USA > Virginia > Old Virginia and her neighbours > Part 10
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"In their absence I followed the new begun works of pitch and tar, glass, soap ashes, and clap-
From our in- board; whereof some small quantities we
fant indus- tries you have sent you. But if you rightly con-
must not expect too sider what an infinite toil it is in Russia much. and Swedeland, where the woods are proper for naught else, and though there be the help both of man and beast in those ancient com- monweals which many an hundred years have
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[been ] used [to] it; yet thousands of those poor people can scarce get necessaries to live but from hand to mouth. And though your factors there can buy as much in a week as will fraught you a ship . .. ; you must not expect from us any such matter, which are but a many of ignorant misera- ble souls, that are scarce able to get wherewith to live and defend ourselves against the inconstant salvages ; finding but here and there a tree fit for the purpose, and want [ing] all things else [which] the Russians have.
"For the coronation of Powhatan, by whose advice you sent him such presents I know not ; but this give me leave to tell you, I fear While we they will be the confusion of us all ere suffer for want of we hear from you again. At your ship's food,
arrival the salvages's harvest was newly gathered and we [were] going to buy it; our own not being half sufficient for so great a number. As for the two [shiploads ] of corn [which] Newport prom- ised to provide us from Powhatan,1 he brought us but 14 bushels . . [while most of his men were] sick and near famished. From your ship we had not provision in victuals worth £20, and we are more than 200 to live upon this ; the one half sick, the other little better. . . . Our diet is a little meal and water, and not sufficient of that. Though there be fish in the sea, fowls in the air, and beasts in the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wild, and we so weak and ignorant that we cannot much trouble them.
1 Smith here means the village of that name, on the James River, near the site of Richmond. See above, p. 94.
128 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
" The soldiers say many of your officers main- tain their families out of that you send us; and that Newport hath £100 a year for carry- peculation
and intrigue ing news. . . Captain Ratcliffe is now are rife.
called Sickelmore, a poor counterfeited imposture. I have sent you him home, lest the company [here] should cut his throat. What he is now, every one can tell you. If he and Archer return again, they are sufficient to keep us always in factions.
" When you send again I intreat you [to] send but 30 carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fisher-
Send us next men, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers
time some
useful
up of trees' roots, well provided, [rather]
workmen. than 1000 of such as we have ; for except we be able both to lodge them and feed them, the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can be made good for anything. . . . And I humbly entreat you hereafter, let us know what we [are to] receive, and not stand to the sailors's courtesy to leave us what they please. . . .
" These are the causes that have kept us in Vir- ginia from laying such a foundation [as] ere this might have given much better content and satis- faction ; but as yet you must not look for any profitable returns ; so I humbly rest." 1
It is to be hoped that the insinuation that some of the Company's officers were peculators was ill founded ; as for the fling at Newport, it A sensible
letter. was evidently made in a little fit of petu- lance and is inconsistent with the esteem in which Smith really held that worthy mariner. These are 1 Smith's Works, pp. 442-145.
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slight blemishes in a temperate, courageous, and manly letter. It is full of hard common-sense and tells such plain truths as must have set the Com- pany thinking. It was becoming evident to many persons in London that some new departure must be made. But before Newport's home-bound ship could eross the ocean, and before the Company could decide upon its new plan of operations, some months must needs elapse, and in the interim we will continue to follow the fortunes of the little colony, now left to itself in the wilderness for the third time.
It is evident from Smith's letter that he antici- pated trouble from the Indians. In The Pow- hatan's promise to count him forever as his own son he put little faith. His own view of the noble savage seems to have been much the same as that expressed about this time by Rev. Richard Hak- luyt, in a letter of advice and warning to the Lon- don Company : "But for all their fair Richard and cunning speeches, [these natives] Hakluyt on the Indian are not overmuch to be trusted ; for they character.
