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A Yahgan for the killing: murder, memory and Charles Darwin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2011

JOSEPH L. YANNIELLI*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Yale University, PO Box 208324, New Haven, CT 06520–8324, USA. Email: joseph.yannielli@yale.edu.

Abstract

In March 1742, British naval officer John Byron witnessed a murder on the western coast of South America. Both Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy seized upon Byron's story a century later, and it continues to play an important role in Darwin scholarship today. This essay investigates the veracity of the murder, its appropriation by various authors, and its false association with the Yahgan people encountered during the second voyage of the Beagle (1831–1836). Darwin's use of the story is examined in multiple contexts, focusing on his relationship with the history of European expansion and cross-cultural interaction and related assumptions about slavery and race. The continuing fascination with Byron's story highlights the key role of historical memory in the development and interpretation of evolutionary theory.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2011 

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References

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25 I have identified over three hundred seemingly plagiarized fragments in Byron's narrative, which suggests that Byron used Campbell's book as an outline for his own. They also could be evidence of a forger or ghostwriter.

26 Campbell, op. cit. (18), pp. iii–viii; Williams, op. cit. (15), pp. 98–99, 101–102.

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30 Edwards, op. cit. (23), p. 78; Moss, Chris, Patagonia: A Cultural History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 6770Google Scholar; Hulme, op. cit. (15), pp. 27–56. The murder itself is reminiscent of a biblical revenge story: ‘Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones’. See Psalms 137:9.

31 For an intriguing, but very dated, analysis of infanticide and violence in the region see Cooper, op. cit. (27), pp. 171, 174–175.

32 Tierra del Fuego and the Cape Horn Archipelago bordered a popular route for explorers and whaling vessels on their way to Asia and the South Pacific. See Francis Allyn Olmsted, ‘Journal of a Voyage around Cape Horn, 1840’, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, vol. 151; Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition. During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 5 vols., Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845, vol. 1, pp. 119–129.

33 For ethnographic details on the Yahgans and their encounters with Europeans, see Michael Taussig, ‘Tierra del Fuego – land of fire, land of mimicry’, in McEwan, Borrero and Prieto, op. cit. (22), pp. 153–172. On Darwin's experience in Tierra del Fuego, see Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991, pp. 132148Google Scholar; Browne, Janet, Charles Darwin: A Biography, 2 vols., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995–2002, vol. 1, pp. 234253Google Scholar; Chapman, op. cit. (7), pp. 7–8, pp. 67–102.

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54 Darwin, op. cit. (34), vol. 1, pp. 134–135, vol. 2, pp. 363–365. Darwin acknowledged the role of infanticide among ‘lower’ animals, under exceptional circumstances, in the Origin of Species, but appeared less concerned with this nuance in Descent. See McDonagh, op. cit. (3), pp. 160–161, 170–171.

55 On Darwin's need to denaturalize ‘savage’ conduct see Duncan, Ian, ‘Darwin and the Savages’, Yale Journal of Criticism (1991) 4, pp. 1345Google Scholar, esp. 25; Jann, Rosemary, ‘Darwin and the anthropologists: sexual selection and its discontents’, Victorian Studies (1994) 37, pp. 287306Google Scholar; Schmitt, op. cit. (11), pp. 32–56.

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57 Robert A. Stafford, ‘Scientific exploration and Empire’, in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 294–319; James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew (eds.), Science and Empire in the Atlantic World, New York: Routledge, 2008. On the relationship between scientific voyages and racial formation see Douglas, Bronwen and Ballard, Chris (eds.), Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race, 1750–1940, Canberra ACT: Australian National University E Press, 2008Google Scholar.

58 Gillian Beer, ‘Travelling the other way: travel narratives and truth claims’, in McEwan, Borrero and Prieto, op. cit. (22), pp. 140–152, esp. 143. For compelling arguments in support of Beer's statement see Drayton, Richard, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000Google Scholar; Irving, Sarah, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008Google Scholar.

59 Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944Google Scholar. On the utility of social Darwinism as both category of analysis and blanket pejorative see Bellomy, Donald C., ‘“Social Darwinism” revisited’, Perspectives in American History (1984) 1, pp. 1129Google Scholar; Jim Moore, ‘Socializing Darwinism: historiography and the fortunes of a phrase’, in Les Levidow (ed.), Science as Politics, London: Free Association Books, 1986, pp. 38–80; Richard J. Evans, ‘In search of German social Darwinism: the history and historiography of a concept’, in Manfred Berg and Geoffrey Cocks (eds.), Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 55–79; Leonard, Thomas C., ‘Origins of the myth of social Darwinism: the ambiguous legacy of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (2009) 71, pp. 3751Google Scholar.

