Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha

by Harvey Rachlin

  The Americans were able to negotiate for the return of the bodies. Seven bodies, Charles Wilkes wrote in his Narrative, “were brought down to the shore much mutilated, in consideration of a musket. The eighth, a negro, had been cooked and eaten. Captain Bachelor had the bodies sewed up in canvass, and thrown overboard, in the usual manner. They however, floated again, and fell into the hands of the savages, who, as [Paddy Connel] afterwards understood, devoured them all. They complained, however, that they did not like them, and particularly the negro, whose flesh they said tasted strong of tobacco.”

  Six years after this debacle, Charles Wilkes, on his South Pacific information-gathering naval expedition, spoke with Paddy Connel, who told him of the mass killings of the Americans from the Charles Doggett. Incensed by Connel’s report, Wilkes felt this heinous crime could not go unpunished and resolved to bring the main culprit to justice. Connel told him that person was Vendovi, although his brothers, also chiefs, had been party to the murderous scheme.

  Through Connel, Wilkes requested Captain William Hudson—commander of the man-of-war Peacock, which was part of his expedition, then anchored off Viti Levu—to effect the capture of Chief Vendovi. Coincidentally, an artist from the ship had recently drawn a portrait of Vendovi at Rewa, a settlement on Viti Levu, so it was known that their target was around. They hatched a plan to invite the islanders aboard the vessel for a festive reception. Soon, the king and queen, chiefs, servants, and other natives, numbering more than seventy, were visitors on board the Peacock, and Vendovi himself was expected to join the gathering. The visitors sensed something strange was happening, as Wilkes wrote: “There was an evident constraint in the manner of the visitors, which was apparent from their not expressing the usual astonishment at every thing they saw.” But after some time had passed and it was obvious Vendovi would not be showing up, Captain Hudson, through a translator, informed the king, a brother of Vendovi, and the chiefs that they and their party were prisoners on the ship and that the Americans’ purpose was to apprehend Vendovi for slaughtering their countrymen several years before.

  The islanders feared their captors were going to kill them, but they were assured that it was Vendovi, the mastermind of the murder of the Charles Doggett crew, who was the target, and that it was necessary to hold them hostage to effect his capture. The royal party was sympathetic to the American position, saying that Vendovi should be punished and that he in fact was troublesome to them as well. But they did make it a point that although others had been involved in the slayings, Vendovi alone should be punished.

  One of the royal visitors, a man named Ngaraningiou, who proclaimed Vendovi to be his enemy, was sent to Vendovi’s home to take him prisoner, if possible, and bring him to the vessel. Ngaraningiou had had many difficulties with Vendovi and was glad to be the instrument that would undoubtedly lead to Vendovi’s death, even if he, like the king, was Vendovi’s brother. Perhaps any remorse over turning in his brother for such a purpose was lessened by his recollection that Vendovi had taken the life of their oldest brother. For their part, the Americans still harbored some concern that the natives, as a matter of revenge, would attack the missionaries on the island, but they were assured that this would not happen and furthermore had taken the precaution of alerting them to what was occurring.

  Despite the dangers of his mission, Ngaraningiou did make it to Vendovi’s home and embarked on his plan to seize him. He sat next to Vendovi, placed his hand on his arm, and explained that he was wanted for the murder of the Doggett crew some years back. He told Vendovi that the king and queen, as well as others, were being held hostage aboard a foreign vessel and that the chief’s surrender was a condition of their release. Although he probably knew his surrender was tantamount to a death sentence, Vendovi agreed to go, an honorable act on his part in deference to the royal rulers. When Ngaraningiou did not return with Vendovi later that day, however, the Peacock crew became worried about the emissary’s safety. In fact, while Vendovi was willing to leave immediately for the Peacock, Ngaraningiou himself delayed the trip until the next day. During the evening, on board the Peacock, the natives entertained the crew with dances.

