Savage (5 page)

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The commander might have felt at this point that he now had his full complement of native captives for whatever purpose he was formulating. His intentions towards them were still unclear and the idea of taking either or both of them to England remained unvoiced. But if he had thought his specimen collecting was over he was only half correct. Less than a week after welcoming York Minster on board he was involved in a pitched battle with a party of Fuegians on cliffs near where the carpenter was building the new boat. Shots were fired and stones hurled. One of the crew went down, seriously wounded, and when it was all over FitzRoy found bottles of beer and a part of the missing whale-boat's gear in one Fuegian canoe. The commander had not found his boat yet, but the new discoveries revived his appetite one last time.

From the deck of the
Beagle,
smoke was spotted rising from nearby Whittlesbury Island. Next day he took a small raiding party across the sound and found a piece of King's white line near to some deserted wigwams. He sensed that his quarry was close and, looking from a hilltop vantage-point, he saw two canoes making a dash for it. The sailors scrambled into their boat and pushed off. Their superior numbers meant that within minutes they had caught hold of one canoe while the other escaped. A young man and a girl plunged into the sea and attempted to swim away. Fifteen minutes of fierce flailing followed as the man put up a mighty struggle in the water before being dragged, beaten and exhausted, onto the boat.

In contrast to the stout, rather squat appearance of both Fuegia Basket and York Minster, this new prisoner, who was called Boat Memory, was the best-looking Fuegian FitzRoy had ever seen, ‘a very favourable specimen of the race'. As they rowed the captive back to the
Beagle,
FitzRoy reflected on his encounters with the locals and speculated that ‘kindness towards these beings, and good treatment of them, is as yet useless … Until a mutual understanding can be established, moral fear is the only means by which they can be kept peaceable.' There was no hope for them, and no hope for relations with them, he concluded, while they could not understand European languages, European ways and European power.

Boat Memory was unsurprisingly frightened when they pulled him on board the
Beagle.
The bewilderment he must have felt at what was happening to him would not have been helped by the frosty welcome given him by York Minster, who refused either to talk or even acknowledge the presence of the new arrival. Boat was given a large meal then allowed to sleep it off.

As FitzRoy watched over him his thoughts crystallised. ‘Three natives of Tierra del Fuego, better suited for the purpose of instruction, and for giving, as well as receiving information, could not, I think, have been found,' he noted in self-congratulation. Soon he was seeing confirmation of this in his Fuegians' behaviour. Within a few hours of his coming on board the ship, Boat Memory and the other two Fuegians were getting on famously.

This morning, having been well cleaned and dressed, ‘Boat' appeared contented and easy; and being together, kept York and him in better spirits than they would probably otherwise have been, for they laughed, and tried to talk, by imitating whatever was said. Fuegia soon began to learn English, and to say several things very well. She laughed and talked with her countrymen incessantly.

Yet the constant presence of Fuegians on the
Beagle
highlighted FitzRoy's true ignorance of these people, and revealed the poverty of his earlier statements about communicating ideas, threats, directions and trades with them.

As March slipped away the ship moved slowly towards Cape Horn and the territories of eastern Tierra del Fuego. Only now, after a year spent charting the region, did he realise that there were more than superficial differences between the various groups of native peoples they were encountering. Early in April he observed a meeting between the captive natives on the ship and those who came to barter, and perceived distinctions that he found both distressing and shocking. ‘I was sadly grieved at finding that some Fuegians who arrived were not of the same tribe as our captives, nor even spoke the same language. On the contrary, much enmity appeared to exist between them; though their colour, features and habits were similar.'

York Minster and Boat Memory's initial response to the native traders had been to snub them. Through signs and by pointing at their scars, they helped FitzRoy recognise that they had had many violent fights with these Indians and that there was no love lost between them. Then, however, York and Boat decided there was a better policy than the cold shoulder, and ‘took delight in trying to cheat them out of things they offered to barter; and mocked their way of speaking and laughing; pointing at them and calling them “Yapoo, yapoo”'.

