Free Savage by Nick Hazlewood

Piccadilly; Tono Maria, the Venus of South America, appeared in Bond Street; a troupe of Laplanders with reindeer attracted 58,000 spectators. As the empire expanded, so did the variety of exhibits: Eskimos, Zulus, Bushmen, Aborigines all graced the stage of nineteenth-century Britain.
    They came, though, in a period when the public’s attitude had undergone a cynical change. The century before, Britain had been influenced by the French philosophers, like Rousseau, who had extolled the virtue of the Noble Savage – the innocent native, free from original sin, the noble naïveté from which civilisation had sprouted. Now there was a gloating, preening approach to the imported ‘savages’, an attitude that said, ‘Look how far we have come from these basest of instincts.’
    Science stepped in too. Systematic research – the measuring of heads and brains and limbs, the development of ethnology and anthropology – was conducted on specimens brought from abroad. There can be no doubt that this was a period of greatly increased scientific understanding and knowledge, and the showmen now claimed that their exhibitions were in the interests of scientific advancement.
    It is important to remember, too, that in 1830 when Jemmy and his compatriots arrived in Britain slavery still existed. There had been a ferocious clamour for its abolition, and in 1806 the slave trade was made illegal, but slavery itself survived legally in British colonies for a further three years.
    FitzRoy, of course, as a man of reasonable wealth and aristocratic background, had no need of the commercial gains to be made from his Fuegian captives. There would be no degrading public exhibitions for the surviving three and no attempt to make money from them. His objectives were, if naïve, certainly logical. He would have them educated in ‘English, and the plainer truths of Christianity, as the first objective; and the use of common tools, a slight acquaintance with husbandry, gardening and mechanism, as the second’. This would allow them to return to their homeland and educate their fellow countrymen. The nomadic lifestyle would give way to agricultural settlements, the Fuegians would become Christians and open to business with traders from Britain. As a bonus they would act with kindness towards the many sailors shipwrecked on the shores of Tierra del Fuego, who were usually butchered by Indians.
    There were precedents for FitzRoy’s actions. We have already seen the fate of the first convert from Sierra Leone. If FitzRoy had been reading the Morning Advertiser on 29 November, just days before the Fuegians were due to join him, he would have seen a court report from the Mansion House that might have served as a warning. Under the headline ‘ A REVOLTED MISSIONARY ’, it related the case of Pierre, another young man from Sierra Leone. Pierre had been brought to England years ago by a Quaker woman. He had turned out to be a good scholar and a likeable person, and the Society of Friends had funded a proper school education for him. Then he was sent back to his homeland to preach Christian values to his countrymen. Unfortunately he ‘underwent a very sudden and important change, and rather than attending to the duties of his situation, he took a fancy to rum-drinking…’. He gave up preaching and became a sailor. Pierre went before the mast to China, but the ready supply of liquor was too much temptation for him. On a voyage to England he tried to visit his old benefactors, but ‘happened, on his way to the Quakers, to meet a messmate, and to get drunk, so that when he made his appearance, it was some time before he was recognised as the coloured Quaker’. His patrons forgave him, thinking that ‘kindness and advice might still reclaim him’. They gave him more money, but he got drunk again. Finally he was charged before the Lord Mayor, who severely admonished him.
    In conclusion