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Smith. have in exchange a piece of land in the neighbourhood, and that chief would evermore esteem him as his own son. Smith's narrative does not indicate that he understood this to be anything more than a friendly figure of speech, but it seems clear that it was a case of ceremoni- ous adoption. As the natural result of the young girl's intercession the white chieftain was adopted into the tribe. A long incantation, with dismal howls and grunts, propitiated the tutelar deities, and then the old chief, addressing Smith as a son,
1 Smith's Works, p. 400.
THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS. 111
proposed an exchange of gifts. The next time that Smith visited Werowocomoco, The Powhatan proclaimed him a "werowanee" or chief of the tribe, and ordered "that all his subjects should so esteem us, and no man account us strangers but Powhatans, and that the corn, women, and country should be to us as to his own people." 1
I have dwelt at some length upon the question of Smith's veracity for three good reasons. First, in the interests of sound historical criti- Importance of the story of Poca- houtas. cism, it is desirable to show how skepti- cism, which is commonly supposed to indicate superior sagacity. is quite as likely to result from imperfect understanding. Secondly, justice should be done to the memory of one of the noblest and most lovable characters in American history. Thirdly, the rescue of Smith by Poca- hontas was an event of real historic importance. Without it the subsequent relations of the Indian girl with the English colony become incompre- hensible. But for her friendly services on more than one occasion, the tiny settlement would probably have perished. Her visits to Jamestown and the regular supply of provisions by the In- dians began at this time.2
1 Id. p. 26. Of course the cases of rescue and adoption were endlessly various in circumstances ; see the case of Couture, in Parkman's Jesuits, p. 223; on another occasion "Brigeac was tortured to death with the customary atrocities. Cuillerier, who was present, . . . expected the same fate. but an old squaw hap- pily adopted him. and thus saved his life." Parkman's Old Régime in Canada. revised ed. p. 108. For adoption in general see Mo gan. Ancient Society. p. SO ; League of the Iroquois, p. 342 ; Cold-n's History of the Five Vations, London, 1755, i. 9.
" Of the really critical attacks upon the story of Pocahontas,
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112 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
On the very day that Smith returned to James- town the long expected ship of Captain Newport arrived with what was known as the First
Arrival of
the First Supply, Jan. Supply of men and provisions. Part
8, 1608. came now, the rest a few weeks later. Only 38 men had survived the hardships at James- town ; to these the First Supply added 120, bring- ing the number up to 158. For so many people, besides the food they brought with them more corn was needed. So Smith took his "Father New- port," as he called him, over to Werowocomoco, where they tickled " Father Powhatan's" fancy with blue glass beads and drove some tremendous bargains. As spring came on, Newport sailed for England again, taking with him the deposed Wingfield. The summer of 1608 was spent by Smith in two voyages of exploration up Chesa- peake Bay and into the Potomac, Patapsco, and Susquehanna rivers. He met with warriors of the formidable Iroquois tribe of Susquehannocks, and found them carrying a few French hatchets which the most important are those of Charles Deane, in his Notes on Wingfield's Discourse of Virginia, Boston, 1859, and Henry Adams, in the North American Review, vol. civ. Their argu- ments have been ably answered by W. W. Henry, in Proceedings of Virginia Historical Society, 1982, and Charles Poindexter. in his Captain John Smith and his Critics, Richmond, 1893. There are two writers of valuable books who seldom allude to Smith without sneers and words of abuse. - Alexander Brown, of Vir- ginia, and Edward Duffield Neill, of Minnesota ; they seem to re- sent, as a personal grievance, the fact that the gallant caprai 1 ever existed. On the other hand, no one loves him better than the learned editor of his books, who has studied them with micro- scopie thoroughness, Edward Arber. My own defence of Smith, when set forth in a lecture at University College, London, 1879. was warmly approved by my friend, the late Henry Stevens.
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113
THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
had evidently come from Canada. During his absence things went badly at Jamestown Ratcliffe de- posed ; Smith chosen presi- dent, Sept., 1008 ; arrival of the Sec- end Supply. and Ratcliffe was deposed. On Smith's return in September he was at once chosen president. Only 28 men had been lost this year, so that the colony num- bered 130, when Newport again arrived in Sep- tember. with the Second Supply of 70 persons, bringing the total up to 200. In this company there were two women, a Mrs. Forrest and her maid, Anne Burroughs, who was soon married to John Laydon, the first recorded English wedding on American soil.
