Savage (34 page)

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Contrary to many expectations, a fuller inquiry into the massacre did take place in Port Stanley, although it did not open until 24 April 1861. By then Despard's resignation had been acknowledged in January's
Voice of Pity
with some recognition of the difficulties incumbent on the missionary's work:

It is not without genuine sorrow that the Committee accept the resignation which has been tendered to them … It is a growing conviction in the minds of those who watch most narrowly the conditions of the Fuegian branch of our work, that, in future, the Superintendent abroad should be free from family ties; while the Catechists, or at least one of them, should be married. The peculiarly trying nature of the Superintendent's office, in virtue of which it becomes necessary for him to be almost always present in the Mission vessel, during her visits to the natives of Tierra del Fuego, renders it highly expedient that he should be without additional anxiety on the score of his family. On the other hand, the presence of females at the Mission Station is most essential, and must be provided …

Despard and his family were expected to settle near Buenos Aires where there was an opening for a clergyman willing to work with the
estancieros,
the large cattle grazers of the pampas. In the meantime he remained in the Falklands, and when requested by the Society's committee went to Stanley prepared to answer any questions, this time without the protection of a lawyer.

The proceedings opened in the council room of Government House with an examination of Charles Conyngham Turpin, former catechist of the mission station, the man whom Bull alleged had claimed that Fuegians were held against their will on the
Allen Gardiner.
Captain Molony and Mr Longden presided, and Despard asked most of the questions, fifty of which were fired at Turpin. They elicited little new information: Jemmy Button had been happy on Keppel Island and had been returned on time; he had not been forced to work and had not been ill-treated. The same could be said for the second party who, at all times, appeared contented, and only those who were willing to work had done so.

He revealed some interesting snippets, although surprisingly, and rather frustratingly for the historian, they were not followed up by his examiners. Turpin claimed to have been ashore at Wulaia on many occasions and to have spent a great deal of time with the Indians when the second party agreed to go to Keppel Island. However, in answer to a question on the quality of the mission's communication with the Fuegians he agreed that they had had it ‘rather imperfectly'. When asked who had arranged for the natives to go to Cranmer, he replied, ‘I don't recollect.' Turpin denied telling the colonial chaplain that Fuegians had been detained on the
Allen Gardiner
and said that he had written to Bull to express his displeasure at such an insinuation. Nevertheless, despite his denial, the letter to Mr Bull, which he handed over to the inquiry, admitted that these Fuegians had been kept on board the schooner until they returned clothes intended only for those agreeing to go to Keppel Island.

Alfred Coles followed Turpin and repeated his much-told story. Next followed John Betts, a former seaman on the
Allen Gardiner
turned labourer at the mission station. On the day the second party had boarded the ship to go home he had been present at the search and admitted that the Fuegians had not seemed pleased at the goings-on; he had seen Schwaiamugunjiz ‘shake his fist at Mr Despard's back'.

With Betts's testimony complete, Despard offered himself for examination. He handed over extracts from his journals, then answered plainly and directly the eighteen questions put to him by Molony and Longden. It was a disappointing anticlimax: the questions were far from searching and, under the circumstances, it is curious that the former missionary had been so reluctant to comply with the first inquiry. His two examiners went through the motions, neither cajoling nor pressing him on any particular issue. The final question was, ‘Do you attribute the massacre to any feelings of revenge on account of the search?'

Despard answered, ‘No, I ascribe it entirely to covetousness to be gratified by plunder of the vessel.'

Apart from a written submission by the absent Smyley – in which, incidentally, he wrote, ‘I feel certain that Jemmy Button was at the head of the massacre' – that was it, and the inquiry was over. Governor Moore received the transcripts, took a little while to analyse the evidence and having done so wrote to Despard offering him thanks that he ‘so candidly and fairly answered every question put to you. Allow me to remark that much of my personal annoyance to yourself would have been spared had you shown the same willingness to satisfy the public interest in May last year.' The massacre, he said, could only be partly explained by the desire to plunder. The most important reasons, he felt, were

the enforced search of the natives at Keppel Island, which was most unwise, and does not seem to have been followed up by the commonest precautions; the detention and rough treatment of the natives for eight days at Keppel Island, during which the man Coles knocked a native into the hold; the neglect of observing due faith by returning the natives before the commencement of their egg season, and the want of precautionary measures even after perceiving the gathering of the natives, and their troublesome behaviour, as appears from Captain Fell's journal, and from the final search, and scuffle, which took place.

Only when Governor Moore was satisfied that Fuegians were to be brought to the Falklands for Christian education and practical instruction and that they understood the term of months for which they were to stay, and only when he was sure that the captain of the transport vessel had received such precautionary instructions as were needed to guard against further disasters, would he remove the ban against importation.

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In the end, the inquiry did not put names to the killers – other than the already identified Billy Button – but it did tackle possible motivations. The question of how far Jemmy Button was involved in murder will never be resolved. The fact that so many influential people said that he was not should be weighed against their vested interests and their need to clear him. The balance of evidence suggests that there was some complicity in the events by Jemmy and his family. Moreover, there is little doubt that he joined in the plunder of the ship. However, the important issues hinge not so much on the culpability of FitzRoy's Fuegian, but on how far the killings could be justified, whether they might have been predicted and therefore avoided.

From the British point of view it would never be possible to justify such a brutal massacre. The dead men were all largely innocent – certainly the six crew members who died were mere sailors carrying out instructions, with very little involvement in the day-to-day affairs of the Indians, either in Tierra del Fuego or on Keppel Island. Whether the killings might have been anticipated is a different matter. With hindsight even if the Fuegians had not been detained at the Cranmer mission station against their will, they had been unhappy about going there and far from content to stay. Despite claims by Despard that he and his missionary foot-soldiers had mastered the Fuegian language, it is obvious that this was not so. And with the Fuegians capable of speaking only a few words of English, how much did they truly understand about what was expected of them?

