Savage (23 page)

A picture began to emerge in the
Voice of Pity
of domestic behaviour and contentment that any middle-class British family could appreciate. Despard gave Jemmy a new broom and the Fuegian was meticulous in his daily sweeping of the house. Tin utensils for cooking and eating were polished until they shone. In July the missionary superintendent visited what had become known as Button Villa, where he had recently installed a stove, and commented, ‘What was my surprise and delight to see the worthy fellow sitting, denuded of his jacket, sewing very neatly, with thimble on finger, a strip of calico, to make braces for himself?'

At other times Mrs Button was found plucking a duck for dinner, taking needlecraft lessons, or doing the ironing. She liked to indulge herself with sugar plums and raisins, which she piled into her mouth as quickly as her hands could be filled. In a letter to a friend in Ireland Mrs Despard told of how Jamesina would stand in the kitchen and watch everything – cooking, baking, washing – then rush back to her house to copy it. Every day she, Threeboys and Fuegia would attend lessons in English in the mission house, and her children got along famously with the Despard children. Fuegia loved to be tickled by the slightly older Bertha, and offered her cheek to Louise Hanlon for a kiss. The first words of baby Annasplonis, or Anthony, were ‘Button, butt—.'

Yet behind the idyllic reports there was a creeping sense of frustration among those at the mission at their lack of progress with the Fuegian language. Charles Turpin would give a daily report at breakfast to Despard of the new words he had picked up. By the end of July he had begun to translate the Lord's Prayer into Fuegian, but he was coming across some fundamental problems: he could not uncover the words for kingdom or heaven, and found it nigh on impossible to explain to the Fuegians the idea of the third person singular. In September he claimed to have completed the task, but when Despard tried to read out the Yamana version of the prayer at church on the first Sunday of the month he had to stop at the beginning. According to Jemmy, what Turpin had written translated as ‘Dead Father, who art in…'

The missionaries undoubtedly succeeded in obtaining some words from the Buttons – Despard claimed by November to have a list of 400 – but no matter how much they boasted, this was a disappointing return. They argued that it was Jemmy's fault: ‘It has been difficult to get words from Jemmy Button from the difficulty he felt in understanding even a simple sentence in English…' wrote Despard. ‘He seems never to have tried to turn English into Firelandic, but rather to make his people understand about England in English.' It may have been more interesting than that: very early on Mrs Despard recorded that when her husband demonstrated the extent of his Yamana vocabulary and told the Fuegians the words he knew, ‘Jemmy seemed quite surprised at his knowing so many. The other day, he said laughingly, “You know too much my language; no good, no good.”' Could it have been that Jemmy was deliberately concealing his language from his British hosts? It is certainly clear from the
Voice of Pity
that some suspected he was unwilling to pass on Yamana: every time one of the mission party approached him while he was talking to his family, he would shift from his own language into English. Perhaps, as Jemmy said, it was ‘no good' for Despard to know his language. Or perhaps he did not like the missionary and was not happy at Cranmer. It is possible that he valued the privacy and secrecy that he and his family maintained by being able to talk in a language that others could not understand, and the kudos it gave him when he acted as go-between for the missionaries and his people. Just possibly he understood the power of language, and the dangers that might result from open dialogue between his people and the foreigners.

Whatever the reason, Despard and Turpin turned their attention away from Jemmy to his son. Threeboys was a bright lad, quick to learn, hardworking and keen to pick up the words and grammar of English. Short and stout, he had his father's eyes and the ‘rosy-brunette' complexion of his mother. The missionaries found him a delight: not only was he intelligent, he was always anxious to lend a hand with the heavy construction work at the settlement. Early on, Despard realised the boy's potential; in July he reported:

Threeboys has begun to learn the English alphabet. He gets on fast in learning our names of things. He looked yesterday at Captain Gardiner's portrait, and said, ‘Appanna,' – dead. Then he looked at a portrait of a lady, and said, ‘Keepa,' – woman; showing thus that he at least understands the meaning of pictures.

