Savage (26 page)

Their presence on Keppel Island had an immediate impact on the missionaries' grasp of Yamana. The fact that it was a larger, less well-integrated group than the Buttons' meant that Despard, Turpin and Phillips heard far more conversation in raw Fuegian than they ever had before. Cranmer was filled with the constant chatter of Fuegians, both young and old. ‘When Jemmy Button was here he would talk his English to his wife and his children when we were by, and they spoke to each other in such low tones that we could not catch their words,' wrote Despard. ‘Now the eight natives at present on the island are incessantly talking Fuegian, and loud enough for any one to hear…'

Formal education of a party of this size was probably difficult for the missionaries to organise. Much work remained to be done around the burgeoning settlement and, despite his best intentions, Despard was still spending a good deal of time at sea. Instead, for the Fuegians the experience of being on Keppel Island had to substitute for education: the work regimentation of the men in the field, the domestic duties of the women and attendance at church were lessons that would, it was hoped, lead to a brighter future for Tierra del Fuego.

There were, however, two exceptions. The missionaries quickly became enamoured of the Fuegian boys, Ookokowenche and Luccaenches. Ookoko was the elder of the two, a good-humoured, inquisitive boy in his mid to late teens who took to work in the fields and in the classroom with enthusiasm and a great beaming smile. His ability in English and his readiness to exchange Yamana words cheered the missionaries greatly. Most pleasing of all, they believed, was his diligence when it came to cleanliness. He was, wrote Despard, so ‘ambitious to become white that he washes very often, in the hope of washing the brown out of his complexion'.

Lucca was younger, and where Ookoko was good-looking, he was rather plain, with deep, sunken eyes and a somewhat sullen expression. He was extraordinarily bright, even quicker at grasping English and other concepts than Ookoko, but he had neither the playfulness nor the gregariousness of his fellow Fuegian and could be quite sulky. Nevertheless he had a strong sense of the ridiculous and was excellent at caricaturing those around him. In spite of his moods he was a friendly soul and as his English improved he would take Mrs Phillips by the hand and ask her questions about England and life there.

Despard noted the potential of the two and took them aside for special hour-long lessons in the meeting-house, the Cenobium. The sessions began with Despard giving them a box of phonetic letters. He then placed together letters to spell out a Fuegian word he knew, usually the name of an object in the room. Turpin, Schmidt or Phillips would say the word whole, then break it down into its syllable components. The letters were then mixed up and the boys were asked to re-create the word. Despard described an early lesson in the
Voice of Pity:
‘I place Lucca at my side, and range u-s-h-c-a before him. Mr Schmidt reads ushca. Then I point to Lucca and say, “Comodo shia?” What do you call it? “Ushca.” “Quay?” – and he points to his coat. Then I take each letter and give it its sound, and jumble the word up and make him pick out the letters again.' For an hour this process was repeated. It was tortuous, but seemingly successful. By the time Despard set sail for Patagonia, where he was taking Schmidt, on 4 February, he felt so convinced of the boys' worth that he even took Ookoko with him as a sailor and travelling companion.

When he returned the experiment was extended. By May both boys had moved out of the Fuegian house and gone to live with Charles Turpin, Garland Phillips and his wife. Ookoko was renamed Robert, Lucca became James. Great amounts of energy and time were dedicated to their progress: every night they were given reading lessons and over the next months, unlike their Fuegian colleagues, they were socialised by the missionaries and seem to have been forever taking tea in the Cenobium or the mission house. The Despard children spent time teaching them the five vowels. In May the chief missionary rejoiced at eventually discovering the word for ‘we' (it was, he said,
macatoo
). Another time Ookoko was overheard praying to ‘God for Jesus Christ's sake, to make him a good boy,' and Phillips's journal records with satisfaction that they prayed every night by their bedside. When Ookoko turned up for food at the catechists' home one night, he stood over the table and, of his own accord, said, ‘Pray God, bless this!' It was, said Turpin, ‘the first prayer offered by a Firelander and in English'.

