I will tell you a popular story before we get to know Mr. Button.
A Christian Missionary lands on the shore of a remote fishing village in Tamil Nadu.
He walks up to the only person who is there in the shore, sitting on a boat and munching on something.
The Missionary walks up to him, fixes an intense gaze, takes out a bottle out of his robe, pours some liquid from it into his palm, sprinkles it on this guy munching something and tells him in a low measured tone, "From now on, You are Mr. Joseph. Mr. Joseph! What you are eating is a Goat, a Sin! Stop eating it in the name of God!"
Startled and puzzled at this invasion of his privacy plus free admonition, that guy nods his head in a daze and walks off from the boat, leaving goat meat back.
The happy missionary looks around to find none in the shore. He sets off in his boat to his next port of "calling".
A week goes by. Our missionary is on his way back to the place from wherever he started and makes a brief stop on the same shore where he met Mr. Joseph earlier.
There he is, Mr. Joseph, sitting on the same boat, munching on the roasted thighbone flesh of a goat.
Mr. Missionary walks up to him in total disappointment and yells at him, " Mr. Joseph! How can yo do that? Eating goat meat is a SIN! I warned you about it last week!!"
Mr. Joseph steps down from the boat and replies earnestly: 'No Father! I haven't sinned!!! What I eat now is Fish. Not goat!'
Our Missionary, crimson faced by now, confronts Mr. Joseph; "BUT! How on earth a goat can become fish????!"
Mr. Joseph solemnly responds; 'Indeed it became a fish Father, after I took out a bottle from his hip, sprinkles some liquid on it and told I that from that moment on, it was a fish and NOT a goat anymore...'
Jokes are often too real to laugh.
Mr. Jemmy Button had a name in his native Patagonian archipelago before that fateful day he was bought by a British sailor. The buyer bartered a pearl button to buy Orundellico and named him Jemmy Button.
He actually bought four people with an intention to take them back to England, train them in English and Christianity, drop them back into their native place so that they could act as interpreters for English visitors AND spread Christianity. A brilliant idea, executed brilliantly. So brilliantly that after just one year of 'civilizing', Jemmy Button and two of his people (the third one died after a vaccination) were "presented" in the courtyard of the Queen!
Mr. Button became a celebrity in England and seemed to enjoy the attention.
After some time, his Buyer decided to return him to his Native land, along with the other two.
Once they landed back in their native soil, something happened to Mr. Button within a very short time, to the stunned disbelief of his Buyer.
Jemmy Button tore down his three piece suite, threw his hat and shoes off and went back to loinclothes and long hair, becoming Orundellico allover again.
He became a 'born again native'!
His Buyer tried to convince him to become a "born again British Christian" but it was squarely turned down by the English educated Mr. Longhair in a Loincloth!
Now, read the story of Mr. Joseph that I narrated at the beginning of this post :-)
P.S:
1. Orundellico was unsuccessfully tried in a case related to the ambush and killing of a group of missionaries there and much later, one of his his grandsons was taken away to England to give English Education and Christianity another try!
2. The Buyer, sailor and scientist who took Orundellico to England was none other than Mr. Robert Fitzroy, the man who gave the world weather forecasts and much more by taking on board Mr. Charles Darwin for a five year voyage into southern hemisphere that helped Mr. Darwin compile "The Origin of Species!"
And the conflict of opinion between Robert and Charles during a cold winter night on the deck of HMS Beagle under a starless sky was on a question posed by Robert to Charles; 'the owner of a slave asks his slave whether he wants to be set free. The slave turns down the offer. That shows how much the slave loves to be a slave. Right?'
Charles questioned that by telling 'how could a slave answer honestly when this question was posed by his Master?!'
Darwin was right but his own folks didn't quite get it as history has shown :-)
Llll
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