Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [44]
All the Fuegians taken by FitzRoy except York Minster were part of a tribe called the Yamana. The Yamana were semi-nomadic, living in small, self-contained family groups, and building small huts near oyster beds along the coast and then moving when the oyster supply gave out. They went back and forth between locations, returning to old huts after intervals long enough to allow the oyster stock to replenish. They also clubbed cormorants and seals, fished, and speared the occasional guanaco. They didn’t wear clothing, and smeared themselves with seal grease to stay warm. They carried all their valuables with them in canoes, including torches brandished to help keep their fires alive, and when there was a big event, like a whale washing ashore or an English boat landing, they would all gather in their canoes, build their huts (it took only an hour or two), and hang out.
The Yamana communicated with each other by lighting signal fires along the coast—Magellan saw these in the 1500s and named the place Tierra del Fuego or “Land of Fire” in Spanish. The Fuegians lit a large signal fire when the Beagle arrived this second time. FitzRoy and Darwin observed it from the boat, and FitzRoy recorded being “astonished at the rapidity with which the Fuegians produce this effect . . . in their wet climate, where I have been, at times, more than two hours attempting to kindle a fire.” Although the captain and his naturalist might have seen this as an example of the Fuegians’ clever adaptation to their environment, neither did so. When they landed the next day, it was amongst “savages.”
Darwin was transfixed. Landing amongst the Fuegians, he wrote, “was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld. I would not have believed how entire the difference between savage and civilized man is.”
The musical treated its Fuegian heroes with a similar level of condescension. Jemmy Button’s actor turned him into a happy, effeminate Englishman who didn’t want to leave England, wearing gloves and shiny pink clothing and sipping tea with a raised pinky. (Darwin did describe Jemmy as “vain of personal appearance.”) The musical implied a romantic relationship between him and FitzRoy, which could have been Argentine actors subtly expressing their disdain for the English, or could have been overacting. Or it could have been entirely unintentional. Whichever the case, the show proceeded to the point of separation, in which FitzRoy, having shepherded his Fuegians for the past several years, finally arrived back near their home.
On January 18, 1833, FitzRoy anchored at the eastern end of the Beagle Channel and set off with Darwin, a small crew, and the missionary, whose name was Richard Mathews, to return the Fuegians to Jemmy Button’s old homeland in Ponsonby Sound, an inlet on the south end of the channel opposite modern Ushuaia. The yawl, a small sailboat used for exploratory expeditions, carried all of the items selected by Mathews’ Missionary Society to help the newly converted turn from savagery to proper Victorians. Darwin noted with disgust that the outfit included wine glasses, tea-trays, fine white linen, and a mahogany dressing case.
When the Beagle crew turned into Ponsonby Sound after three days of sailing, they found a small cove identified by Jemmy Button as his former home, Wuluaia. They landed and on the next day, Jemmy’s family arrived. (In the musical, the family was represented by dozens of grunting Yamana Indian puppets in canoes, which surrounded the stage.) Darwin remarked on the Fuegians astounding good eyesight and hearing: “all the organs of sense are highly perfected; sailors are well known for their good eyesight, & yet the Fuegians were as superior as another almost would be with a glass.” The Beagle crew optimistically set to work clearing the land for European-style living, building houses for Mathews and his prospective neighbors, and planting vegetable gardens. On January