There were elements of their existence on Keppel Island that they might have appreciated – the food, the warm accommodation, the clothes – but the long-term effects of the sudden changes the missionaries were trying to impose brought avarice, servility and covetousness in their wake and did little to advance them towards the missionary goal. Added to this, missionary arrogance compounded the problems. Despite repeated warnings that accusations of thievery were insulting to the Fuegians – no matter how true – the missionaries continued to make an example of them. The lesson that theft is bad, theft was unChristian, was valid to the missionaries, but to a people who did not understand property it was meaningless. The missionaries had several opportunities to adapt their behaviour: the reaction of the Indians to the search on the quayside at Keppel Island was alarming; that they were unsettled for days and had to be punished physically should have been a warning. That the crew would search them again at Wulaia was astonishing. When the Fuegians acted with violence it was almost certainly in response to what they perceived as a threat to their livelihoods.

The missionaries had engendered an atmosphere of greed that contributed to their downfall. When the natives left the
Allen Gardiner
for the last time they did so viewing the ship as not only home to their tormentors but also as the source of boundless treasure. The missionaries had fostered a demand for booty that was stronger and more frenzied than they could comprehend and which, in the end, they failed to guard against.

PART SIX

The Fall

Chapter 23

For the Patagonian Missionary Society the 1861 inquiry into the Wulaia killings signalled that the worst was over. Interest at home in the organisation's activities waned, registered by a drop in income, but nevertheless there was renewed enthusiasm among the Society's committee members for the work to be continued and consolidated. In October 1861 George Packenham Despard left the Falklands for England on board the
Allen Gardiner,
having failed to find a suitable position anywhere in South America (he eventually settled in Australia). His replacement was to be the no-nonsense robust former secretary of the Society, Waite Stirling.

Behind him at Keppel Island, Despard left his eighteen-year-old adopted son Thomas Bridges, the Fuegian Ookoko and wife Camilenna, along with their baby son. Free of his stepfather's autocratic and deadening control, an invigorated Bridges revived the mission station. He realised that many of its problems lay with its failure to come to terms with the Indian language. He pumped Ookoko and Camilenna for words, for grammatical rules and for accuracy of pronunciation. By the time Stirling arrived, in January 1863, Bridges could claim both to have mastered Yamana like no white man before him, and to have collected and recorded over 7,000 words.

The two men made a formidable team. As missionary, Stirling approached his work aggressively and frequently trampled over local protocol and even some of its laws – most notably the Alien Ordinance and the specific ban on the mission importing natives. Within three months of his arrival at Keppel Island he and Bridges were at Wulaia Cove. It was the first time that either man had been there and they found the Fuegians sheepish and apprehensive of reprisals. They also discovered that their numbers had mysteriously dwindled. Jemmy Button was well, though, and he came on board to explain that a strange illness had killed many of his people. Stirling listened, and promised him presents if he would organise the repair of the house on the beach, which was now a mere skeleton. He would also give Jemmy two hatchets, four knives, two buckets and ship's biscuits if he would fetch wood for the
Allen Gardiner
before she left for the Falklands. It seems that sound relationships were established because the two missionaries sailed out of Wulaia with seven Fuegians on board: Jemmy's son Threeboys, Luccaenche, a fourteen-year-old boy called Uroopa, Macooallan and his wife Wendoo, along with their twenty-year-old son Pinoiense and an infant. Jemmy and his family towed the ship out of the cove and demanded a chorus of three cheers for old times' sake. The crew obliged.

This was the first of many breaches of the Alien Ordinance by the Society. In the course of the next four years Stirling oversaw the transportation of more than fifty Fuegians to and from Keppel Island. An abrasive correspondence ensued with the Falklands' new governor, Mackenzie, but nothing was done to enforce the law. In the end the governor settled for the missionary's agreement to supply a list of the Fuegians present at Cranmer, and the understanding that although he had not stopped the importation, neither had he approved of it.

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On 18 February 1864 the
Allen Gardiner
left Keppel Island with the intention of returning the latest party of Fuegians to their homes. Joining them were Ookoko, Camilenna, their children (Camilenna had recently given birth to a daughter), seven goats and a collection of tools. Ookoko was to attempt to break away from the nomadic life of the Fuegian Indian by cultivating a smallholding. Camilenna would relinquish fishing and idle wanderings in her canoe for, the
Voice of Pity
reported, her life was from now on to ‘resemble that of an English wife; she was to stay at home, take care of the children, and present to her people an example of domestic life'.

However, as the ship reached the outlying islands of Tierra del Fuego an air of despondency fell over the party. Rumours reached the Fuegians on board that, this last summer, another terrible disease had cut down swathes of their people. Every Yamana on the ship was said to have lost somebody – mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts. The native passengers became downcast and many cried openly at the news. Saddest of all was Threeboys, who had heard an unconfirmed report that his father Jemmy Button had been among the victims. Stirling reported back to the Society that ‘loud and melancholy sounded the tidings of death'.

On 7 March the ship reached Wulaia Cove and, the
Voice of Pity
disclosed, ‘The approach of the vessel was the signal for a burst of mournful news … There had been a malignant sickness, and old and young, very many, had been swept away by it. James Button was dead.'

The
Allen Gardiner
dropped anchor and those on board sat and waited for news. The following day Jemmy's wife Lassaweea arrived in a canoe with eleven young people. Stirling wrote in his journal, ‘Her face was visibly impressed with sorrow; and, pointing with her finger toward the sky, she gave me to understand by looks, more than words, the cause of her grief, and how great it was. A majority of the natives had the hair cut short on the crown of the head, and other evidences of mourning were frequent…'