. The Reverend John Ogle volunteered to go as assistant missionary, and Allen Gardiner, son of the martyred captain, put his name down as an unpaid catechist. Charles Turpin, another lay preacher, was added to the party, which, by the time it left Plymouth on the
Hydaspes
in June 1856, had grown to seventeen persons:

Rev. G.P. Despard, missionary

Rev. John Furniss Ogle, missionary

Frances Margaret Despard, stepmother of Despard children:

Emily, about 12

Bertha, 11

Florence, 9

Harriet, 8

E. Packenham, 7

Despard's two adopted boys:

Thomas Bridges, 13

Frank Jones, 10

A.W. Gardiner and Charles Turpin, catechists

Miss Louise Hanlon, governess

Margaret, servant

William Bartlett, herdsman

Emma Bartlett

Mr Foster, carpenter

They took with them 80 tons of goods, which Snow later complained were mainly personal effects for Despard himself – a pianoforte, furniture and books – and a cow that died on arrival at Port Stanley.

*   *   *

By now Snow was spending most of his time in Port Stanley, seeking the advice of the new governor, Thomas Moore, refitting the
Allen Gardiner
and awaiting news about the arrival of the missionary. Only Phillips and Ellis remained at Cranmer. Snow checked on them occasionally and offered them a passage away, which they steadfastly refused, claiming to be content in what had effectively become a hermitage.

In April 1856 Schmidt arrived. His presence did little to shake Snow out of his growing depression. In
A two years' cruise off Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia and in the River Plate: a narrative of life in the southern seas,
Snow's account of his work in the South Atlantic, he painted a picture of Schmidt as a feeble sycophant, a timid but sneaky place-man sent by Despard to snoop on the mission party and even to open the private mail of the governor and the colonial chaplain. Snow mocked him from the moment they met in a Port Stanley lodging house; it was ‘like having a baby to deal with', he wrote. Far from being a linguist, Schmidt could not even speak English and Snow was ‘so amazed and disappointed at beholding the gentleman who had come under that high-sounding title that I could hardly speak to him'.