Jemmy Button

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HMS "Beagle" (centre), watercolour by Owen Stanley (1841)

Orundellico, known as "Jemmy Button", (c. 1815 – 1864) was a native Fuegian of the Yaghan (or Yamana) tribe from islands around Tierra del Fuego, in modern Chile and Argentina. He was brought to England by Captain FitzRoy on the HMS Beagle and became a celebrity for a period.

In 1830, Captain Robert FitzRoy, at the command of the first expedition of the famous Beagle, took a group of hostages from the Fuegian indigenous people after one of his boats was stolen. He decided to take four of the young Fuegian hostages all the way to England "to become useful as interpreters, and be the means of establishing a friendly disposition towards Englishmen on the part of their countrymen." He seems to have shown great concern for the four, feeding them before his own officers and crew and intending them to be educated and Christianised so that they could improve the conditions of their kin.

The names given to the Fuegians by the crew were: York Minster, Jemmy Button, Fuegia Basket and Boat Memory. Their original names were, respectively: el'leparu, o'run-del'lico and yok'cushly. Boat Memory died of smallpox shortly after his arrival to England, and so his name is lost.

Jemmy Button was paid for with a mother of pearl button, hence his name. It is not clear whether his family willingly accepted the sale or he was simply abducted.

The Beagle arrived in Plymouth in mid-October 1830. The newspapers soon started publishing details of the exotic visitors and they became celebrities. In London, they met King William IV. Fuegia Basket, only a young girl, got a bonnet from Queen Adelaide herself.

One year later, the Beagle returned the three surviving Fuegians home, still captained by FitzRoy and at great expense to himself. He took with him a young naturalist, Charles Darwin.

After initial difficulty recalling his language and customs, Jemmy was soon out of his European clothes and habits. A few months after his arrival, he was seen emaciated, naked save for a loincloth and long-haired. Darwin was appalled at Jemmy's resistance to returning to England, and preferred to relate that to the presence of his "young and nice looking wife", Lassaweea. It appears, however, that he and the others had taught their families some English and he was happy and healthier, given the disease and diet to which he had been exposed away from home.

Some twenty years later a group of Christian missionaries, the Patagonian Missionary Society, arrived to find Jemmy still had a remarkable grasp of English. Some time later in 1859, the group was massacred at Wulaia Bay by the Fuegians, supposedly led by Jemmy and his family.

Bruce Chatwin wrote a fictionalised version of Orundellico's capture in his book, In Patagonia. In the 1950s, the Chilean writer Benjamin Subercaseaux published the novel Jemmy Button. Another fictionalised version of the story can be found in the book La Tierra del Fuego by Sylvia Iparraguirre. Another account of Jemmy's time on HMS Beagle and in England can be found in Harry Thompson's This Thing of Darkness (2005).