The increased emphasis on education led Ookoko and Lucca to develop aspirations of their own. Garland Phillips wrote, in a letter home, ‘The two boys … are living in my house … they are both much attached to me and Mrs P … we regard them with much affection…' They were, he added, better behaved, more docile and obedient than their English counterparts. Both loved drawing and Ookoko wanted to be a flautist after an evening spent blowing and toying with Phillips's flute.

Inevitably the special treatment the boys received created tension among the native party. In July the Fuegian women complained that Ookoko and Lucca took tea with the mission party every Sunday, while they and their husbands were rarely invited. In the fields, too, there was some evidence of ill-feeling between Ookoko and Macooallan, which Garland Phillips speculated was because ‘the lazy is jealous of the hard worker, inasmuch as the latter fares better than the former, and enjoys more of the confidence of the white man'.

For the Fuegians, however, life was not all work and education: they played games with Despard's children and the women made the occasional visit in their best clothes to Sulivan House for tea and plum cake. In February Charles Turpin gave a moonlight concert on his flute, the climax of which was a stirring rendition of ‘God Save The Queen' to which the Yamana attempted the chorus. British rituals also had to be observed. On 12 March James Ellis became the second member of the mission party to die at Keppel – Despard's adopted son Frank Jones had died almost exactly a year earlier – and the doctor's funeral and subsequent burial must have been the first the Fuegians had seen. Early in May Alfred Coles, the
Allen Gardiner
's cook, rounded up all of the Fuegians, armed them with pieces of wood, rakes and brooms and marched them in single file around the settlement like some rag-tag army. The Fuegians reportedly enjoyed it and the missionaries found it amusing, but it might have been preparation for what was to come two weeks later. May 24 was Queen Victoria's birthday and Despard declared a general holiday and a lively celebration.

At 10 mustered all the fencibles of the place, including seven Firelanders; rigged up banners, royal standard, and union jacks; Firelanders and children bore them. Self and E [Emily, his daughter] were at head of procession, and proceeded round the bounds of our township; at each of five corners of which we set up new posts (of coast wood) made for the occasion, with three cheers for the Queen. Sang the national anthem with full chorus at the last, in spite of wind striving, with borean prowess, to blow it back again down our throats. Firelanders highly pleased, Ookokko on the lead. He had assisted Bartlett yesterday digging holes, carrying poles, and knew the way. We were home from our walk by 12.

At five that evening the Fuegians were invited to join the missionaries and Captain Fell for tea and a spread of meat, fruit, pies and cake. Twenty-one people were crammed into a tiny room, though Schwaiamugunjiz had trouble using a fork and left early. After refreshments were over, they all sang the national anthem then followed Mrs Despard into another room to hear her play the piano. The evening culminated with a magic-lantern show that charmed and vastly impressed the Indians.

On 27 May Despard set sail for Port Stanley, with Macooallan and Schwaiamugunjiz on board. The missionary had business to transact in the Falklands' capital, but it would seem that the trip also bore the mark of a public-relations exercise. The islands were desolate and remote, and even though Port Stanley was only separated from Keppel Island by 150 miles, communications were difficult. It was inevitable that people would start asking questions about the mission and its activities with the Fuegians. The visit provided an opportunity for Despard to exhibit his happy charges and allay any fears that might exist.

The
Allen Gardiner
reached Port Stanley on 30 May, but the city, with its natural harbour and three miles of docks, its piers and jetties, its rows of pensioners' white cottages, ramshackle homes and slightly unworthy, rather humdrum government buildings, failed to impress the two Fuegians, who remained as little surprised as if they had been taken back to the Yahgashaga.

On their first full day in port, the party went ashore and visited Mrs Phillips, the catechist's wife, who was spending time in the town. The people of the town were reportedly curious about the Yamana presence, and on 1 June Despard dressed them in blue and red uniforms, like American sailors, and marched them through the streets. As they passed, locals came out to see them and commented that the two men were ‘Nothing savage; nothing unpleasant; nothing un-English in form or face, only in complexion.' They walked on to the town's guard house where the soldiers found them highly amusing:

The sergeant gave Macooallan a musket to handle, and put him through part of the manual exercise. Afterwards I took them to see Mr H and his family. The natives sat down and behaved like gentlemen. Mrs H played for them, and Macooallan sang for her, and then Miss H sang a duet with her father, with which they were much pleased. Dr H gave them a handkerchief a piece, and Mrs H two coloured prints of English life.

