In 1830 Orundellico, a young boy from Tierra del Fuego, was ‘bought’ for a mother of pearl button by English sailors.
They renamed him Jemmy Button and shipped him back to England on board the Beagle
What followed was a dramatic tale of travel and treachery; of a friendship with Charles Darwin and a meeting with the King and Queen.
Jemmy’s story is also one of tragedy and catastrophe as the boundaries of civilisation blur at the ends of the earth.
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Reviews
The Guardian: The mournful tale of Europeans’ influence on the Indians of this South American region comes through magnificently in Nick Hazlewood’s Savage , which exposes the clumsiness of the English and the tragic innocence of the Fuegians in a credible, sympathetic style which also makes for extremely poignant reading. See full review
The Independent: Nick Hazlewood has written a delightful book… searching out historical detail and composing a readable account with all the fluency of a novelist. See full review
The Evening Standard: THIS extraordinary story begins with a boy in a canoe and ends with the vanishing of a whole people. Jemmy Button, as the British sailors named him, or Orundellico, in the language of his tribe, was kidnapped by Robert Fitzroy, captain of the Beagle. Together with three other Young Fuegians, he was taken to England in 1830 to be educated, converted, and returned to his people as interpreter and guide.
That, at least, was Fitzroy’s plan. Like most such plans, it went awry.
As Nick Hazlewood recounts in this gripping book, the consequences of Fitzroy’s action spread out disastrously over time into murder… It is a wonderful piece of detective work recounted in an open style that allows us to sympathise with an improbable array of people
Gillian Beer