be the greatest traitors of the world, as their mani- fold most crafty contrived and bloody treasons . . do evidently prove. They be also as uncon- stant as the weathercock, and most ready to take all occasions of advantages to do mischief. They are great liars and dissemblers ; for which faults oftentimes they had their deserved payments .. ... To handle them gently, while gentle courses may be found to serve, . . . will be without comparison the best; but if gentle polishing will not serve, [we] shall not want hammerers and rough masons
130 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
enow - I mean our old soldiers trained up in the Netherlands - to square and prepare them to our Preacher's hands." 1
There is something delicious in the naïve prompt- ness with which this worthy clergyman admits the probable need of prescribing military measures as a preparation for the cure of souls. The London Company may have stood in need of such advice : Smith did not. He looked upon Indians already with the eyes of a frontiersman, and the rough vicissitudes of his life had made him quick to What Smith interpret signs of mischief. It was not dreaded. so much a direct assault that he feared as a contest arising from the Indians' refusal to sell their corn. During the past winter Pora- hontas had made frequent and regular visits to Jamestown, bringing corn and occasionally veni- son, raccoons, and other game; and this aid had been so effective as to ward off famine for that season. But a change had come over her father and his councillors. As the English kept strength- ening their fortifications and building houses. as the second and third shiploads of colonists arrived, the Indians must have begun to realize that it was their intention to stay in the country. On Smith's first visit to Werowocomoco, when The Powhatan said that he should henceforth regard him as a son, he showed himself extremely curious to know why the English had come to his part of the world. Smith did not think it safe to confess that they had come to stay; so he invented a story of their having been defeated by the Spaniards and
1 Neill's Virginia Company, p. 28.
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THE STARVING TIME.
driven ashore ; then, he added, the pinnace being leaky, they were obliged to stay until their Father Newport should come back How the red men's views of the situa- tion were changed. and get them and take them away. Since that conversation Father Newport had come twice, and each time he had brought many of his children and taken away but few. Instead of 38 men at Jamestown there were now 200. Every painted and feathered warrior knew that these pale children were not good farmers, and that their lives depended upon a supply of corn. By withholding this necessary of life, how easy it might be to rid the land of their presence !
As the snows began to come, toward Christ- mas of 1608, Smith's fears began to be realized. When the Indians were asked for corn they re- fused with a doggedness that withstood even the potent fascination of blue glass beads. Smith fully comprehended the seriousness of the situa- tion. "No persuasion," he says, "could persuade him to starve." If the Indians would A bold re- solve.
not trade of their own free will they must be made to trade. The Powhatan asked for some men who could aid him in building a house, and Smith sent to Werowocomoco fourteen men, including four of the newly arrived Germans. Smith followed with twenty-seven men in the pin- nace and barge. In the party were George Percy and Francis West, brother of the Lord Delaware of whom we shall have soon to speak. At War- rasqueak Bay, where they stopped the first night, a chieftain told them to beware of treachery at Werowocomoco ; The Powhatan, he said, had con-
132 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
coeted a scheme for cutting their throats. Cap- tain Smith thanked the redskin for his good eoun- sel, assured him of his undying affection, and proceeded down the river to Hampton,
Voyage to
Werowoco- where he was very hospitably entertained moco.
by the Kecoughtans, a small tribe num- bering about twenty warriors. For about a week, from December 30, 1608, till January 6, 1609, a fierce blizzard of snow and sleet obliged the party to stay in the dry and well-warmed wig- wams of the Kecoughtans, who regaled them with oysters, fish, venison, and wild fowl. As they passed around to the northern side of the penin- sula and approached the York River, the Indians seemed less friendly. When they arrived at We- rowocomoco the river was frozen for nearly half a mile from the shore, but Smith rammed and broke the ice with his barge until he had pushed up to a place where it was thick enough to walk safely ; then sending the barge back to the pin- nace the whole party were landed by instalments. They quartered themselves in the first house they came to, and sent to The Powhatan for food. He sent them venison, turkeys, and corn-bread.