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63 Kennedy, Dane, The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 131163Google Scholar. For an overview of Darwin's strongly ‘meliorist’ paternalism see Gould, Stephen Jay, ‘The moral state of Tahiti – and of Darwin’, in idem, Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, New York: Norton, 1993, pp. 262274Google Scholar; Janet Browne, ‘Missionaries and the human mind: Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy’, in MacLeod and Rehbock, op. cit. (10), pp. 263–282. For colonial tropes in Darwin's thought see Barta, Tony, ‘Mr Darwin's shooters: on natural selection and the naturalizing of genocide’, Patterns of Prejudice (2005) 39, pp. 116137Google Scholar.

64 Keynes, op. cit. (42), p. 222; Charles Darwin to Caroline Darwin, 30 March–12 April 1833, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 1, pp. 302–306; Darwin to John Henslow, 11 April 1833, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 1, pp. 306–309, esp. 306; Darwin to Charles Whitley, 23 July 1834, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 1, pp. 396–397. The ‘hideous faces’ passage is reproduced in the second edition of the Journal, minus the creationist rhetoric. See Darwin, op. cit. (36), p. 213.

65 William Reynolds to Lydia Reynolds, 22 May 1839, in Cleaver, Anne Hoffman and Stann, E. Jeffrey (eds.), Voyage to the Southern Ocean: The Letters of Lieutenant William Reynolds from the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988, pp. 5067Google Scholar, esp. 63; Silas Holmes, ‘Journal’, 3 vols., Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (hereafter WAC), vol. 1, pp. 69–71, esp. 70; Joseph Underwood, ‘Journal of a Cruise in the U.S.S. Relief’, WAC, 29 January 1839; George Foster Emmons, ‘Journal’, 3 vols., George Foster Emmons Papers, WAC, vol. 1, 25 February 1839; Wilkes, op. cit. (32), vol. 1, p. 122; MacDouall, op. cit. (47), p. 109, p. 117, p. 168. For examples of Fuegian ethnocentrism, however credible, see FitzRoy, op. cit. (41), p. 203.

66 Although historians may quibble about the exact degree of its influence, there is little doubt about Darwin's abolitionist commitment. For a thorough treatment, see Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8). For an interesting critique, see Richards, Robert J., ‘The Descent of Man’, American Scientist (2009) 97, pp. 415417Google Scholar. On Humboldtian Romanticism and encounters with slavery see Sachs, op. cit. (39), pp. 70–71, esp. 70; Richards, op. cit. (39), pp. 135–136.

67 Darwin, op. cit. (36), p. 499. On the immediate impetus for this passage see Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), pp. 180–183.

68 On the significance of witnessing slavery at first hand, although in a somewhat different context, see Huston, James L., ‘The experiential basis of the Northern antislavery impulse’, Journal of Southern History (1990) 56, pp. 609640Google Scholar; Yannielli, Joseph, ‘George Thompson among the Africans: empathy, authority, and insanity in the Age of Abolition’, Journal of American History (2010) 96, pp. 9791000Google Scholar. On the key role of Brazil for supporters and opponents of slavery alike see Horn, Gerald, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade, New York: New York University Press, 2007Google Scholar.

69 Darwin, op. cit. (36), p. 500. On the significance of Darwin's emotional awareness see Endersby, Jim, ‘Sympathetic science: Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, and the passions of Victorian naturalists’, Victorian Studies (2009) 51, pp. 299320Google Scholar. Likewise, Desmond and Moore point to the ‘moral fire’ driving his work. See Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), p. xix. On the revolutionary temporality intrinsic to Darwin's brand of abolitionism see David Brion Davis, “The emergence of immediatism in British and American antislavery thought,” in idem, From Homicide to Slavery: Studies in American Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 238–257.

70 FitzRoy, op. cit. (41), pp. 61–62.

71 Freeman, R.B., ‘Darwin's negro bird-stuffer’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1978) 33, pp. 8386Google Scholar; Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), pp. 18–26. On the significance of interracial contact and friendship for antislavery movements see Stauffer, John, The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002Google Scholar; Newman, Richard S., The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002Google Scholar; Harrold, Stanley, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828–1865, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003Google Scholar.

72 Charles Darwin to Catherine Darwin, 22 May[–14 July] 1833, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 1, pp. 311–315, esp. 312–313. Desmond and Moore discuss the immediate context for this remarkable letter, but ignore the important comparison between the ‘fine muscular’ Afro-Brazilians and the ‘murderous’ Portuguese. See Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), pp. 82–83, 87.

73 Matthews, Gelien, Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006Google Scholar; Rugemer, Edward Bartlett, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008, pp. 42142Google Scholar.