Newport's instructions show that the members of the London Company, sitting at their cosy Eng- lish firesides, were getting impatient and Captain Newport's instructions, meant to have something done. He was told that he must find either the way to the South Sea, or a lump of gold, or one of White's lost colonists, or else he need not come back and show his face in England ! One seems taken back to the Arabian Nights, where such peremptory behests go along with enchanted car- pets and magic rings and heroic steeds with pegs in the neck. No such talismans were to be found in Old Virginia. When Newport read his instruc- tions, Smith bluntly declared that the London Company were fools, which seems to have shocked the decorous mariner. The next order was gro- tesque enough to have emanated from the teem- ing brain of James I. after a mickle noggin of his native Glenlivat. Their new ally, the mighty Emperor Powhatan, must be crowned! Newport
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114 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
and Smith did it, and much mirth it must have afforded them. The chief refused to come to Jamestown, so Mahomet had to go to tlie moun-
tain. Up in the long wigwam at Wero-
Coronation
wocomoco the two Englishmen divested of The Powhatan.
the old fellow of his raccoon-skin 1 gar- ment and put on him a scarlet robe which greatly pleased him. Then they tried to force him down upon his knees - which he did not like at all - while they put the crown on his head. When the operation was safely ended, the forest-monarch grunted acquiescence and handed to Newport his old raccoon-skin cloak as a present for his royal brother in England.
An Indian masquerading scene at one of these visits to Werowocomoco is thus described by one of the English party : " In a fayre playne field they made a fire, before which [we] sitting upon a mat, suddainly amongst the woods was heard . .. a hydeous noise and shrieking. . . . Then presently [we] were presented with this anticke ;
How the In- thirtie young women came [nearly] na- dian girls ked out of the woods, ... their bodies danced at Werowoco-
all painted, some white, some red, some moco. black, some particolour, but all differing; their leader had a fayre payre of buck's horns on her head, and an otter's skin at her girdle, and an-
1 The word " raccoon " is a thorn in poor Smith's flesh, and his attempts to represent the sound of it from guttural Indian mouths are droll : " There is a beast they call Aroughcun, much like a badger, but useth to live on trees as squirrels do." - " He sent me presents of bread and Rangrougheuns." - "Covered with a great covering of Rahoughcums." - "A robe made of Raroucun skins," etc., etc.
115
THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
other at her arm, a quiver of arrowes at her back, a bow and arrowes in her hand ; the next had in her hand a sword, another a club, . . . all horned alike. . . . These fiends with most hellish shouts . and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dauncing with most excellent ill varietie; . . . having spent neare an houre in this mascarado, as they entred in like manner they departed. Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited [us] to their lodgings, where [we] were no sooner within the house but all these nymphes more tor- mented us than ever, with crowding, pressing, and hanging about [us], most tediously erying, Love you not me ? . This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of fruit in baskets, fish and flesh in wooden platters ; beans and peas there wanted not, nor any salvage dainty their invention could devise : some attending, others singing and dan- cing about [us] ; which mirth and banquet being ended, with firebrands [for] torches they con- ducted [us ] to [our] lodging."
The wood-nymphs who thus entertained their guests are in one account mentioned simply as "Powhatan's women," in another they are spoken of as " Pocahontas and her women ; " which seems to give us a realistic sketch of the little maid with her stag-horn headdress and skin all stained with puccoon leading her companions in their grotesque capers. Truly, it was into a
strange world and among a strange peo- ple that our colonists had come. Their quaint de- scriptions of manners and customs utterly new and
Accuracy o .: Smith's de- scriptions.
