Charles Darwin and the bizarre experiment to civilize four natives - and how it all failed

Jonathan Duffy:

When the Beagle set sail from Plymouth for the south Atlantic in 1831, with Darwin in the charge of Captain Robert Fitzroy, it was also taking three young Patagonian Indians home after a bizarre social experiment.

His charges - two of them still children - had spent the previous 15 months living on the outskirts of London, where they had been the subjects of what, viewed through modern eyes, seems like an astonishing act of imperialism.

The trip back to the southern hemisphere was also a return journey for Fitzroy, who had originally been sent there, in charge of the Beagle, to survey this remote part of the globe for the British government.

On that initial journey Fitzroy had taken four local "savages" from the southernmost tip of the continent, known as Tierra del Fuego, as retribution for the stealing of one of his whaling boats.

As hostile as the captain's conduct may seem, his motives were largely 19th Century benevolence: Fitzroy planned to ferry his four captives back to Britain and school them in the ways of Christianity and gentility. He then planned to return them to their homeland in the belief they would spread their newly instilled values through this "dark continent".

The four were an incongruous bunch, spanning in age range from nine to 26, with an equally motley collection of names given them by Fitzroy:

Fuegia Basket, the youngest and the only female, was named after "Basket Island";

Jemmy Button, aged about 14, took his name from the pearl button he was exchanged for;

Boat Memory, who was about 20; and

York Minster, who was named after a hill that had been likened in shape to the ancient city's cathedral.

The experiment started badly. Boat Memory died of smallpox shortly after the Beagle docked in Plymouth. Fitzroy took the other three to London and enrolled them in the first Church of England primary school, located in Walthamstow, today a suburb but then a village to the north east of the capital.

Peter Nichols, author of Evolution's Captain, which examines the relationship between Fitzroy and Darwin, struggles to imagine the scene.

"York Minster would have been a hulking guy. They would have been dressed up in uniform and made to sing songs about Jesus," says Mr Nichols.

Nevertheless, the two youngest seemed to settle in well. Records held by the Vestry House Museum, which sits close to the spot where the school was, reveal they made friends easily.

With Fitzroy as their escort, they were also proving a hit on the London social scene, and even enjoyed an audience with King William IV and Queen Adelaide.

Such treatment doesn't bear scrutiny through modern eyes, says Mr Nichols.

"People then looked at them and thought isn't it great to see them dressed up in English clothes, saying 'please' and 'thank you ma'am'."

Yet records showed that Jemmy Button lapped up the attention, and was "enthralled" by his clothes. "He was said to never be able to pass a mirror without stopping to gaze in it."

"What they really thought... what was going on inside their heads... who knows?"

But things were starting to go awry as York Minster, who was ill at ease among his new-found "friends", became sexually interested in young Fuegia Basket. Although the official records don't note it, says Mr Nichols, it can be deduced from other writings at the time.

"It was really hushed up. Fitzroy, having taken these people around London and explained his scheme knew it wouldn't have looked good."

Devastated and fearing he would be utterly humiliated the captain swiftly removed his charges from school and made hasty plans to take them back to the south Atlantic.

But a complex and intelligent man, Fitzroy panicked at the thought of spending months on his own at sea, with only the ship hands and his three Patagonians. So he put the word out he was looking for a travelling companion, preferably a naturalist.

Up stepped Charles Darwin, then a trainee pastor, and, like most others at the time, a firm believer in the biblical account of the Creation.

The repatriation of the Patagonians was every bit as disappointing as the experiment to Fitzroy. They had been packed off with a haul of presents from British well-wishers - wine glasses, tea trays, butter dishes - all of which were useless in their home environment.

They were robbed by other natives and York Minster, having married Fuegia Basket on their return, subsequently robbed his old travelling companion Jemmy Button.

When Fitzroy returned a year later to catch up, having traipsed around the south Atlantic with Darwin, he found Jemmy Button had simply gone back to his old way of life.

"Fitzroy had to face the fact his experiment had been a total disaster because they had reverted to savaging; their civilisation had been a gloss. It plunged him into a deep depression," says Mr Nichols.

Reports that filtered back to Britain many years later would have depressed him even further. Fuegia Basket had become a prostitute "turning tricks on the beach" for British sailors and Jemmy Button stood trial for hijacking a ship of British missionaries, who were all slaughtered.

Yet, as Mr Nichols points out, without the experiment Darwin might never have set out on what turned out to be the momentous voyage through which he forged his theory of natural selection.

Shortly afterwards, Alfred Russel Wallace was pursuing a similar line of inquiry. Were it not for the folly of the well-meaning but ultimately misguided Captain Fitzroy, says Mr Nichols, we might today be talking about Wallacism rather than Darwinism.

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