Savage: the Life and Times of Jemmy Button

Jemmy Button was not a decisive figure in human history. Indeed, he would have lived out his life and died totally forgotten were it not for the chance of his being taken to England, and returned home on the immortal voyage of the Beagle. As such, he pops up from time to time in works on Darwin and evolution, and has always left me wondering, Darwin went on to fame and authority, what ever happened to Jemmy Button? Until now, for me at least, the question has been left hanging. In this absorbing book, Hazlewood lets Darwin go his way, and tracks Button and the fascinating story of intentions -- good or pig-headed, as you will -- gone bad. This is not a dry academic publication. The same day I got this book, a friend lent me three detective novels -- one Jeffery Deaver and two James Pattersons -- but once I got my nose into Savage, I could hardly pull it out. From my previous reading, I had a picture of Captain Fitzroy as an unpleasant character, being forced to right his wrongs through no good will of his own. Hazlewood's research shows me that I seem to have been led astray. His Fitzroy is far more sympathetic than the one I had known. An inferior artist leaves you gasping at his craft. Hazlewood is such an expert writer that you may read the entire book without really noticing the skill and work that must have gone into the creation of this book: fluent writing, careful research, and fine construction throughout. Had Fitzroy never packed Jemmy Button off to England, perhaps the Fuegian Indians would have disappeared from this world without a trace. At least through the work of the missionaries, whatever their motive, a record has been left of their language and some of their culture (BTW, I disagree with the previous reviewer who said we are closer to the Yamana than to the Victorians; a romantic notion that hardly bears up to a moment's consideration.) This book leaves you with a lot to think about.Permit me to quote Alfred Russel Wallace in exposition of the book's title: "The white men in our colonies are too frequently the true savages."

The reviews that are already submitted do an excellent job of describing the scope of the book so I won't do it again.Normally I would be satisfied to see that other reviewers have given the marks that are deserved and would not bother to write yet another review.This book is not normal, however. I was struck by Hazlewood's ability to paint all of the characters as rational and intelligent but also products of their times and cultures. The story unfolds in a nonjudmental way...and then leads the reader to be a witness to untold horrors and great tragedy.Well worth the read.

Charles Dickens wrote, "Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it." I do not know if Dickens knew about the missionary aims of the Patagonian Missionary Society, but there he surely would have found confirmation of his opinion. In _Savage: The Life and Times of Jemmy Button_ (Thomas Dunne Books), Nick Hazlewood has written an amazing and sad story about missionaries, colonialism, and a tragic clash of cultures. Sparking the story, a shocking tale of repeated good intentions and bad results, was the high Tory captain of the HMS _Beagle_, Edward FitzRoy. FitzRoy thought it would be grand to take Fuegian specimens back to Britain. One of them, swapped for a button, became Jemmy Button, and Darwin got to see him on the _Beagle_'s trip in 1831 to take him back home (so he had influence in Darwin's _The Descent of Man_). FitzRoy's hopes were futile, as Jemmy turned native again.In 1845, the Patagonian Missionary Society, one of the many Protestant vanguards of British colonialism, made an effort to land on Tierra del Fuego and begin proselytizing. The mission lasted a week, because the natives merely stole from it, without improvement of their souls. In 1850, a similar attempt lead to the deaths of the missionaries. Newspapers warned the Patagonian Missionary Society off any future effort, but the public loved this British bravado, and the Society was emboldened to try a new venture. It would use one of the Falkland Islands as a staging ground to which Fuegians could be ferried, civilized, converted, and returned. To this end, Jemmy was found and was kidnapped once again, along with members of his family. They became homesick and resentful, and were cycled back home, with another nine Fuegians picked up. The Society's reports were glowing, but glossed over the frequent problems. One of the basic ones was that the Fuegians had little concept of property rights, and when they liked something, they took it, and they resented any subsequent searches. When this group was returned, eight missionaries were murdered. The Society blamed the work of Satan, but as one letter to the papers said, the massacre "...was produced by the recklessness of the society and their agents, and therefore I must conclude that Satan is much maligned in this matter."Hazlewood has told this astonishing and distressing story with a novelist's fluency. In the end, the efforts toward the Fuegians could not have been more futile. Ranchers and sheep-farmers soon began invading their island, and brought devastating diseases or simply hunted them down and shot them. No pure Fuegians survived. Those with intentions of greed harmed them as much as those with intentions of improvement under the guise of imposition of a strong culture over a weak one. Such were the benefits of civilization to the savages.

The title, "Savage", is of course ironical. Captain Fitzroy thought, when he captured three Tierra Fuegian men and a young girl in 1830, that his "specimens" were the savages, even as he sailed them away from their homes and their grieving families. So _Fitzroy_ is the savage, of course? Certainly, but Hazlewood's irony, and his capacity for imaginative compassion, is deeper than that. Fitzroy thought he was doing good. Mutual incomprehension between the Tierra del Fuegians and passing European and American ships had led to murder: and people with muskets and ship's cannon are more efficient at murder than people with spears. If some Tierra del Fuegians could be taught English and gain an understanding of European culture and manners, there might be fewer violent encounters. And if his captives could be taught to build and cultivate crops, then they could be returned to their homes, equipped with seeds, food animals and tools, and perhaps teach their kinspeople a more comfortable and secure way of living. Hazlewood tells the story of how this benevolent (by the standards of its time) project goes horribly wrong. The remarkable figure of Jemmy Button, the resourceful young man captured by Fitzroy (later returned to his home by Fitzroy, as promised), and how he fared in English culture and his own, is a central thread in that story. However this is history and not biography; the canvas is wider than one man. Tragedy comes with the arrival of the Patagonian Missionary Society in the Land of Fire. Like Fitzroy they believed they came with good intentions; unlike Fitzroy they offered little of value, took much, and mostly broke their promises. They sought the help of Jemmy Button, who was back living with his people, but with a half-remembered stock of English. Button offered that help, and he and his family, and other Tierra del Fuegians were in return kept as virtual slaves in the Society's encampment. Hazlewood shows how tensions rose until the missionaries were massacred, probably by a party led by Jemmy Button. Interestingly, despite what we think of as the racist arrogance of the Victorians, the authorities in nearby Port Stanley and in London understood the events in terms that we might consider "modern": they saw the massacre as the result of the missionary society's cruelty, bigotry and duplicity, which had placed intolerable pressure on the Tierra del Fuegians. Claims that the slain missionaries had been "martyrs" were quietly (and justly) derided, and no attempt was made to avenge their deaths. The title "Savage", I think, refers neither to the Tiera del Fuegians nor by heavy-handed irony to the Victorians. Though the Patagonian Missionary Society does emerge as something of a villain, their villainy was too drab to be "savage". The title refers not to people but to the events that led to the destruction of the first and second missions to Tierra del Fuego. The wholesale slaughter of Jemmy Button's people by European se