  The next day Vendovi, in a canoe with Ngaraningiou, arrived at the Peacock and came on board. “He was a model of a man, very tall and erect and of a proud bearing, scrupulously clean in his habits,” Wilkes wrote of Vendovi in his autobiography. Vendovi carried on board with him a Jew’s harp he had obtained and which he liked to play, being very fond of music. With his crew and royal guests present, Captain Hudson interrogated Vendovi about the crime for which he was sought, and Vendovi, according to Wilkes, “acknowledged his guilt in causing the murder of part of the crew of the Charles Doggett, and admitted that he held the mate by the arms while the natives killed him with clubs.” Satisfied that Vendovi was guilty of murder, if not the architect of the whole macabre plot, Captain Hudson resolved to take Vendovi to America to be rehabilitated in the manners of a civilized society. The Fijians surmised they would never see Vendovi again, and their farewells to him were quite a spectacle. As Wilkes described it:

  All the party were now much affected. Kania, the king, seated himself on the right of Vendovi, taking hold of his arm, while Navumialu placed himself on the left. … All shed tears and sobbed aloud while conversing in broken sentences with their brother. The natives shed tears also, and none but Ngaraningiou remained unmoved. The king kissed the prisoner’s forehead, touched noses, and turned away. The inferior chiefs approached and kissed his hands, whilst the common people crawled up to him and kissed his feet. One young man who belonged to the household of Vendovi, was the last to quit him; he wished to remain with his master but was not permitted. In bidding farewell to the chief, he embraced his knees, kissed his hands and feet, and received a parting blessing from Vendovi, who placed his manacled hands on his head. The young man retreated backwards towards the ladder, sighing and sobbing as though his heart would break.

  The royal party was released and given gifts before their departure. As the Peacock took off, Vendovi—a much-feared chief with the reputation of having killed many innocent people in his lifetime and to have feasted often on human remains—wept aloud. Before bringing Vendovi to America, Captain Hudson intended to bring his man-of-war to Kantavu to find the other guilty chiefs who had participated in the Charles Doggett crew killings—and torch their villages, if necessary—but strong winds steered his vessel so far away as to make returning time-consuming and difficult, considering he was to rendezvous with another vessel.

  Vendovi was taken off the Peacock and placed on the USS Vincennes, another ship on Wilkes’s expedition. The voyage to America would not follow immediately. This was, after all, a scientific expedition, and it was not finished; plant, animal, archaeological, geological, and ethnographical specimens in different geographical areas had to be collected. Wilkes allocated different reconnaissance missions to the vessels under his command; the ship bearing Vendovi was to explore the North American coastline from Canada to northern California. This afforded the chief of Rewa a glimpse at how Native Americans lived, and he responded with a bit of snobbery. According to Wilkes, Vendovi felt it was beneath him to talk to people of color, thinking them primitive, and was amiable only toward the white men. As Wilkes wrote in his autobiography, “He was a splendid picture of a Savage, very proud & very haughty in his bearing and evinced much disgust at the natives of the Northwest coast and those of the Sandwich Islands and would never condescend to keep any intercourse with them, applying to them all the strong epithets the Feejee language offered of his contempt for the colored race. With the whites he was more on a par and many of our men he became attached to and accepted kindnesses from them.” The Vincennes met up with the other ships in Wilkes’s fleet in Hawaii and took an eastern route, first to California, then to Hawaii, Singapore, and around Africa to return to the United States.

  On the trip to America, Vendovi was friendly, jovial, and kind, in contrast to the personality he had exhibite
d in his homeland. No doubt he aroused the sympathy of the mates on board, who knew that on Vendovi’s arrival he would again be clapped in chains, that he would draw the wrath of Americans whose countrymen he had murdered, and that he would face a trial. But the voyage proved fatal for Vendovi. He became ill, and after an elderly sailor on board who spoke his language and with whom he had developed a friendship passed away, his condition deteriorated. On the day in June 1842 that his vessel sailed into the New York City harbor, some two years after leaving his South Pacific home, the ailing Chief Vendovi was carried off the boat and taken to a naval hospital. He died shortly thereafter. Had he lived, this exotic chief who had killed and purportedly devoured many human beings would surely have caused a stir in New York City, not to mention the whole of America; and likewise, the sight of a large civilized city would probably have amazed the Fijian chief. But with his death, none of this was to come to pass.

