Savage (15 page)

There was no time to waste: the crews may have rowed themselves beyond exhaustion over the last few days, but the Fuegian hordes would soon arrive. Already one family, happily living on Wulaia, had had to be placated with gifts and reassurances, and FitzRoy had no illusions about the difficulties that might lie ahead. A party was detailed to dig out a boundary trench around the planned settlement and sentries were placed at strategic points along it to prevent encroachment. One group pitched the tents for the boat party, another turned the topsoil near the brook for a garden and yet another was set to chopping down trees to use in the construction of three houses – one for Matthews, one for Jemmy and one for York and Fuegia, who, it was now agreed by all, were effectively married.

Even as the work parties were being detailed, canoes began to pour in. Leaving their women behind, Fuegian men and boys dashed across to the camp. Very soon a hundred indians crowded along the boundary, which was only enforceable with a combination of coercion, good humour, Jemmy's explanations, and presents of knives, scissors and gimlets. One by one the Fuegian men squatted on their haunches along the line. To Jemmy they directed a thousand questions and tirades. His temper was being tested to the limit when, at the height of his exasperation, there came a deep roar. He halted in his tracks and turned. The roar came again. A man was shouting from a canoe a mile out to sea. Jemmy dropped the bag of nails he was carrying. ‘My brother!' he exclaimed, and climbed a rock to watch the canoe approach.

Aboard it were his four brothers – one man and three boys – two sisters, and his mother. As the boat arrived Jemmy descended from the rock to the water's edge. His mother, barely able to look at him, ran away to secure the canoe, then hid her possessions – a tatty basket of tinder, firestone, paint and fish. Jemmy's sisters went with her, leaving the four brothers staring at their returned sibling. A few seconds passed without a word, and then they walked up to him and around him, circling silently again and again.

‘Strange dogs meeting in a street shew more anxiety and more animation than was manifested at this inhuman meeting of a lost child and his afflicted mother and relatives,' FitzRoy wrote later to his sister Fanny. Darwin, too, used an animal analogy: this first reunion, he said, was ‘less interesting than that between a horse turned out into a field when he joins an old companion. There was no demonstration of affection; they simply stared for a short time at each other…'

Jemmy tried to communicate, but was stunned by his inability to use his own tongue. He attempted to converse with his eldest brother in English, and when he got no reply, asked repeatedly,
‘No sabe? No sabe?'
Darwin viewed the proceedings with sadness: ‘I do not suppose any person exists with such a small stock of language as poor Jemmy,' he noted in his diary. ‘His own language forgotten, and his English ornamented with a few Spanish words, almost unintelligible.'

The crew were also confused. They had expected great emotion, but had witnessed what seemed to be cruel indifference. It was another of those apparent instances of cold-heartedness that appeared to confirm their ideas of savagery. It is worth noting that later that evening, after York had spoken with Jemmy's mother, he disclosed that she had been inconsolable on the abduction of her son and had scoured the furthermost coasts of Tierra del Fuego for weeks on end in the hope that the ship had left him behind.

That same evening the three Fuegians spent time at the native encampment that had been built a short distance away. Their aim was to explain where they had been and what had gone on. Jemmy took his mother a carter's smock frock to cover her nakedness. To his eldest brother he gave a Guernsey frock, trousers and a Scottish cap. Both were delighted. At sunset those Fuegians who had not built wigwams went home, while Jemmy, York and Fuegia returned to their shipmates.

*   *   *

Over the next four days, Wulaia Cove was a hotbed of activity. Three large, spacious wigwams were built for Matthews and the Fuegians. Trees and branches from the nearby woods were chopped down and whittled into tapered poles. The thick ends of these were planted in a circle in the ground and the thinner ends brought together at the top. These structures were covered with several insulating layers of thatched boughs and grass. The one assigned to the missionary was provided with an upper floor made from boards carried from the ship, so that he could squirrel tools and provisions away from the eyes of the larcenous Indians. Around the wigwams a couple of smallholdings were dug and planted with potatoes, carrots, turnips, beans, peas, lettuce, onions, leeks and cabbages.

