Savage (28 page)

Spend every day with the natives rather than go into the woods to fell wood, or other purposes. Keep your note-book and pencil going. Spell in phonetic. Try them much with singing … I would advise, when the weather allows, that you should have a Sabbath morning and evening service on shore, that the natives may attend, and be aroused to inquiry. You will take presents with you for the boys' relatives, and I hope you will treat them (the relatives) with distinguished favour …

On 5 October Ookoko and Lucca went on board the
Allen Gardiner
with presents of clothes for their mothers. Next morning, nine days after the main body of Fuegians had been searched on the jetty and shunted onto the ship, the schooner got under weigh. A gale was blowing from the south-west, but with caution she broke her ground and by three in the afternoon the
Allen Gardiner
had passed the Eddystone rock. By seven the next morning it had arrived at Port Stanley.

Relations between the Fuegians and the missionaries were now shaky. The former were still smarting from the search, still bruised from the set-to with Coles. They had demanded to be taken straight home but instead, against a tidal wave of objections, the schooner had slipped into Port Stanley where it was to sit for the next six days while coal for Cranmer was loaded into the hold. They were angry and their complaints warranted more attention than they received.

There are two distinct versions of this visit to the Falklands' capital, and while they are not contradictory they sit uncomfortably together. First, there was the mission's side of the the story, which conveyed the impression of a productive, enjoyable time, where business was done and the Fuegians captured the hearts and settled the minds of the townspeople. Captain Fell's diary told of a brisk stay dotted with meetings and church services:

Friday, October 7,
– Having come to at 7 am, we did not land then, it being too early for the people on shore. The natives thought this a fair place. Mr Phillips soon took the two boys on shore. Having paid a visit to the Colonial Secretary, I called upon a few friends, and afterwards, with Mr Phillips, dined with Captain Packe.

Saturday, October 8,
– Yesterday an American got Mr Havers to sketch the natives in the cabin in a group. Called to see a few friends, and arranged a meeting for Mr Phillips tomorrow night.

Sunday, October 9,
– In the morning went to our Meeting, at the cottage. Mr Phillips preached.

Monday, October 10,
– Mr Havers at the sketch in the cabin. In the afternoon the natives went on shore, and received many presents from the inhabitants of Stanley.

Tuesday, October 11,
– Took the natives on shore (the young ones) to have their likenesses taken.

Wednesday, October 12,
– The wind being about W.N.W., got under weigh …

Garland Phillips's account put more flesh on the bones. He told of how on 8 October he had taken Ookoko and Lucca ashore to show them Despard's store, then to see the governor, and finally Captain Packe, where the housekeeper was very kind. At the same time Mr Havers was on board the
Allen Gardiner
drawing the remaining Fuegians. During the course of the next day many of the residents at Stanley apparently let it be known that they would love to see the Fuegian women and the young child. Accordingly, on 10 October, the whole party was washed and dressed in their Sunday best – Phillips had bought the young girl Kitty a pair of gaiters the day before, but when she put them on she found them difficult to walk in so she left them off – and together they stepped ashore to be met by Mrs Sweeny and the American consul's wife Mrs Smiley. The two women gave the child more gaiters, a woollen coat, and a couple of handfuls of sweets.

The party went on a tour of the town: at the Sibbalds' the lady of the house handed out gingerbread nuts; up the hill, near the poorer cottages, men, women and children flocked to see them, handing out trinkets and little presents, ‘all evidences of the kindly feeling entertained towards them'. Captain Molony had said he wanted to see them, but he was out boating so they moved on to two more houses before again meeting Mrs Smiley, who ‘begged me to take them on to her house, as she had some more clothes for them. Poor creatures, they were evidently well pleased with Stanley and its people, and kept talking one to another about their gifts and the givers. It came on to blow very hard, so I got them on board again as quickly as possible…' Next day, as the ship moved out of Port Stanley, Garland Phillips wrote in his journal, ‘It is very clear that the natives thought very highly of their “lionizing,” yesterday, for, to-day, they have frequently told me and others that they do not want to go to Tierra del Fuego, but to England. “Tierra del no good; bar Tierra del.”'

