Jameson (Jameson's Antpecker, Jameson's Wattle-eye, Jameson's Firefinch) has been the worst individual I have come across to have some birds named after him.
"However, the incident of 11 May 1888 is recorded in Jameson’s own journal, so it seems likely that at least something along its utterly horrifying lines took place. Europeans of the day were obsessed with reports of cannibalism. There was a general sense among many in the period that cannibalism was widely practiced in Africa, reinforced by sensational stories of dubious veracity. These reports were often used as a rationale for colonization– who, after all, could argue with European expansion if it was in the name of stopping a practice that claimed untold innocent lives? Explorers often as not bought into these beliefs, and so frequently brought up the topic in their travels.
It is likely in this context that Jameson, totally convinced that the local people were cannibals, offered a leader of the group six handkerchiefs in exchange for them killing and consuming a ten year old girl purchased for that purpose. The passage in which he describes this event in his journal is incredibly repugnant, both for its violence and its intense racism– the n-word is used repeatedly as Jameson echoes every racist trope about “darkest Africa”. He expresses his horror at this scene repeatedly…but also admitted later that he in part initiated the whole awful sequence of events so that he could sketch it."
Buying a child and then paying OTHER human beings to eat that child so you can make sketches (which you can find online if you are curious) makes Townsend and Audubon seem like Mother Teresa.