116 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
unintelligible to them, though familiar enough to modern students of barbaric life, have always the ring of truth. Nowhere in the later experiences of white men with Indians do we find quite so pow- erful a charm as in the early years of the seven- teenth century. No other such narratives are quite so delightful as those of Champlain and his friends in Canada, and those of Smith and his comrades in Virginia. There is a freshness about this first contact with the wilderness and its uncouth life that makes every incident vivid. There is a fas- cination too, not unmixed with sadness, in watch- ing the early dreams of El Dorado fade away as the stern reality of a New World to be conquered comes to make itself known and felt. Naturally the old delusions persisted at home in England long after the colonists had been taught by costly experiences to discard them, and we smile at the well-meant blundering of the ruling powers in Lon- don in their efforts to hasten the success of their enterprise. In vain did the faithful Newport seek to perform the mandates of the London Company. No nuggets of gold were to be found, nor traces of poor Eleanor Dare and her friends, and The Pow- hatan told the simple truth when he declared that there were difficult mountains westward and it would be useless to search for a salt sea behind them. Newport tried, nevertheless, but came back exhausted long before he had reached the Blue Ridge ; for what foe is so pertinacious as a strange and savage continent ? In pithy terms does Aras Todkill, one of the first colonists, express himself about these wild projects : " Now was there no
117
THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
way to make us miserable but to neglect that time to make our provision whilst it was to be had ; the which was done to perfourme this strange dis- covery, but more strange coronation. To lose that time, spend that victuall we had, tire and starue our men, having no means to carry vietuall, muni. tion, the hurt or sicke, but their own backes : how or by whom they were invented I know not." How eloquent in grief and indignation are these rugged phrases ! A modern writer, an accom- plished Oxford scholar, expresses the opinion that the coronation of The Powhatan, although "an idle piece of formality," " had at least the merit of winning and retaining the loyalty of the savage." 1 Master Todkill thought differently : "as Todkill's for the coronation of Powhatan and his complaint.
presents of bason, ewer, bed, clothes, and such costly nouelties ; they had bin much better well spared than so ill spent ; for we had his favour much better onlie for a poore peece of copper, till this stately kinde of soliciting made him so much overvalue himselfe, that he respected vs as much as nothing at all." 2
When Newport sailed for England, he took with him Ratcliffe, the deposed president, a man of doubtful character of whom it was said that he had reasons for using an alias, his real name being Sickelmore. Deposed presidents were liable to serve as tale-bearers and mischief-makers. Wing- field had gone home on the previous voyage, and Newport had brought back to Virginia complaints
1 Doyle's Virginia, p. 124.
2 Smith's Works, p. 122.
1
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118 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER. NEIGHBOURS.
from the Company about the way in which things had been managed. Now Smith sent to London Smith's map by Newport his new map of Virginia em- of Virginia. bodying the results of his recent voyages of exploration, a map of remarkable accuracy and witness to an amount of original labour that is marvellous to think of. That map is a living refu- tation of John Smith's detractors; none but a man of heroic mould could have done the geographical work involved in making it.
With the map Smith sent what he naïvely calls his " Rude Answer" to the London Company, a paper bristling with common-sense and not timid when it comes to calling a spade a spade. With some topics suggested by this " Rude Answer" we shall concern ourselves in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STARVING TIME.
THE men of bygone days were quite as fond as ourselves of playing with names, and the name of Christopher, or " Christ-bearer," was a favourite subject for such pastime. The old Syrian saint and martyr was said to have forded a river carry- ing Christ on his back in the form of a child ; and so when in the year 1500 Columbus's famous pilot, Juan de La Cosa, made his map of the new discoveries, and came to a place where he did not know how to draw his coast-line, he filled The name of the space with a picture of the new Chris- Christo- pher.
topher wading in mid-ocean and bring- ing over Christ to the heathen. At the court of James I. it was fashionable to make similar mild jests upon the name of Captain Christopher Newport, whose ships were carrying year by year the gospel to the tawny natives of Virginia. Very little of the good tidings, however, had the poor heathen of Pamunkey and Werowocomoco as yet received. So much ado had the English colonists to keep their own souls from quitting their bodies that they had little leisure to bestow upon the spir- itual welfare of the Indians. By the accident of Smith's capture and the intercession of Pocahon- tas, they had effected a kind of alliance with the
120 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
most powerful tribe in that part of the country, and this alliance had proved extremely valuable
throughout the year 1608; without it
Value of the
Indian alli- the little colony might have perished be-
ance. fore the arrival of the Second Supply. Nevertheless the friendship of the red men was a very uncertain and precarious factor in the situa- tion. The accounts of the Englishmen show con- fused ideas as to the relations between the tribes and chieftains of the region; and as for the In- dians, their acquaintanceship with white men was so recent that there was no telling what unfore- seen circumstance might at any time determine. their actions. The utmost sagacity was needed to retain the slight influence already acquired over them, while to alienate them might easily prove fatal. The colony was far from able to support itself, and as things were going there seemed little hope of improvement. The difficulties involved in the founding of colonies were not well under- stood, and the attempts to cope with them were unintelligent.