Fuegia's reaction was more violent. As soon as she saw them she went frantic with panic, and when one of the crew jibed that she was to be disembarked with the visitors, she burst into floods of tears and ran away screaming to hide below deck. FitzRoy's understanding of a homogeneous Fuegian tribe had been shattered.

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As the
Beagle
continued its passage south and east, the days the Fuegians spent on board became weeks.

FitzRoy set the
Beagle
on a course that took it from Orange Bay, past West Cape and Cape Spencer to Horn Island where a party climbed the Cape, built an eight-foot-high pile of stones to commemorate the occasion, and drank the health of the King.

On the last day of the month the
Beagle
rounded the Horn in glorious weather. A big push was organised on the surveying front. Mr Murray was despatched to the Cape of Good Success with three weeks' provisions. Another boat departed to chart the eastern coasts of Nassau Bay and New Island, and FitzRoy took the opportunity to explore the filigree passages and channels of the interior. In particular he was interested in a fine, wide channel that Murray had reported seeing on an earlier sortie.

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Over the course of the next week, FitzRoy penetrated the Murray Narrows and sailed along what was to become known as the Beagle Channel. His days were a mix of hard work and hot pursuit, as he tried to avoid the frequent demands of the local population. From his notes, he was clearly wearied by their unwarranted attentions. He ordered his men to paddle harder as Fuegian canoes came in sight and on a number of occasions abandoned camp to avoid them. Of one such incident he wrote, ‘Just as we had moored the boat, kindled a fire, and pitched our tent a canoe came into the cove; another and another followed, until we were surrounded with natives. Knowing we must either drive them away by force, or be plagued with them all night, we at once packed up our things, and wished them good evening.'

However, his realisation that there were several tribes of Fuegians opened his eyes to other disparities. On 7 May, in the Murray Narrows area, he noted another encounter with a group of Indians: ‘When we stopped to cook and eat our dinner, canoes came from all sides, bringing plenty of fish for barter. None of the natives had any arms, they seemed to be smaller in size and less disposed to be mischievous than the western race: their language sounded similar to that of the natives whom we saw in Orange Bay.' It was with observations of tribal differences playing in his mind that, four days later, FitzRoy found himself trading with three canoes of chattering old men and a young boy they called Orundellico. It was with these same thoughts in mind that his ‘spontaneous' trade in flesh was contracted.

Chapter 4

FitzRoy's haul of Fuegians had reached four.

After camping ashore with his captors, the boy was taken to the
Beagle
for a humiliating meeting with the three other Fuegians, who mocked him and hurled abuse at him. He found the meeting distressing, but FitzRoy was amused: ‘Our Fuegians were in high spirits, and the meeting between them and Jemmy Button was droll enough: they laughed at him, called him Yapoo, and told us to put more clothes on him directly.'

Jemmy was clothed and fed, and attempts were made to make him feel comfortable, but despite their best efforts these early days of captivity must have been difficult for the Yamana boy. He had already spent several days away from his family in the company of strange men, in strange clothes, with an incomprehensible language and odd habits. Now he was on board their ship and expected to live in close quarters not only with the foreigners but also with three mocking members of an enemy tribe.

Jemmy's presence brought a new clarity to FitzRoy's thinking. He decided to take the four to England, ‘trusting that the ultimate benefits arising from their acquaintance with our habits and language, would make up for the temporary separation from their own country'. It had not been, he conceded, his original idea, but the captives' apparent happiness, their continuing good health and the discovery of the grave inter-tribal animosity among the Fuegians had alerted him not only to the potential advantages of the abduction – educating them and bringing them back to Tierra del Fuego to act as advocates of civilisation and interpreters for passing English ships – but also the inherent dangers of not doing so. He acknowledged that he could not

in common humanity, land them in Nassau Bay or near the Strait of Le Maire. Neither could I put the boy ashore again, when once to the eastward of Nassau Bay, without risking his life; hence I had only the alternative of beating to the westward, to land them in their own districts, which circumstances rendered impracticable, or that of taking them to England … In adopting the latter course I incurred a deep responsibility, but I was fully aware of what I was undertaking.