The second version of this stopover in Port Stanley is more sinister. Two of the most important figures in the capital saw things differently from the missionary party. Superficially what Phillips and Fell were reporting was true, but the governor and the colonial chaplain had noticed disturbing friction between the Fuegians and their missionary hosts: a despatch from the governor to the colonial secretary back in London noted, ‘The
Allen Gardiner
put into Stanley on her way. The temper of the natives was known here and the Captain and Mr Phillips were warned by several friends to be on their guard.'

The chaplain, Charles Bull, backed him up. In a letter to the
Guardian
newspaper he wrote that after the ship had arrived at Port Stanley, to ‘those who were fully acquainted with the native character, it became evident that there was a good deal of mischief brewing. The natives who had been searched previously to their leaving Keppel, had expressed a good deal of indignation at this proceeding.'

The
Allen Gardiner
crawled back to Wulaia with no sense of haste. A journey that could be completed in good conditions in three days took over three weeks. Along the way they pulled in at Sparrow Cove, Mare Harbour, Ship Harbour and several of the islands of the Fuegian archipelago. Time was set aside for collecting eggs, fishing and refilling the ship's water tanks from the many freshwater streams to be found in the area. Ferocious winds got up, pitching the ship, tossing and turning her like a piece of flotsam. On Thursday 20 October – ten days after leaving the Falklands' capital – land was spotted, but found to be the mountains around Port Stanley. Fell was disappointed, but so too were the Fuegians, who complained vociferously, Macooallan claiming that Jemmy Button had told him the crossing was easy and swift.

As the journey became rougher, the passage slower and the entire ship's company sicker, it became clear that it was not just the Fuegians who were unhappy with the administration of the venture. Robert Fell began to compose a letter to the committee of the Patagonian Missionary Society in Bristol. He told them he had come to the realisation that the maintenance of a mission station on Keppel Island was not viable if the enterprise was to be a success. The passage between Keppel and Tierra del Fuego could be tough, time-consuming and even dangerous. Progress with the natives was deadly slow because the sporadic visits to their homeland were not enough to provide continuity or understanding, and taking away a few natives at a time was not having the desired effect. He concluded that the only real chance of progress lay with the establishment of a station among the natives, on Tierra del Fuego, and urged the committee to consider it.

On 2 November the ship arrived at Wulaia and the captain prepared to demonstrate once again that if there was one truly great failing intrinsic to the Patagonian Missionary Society it was the inability of its personnel to learn from past mistakes. It might have been over a month since the departure from Keppel Island, and the search on the jetty might have been a distant, insignificant memory for the crew and captain of the
Allen Gardiner,
but those who had been subjected to it were still indignant.

As the ship dropped anchor that Wednesday noon, Jemmy Button came alongside, and Fell recorded in his diary,

Wednesday November 2,
– A canoe came off, and we saw poor Jemmy Button naked, and as wild-looking as ever. It was almost too trying to behold him. It seemed to prove that all our labours with him had been thrown away. Something entirely different to what has been already done will have to be taken in hand, before the natives will be benefited.

The bedraggled Jemmy climbed on board and was not long in expressing his dissatisfaction at the shortage of presents that awaited him. In the meantime the returning Fuegians prepared to disembark, but as they did so Fell, who had been advised that some of the crew's possessions were missing, ordered another search of their bundles. Schwaiamugunjiz and Macalwense were enraged. As the captain attempted to open his bundle Schwaiamugunjiz grabbed him by the throat and pinned him against the wall. The captain lashed out, punching the Fuegian away. The incensed Yamana dropped their bundles, or left them where they lay, and climbed into the canoes waiting below. Only Macooallan, his wife and the two boys Ookoko and Lucca remained behind, startled by what they had witnessed. With the antagonists gone their bundles were opened. Amid their clothes were found a harpoon, a silk handkerchief, a knife and a steel.

