When a man has no good stories to write about, a good idea from that same man could be to write about the story of another man written by some other men. In this case I will write about a fantastic real story that took place at the end of XIX century in Argentina, one of those stories that sounds like a legend but is absolutely true and fascinating.
Please don’t let this boring preface stop you from reading this today’s column – the story is worth it!
This is a real story that includes a sailor, a naturalist and an indigenous man, the names: Fitz Roy, Darwin and Orurdelicone alias ‘Jemmy Button’.
Captain Fitz Roy came to Argentina with the mission of making the whole cartography of the Atlantic coast, the Beagle Channel and the coast of the Pacific up to Chile. The name of the boat was Beagle, and English boat that discovered this path to the Pacific from the Atlantic a couple of years before.
Around 1831 when the expedition was about to conclude, a rescue boat from the Beagle was stolen by the Yamanas, local indigenous people from Tierra del Fuego (land named like this because of the permanent fires the tribes made to combat the freezing temperatures). Fitz Roy kidnapped four natives in order to exchange them for the boat. As the indigenous never brought the boat back, the captain had the ‘idea’ of taking these natives to England, giving them an education and culture, and transforming their wild life to a 5 o’clock Victorian tea culture in London. The story also involves Fitz Roy giving Orurdelicone to his father for a button made of nacre on his jacket, hence Orurdelicone’s name changing for the ‘civilised’ name of Jemmy Button.
A couple of months later, Jemmy and the other three natives landed in Europe and went on an internship to learn manners, use European clothes, eat with knives and forks, etc. One of the four died quite soon of a civilised disease (viruela), the older one, nicknamed York Minster was quite wild and was excluded to the reformation plan literally because: “The size of his head and shapes revealed a disgusting specimen of uncivilised human nature.”
Therefore after five months of training Jemmy and ‘Fueguia Basket’ (the other indigenous who was only nine years old whose real name was Yokcushlu) were introduced to the King and Queen of England, and after an audience of 20 minutes they were sent to the internship again.
The reasons are not clear, at least for me, but less than a year after they arrived in Europe, Fitz Roy managed himself to find another mission in South America to draw a complete map of the continent. Fitz Roy’s goal was to return these indigenous to their land, I guess this old sailor had a brutal charge of conscience at this point, even more with the under lying versions of York Minster raping Fueguia Basket at the reformatory. He included an ‘amenity’ to his expedition, the inclusion of a young naturalist of good education who to this old captain at the end, was to be able to share conversations with a cult man during the next five years in the Beagle, at this point, all this reminds me of Jack Sparrow and his Black Pearl.
A year later Jemmy and Fueguia were dropped off on their land and Fitz Roy and Darwin proceeded to continue their trip to the harbour of the origin of the species and some exclusive cartography for her majesty. On their way back they sleep on board by the shores of Jemmy’s land, who rowed until the old navy to salute the cap and crew. Jemmy was again a nude indigenous with his old hair and manners of course.
Once in England Darwin wrote the revolutionary book whilst Fitz Roy was completely eclipsed by his image, though he was destined to a role in New Zealand and was the first man on earth to write about the daily weather in newspapers, he cut his throat one morning after greeting his whole family.
The last episode that history is about Jemmy Button, and is a confusing story in a massacre in which indigenous killed (some versions include anthropophagi) some religious missionaires paradoxically from a religious order created by Captain Fitz Roy.
The story gives feet to various debates and in my opinion is fascinating and I hope you enjoyed it too, at least I am glad that the next time you go restauranting in Palermo Hollywood in Darwin street or Fitz Roy street, you will recall this tale, and possibly as I do, thinking why isn’t there or somewhere a street called Orurdelicone or Jemmy Button or another one in the tender memory of little Fueguia Basket.