FitzRoy endeavoured to look after his prisoners. They were dressed in sailors' clothes and given high priority in the queue for fresh food, after the sick, but before the officers and crew. On 17 May, the four feasted on three gulls and two redbills that had been shot by the carpenter Mr May and George West. Two days later, after FitzRoy had bartered with Indians, they shared thirty-six fish with the sick. Over the next few months, Jemmy and his colleagues dined on a diet of penguin, albatross, goose, shag and bittern. FitzRoy stressed that his prisoners were happy and somehow, through signs and gesticulations, and the occasional bastardised Fuegian word, he made a promise that he would return them to their homes at a ‘future time, with iron, tools, clothes, and knowledge which they might spread among their countrymen'. He believed this helped them come to terms with their fate and, as the
Beagle
continued a slow trawl up the eastern coastline of Tierra del Fuego, it appeared that the Fuegians were quick to adapt. In the picture that FitzRoy painted, all four helped the crew with the daily tasks of the ship and even ‘took pains to walk properly, and get over the crouching posture of their countrymen'. While the ship had been at anchor in Good Success Bay, they had accompanied him ashore on several occasions, without making any attempt to escape, even taking an oar in the boat (though in truth they would have realised, more acutely than anybody else on board, the inadvisability of jumping ship in enemy territory). When Indians visited the passing
Beagle,
two of FitzRoy's prisoners were quick to grasp the nature of these encounters:

It was amusing to witness York and Boat taking in these people, by their bargains. The same men who, two months back, would themselves have sold a number of fish for a bit of glass, were seen going about the decks collecting broken crockery-ware, or any trash, to exchange for the fish brought alongside by these ‘Yapoos' as they called them, not one word of whose language did they appear to comprehend …

As they moved away from Tierra del Fuego and along the coast of mainland South America, a two-way learning process began. From the Fuegians the English built a rudimentary vocabulary, Yamana from Jemmy and Alakaluf from the other three. From their captors the Fuegians began to learn English. The Indians were gifted mimics, quickly picking up and copying all sorts of phrases, inflections and noises. From this FitzRoy had anticipated a natural bent for the spoken word, but quite soon he was forced to acknowledge that their progress was surprisingly slow.

Another surprise for the captain was the Fuegians' collective lack of curiosity, which to him marked them out as intellectually idle.

The
Beagle
headed for Monte Video and reached the river Plate on 22 June, anchoring beside the city six days later. Monte Video was busy and bustling, with a harbour full of ships from every corner of the world and a brass band that played boisterous tunes on the quayside. Along the harbour front there were government offices, customs houses and port authorities, and, further in, square blocks of flat-roofed houses along roughly paved but mathematically precise gridiron streets. There was a cathedral, a theatre, hotels and a prison, and on the Calle del 25 Mayo a lively market of stalls and shops dominated by French traders.

There was nothing in the Fuegians' background that could have prepared them for their first experience of a modern city – the agglomeration of people, the hubbub, the dirt and the smells. Yet FitzRoy noted that where he had expected them to be nonplussed they were undisturbed. ‘The apparent astonishment and curiosity excited by what they saw, extraordinary to them as the whole scene must have been, were much less than I had anticipated; yet their conduct was interesting, and each day they became more communicative.' It was to be the same in seaports all the way to England:

Animals, ships and boats seemed to engage the notice of our copper-coloured friends far more than human beings or houses. When anything excited their attention particularly they would appear at the time almost stupid and unobservant; but that they were not so in reality was shown by their eager chattering to one another at the first subsequent opportunity, and by the sensible remarks made by them a long time afterwards, when we fancied they had altogether forgotten unimportant occurrences which took place during the first few months of their sojourn among us. A large ox, with unusually long horns, excited their wonder remarkably; but in no instance was outward emotion noticed …