Savage (33 page)

Not everyone subscribed to the view that Jemmy Button and his people were innocent. Alfred Coles stuck unswervingly to his account, which he related on several occasions. Captain Smyley cleaved to that view too, but it was William Parker Snow who once again attempted to nail the lie. He recognised the advantage to the Society of Jemmy's exoneration and that any other version would cripple their operation. In a letter to the
Western Daily Press
published on 28 May 1860 he spelled it out:

Mr Stirling can dare say that ‘Jemmy Button acquits his own people entirely' of the massacre! How contemptible such an argument is on the part of a minister of the Gospel! Far better for these gentlemen to honestly and manfully admit the truth, acknowledging the error done, and trying to make amends. But, no, that would not suit Mr Stirling, nor his missionary, nor those that back them up in law. Nevertheless, it is evident that they are wrong, and that Mr Stirling does not give the clear truth. It was Jemmy Button's brother, and Jemmy Button's family and tribe that massacred the party at Wollyah, for Coles distinctly says so. Besides … it was from these very men I had the most trouble, causing me the most anxiety.

He reiterated his familiar demand: ‘That blood demands from a Christian community like this of England that an immediate and most searching investigation – full, fair and without being perverted by legal quibbling – be made into the doings of the “Patagonian Society”.'

*   *   *

By coincidence, the same day that his letter appeared in the newspaper an inquiry into the massacre was opening in Stanley. It seemed that there was going to be a genuine attempt to get to the bottom of the catastrophe. The Reverend George Packenham Despard had been summoned to the Falklands' capital and had arrived there on 25 May. He immediately engaged the services of the islands' only professional lawyer, Mr Lane, an action that is automatic in the present age but which back then, considering the circumstances of the investigation, caused frowns then among the authorities. On Monday 28 May the investigation began in Port Stanley's court house before the justices of the peace, Arthur Bailey and John Dean. The colonial secretary J.R. Longden conducted the proceedings.

Alfred Coles was the first called and sworn in. In response to questions from Longden he repeated his version of events at Wulaia. When asked if the natives had been searched in Tierra del Fuego, he responded that they had because many things had been lost. Mr Lane jumped to his feet and objected: the hearing could not extend to the cause of the loss of life on shore at Tierra del Fuego, he argued, as it was being carried out under the 432nd and 433rd sections of the Merchant Shipping Act, and could only deal with the causes of the abandonment of the
Allen Gardiner.

The magistrates looked sceptical. Mr Longden resumed. Was the loss of life on shore the cause of the abandonment of the vessel? he asked. Coles affirmed that it was. A legal debate broke out between Longden and Lane, and after some minutes of technical arguments the bench ruled that they had full power to inquire into any matters occurring aboard the vessel and also into the cause of the loss of life on shore.

Longden continued his questioning, eliciting the now customary responses from Coles on what had happened to him after he had escaped from the ship. In cross-examining Coles, Lane asked whether Captain Fell and the men returned safely after taking Tommy Button and his wife ashore in the hours after the search. Coles agreed that they had, and that in fact many trips ashore had been made over the next few days.

The bench asked if, during the week, the men had gone armed. ‘They were only armed with axes for cutting wood,' replied Coles. Then, in answer to further questioning by Lane, he reiterated that he had been kindly treated by the Fuegians at Wulaia in the four months that he had lived there, and concluded,

‘Before the massacre none of the natives in my hearing ever remarked about any violence towards them. I saw one man who had been at Keppel join in the outrage, it was William Button. I am certain I saw him. I was on board the vessel, about 300 or 400 yards distant; he flung a stone at Mr Phillips and hit him on the side of the head.'

Despard was called, but at the witness stand he refused to be sworn in. The magistrates were startled. Mr Lane rose and told his client that he had no choice, he must take the oath. Despard raised his hand and swore to tell the truth.