At some point the Fuegians were taken to see what they believed were horses having their throats cut to make beef, and that night Despard took them to a meeting of the Port Stanley Temperance Society, where he gave a short address. Word of their presence had reached the Falkland Islands' governor, Thomas Moore, who arranged a meeting at which he compared them with the Eskimos he had seen while on Ross's Antarctic expedition. He gave each a sailor's knife on a short lanyard for hanging around their necks, and his daughter gave each a penknife.

It was almost time to leave. Whatever business Despard had there was completed. On Sunday they went to church twice and the following day, 6 May, sailed for Cranmer, where they arrived to an emotional greeting six days later. The women had been upset by the departure of their loved ones and had cried their hearts out. On the day after their husbands left, they had painted sad black lines across their faces and asked continuously for news of the schooner and when it was coming back.

Three days after the men arrived back at Keppel Island, a Fuegian delegation visited Despard. ‘They came to beg me neither to send them nor to go myself any more to Stanley,' the missionary superintendent remembered. ‘When I acceded to their wishes, they patted me on the shoulder, and called me “tagacollo-kyemah owa cow-shoo” (friend, good man, excellent fellow!).'

Once again the Patagonian Missionary Society painted a rosy picture of its operations on Keppel Island. After all, they were having a tough time at home. William Parker Snow's campaign against the Society had been stepped up over the course of 1858: a whole file of letters and representations between him, the colonial secretary, the governor of the Falklands and the Society's secretary had been lodged in the House of Commons library in May. In September 1858, the former captain wrote a vociferous warning to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Bulwer Lytton:

Is there no one to see to it, Sir? Will not Government ask how they were brought there, and have it proved? or must there be an indifference shown towards the subject because I name it, until some fearful massacre of a ship's crew on the Fuegian or Patagonian coast awakens the people of England to the folly and evil of deporting natives by any and every means, just to carry out some selfish crotchet emanating from the brain of a shrewd speculator or idealist?

Snow's legal case against the Society was adjourned in December 1858 to enable him to obtain documents from the Falkland Islands government. With its former captain winning the propaganda war, it was essential that the Society gave their supporters good news. This they did with stories of domestic satisfaction, successful contact with native peoples and proof of progress from savage to civilian. So it is that we learn that the women Wyeenagowlkippin and Wendoogyappa loved to dress neatly, the former wearing her hair neatly parted, tied in front with two coloured ribbons and behind with lace, the latter though short and broad being good-looking ‘even to English eye'. We learn that they were keen when it came to working around the house, that they liked needlework and basketry, came and went as they pleased, and were affectionate towards the mission children.

In June Despard recorded that his wife loaned Wyeenagowlkippin a saucepan and demonstrated how to use it for cooking a meal; the next day the woman brought back the pan cleaner than it had been when she borrowed it. Mrs Despard, too, noted changes in the women: ‘They are gradually becoming modest in their ways,' she wrote in a letter home, ‘and no longer uncover themselves, and squat down as they used to do upon their arrival here.' There was amusement too: the
Voice of Pity
informed the Society's members that Wendoogyappa was the best-humoured and favourite of the women. She would run into a room, sit down, make some remark, get up, run to another room then come back to the first.

As evidence of their domestic contentment, Fuegian men could be found sitting around the fire in their home, repairing their clothes with a needle and thread. On 6 February there was general astonishment when Garland Phillips produced a set of daguerreotypes and photographs of himself and his family. The Fuegians were fascinated and asked questions as to where the people in the pictures were and was it a long way away. They noticed the similarities between Mrs Phillips and her sister and laughed at a picture of the catechist without a beard.