In the lists of these earliest parties of settlers one cannot fail to notice the preponderance of those who are styled gentlemen, an epithet which in those days was not lavishly and indiscriminately but charily and precisely applied. As a rule the per- sons designated as gentlemen were not accustomed to manual labour. To meet the requirements of these aristocratie members of the community, we find in one of the lists the name of a dealer in per- fumes. A few score of farmers, with abundance of live-stock, would have been far more to the
121
THE STARVING TIME.
purpose. Yet let us do justice to the gentlemen. One of the first company of settlers, the Gentlemen sturdy soldier Anas Todkill, thus testi- as pioneers. fies to their good spirit and efficiency : "Thirty of us [President Smith] conducted 5 myles from the fort, to learn to . . . cut down trees and make clapboard. . . . Amongst the rest he had chosen Gabriel Beadell and John Russell, the only two gallants of this last supply [he means October, 1608] and both proper gentlemen. Strange were these pleasures to their conditions; yet lodging, eating and drinking, working or playing, they [were] but doing as the President did himselfe. All these things were carried on so pleasantly as within a week they became masters; making it their delight to heare the trees thunder as they fell ; but the axes so oft blistered their tender fin- gers that many times every third blow had a lond othe to drowne the eccho; for remedie of which sinne, the President devised how to have every man's othes numbred, and at night for every othe to have a cann of water powred downe his sleeue, with which every offender was so washed ( himselfe and all) that a man should scarce hear an othe in a weeke.
For he who scorns and makes but jests of cursings and his othe, He doth contemne, not man but God; nor God, nor man, but both.
By this let no man thinke that the President and these gentlemen spent their time as common wood- hackers at felling of trees, or such other like la- bours ; or that they were pressed to it as hirelings or common slaues ; for what they did, after they
122 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
were but onee a little invred, it seemed and some conceited it only as a pleasure and recreation : . . . 30 or 40 of such voluntary gentlemen would doe more in a day than 100 of the rest that must be prest to it by compulsion." Nevertheless, adds this ingenuous writer, " twentie good workmen had been better than them all." 1
One strong motive which drew many of these gentlemen to the New World, like the Castilian hidalgos of a century before, was doubtless the mere love of wild adventure. Another motive was the quest of the pearls and gold about All is not gold that which the poet Drayton had written. In
glitters.
the spring of 1608, while Newport was on the scene with his First Supply, somebody dis- covered a bank of bright yellow dirt, and its colour was thought to be due to partieles of gold. Then there was clatter and bustle ; "there was no thought, no discourse, no hope, and no work but to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold." In the list of the First Supply we find the names of two goldsmiths, two refiners, and one jeweller ; 2 but such skill as these artisans had was of little avail, for Newport carried a shipload of the yellow stuff to London, and found, to his chagrin, that all is not gold that glitters. On that same vc he carried home a eoop of plump turkeys, the nrsu that ever graced an English bill of fare. Smith seems early to have recovered from the gold fever, and to have tried his hand at various industries. If precious metals could not be found, there was plenty of excellent timber at hand. The produc-
1 Smith's Works, p. 439. 2 Id. p. 108.
123
THE STARVING TIME.
tion of tar and soap was also attempted, as well as the manufacture of glass. to assist in Glass and which eight Germans and Poles were soap.
brought over in the Second Supply. It was hardly to be expected that such industries should attain remunerative proportions in the hands of a little company of settlers who were still confronted with the primitive difficulty of getting food enough to keep themselves alive. The arrival of reinforce- ments was far from being an unmixed benefit. Each new supply brought many new mouths to be filled, while by the time the ship was ready to sail for England, leaving all the provisions it could safely spare, the remnant was so small that the gaunt spectre of threatening famine was never quite out of sight. Moreover the new-comers from the civilized world arrived with their heads full of such wild notions as the older settlers were begin- ning to recover from under the sharp lessons of experience ; thus was confusion again and again renewed. While the bitter tale was being enacted in the wilderness, people in London were wonder- ing why the symptoms of millennial happiness were so slow in coming from this Virginian para- dise. From the golden skewers and dripping-pans adorning the kitchens of barbarie potentates,1 or the priceless pearls that children strolling on the beach could fill their aprons with, the de- scent to a few shiploads of ignoble rough Disappoint- ment of the Company. boards and sassafras was truly humiliat- ing. No wonder that the Company should have been loth to allow tales of personal peril in Vir- 1 See above, p. 58.