The colonial secretary asked if he had in his possession any of the ship's papers. Despard produced the crew list and said that this was all he had. The names of the dead were read out. Longden asked if he could give any evidence as to the cause of the abandonment of the vessel. Despard replied, ‘I cannot.'

‘Are you aware,' Longden asked, ‘of any threats or threatening language used by the natives at Keppel Island on board the vessel before she embarked?' Despard refused to answer. Longden announced that he would not be asking any more questions.

The magistrate Mr Dean asked again if the missionary had heard threats made by the natives. Despard replied with a curt, ‘I have no distinct recollection of hearing any.'

‘Did the natives at Keppel ever attempt any outrage or threats towards the colonists there?'

‘No.'

Arthur Bailey asked, ‘Did you search the bags of the natives at Keppel?'

Despard objected to the question. Lane rose again and explained that this question was not permitted, it was outside the remit of the inquiry. Further proceedings were futile and the magistrates had no choice but to close the inquiry.

Uproar followed. On 29 May Charles Bull, who had taken a close interest in the Society's affairs, wrote to the Falklands' governor expressing his ‘deep anxiety, for the sake of the natives, for the sake of the character of the Missionary Operations generally…' He said he had new and damning information on the appalling way the missionaries had treated the Fuegians. Mr Turpin, the former catechist of the mission, who was now living in Port Stanley, had told him that on at least one occasion Fuegians had been detained on the
Allen Gardiner
against their will. ‘If the natives are brought to Cranmer without any intelligent notion of the object of their long voyage we have at once a key to the massacre of Mr Phillips and the Captain and crew of the
Allen Gardiner!
' Bull wrote. For the sake of one and all – the missionary society, the Yamana and the dead men – for the sake of avoiding future martyrs and for the ‘honour of the flag', he urged the governor not to accept the previous day's hearing and to take whatever steps he thought fit to resolve the matter.

Governor Moore had no intention of letting the issue rest, though it was by no means an easy matter for him: Tierra del Fuego fell outside his jurisdiction. He had no authority or responsibility for events there, but he had hoped that for the general well-being of the Falklands' colony and its future progress, Despard would have shown a willingness to get to the truth of the massacre by co-operating with the inquiry. Instead, Moore wrote to Rear Admiral Sir Stephen Lushington, the commander on Britain's Brazil station, that the ‘gravest suspicions have been for some time entertained as to the voluntary character of the residence of the Fuegians at the Mission Station'. These suspicions, he added, had been ‘greatly aggravated by Mr Despard's conduct', which was a cause for regret, because the mission would suffer.

I believe that the natives are brought over from the finest and most philanthropic motives, but I am afraid they themselves did not appreciate the philanthropy of their benefactors. All the information in my possession tends to prove that at Keppel Island they were disoriented, peevish, anxious to return to their native land and occasionally threatening the mission party with vengeance on their return to Tierra del Fuego.

He wrote in a similar pessimistic tone to the Secretary of State for the Colonies back in London:

I should have hoped that instead of availing himself of every technical objection to defeat the enquiry Mr Despard would gladly have availed himself of this public investigation in open court to have cleared the mission from the grave suspicions which have become current in the colony regarding their dealings with the natives. As it is, those suspicions have been necessarily aggravated by this studied concealment, and in place of establishing the truth the door is left open for conjecture of all kinds.

He included in this despatch a copy of Charles Bull's letter and confirmed that he would not be lifting the ban on the importation of natives to the Falklands until a full and satisfactory inquiry had been carried out.

London had placed great weight on the findings of the inquiry at Stanley. Initial plans to send HMS
Buzzard
to investigate had fallen through and the governor's despatch was eagerly anticipated. It arrived on 6 August, and many minutes were scribbled over it, but the mood in the Colonial Office was united. Blackwood, the senior clerk, was first to pen his thoughts:

The course pursued by Mr Despard warrants the inference that his proceedings have, to say the least, been extremely indiscreet and disastrous in their results. But his silence and the want of other evidence must, I fear, baffle the government in bringing home to him or the agents in the affair any distinct charge of culpability.