  After Vendovi’s death, physicians at the hospital made a death mask of his head with plaster and then removed the head; the remainder of the Fijian chief’s corpse was buried in the cemetery by the hospital. Vendovi’s skull was sent to the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, a recently formed repository for artifacts acquired on exploratory missions, and later, after its termination in 1861, to the Smithsonian Institution. Without a physical anthropology section, however, the Smithsonian wasn’t deemed the right home for this specimen, and seven years later it went to the Army Medical Museum, also in Washington, D.C. But in the early 1900s, after the Smithsonian’s creation of a physical anthropology division, Vendovi’s skull was returned to its former home.

  Vendovi’s remains have scientific relevance for numerous reasons. Foremost, the skull is of a known individual: there is an accurate account of when he lived, his tribal affiliation, his age, and his cause of death. Additionally, at the time Vendovi was alive there was little or no Caucasian admixture in the Fijian population. Therefore, his cranial morphology reflects a more accurate representation of the Fijian population, especially of the Fijian people from the late eighteenth century. Because of this factual record of Vendovi’s background, the morphology and cranial measurements from Vendovi’s skull have been used for comparison purposes to evaluate and hypothesize population migrations in the South Pacific through other crania from Oceanic (South Pacific) archaeological investigations and to help in the classification of historical Oceanic skeletal collections in museums throughout the world. Vendovi’s craniometric data are part of the International Forensic Data Bank, which is used to help identify people involved in mass fatalities or in questionable deaths.

  On a broader scale, human skeletons are, in a way, like a diary. Retained in the morphology of the hard tissue are the effects of diet, disease, trauma, and aging that the individual sustained during life. From these discernible markers and from bone chemistry such as mineral and isotope compounds retrieved by biochemical analysis, nutritional and environmental influences to bone formation and maintenance can be determined. Vendovi’s skull is such a storehouse of information, curated in its holding institution for today’s ongoing research and available for future generations of researchers and new research technologies that may easily answer questions not even thought of yet.

  Fijians today remember Vendovi with pride, and some Fijians living in New York City and other parts of America visit the memorial grave to Vendovi in Brooklyn as an annual tradition. Representatives of the Fijian people have indicated that they are honored that one of their ancestors and former chiefs is part of the Smithsonian Institution, and that by his being there, he continues to contribute to the research and understanding of the Fijian people and is an integral part of the institution’s purpose to make all information available for dissemination throughout the world.

  The story of the murder of the Charles Doggett crew by Fijian natives in 1834 is, on the surface, one of deceit, murder, and mayhem. Looking deeper, one sees that it is also a poignant tale of human redemption. Vendovi, the fearsome cannibal chief, having perpetrated a horrible massacre, willingly gave himself over to justice to keep his own people from being punished; wept when he left his kinsmen, knowing he would never see them again; marveled at the worldly sights he saw on his voyage to judgment; and thoroughly charmed his captors. And the ultimate irony is that Vendovi the cannibal, after his own untimely death, gave back something to civilization by contributing to the study of physical anthropology with his own severed skull.

  LOCATION: National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.

  THE BATTLE SWORD OF COLONEL

  NAJERA

  DATE: 1846.

  WHAT IT IS: A sword used in a famous duel of the Mexican War.

  WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The sword measures 4½ inches; all its mountings, including the hilt and sheath fittings, are made of sterling silver. There are inscriptions on either side of the sheath’s upper ring, one side reading “Worn by Lt. Col. Nagera [sic], of the Mexican Lancers who fell in personal combat with Col. John C. Hays of the Texas Rangers,” the other side reading “Captured in the battle of Monterey/Septem.r 21st 1846.” The blade contains an engraving in Spanish (whose view is partly obstructed by the scabbard), which, roughly translated, reads, “Draw me not with anger, sheath me not without honor.”