The next day, January 13, the wily barbarian came to see Smith and asked him bluntly how soon he was going away. He had not asked the Eng- lish, he said, to come and visit him, and he was sure he had no corn for them, nevertheless he thought he knew where he could get forty baskets of it for one good English sword per basket. Hearing this speech, Captain Smith pointed to the new house already begun, and to the men whom
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he had sent to build it, and said, "Powhatan, I am surprised to hear you say that you have not in- vited us hither; you must have a short memory!" At this retort the old chieftain burst into fits of laughter, but when he had recovered gravity it appeared that his notions as to a bargain re- mained unchanged. He would sell his corn for swords and guns, but not for copper; he could eat corn. he could not eat copper. Then said Cap- tain Smith, "Powhatan, . . . to testify my love [for you] I sent you my men
Smith's par- ley with The Powhatan.
for your building, neglecting mine own.
What your people had, you have engrossed, for- bidding them our trade; and now you think by consuming the time we shall consume for want, not having [wherewith ] to fulfill your strange de- mands. As for swords and guns, I told you long ago I had none to spare. . . . You must know [that the weapons] I have can keep me from want; yet steal or wrong you I will not, nor dis solve that friendship we have mutually promised, except you constrain me by . . bad usage."
This covert threat was not lost upon the keen bar- barian. He quickly replied that within two days the English should have all the corn he could spare, but said he, " I have some doubt, Captain Smith, [about] your coming hither, [which] makes me not so kindly seek to relieve you as I would. For many do inform me [that] your coming hither is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my country. [They ] dare not come to bring you corn, seeing you thus armed with your men. To free us of this fear, leave your
-
134 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
weapons aboard [the ship], for here they are need- less, we being all friends, and forever Powhatans."
This last remark, that Smith's men were virtu- ally or constructively members of the Powhatan tribe is in harmony with my suggestion that the rescue of their leader by Pocahontas a year before had directly led to his adoption, according to the usual Indian custom in such cases of rescue. With many such discourses, says our chronicle, did they spend the day ; and on the morrow the parley was renewed. Again and again the old chief insisted that before the corn could be brought, the visitors must leave their arms on shipboard ; but Smith was not so blind as to walk into such a trap. He said, "Powhatan, . . . the vow I made you of my love, both myself and my men have kept. As for your promise, I find it every day violated by some of your subjects ; yet . for your sake only we have curbed our thirst- ing desire of revenge ; else had they known as well the cruelty we use to our enemies as our true love and courtesy to our friends. And I think your judgment sufficient to conceive - as well by the adventures we have undertaken as by the advan- tage we have [in] our arms [over ] yours - that had we intended you any hurt, we could long ere this have effected it. Your people coming to Jamestown are entertained with their bows and arrows, without any exceptions ; we esteeming it with you as it is with us, to wear our arms as our
A gaine of apparel." Having made this hit, the cap-
blutf. tain assumed a still loftier tone. It would never do to admit that this blessed corn,
135
THE STARVING TIME.
though the cause of so much parley, was an indis- pensable necessity for the white mnen. "As for your hiding your provisions . . . we shall not so unadvisedly starve as you conclude ; your friendly care in that behalf is needless, for we have [ways of finding food that are quite] beyond your know- ledge."
The narrative which I am here following1 is written by William Phettiplace, captain of the pin- nace, Jeffrey Abbot, described as sergeant. and two of the original settlers, Anas Todkill and Richard Wiffin. Abbot and Phettiplace were on the spot. and the narrative was revised by Captain Smith himself, so that it has the highest kind of author- ity. One need but examine the similar parleys described so frequently by Francis Parkman. to realize the faithful accuracy with which these Eng- lishmen portrayed the Indian at that early period when English experience of the red man's ways was only beginning.
The hint that perhaps white men could get along withont his corn after all seems to have wrought its effect upon the crafty Powhatan. Baskets filled with the yellow grain were The corn is brought, and dickering as distinguished brouglit. from diplomacy began. Yet diplomacy had not quite given up its game. With a sorrowful face and many sighs the chief exclaimed : "Captain Smith, I never used any chief so kindly as your- self, yet from you I receive the least kindness of any. Captain Newport gave me swords, copper, clothes, a bed, towels, or what[ever] I desired ; 1 Smith's Works, pp. 448-465.