124 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
ginia to find their way into print. No wonder that its directors should have looked with rueful faces at the long columns of outgoes compared with the scant and petty entries on the credit side of the ledger. No wonder if they should have arrived at a state of impatience like that of the urchin who has planted a bed full of seed and cannot be restrained from digging them up to see what they are coming to. At such times there is sure to be plenty of fault-finding; disappointment seeks a vent in scolding. We have observed that Wing- field, the deposed president, had returned to Eng- land early in 1608 ; with him went Captain Gabriel Archer, formerly a student of law at Gray's Inn, and one of the earliest members of the legal profession in English America. His name is com- memorated in the little promontory near James- town called Archer's Hope. He was a mischief- maker of whom Wingfield in his "Discourse of Virginia " speaks far more bitterly than of Smith. To the latter Archer was an implacable enemy. On the return of Smith from his brief captivity with the Indians, this crooked Archer exhibited his legal ingenuity in seeking to revive a provision in the laws of Moses that a captain who leads his men into a fatal situation is responsible for their Tale-bearers death. By such logic Smith would be
and com-
responsible for the deaths of his follow-
plaints. ers slain by Opekankano's Indians ; there-
fore, said Archer, he ought to be executed for mur- der! President Ratcliffe, alias Sickelmore, appears to have been a mere tool in Archer's hands, and Smith's life may really have been in some danger
125
THE STARVING TIME.
when Newport's arrival discomfited his adversaries. One can see what kind of tales such an unserupu- lous enemy would be likely to tell in London, and it was to be expected that Newport, on arriving with his Second Supply, would bring some mes- sage that Smith would regard as unjust. The nature of the message is reflected in the reply which Smith sent home by Newport in November, 1608. The wrath of the much-enduring man was thoroughly aroused ; in his " Rude Smith's
Answer," as he ealls it, he strikes out " Rude Answer."
from the shoulder, and does not even
spare his friend Newport for bringing such mes- sages. Thus does he address the Royal Council of Virginia, sitting in London : "Right Honour- able Lords and Gentlemen : I received your letter wherein you write that our minds are so set upon faction and idle coneeits, . .. and that we feed you but with ifs and ands, hopes, and some few proofes ; as if we would keep the mystery of the businesse to ourselues ; and that we must expresly follow your instructions sent by Captain Newport, the charge of whose voyage amounts to neare £2000 the which if we cannot defray by the ship's returne, we are like to remain as banished men. To these particulars I humbly intreat your par- dons if I offend you with my rude answer.
"For our factions, vnlesse you would haue me run away and leaue the country, I can- not prevent them: ... I do make many I cannot prevent quarrels. stay that would els fly anywhither. . .. [As to feeding] you with hopes, etc., though I be no scholar, I am past a school-boy ; and I desire
126 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
but to know what either you [or] these here do know but I have learned to tell you by the con- tinual hazard of my life. I have not concealed from you anything I know; but I feare some cause you to believe much more than is true.
" Expressly to follow your directions by Captain Newport, though they be performed, I was directly
Your in- against it; but according to our Com-
structions
were not mission, I was content to be ruled by the
wise. major part of the council, I fear to the hazard of us all ; which now is generally confessed when it is too late. . . . I have crowned Powhatan according to your instructions. For the charge of this voyage of £2000 we have not received the value of £100. . . . For him at that time to find . . . the South Sea, [or] a mine of gold, or any of them sent by Sir Walter Raleigh: at our con- sultation I told them was as likely as the rest. But during this great discovery of thirty miles (which might as well have been done by one man, and much more, for the value of a pound of copper at a seasonable time) they had the pinnace and all the boats with them [save ] one that remained with me to serve the fort.
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