Every move was observed by the assembled Fuegians. For a couple of days, at least, relations remained amicable: some of the Indians carried wood for the wigwams or brought material for thatching. They bartered fish for trinkets and iron tools and were entertained by the antics of the sailors. One day the mate and the surgeon got the whole of the Fuegian gathering dancing, with the mate demonstrating the actions while Bynoe plucked away on a Jew's harp. At other times crew members led singing lessons, which the Indians adored, giving full vent to their powers of mimicry. However, the sight of white-skinned men washing themselves was, to the Fuegians, the greatest spectacle of all. As the crew removed their clothes and splashed around in a brook, a hundred pairs of eyes were on them. However, on their third day in the cove when a group of men were stripped to the waist by the stream, a large party of Fuegians turned up and used the sailors' preoccupation to steal whatever they could get their hands on: handkerchiefs, shoes, shirts and the like. Theft was a problem: the ship's hands had lost much property, and FitzRoy had witnessed one Fuegian distract Jemmy in conversation while another picked a knife from his back pocket. Even the ever cautious and somewhat daunting York Minster had lost out to the pilferers.

As time moved on, the numbers of Fuegians grew. At one point as many as 300 sat on the boundary line, and Jemmy warned FitzRoy of some unsavoury characters, including an uncle of his. Things turned hostile on 26 January when there was a concerted attempt at theft during the sailors' ablutions, but more serious was an incident at the boundary marker. Here, two or three old men tried to break the camp's perimeter. When a sentry asked one to move back, the old man walked up to him and spat in his face. He then stepped back behind the trench and, over a sleeping Fuegian, acted out a scene in which he skinned the body, cut it up and ate it. The implication was clear.

Later that evening FitzRoy ordered a firearms practice to impress and warn the natives. The Fuegians watched and chattered as the balls hit their mark or splashed great distances out to sea. At sunset they left the camp as usual, but FitzRoy noticed they were ‘looking grave, and talking earnestly'. An hour later one of the guards opened fire on an object scuffling around by the tents, thinking it was a wild animal. It was not. It was a man, who jumped up and ran off into the night.

The next morning a strange atmosphere hung over the encampment. At nine o'clock, as the final touches were put to both the wigwam thatches and the gardens, all the Fuegians but four men climbed into their canoes and left the cove. There were no explanations as to why they were leaving, or where they were going, not even for Jemmy and York, and speculation ran through the camp: had they been alarmed by the show of strength the night before, or were they planning an attack? FitzRoy feared the latter, as did most of the rest of the party. In the last day or two, the arrival of many strangers had diminished the influence of Jemmy and his family among the Fuegians. His friends and relatives might have suspected that fighting was about to break out, and FitzRoy was puzzled as to why they had not told Jemmy or York.

He decided on a plan of simultaneous retreat and advance. If 300 Fuegians were to attack, there would be no chance that his party of thirty could survive the onslaught. He thought it sensible to leave the settlement, set up a camp a little way off and let any violence that might erupt burn itself out. At the same time, this mini crisis offered an opportunity. He called Richard Matthews and asked him how he felt about spending his first night alone with the three Fuegians in the wigwams. The absence of Indians would give the crew the chance to unload the yawl away from their covetous eyes, and a night on their own in the wigwams would be a test of both Fuegian intentions and the missionary's mettle. The plan seemed tough on Matthews: on the one hand FitzRoy was saying that he suspected treachery and a major assault that thirty men would be unable to resist, and on the other he was suggesting that Matthews, Jemmy, York and Fuegia spend the night alone undefended.

Nevertheless, Matthews agreed. He was not held in high regard on the
Beagle
– Darwin said of him at this moment that he ‘behaved with his usual quiet resolution: he is of an eccentric character and does not appear (which is strange) to possess much energy and I think it very doubtful how far he is qualified for so arduous an undertaking'. However, thus far he had yet to show any fear and any hesitation in the face of potential adversity, and he was not about to start now. Stores were brought across from the yawl and carried into Matthews's wigwam, where they were placed in the upper partition. A box of especially valuable items was buried, safe from Fuegians and from fire. With the afternoon fading York and Fuegia went to their wigwam, Jemmy joined Matthews in his, and the boats sailed off, as if for good. Three miles away they pulled into a bay and pitched their tents in the dark.