----
136 OLD VIRGINIA AND HIER NEIGHBOURS.
ever taking what I offered him, and would send away his guns when I entreated him. None doth . . . refuse to do what I desire but only you ; of whom I can have nothing but what you regard not, and yet you will have whatsoever you de- mand. . . . You call me father, but I see . . . you will do what you list. . . . But if you intend so friendly as you say, send hence your arms that I may believe you."
Smith felt sure that this whimpering speech was merely the cover for a meditated attack. Of his thirty-eight Englishmen but eighteen were with him at the moment. He sent a messenger to his vessels, ordering all save a guard of three or four men to come ashore. and he set some Indians to work breaking the ice, so that the barge Suspicions of treach- could be forced up near to the bank. ery.
For a little while Captain Smith and John Russell were left alone in a house with The Powhatan and a few squaws, when all at once the old el ief slipped out and disappeared from view. While Smith was talking with the women a crowd of armed warriors surrounded the house, but in- stantly Smith and Russell sprang forth and with drawn swords charged upon them so furiously that they all turned and fled, tumbling over one an- other in their headlong terror.
This incident gave the Englishmen a moral ad- vantage. The Indian plot, if such it was, had failed, and now the red men "to the uttermost of their skill sought excuses to dissemble the matter; and Powhatan, to excuse his flight and the sudden coming of this multitude, sent our Captain a great
137
THE STARVING TIME.
bracelet and a chain of pearl,1 by an ancient orator that bespoke us to this purpose ; perceiving even then from our pinnace, a barge and men departing and coming unto us : - Captain Smith, our [chief] is fled ; fearing your guns, A wily speaker.
and knowing when the ice was broken there would come more men, sent these numbers but to guard his corn from stealing, [ which ] might happen with- out your knowledge. Now, though some be hurt by your misprision, yet [The] Powhatan is your friend, and so will forever continue. Now since the ice is open he would have you send away your corn, and if you would have his company send away also your guns." It was ingeniously if not ingenuously said, but the conelnding request re- mained unheeded, and Smith never set eyes on his Father Powhatan again. With faces frowning, guns loaded and cocked, the Englishmen stood by while a file of Indians with baskets on their backs carried down the corn and loaded . it into the barge. The Indians were glad to get safely done with such work; as the chronicle observes, "we needed not importune them to make despatch."
The Englishmen would at once have embarked, but the retreating tide had left the barge stranded, so that it was necessary to wait for the next high water. Accordingly it was decided to pass the night in the house where they were already quar- tered, which was a kind of outpost at some dis- tance from the main village, and they sent word to The Powhatan to send them some supper. Then the Indians seem to have debated the question 1 Wampum is undoubtedly meant.
138 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
whether it would be prudent to surprise and slay them while at supper or afterward while asleep. But that "dearest jewel," Pocahontas, says the narrative, "in that dark night came through the irksome woods, and told our Captain
Pocahontas reveals the great cheer should be sent us by and by ;
plot. but Powhatan and all the power he could make would after[ward] come kill us all, if [in- deed] they that brought it [did] not kill us . . . when we were at supper. Therefore if we would live she wished us presently to be gone. Such things as she delighted in [we] would have given her; but with the tears running down her cheeks she said she durst not be seen to have any, for if Powhatan should know it she were but dead ; and so she ran away by herself as she came." Within less than an hour eight or ten stalwart Indians appeared, bringing venison and other dainties, and begged the English to put out the matches of their matehlocks, for the smell of the smoke made them sick. Our narrator tells us nothing of the sar- donic smile which we are sure that he and his com- rades can hardly have suppressed. The captain sent the messengers back to Father Powhatan,
Smith's mes- with a concise but significant message :
sage to The "If he is coming to visit me to-nigl.t let
Powhatan. him make haste, for I am ready to re- ceive him." One can imagine how such an an- nouncement would chill the zeal of the Indians. A few of their scouts prowled about, but the Eng- lish kept vigilant guard till high tide and then sailed away. A queer interview it had been. With some of hell's fiercest passions smouldering
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beneath the surface, an explosion had been pre- vented by watchful tact on the one side and vague dread on the other. Peace had been preserved between the strange white chieftain and his dusky father, and two Englishmen were left at Werowo- comoco, with the four Germans, to go on with the house-building. If our chronicle is to be trusted, the Germans played a base part. Believing that the English colony would surely perish of famine, they sought their own profit in fraternizing with the Indians. So, no sooner had Smith's vessels departed from Werowocomoco on their way up to Opekankano's village, than two of these " damned Dutchmen," as the narrator calls them, went over- land to Jamestown and said that Captain Smith had sent them for more weapons ; in this way they got a number of swords, pikes, muskets, and hatch- ets, and traded them off to the redskins at Wero- woeomoco.
