Savage: The Life And Times Of Jemmy Button
Jemmy Button (born Orundellico), along with three other young Tierra del Fuegians, was captured and brought to England in 1829. Had they been displayed as sideshow freaks, it would have been bad enough, but the Patagonian Missionary Society had bigger plans: convert these Fuegians to Christianity and use them to reach their own countrymen, so more "miserable barbarians" could be saved. Thus, after spending a year in England, where he was "educated" and shown off to British aristocracy, and even introduced to King William IV and Queen Adelaide, Button and his fellow Fuegians were brought home on the return trip of the HMS Beagle. (Ironically, given the church's later opposition to his work, Charles Darwin made his first major scientific expedition on the same trip.) The missionaries established a compound in the Falklands where Fuegians were brought in to be civilized that is, until they mounted a bloody uprising in 1859 and slaughtered every white man in sight. (Button himself was accused of leading this massacre.) Still, the colonizers had the last word, wiping out most of the indigenous tribes in the end. Hazlewood, a British journalist, chronicles this sad history with dense, well-chosen detail, drawn mostly from ship captains' and missionary societies' accounts or British public records (regrettably not footnoted). Although his research is as meticulous as a ship's log, the book has the drama and passion of Mutiny on the Bounty. 23 b&w; illus., not seen by PW. (June)Forecast: Students of naval history and colonialism will find this a must read; academic advertising will help to reach them, but the book deserves wider exposure.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.