We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Jemmy Button was an Indian of Tierra del Fuego who inadvertently inspired four generations of nineteenth-century English missionaries to risk their earthly lives to save his eternal soul. These earnest evangelicals made five expeditions to Jemmy's South American homeland to make Christians of him and his countrymen. One of these ventures was an embarrassing fiasco, another ended in death by starvation, and a third led to a treacherous massacre.
This young Indian's unintended influence also touched evolutionary thought. Jemmy Button was a friend and companion to Charles Darwin on the famous voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Jemmy's versatile personality was intriguing to Darwin. He could be a naked Indian hunter when in Tierra del Fuego, and a foppish English gentleman when in the company of British naval officers. His ability to change like this inspired Darwin's earliest written reflections on the human capacity to progress from savagery to civilization.
1 Darwin, , Charles, entry of 17 December 1832 in The Voyage of the Beagle (New York: Bantam, 1972), p. 178 Google Scholar; Wendt, , Herbert, , In Search of Adam (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), p. 240.Google Scholar
2 Mellersh, H.E.L., FitzRoy of the Beagle (London: Hart-Davis, 1966), p. 46.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p AT.
4 Ibid., p. 48; Wendt, 1956, p. 241.Google Scholar
5 Mellersh, 1966, p. 54.Google Scholar
6 Ibid., p. 54.
7 Ibid., p. 54; Wendt, 1956, p.241.Google Scholar
8 Mellersh, , 1966, p. 56.Google Scholar
9 Ibid.,p.57.
10 Darwin, , entry of 17 December 1832 in The Voyage of the Beagle, p. 178.Google Scholar
11 Darwin, , Charles, , The Descent of Man (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 34.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., p.34.
13 Letter from Charles Darwin to his sister Caroline, 10 March 1835, in Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle, edited by Barlow, Nora (New York: Philosophical Library), p. 114.Google Scholar
14 DeBeer, , Gavin, (editor), Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley: Autobiographies (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 46.Google Scholar
15 Barlow, , Nora, (editor), Charles Darwin’s Diary of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), pp. 118–119.Google Scholar
16 Darwin, , entry of 18 December 1832 in The Voyage of the Beagle, pp. 176–180 Google Scholar; Darwin, diary entry of 18 December 1832, in Barlow 1933; pp. 118–121.
17 Darwin, The Descent of Man, Part I, Chapter 2.
18 FitzRoy, , Robert, , entry of 18 December 1832 in Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of H.M.S.’s Adventure and Beagle, Volume II, cited in Keynes 1979, p. 96.Google Scholar
19 Darwin, diary entry of 18 June 1833, in Barlow 1933, p. 129.
20 Darwin, diary entry of 20 June 1933, in Barlow 1933, p. 130.
21 Darwin, diary entry of 23 June 1833, in Barlow 1933, p. 132.
22 Mellersh, 1966, p. 95.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., p. 101.
24 Darwin, letter to his sister Caroline of 30 March 1833, in Keynes 1979, p. 126.
25 Darwin, diary entry of 6 February 1833, in Barlow 1933, p. 136.
26 Darwin, letter to his sister Caroline of 30 March 1833, in Keynes 1979, p. 127.
27 Darwin, diary entry of 5 March 1834, in Barlow 1933, p. 216.
28 Mellersh, 1966, pp. 237–238.Google Scholar
29 Ibid., p. 240.
30 The Times (of London), 29 April 1852, p. 5.
31 Mellersh, 1966, p. 240.Google Scholar
32 The Times, 29 April 1852, p. 4.
33 The Times, 29 April 1852, p. 5.
34 The Times, 29 April 1852, P. 4.
35 Mellersh, 1966, pp. 240–242.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., pp. 242–243.
37 The Times, 8 December 1859, p. 8.
38 Ibid., p. 8.
39 Mellersh, 1966, pp. 247–248.Google Scholar
40 Ibid., p. 243.
41 Ibid., pp. 245–246.
42 Ibid., pp. 249–250.
43 Bridges, E. Lucas, Uttermost Part of the Earth (New York: Dutton, 1949), p. 43 Google Scholar; The Times, 8 December 1859, p. 8.
44 Bridges, 1949, pp. 43–45.Google Scholar
45 Ibid., p. 45; Mellersh, 1966, p. 251.Google Scholar
46 Bridges 1949, p. 45; Mellersh 1966, p. 251; The Times, 8 December 1859, p. 8.
47 Mellersh, 1966, p. 253.Google Scholar
48 The Times, 9 December 1859, p. 8.
49 Bridges 1949.
50 Ibid., p. 532.
51 Mellersh, 1966, p. 295.Google Scholar
52 Darwin, , The Descent of Man, p. 67.Google Scholar