That evening Fell took ashore Macooallan and his wife in the ship's boat, along with the bundles left behind by the disgraced Fuegians. That same night Jemmy Button was encouraged back onto the ship where he was given clothes and some presents that had been sent for him from Cranmer. Over the next days the crew went ashore unmolested, completed work on the house and began to dig a garden for it. Some Fuegians even worked for them, and Ookoko stayed on board, going ashore with the ship party to cut down trees, work on the house, and return at the end of each day to sleep on the
Allen Gardiner.
If any trouble was brewing, he either had not heard of it or was not going to tell. Things were changing, though, perhaps imperceptibly to the crew, but the atmosphere on shore was darkening. There had been few Fuegians at Wulaia on the Wednesday of the ship's arrival, but by Saturday seventy more canoes had arrived, swelling their numbers to over 300. On the Friday night Jemmy Button came on board once again for one of his unpleasant conversations with the captain, an exchange of views that the captain would probably have put down to Jemmy being ‘one of the dullest of his race' and greedy with it.

In the final four days of Fell's Wulaia diary there are few clues to the deteriorating relations that the crew was experiencing with the Indians, but they are there:

Thursday November 3,
– Crew cutting wood, and Mr Phillips and his boys at the garden. The natives went on shore, and Schwya-Muggins got his clothes in the evening.

Friday November 4,
– Crew at the wood. Our natives too lazy to get their house covered in.

Saturday November 5,
– Crew at the wood. Natives rather troublesome alongside.

Sunday November 6,
–

The blank space after Sunday is ominous. Wishing to comply with the instructions given to Phillips by Despard, and hoping to set a good example to the assembled Fuegians, it was agreed that a service should be conducted in the nearly completed house. A longboat was lowered into the water and all the ship's crew, with the exception of the cook, Coles, climbed on board and rowed the 300 yards to the shore.

There were eight men in the boat, each dressed in their smart jumpers with ‘Mission Yacht' emblazoned across the front. As they arrived on the beach the Fuegians eyed them idly, but did not stir from behind the small fires that speckled the cove. The boat was pulled out of the water and onto the beach, then the men walked to the house and arranged themselves for divine worship. A moment passed before hymn singing began.

Out on the ship, Alfred Coles looked up from the galley where he was preparing lunch, and saw the Yamana rise. ‘They are up to mischief,' he said to himself. A group of naked men approached the unguarded boat, removed its oars and carried them off to a wigwam. The hymn singing stopped, and a dreadful noise pierced the air. Coles turned his gaze to the house. A large group of Indians were attacking it, smashing down the door, flooding inside. Hugh McDowall, the veteran sailor and one-time Arctic explorer, was clubbed to the ground. Seven unarmed men pushed their way out of the house, only to find a huge mob waiting. Wooden clubs carved from the branches of beech trees whipped down, cracking skulls, a rain of stones darkened the sky and thudded against the heads of the fleeing crew. The two Fell brothers, snared by a circle of Fuegians, fought and dropped, back to back; boulders continued to batter their lifeless bodies. The carpenter and two men fell under the dull bludgeoning of clubs. Along the beach Ookoko ran up and down crying, hands held out in front of him, imploring the assassins to stop.

From out of the crowd burst the Swedish sailor, August Petersen, and the screaming catechist, Garland Phillips. At the water's edge a boulder flattened the Scandinavian. Phillips plunged into the sea, black hair flapping in the wind, mouth contorted in anguish. He tried to launch a canoe, but as he pushed desperately, up to his knees in water, Macalwense, the Fuegian known to the missionaries as Billy Button, threw a stone that crashed against his temple. His head lolled to one side, then to the other, and finally his legs buckled under him as the life drained from him, his coat tails rising on the ebb of a reddening sea.

There were eight men dead on Wulaia Cove:

Garland Phillips – Catechist

Robert Fell – Captain

John Fell – Mate

John Johnstone – Carpenter and second mate

Hugh McDowall – Able bodied seaman

John Johnston – Able bodied seaman

John Brown – Able bodied seaman

August Petersen – Ordinary seaman

On the
Allen Gardiner,
Alfred Coles remained calm. He went below, collected a gun and three loaves of bread. He threw them into a gig hanging in the davits, cut the boat free, letting her drop to the water, picked a paddle from the scuppers, jumped over the side and rowed away from the slaughter.