74 Darwin, op. cit. (36), p. 500; Browne, op. cit. (33), vol. 1, p. 245; Richard Huzzey, ‘“A nation of abolitionists”? the politics and culture of British anti-slavery, c.1838–1874’, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2009.

75 Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, 5 June 1861, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 9, pp. 162–164, esp. 163; Darwin to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 27 February 1873, in Darwin, Francis (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, 3 vols., London: John Murray, 1887, vol. 3, p. 176Google Scholar.

76 Charles Darwin to John Higgins, 19 June [1852], in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 5, p. 94; Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), p. 167; Weikart, op. cit. (61), pp. 20–28; Huzzey, Richard, ‘Free trade, free labour, and slave sugar in Victorian Britain’, Historical Journal (2010) 53, pp. 359379Google Scholar.

77 Frederickson, George M., The Black Image in the White Mind: the Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1987, pp. 97129Google Scholar.

78 Darwin, op. cit. (34), vol. 1, p. 232. On Darwin's experience with the Fuegian captives see Toumey, Christopher P., ‘Jemmy Button’, The Americas (1987) 44, pp. 195207Google Scholar; Browne, op. cit. (63), pp. 265–273; Hazelwood, op. cit. (5), pp. 109–152. Fuegian minds were ‘similar’, according to Darwin, but not identical. Although I emphasize his racial progressivism in this context, other authors point to a creeping pessimism about the Fuegians’ ability to be successfully ‘civilized’. See Mayer, Ruth, ‘The things of civilization, the matters of empire: representing Jemmy Button’, New Literary History (2008) 39, pp. 193215Google Scholar, esp. 200–203; Radick, op. cit. (34), pp. 50–54.

79 For FitzRoy's views on racial transformation see Beer, op. cit. (58), pp. 148–149; Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), pp. 94–95.

80 Autobiography of Charles Darwin, op. cit. (9), p. 79; Wyhe, John van, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, pp. 165201Google Scholar. Desmond and Moore dismiss the elder Darwin's remark as ‘a joke’, but the context is unclear. In the passage in question, Darwin claims that his father discovered physical proof of mental alteration despite his scepticism of phrenology. See Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), pp. 116–117.

81 Darwin, op. cit. (34), vol. 1, p. 225. As Stephen Alter has established, Darwin's ‘account of human origins made little appeal to racial hierarchy but depended much on an original racial unity’. Edward Beasley offers a more critical view, noting that Darwin believed in the inheritance of acquired racial characteristics. Both are correct. See Alter, Stephen, ‘Race, language, and mental evolution in Darwin's Descent of Man’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (2007) 43, pp. 239255Google Scholar, esp. 240; Beasley, Edward, The Victorian Reinvention of Race: New Racisms and the Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences, New York: Routledge, 2010, pp. 97111Google Scholar.

82 Galton, Francis, The Art of Travel: Or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries, London: John Murray, 1855Google Scholar.

83 Quoted in The Times, 1 December 1886, p. 8.

84 Galton, Francis, The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, London: John Murray, 1853, p. 15Google Scholar; idem, ‘Africa for the Chinese’, The Times, 5 June 1873, p. 8Google Scholar; Fancher, Raymond E., ‘Francis Galton's African ethnography and its role in the development of his psychology’, BJHS (1983) 16, pp. 6779Google Scholar. For an important caveat see Gavan Tredoux, ‘Fancher on Galton's African ethnography’, March 2004, available at http://galton.org/reviews/FancherGaltonEthnography.htm. Although Darwin admired ‘the spirit & style’ of his cousin's adventures, he showed little interest in the latter's brazenly racist screeds. See Charles Darwin to Francis Galton, 24 July [1853], in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 5, pp. 149–150, esp. 149.

85 Louis Agassiz to Rose Mayor Agassiz, 2 December 1846, Louis Agassiz Correspondence and Other Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Am 1419, pp. 13–14. A facsimile is available online at http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/12379926?n=326. For a closer analysis see Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), pp. 232–233.

86 Agassiz, Louis and Agassiz, Elizabeth, A Journey in Brazil, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868, p. 49, pp. 6566, 128131, 296299Google Scholar; Rogers, Molly, Delia's Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010Google Scholar. The couple's position was similar to that of Thomas Huxley, another naturalist–voyager, who opposed slavery without ‘the smallest sentimental sympathy for the negro’. Quoted in Desmond and Moore, op. cit. (8), p. 334.

87 Lorimer, Douglas A., Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-nineteenth Century , Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978, pp. 131161Google Scholar, esp. 149. Lorimer develops this point by tracing the hard-line racial science of the later nineteenth century. See Lorimer, Douglas A., ‘Theoretical racism in late-Victorian anthropology’, 1870–1900’, Victorian Studies (1988) 31, pp. 405430Google Scholar; Lorimer, ‘Science and the secularization of Victorian images of race’, in Bernard Lightman (ed.), Victorian Science in Context, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 212–235.