  Adventure-movie aficionados everywhere would immediately recognize this tense one-on-one battle scene: amid a throng of excited onlookers, an American swashbuckler faces off against an intimidating foreigner wielding a sharp saber. With his nemesis preparing to deliver a fatal blow, the American, empty-handed and apparently defenseless, simply reaches for his holstered pistol and pumps one fatal round into his challenger, felling him instantly.

  The confrontation between Indiana Jones and the black-robed thug in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Well, let’s just say that history in all its sundry dramas has an uncanny way of anticipating fictionalized entertainment. Try the mid-nineteenth-century duel between the cool and intrepid Texas Ranger Jack Hays and a bold and little-known Mexican Army colonel!

  It was the Mexican War that provided the setting for this real-life derring-do on an open range in Mexico in 1846. The war had its roots in the expansionist fever that began to sweep America around the turn of the nineteenth century. In 1803 the United States doubled its size with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, and while the War of 1812 interrupted U.S. plans to absorb northeastern Florida after its agents stirred Americans there into rebellion against the Spanish, America finally acquired Florida from Spain in 1819 with the Adams-Onis Treaty.

  In the 1840s, the concept of Manifest Destiny—the idea that it was the natural course for the United States to expand its westward boundary all the way to the Pacific Ocean, so that the country’s borders would extend “from sea to shining sea”—emerged in full bloom. There were many provinces to the west that could be added to the United States, and Texas seemed a good first acquisition.

  During the first half of the nineteenth century, major changes were also taking place in Mexico. Since Christopher Columbus had opened up the New World for Europe in 1492, Spain had mined its colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere, and Mexico had been added to that empire less than thirty years later, when Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs through campaigns that sometimes employed cruel tactics.

  Najera's battle sword. Engraved on the upper section of the sheath on one side is the legend: "Worn by Lt. Col. Nagera, of the Mexican Lancers who fell in personal combat with Col. John C. Hays of the Texas Rangers."

  Spain’s grasp on Mexico and its other New World colonies had been firm for almost three hundred years, until the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s weakened Spain, and France invaded Mexico (around 1808). With Spain’s power now eroded, Mexicans saw a chance to gain their independence and in 1810 began a revolution that culminated eleven years later, in 1821, with independence from Spain. Texas, once a province of Spain, became absorbed into the new Republic of Mexico, which invited Americans to settle in its new northern territ
ory.

  Indeed, efforts had already been mounted to attract Americans to this vast area when Moses Austin, in 1820, tried to create an Anglo-American colony there by obtaining a land grant from Spain. Following Austin’s death in 1821, his son, Stephen, continued his mission to bring in settlers, an effort so successful that in 1830 Mexico tried to curb further immigration. But the settlers desired their own independence—not to mention a continuation of slavery, which Mexico wanted to end—and the Texans eventually rebelled against the Mexicans. In the first major battle, on October 2, 1835, the Americans defeated Mexican soldiers at the Guadalupe River; but the next year, after Texas had declared its independence, the Mexican Army defeated the Texans at the Alamo in San Antonio.

  With the Alamo massacre burning in their minds, the Texans retaliated at San Jacinto and drove the Mexican Army out of their territory. The Texans formed the Lone Star Republic, an independent political entity that became a focal point of interest for many countries. European powers wanted it to remain independent to prevent America from expanding. For the United States, the Texas Republic was controversial; southern and western states favored its annexation, while northern states resisted, not wanting to add another slave state. In early 1845, however, after an unsuccessful attempt in the Senate to establish a treaty providing for Texas’s annexation, Texas was finally admitted to the Union when Congress passed a joint resolution.

  Mexico’s outrage at this action was further exacerbated by the United States’ claim that the Rio Grande was the international border between the United States and Mexico (Mexico contended the Texan border was the Nueces River) and by American intentions to claim more northern Mexican lands. After John Slidell, who had been dispatched to Mexico by President James Polk in November 1845 to try to purchase New Mexico and California and settle the border dispute, failed in his mission, Polk sent soldiers to the area of the border dispute.