In the Colonial Office the new Permanent Under Secretary of State, Sir Frederick Rogers, agreed. He suggested, in a lengthy note again setting out the known facts, that the department should write to the Society expressing extreme surprise at the conduct of the chief missionary, adding that such behaviour could not ‘fail to give rise to the most unfavourable surmises'.

After waiting a month to see whether any more information would arrive from either the governor or the Royal Navy, Chichester Fortescue, Assistant Under Secretary of State, wrote a savagely critical letter to the Society. He enclosed Governor Moore's report and the letter from Charles Bull.

After the occurrence of so deplorable an event, it might have been supposed that the Chief Agent of the Society on the spot would have been anxious to do all in his power to facilitate inquiry. But the Revd Mr Despard took a different view of his duty … It is for the Society to judge whether this was a right or a becoming line of conduct. The report contains much matter which calls for the grave consideration of the Society, and the Secretary of State cannot doubt that they will weigh it with a full sense of the responsibility which must attach to the conclusion they adopt and to their future proceedings.

The feeling was different at the Clifton headquarters of the Society. Despard had written explaining that his conduct at the inquiry had been motivated by the realisation that the parties conducting it were all prejudiced and had no right to interfere in the Society's business or events away from the Falklands.

The committee of the Society responded to the government's letter on 4 October. Waite Stirling wrote that though the committee regretted the silence of the Society's representative at the inquiry, they could not ‘shut their eyes to the fact that their superintendent was summoned from a distance of 150 miles, with a rough sea voyage, to appear before a Court of Enquiry the functions of which were limited, but whose authority was sought to be extended beyond the sphere of its legitimate control'. Had the remit of the inquiry been adequate to the task in hand then Mr Despard would not have had the slightest hesitation in answering all of the questions put to him. Furthermore, Stirling argued, the dice were loaded against Despard. Bull had been misled by partial information, an assumption that the Fuegian party had been mistreated at Keppel Island informed the proceedings, and both the governor and the colonial chaplain had failed to be as assiduous in collecting their evidence as they should have been.

Nevertheless Stirling held out an olive branch. The committee was ready to submit the journals of Despard, Turpin, Phillips and Captain Fell for inspection by members of the Colonial Office, ‘so that by a comparison of their contents Her Majesty's Government may be assured how wholly without foundation the suspicions rife at Stanley really are'. He also acknowledged the need for a full and free inquiry ‘in order to quell these turbulent suspicions, which parties abroad have become a prey to'. The committee would instruct Despard by the next mail to make himself available at the earliest opportunity for a full examination of all matters related to the deaths at Wulaia.

Although the promise of an unhindered investigation was undoubtedly a step in the right direction it must have seemed in the Colonial Office, with the anniversary of the massacre fast approaching, that the steam was going out of the affair. With a burgeoning empire to look after, the department was one of the busiest in the government and was losing interest in the butchering of a small missionary party on a far-off shore. Blackwood jotted on the back of Stirling's letter, ‘I think that to continue a correspondence with this Society on this subject can lead to no profitable result and that an inspection of the journals, as proposed by the writer, would be undesirable on the part of this office.' Frederick Rogers concurred, adding, ‘I do not know what more can be done…'

On 23 October Chichester Fortescue wrote to Stirling:

I am desired to state, with reference to the Society's offer to allow the journals of Mr Despard and other of their officers to be inspected at this office, that as no enquiry could be effectually conducted in this country no object would be attained by such inspection, but that the Secretary of State will forward your letter to the Governor of the Falkland Islands directing him not to neglect any opportunity which may offer itself of discovering the full truth respecting this disastrous affair.

When Despard himself wrote to the Colonial Office at the end of 1860, expressing the view that it had not been his Fuegians who had carried out the killing but 300 ‘northern Firelanders', Blackwood wrote on it, ‘I should be disposed to treat his present tardy representation as a very lame excuse for what has happened.' As far as the Colonial Office was concerned the matter was closed.