88 Darwin's early attention ‘to the contrasts and to the similarities between civilized and uncivilized races of human beings’, writes Janet Browne, ‘created an intellectual context in which ideas about a real evolutionary connection could take root and subsequently flourish’. See Browne, op. cit. (33), vol. 1, pp. 244–250, esp. 249.

89 Keynes, op. cit. (42), p. 45.

90 Browne, op. cit. (33), vol. 2, pp. 271–272.

91 Darwin, op. cit. (34), vol. 1, p. 35.

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93 For more on the ‘enslavement’ of indigenous women see Darwin, op. cit. (34), vol. 2, pp. 366–368. On gendered labour in Fuegian society, see Chapman, op. cit. (7), pp. 60–63. On Darwin's approach to gender difference and its ramifications, see Matthews, Glenna, ‘Just a Housewife’: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 116144Google Scholar; Shields, Stephanie A. and Bhatia, Sunil, ‘Darwin on race, gender, and culture’, American Psychologist (2009) 64, pp. 111119Google Scholar; Cohen, Claudine, ‘Darwin on woman’, Comptes rendus biologies (2010) 333, pp. 157165Google Scholar. Rosemary Jann points to ‘the crucial role played by sexual conduct in Victorian (and later) attempts to construct the boundary that demarcates the fully human from the animal and to chart the progress of civilization’. See Jann, op. cit. (55), pp. 287–306, esp. 287.

94 On Darwin's rejection of ‘evolutionary ethics’ see Engels, Eve-Marie, ‘Charles Darwin's moral sense – on Darwin's ethics of non-violence’, Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology (2005) 10, pp. 3154Google Scholar. For a slightly different view see Richards, op. cit. (39), pp. 113–153.

95 Bartholomew Sulivan to Charles Darwin, 13 February [1868], 1 July 1870, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 16, pp. 111–112, vol. 18, pp. 194–196; Sulivan to Darwin, 23 February 1874, 2 January 1879 (quote), 18 March 1881, Darwin Papers, DAR 177: 301, 308, 314; Radick, op. cit. (34), pp. 50–54. On FitzRoy Button, grandson of the famous Orundellico, see Sulivan to Darwin, April [1878], 13 October 1879, 3 December 1881, Darwin Papers, DAR 177: 304, 310, 317; Hazelwood, op. cit. (5), pp. 343–346.

96 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography (1879) 1, pp. 397–398, esp. 397; Musters, George Chaworth, At Home with the Patagonians: A Year's Wanderings over Untrodden Ground from the Straits of Magellan to the Rio Negro, London: John Murray, 1871, p. 1Google Scholar.

97 Joseph Hooker to Charles Darwin, 14 September 1845, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 3, pp. 254–255, esp. 254. I am grateful to Nigel Leask for this reference. On Darwin's Journal as popular travelogue, see Tallmadge, John, ‘From chronicle to quest: the shaping of Darwin's “Voyage of the Beagle”’, Victorian Studies (1980) 23, pp. 325345Google Scholar; Leask, op. cit. (39), pp. 13–36. For its use as a standard reference work see Snow, op. cit. (47), vol. 2, pp. 71–72; Sutherland, Alexander, The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, 2 vols., London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898, vol. 1, pp. 112, 117, 178, 350, 371Google Scholar.

98 Kjærgaard, Peter C., ‘The Darwin enterprise: from scientific icon to global product’, History of Science (2010) 48, pp. 105122Google Scholar; Simons, Eric, Darwin Slept Here: Discovery, Adventure, and Swimming Iguanas in Charles Darwin's South America, Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2009Google Scholar.

99 Lubbock, John, Pre-historic Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages, London: Williams and Norgate, 1865, pp. 464465Google Scholar, esp. 465. For Lubbock's interest in the Beagle see John Lubbock to Charles Darwin, 2 September 1864, in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 12, p. 316.

100 Charles Darwin to John Lubbock, 11 June [1865], in Burkhardt et al., op. cit. (35), vol. 13, p. 182. Darwin scored the chapter in the second edition of Lubbock's book, published in 1869. See Di Gregorio and Gill, op. cit. (42), vol. 1, p. 513.

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109 Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Tense and tender ties: the politics of comparison in North American history and (post) colonial studies’, in idem (ed.), Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006, pp. 23–67, esp. p. 55.

110 Charles Darwin to A. Stephen Wilson, 5 March 1879, in Darwin, Francis and Seward, A.C. (eds.), More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, 2 vols., London: John Murray, 1903, vol. 2, p. 42Google Scholar.