Threeboys became the apple of their eye. He said, ‘Pank you,' and was always first to give a cheery ‘Good morning' or ‘Good afternoon'. He went to religious service most days, and by August he was able to put an English name to virtually any object that Turpin presented to him and, more importantly, was willing to give its Fuegian equivalent. Despard was anxious to hold on to him: ‘I do hope this boy … may be the first native evangelist to Fuegia. James is too old to expect much from in this way.'

Meanwhile Jemmy Button was continuing much as before. He spent his days in idle leisure, wandering from the carpenter to the doctor to the kitchen to the quarry. He busied himself with small tasks like making arrows for Despard and Turpin, or spearing fish in the brook, and affected concern over the health of Mrs Despard – she had a bad eye for a short while – making sure to ask after it every day and occasionally taking her flowers he had picked from the garden.

Behind this veneer of politeness, however, discontent was rising on both sides. For Jemmy and his family five months away from home was a long time. As much as the missionaries tried to disguise it, it is evident that the Buttons were not happy with the new regime and that they were homesick. At first small niggles and later larger strains emerged. On one occasion, the wife of one of the workmen shooed the Buttons out of her house. She had apparently not come to terms with the ‘savages' in their midst and was terrified at the Fuegians wandering into her home. Jemmy was affronted and refused to go there again. When he was found in Despard's house he was given a telling-off, which upset him so much he was moved to tears. ‘Gentleman very angry; say not come to church,' he later commented.

In August there was a complaint against Mrs Button for taking wooden fence palings for use as fuel. Jemmy was indignant: ‘People here think me and my family steal; I no steal; my wife not steal; I not stay Kebbel Island; I go way when schooner comes. No, me not steal.' As it happened, the wood had been cut for the Buttons' fire and their accuser was wrong. When on another occasion he was asked how one says steal in Yamana, Jemmy replied with vehemence ‘No say, I steal; I not steal…'

Jemmy was also concerned about the immediate future. There seemed to be no plans for returning him and his family to Tierra del Fuego. At the end of June the
Allen Gardiner
sailed for Monte Video. (It was away until October when it brought with it the returning Garland Phillips and his wife.) Jemmy was afraid of Despard's plans: the missionary obviously coveted Threeboys, and Despard's wife doted on Fuegia and spent much time carrying the baby Anthony in her arms. In the middle of August, Despard noted in his diary that his wife ‘has an inclination to bring up the little girl'. In a short assessment of Jemmy's character the missionary included the following revealing reference. The Fuegian was

… affectionate; fond of his children; fidgeting very much to go away, after I had asked him to leave Passanulla [another version of the name Passawullacuds] to my wife, to be brought up in our family, as a daughter; from the idea I wanted to take her by force; and only quieted when he got me to confirm Mr T's assurance, they would all go back together.

So, contrary to almost everything else that was written on the Fuegians' stay at Keppel, there was clear contemporary evidence that they were ‘fidgeting' to get away.

Their desire was not all one-sided. The mission party had realised the limits of Jemmy's co-operation and were tiring of him. Frequent references to his laziness litter the journals, and there is unmistakable disappointment at his failure to help with the general work of the settlement. His self-importance and unwillingness to indulge in heavy labour earned him the nickname the Admiral, though to some extent this might have been attributable to a cultural misunderstanding on the value of work: in September when Turpin was cutting wood for the Button household he ‘called the “Admiral” out of his mansion, where he was at leisure, and bade him give the required aid. He did so readily. I think if he were only told to work, he would…'

At other times the irritation simmered just below the surface. Mrs Despard commented in a letter that the Fuegians were very lazy, that they would not fetch wood for their own fire even when it was placed just yards from their door. She found the only way to get a reaction was to tell Jemmy that God did not love idle men.

Towards the end of September two weeks of peat cutting began, ‘Mr Button, the only gentleman of leisure in the place. He paid me a visit; remarked my work to be wet and dirty, but certainly made no effort to help. Jemmy Button employed his time in looking at a large book of pictures.' The next day when he played on a toy trumpet Despard reproved him: ‘Jemmy, everyone work here; you no work.' Only when Turpin was busy cutting peat could Despard report that ‘Mr Button condescends to cut and split his own fuel.'

