Guided tour: Narcisse Pelletier, the true story of the white savageears among the aborigines

With Thomas Duranteau, discover the story of this young sailor from Vendée who was hired on the Saint-Paul in 1857. Abandoned on the north-east coast of Australia after the wreck of this merchant ship, Narcisse Pelletier was taken in by the aboriginal community of the Wathaalas. He lived among them for seventeen years, until the crew of an English ship ‘rescued’ him by force in 1875 and took him back to France. Back with his family, he got a job as a lighthouse keeper in Saint-Nazaire, then as a harbour worker. He married, but had no children, and died in 1894 at the age of fifty.

Narcisse Pelletier's life is as much a story of romance as it is of tragedy, and is representative of the way in which Westerners viewed the indigenous communities of the 19th century, who were described as ‘savages’. Initiated by historian Thomas Duranteau, and richly illustrated with his drawings and watercolours, this exhibition raises the essential question of respect between cultures, which has been discussed at length at the Musée Hèbre.

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