Meanwhile Smith's party arrived at Opekanka- no's village, near the place where the Pamunkey and Mattapony rivers unite to form the York. The chief of the Pamunkeys received them with smiles and smooth words, but seems to have medi- tated treachery. At all events the Englishmen so interpreted it when they found themselves unex- pectedly surrounded by a great crowd of armed warriors numbering several hundreds. It How Ope- kankano was brought to terms. was not prudent to fire on such a num- ber if it could be avoided ; actual blood- shed might do more harm than good ; a peaceable display of boldness was better. It might have been and probably was remembered that the Spaniards
140 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
in the West Indies had often overawed all opposi- tion by seizing the person of the chief. After a brief consultation Smith, accompanied by West and Perey and Russell, rushed into Opekankano's house, seized him by the long scalp-lock, dragged him before the astonished multitude. and held a pistol to his breast. Such prompt audacity was its own safeguard. The eorn was soon forthcoming, and the little expedition made its way back to Jamestown, loaded with some 300 bushels of it. besides a couple of hundredweight of venison and deer suet. In itself it was but a trifle of a pound of meat and a bushel and a half of grain for each person in the colony. But the chief result was the profound impression made upon the Indians. A few years later such a bold treatment of them would have been attended with far more difficulty and danger, would seldom indeed have been pos- sible. But in 1609 the red man had not yet learned to gange the killing capacity of the white man ; he was aware of terrible powers there which he could not estimate, and was therefore inclined to err on the side of prudence. This sudden irruption of about forty white men into the principal In- dian villages and their masterful demeanour there seemed to show that after all it would be wiser to have them for friends than for enemies. A couple of accidents confirmed this view of the case.
One day as three of the Chickahominy tribe were loitering about Jamestown, admiring the rude fortifieations, one of them stole a pistol and fled to the woods with it. His two comrades were arrested and one was held in durance, while the
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THE STARVING TIME.
other was sent out to recover the pistol. He was made to understand that if he failed to bring it back, the hostage would be put to death. As it was intensely cold, some charcoal was charitably furnished for the prisoner's hut. In the evening his friend returned with the pis- Smith as a worker of miracles.
tol, and then the prisoner was found
apparently dead, suffocated with the fumes of the charcoal, whereupon the friend broke forth into loud lamentations. But the Englishmen soon per- ceived that some life was still left in the uncon- scious and prostrate form, and Smith told the wailing Indian that he could restore his friend to life, only there must-be no more stealing. Then with brandy and vinegar and friction the failing heart and arteries were stimulated to their work, the dead savage came to life, and the two com- rades, each with a small present of copper, went on their way rejoicing.
The other affair was more tragic. An Indian at Werowocomoco had got possession of a bag of gunpowder, and was playing with it while his com- rades were pressing closely about him, when all at once it took fire and exploded, killing three or four of the group and scorching the rest. Whereupon our chronicler tells us, " These and other A pretty
such pretty accidents so amazed and af- accident.
frighted Powhatan and all his people, that from all parts with presents they desired peace, return- ing many stolen things which we never demanded nor thought of ; and after that . . . all the coun- try became absolutely as free for us as for them- selves."
142 OLD VIRGINIA AND HIER NEIGHBOURS.
The good effects of this were soon apparent. With his mind relieved from anxiety about the Indians, Smith had his hands free for work at Jamestown. One of the most serious difficulties under which the colony laboured was the commun- istic plan upon which it had been started. The settlers had come without wives and children, and each man worked not to acquire property for him- self and his family but to further the general pur- poses of the colony. In planting corn, in felling trees, in repairing the fortifications, even in hunt-
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