As the time approached for the return of the Fuegians to Tierra del Fuego, questions were raised about the mission's future and Jemmy's part in it. The missionaries were not entirely happy with the success of their work with the older Fuegian, but in the children they saw distinct possibilities. If they could reach young Fuegians they could exert an important influence at a tender age. But Jemmy was crucial to them. Would he help to ensure that other Fuegians came to Cranmer? Would he allow his own children to return without their parents? Jemmy was coy. When Despard asked him whether he would come back, he answered, ‘Me old man now – I go long way England, come here, twice go away. My brother come next time!'

On another occasion Mrs Despard asked, ‘Jemmy, will you come back to us?' but the Fuegian would make no promises and replied, ‘Perhaps, by and by, me no tell now! People say in my country, no God; I go tell my people God in my country; made me and them, trees, moon.'

Nevertheless, the mission could take some heart: Jemmy said he would ‘go home my country; I say, Mr Despard, Keppel Island; very good; churchman. My brother come; by and by, I come. Keppel Island very short; England very long.'

Chapter 18

Captain Robert Fell had arrived at Keppel Island in the last week of June 1858, around the same time as the
Allen Gardiner
came in from Tierra del Fuego bearing Jemmy Button and his family. The new captain had a Master's Certificate from the Board of Trade, but had spent the last five years in England doing missionary work among seamen. The work had been exhausting, and ill-health had forced him to give it up on the advice of a doctor, who told him he needed to feel a sea breeze on his face.

Fell was ideal for the command of the missionary schooner. As well as his seafaring experience, his piety and disdain for alcohol, smoking, swearing, theatres and houses of entertainment – whether innocent or otherwise – qualified him for an enterprise of this stamp. He was a fervent rough-and-tumble Baptist, for whom life was one long crusade, an extended opportunity to inform the heathen and stem the monstrous tide of Catholicism. As he had sailed up the Tagus on his way to the Falklands he had written of Portugal, ‘How this country has been wasted and ruined by the superstitions and dominion of the Roman Church – how the iron grasp of Popery has tyrannised over its inhabitants, kept from their view the word and lamp of life for so many centuries…'

At every port of call he had handed out tracts to sailors on the dockside and locals in the market-places. Quarantine laws at Madeira prevented him stepping on land, so he threw bundles of religious propaganda, translated into Portuguese, to traders who came to the ship's side. At the Cape Verde Islands he boarded an English ship and, in the absence of its captain, rounded up the crew and took a religious service. The sight of slaves hauling coal in Bahia provoked him to go ashore to enlighten the locals, always keeping an eye open for any bigoted priest who might object. The first thing he did when he arrived at Cranmer was to assemble the crew of the
Allen Gardiner
and warn them, ‘If you want to disgrace the vessel, and cause me a good deal of pain, you have only to get drunk, and you will accomplish your task, if that is any satisfaction to you. But if you do not want to do so, keep sober.' In Robert Fell, the Patagonian Missionary Society surely had the man they had so long craved.

There was little time for the new captain to acquaint himself with the arriving Fuegians. The young catechist Allen Gardiner needed to be in Monte Video to meet a ship and, having dropped him off, the captain spent the next few months between there and Buenos Aires, paying off the old crew, employing new men, giving fund-raising lectures, collecting unwanted clothes for the Fuegians and finally waiting for the arrival from England of Garland Phillips and his wife. By the time the ship pulled into Committee Bay, Jemmy Button was ready to go home to Tierra del Fuego.

He and his family departed on 20 November and, after a rough passage, anchored at Banner Cove six days later. Within minutes, four canoes bearing twenty Indians approached the ship. That morning Jemmy had been tonsured and both he and his family were anxious to impress their countrymen: as quickly as they could they put on all their clothes, Passawullacuds wearing two frocks over the dress she had been travelling in. The Indians asked Jemmy for the clasped knife that hung around his neck, and though he refused this, he handed out small gifts of buttons, needles, a fork and another knife from his own property. Three men boarded the ship and were given shirts, ties and trousers. But while Jemmy was behaving kindly, his wife was less forthcoming. Lassaweea apparently felt herself above all of this now and looked down on her fellow people with a glower of derision that suggested she thought them rather vulgar people. One of them called her Pallil-keepa, Englishwoman. She handed a man a necklace of beads in return for a piece of whale-gut, but snatched it back and walked off in a sulk when the man refused to give her the meat.