At daybreak the crew headed back. In the boats anxiety built up as the men speculated on the fate of the missionary. Would he be dead? Would Jemmy have gone the same way? What would have happened to York? And Fuegia? The convoy rounded a point, the camp came into view and there was Richard Matthews, kettle in hand, relaxed and confident after a trouble-free night. Many Fuegians had returned, he said, but they could not have been friendlier. Jemmy agreed, adding that those Fuegians who were presently on Wulaia were friends of his and that all the bad men had gone back to their own country.

Encouraged, FitzRoy ordered the test to be taken a stage further. He directed the yawl and one whale-boat back to the
Beagle
and, with Hamond, Darwin and a contingent of sailors, he headed off to survey and explore the north-western arm of the Beagle Channel, with a promise to return in just over a week. Matthews was to be left alone with the Fuegians for an extended period; whatever happened while the boats were away would determine the feasibility of leaving him alone in Tierra del Fuego.

Nine days went by. The surveying boats went along the unexplored north-west arm of the Beagle Channel to Whaleboat Sound and Stewart Island and turned back.

On 5 February they encountered a large party of Fuegians opposite Shingle Point. This was a fair distance from Wulaia Cove, and on the way out Indians here had acted threateningly towards them. These were the same ones, but now they were fully dressed, their faces were smeared in red and white paint, their hair decorated with goose feathers. One woman was wearing a dress that had belonged to Fuegia Basket; ribbon and red cloth adorned the bodies of others. Worse still was their attitude, which gave little reason for optimism: there prevailed, commented FitzRoy, ‘an air of almost defiance among these people, which looked as if they knew that harm had been done, and that they were ready to stand on the defensive if any such attack as they expected were put into execution'. His heart sank. With grave concern for the well-being of the missionary, Jemmy, Fuegia and York, the crew pulled on for as long as daylight would allow. The next day they began at dawn and, Hamond noted in his diary, that after they shot through the Murray Narrows and entered Ponsonby Sound,

many canoes came out and we heard shouting as usual from every little valley and cove on the beach. Several canoes came close to us, but we left them astern; but I could not help observing a great many pieces of cloth etc, amongst others a man with a piece of Fuegia's gay plaid petticoat tied round his head. This foretold a tale …

The crews on the two boats fell quiet and, though conditions were favourable, it was not until midday that Wulaia came into sight. On the beach sat several canoes, and all around stood a great crowd of Fuegians, dressed in ripped shirts and scraps of cloth. They ran at the two boats as they landed, bellowing, barking and jumping about wildly. FitzRoy ordered his men to pick up their guns. From the back of the screaming mob there was a shout. Matthews, Jemmy and York pushed their way through: all three were well, and Fuegia was waiting in a wigwam.

The missionary appeared relieved to see them and climbed into FitzRoy's boat for a conference at sea. Jemmy got into the other boat, but York waited on the beach. All around him the Indians squatted down to watch the two boats like ‘a pack of hounds waiting for a fox to be unearthed'. What Matthews told FitzRoy made for depressing listening. The departure of the two boats had been followed by a couple of days of relative peace and quiet, but the third brought canoe loads of more aggressive Fuegians. Resolved that the
Beagle
's boats had gone for good, they began several days of looting. Matthews's life had been made a misery: the Fuegians stripped him of clothing, tools, crockery and food. They entered his wigwam and demanded presents, threatening him with violence, holding his head down to demonstrate their strength. One day when he asked an old man to get out of his way, the man fetched a large rock and threatened to smash it over his head. Another group encircled him and shoved him backwards and forwards, teasing him, pulling hideous faces and tearing the hair from his face. On another occasion a large party of men went after the missionary with stones and stakes. One of Jemmy's brothers, who witnessed this, burst out crying, though Matthews headed off his would-be assailants with gifts.

The nightmare was unceasing: his wigwam was constantly surrounded by groups of men who deprived him of sleep with ceaseless chatter throughout the night and doleful howling as the sun rose in the morning. The only escape was provided by the women, who treated him with compassion and gave him food and shelter in their wigwams. By the end of the week he could not even go there, so numerous were his attackers and so vigilant did he have to be with his possessions and his well-being.