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Title: The Birth of the Nation
Jamestown, 1607
Author: Mrs. Roger A. Pryor
Illustrator: William de Leftwich Dodge
Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44229]
Language: English
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THE BIRTH OF THE NATION
[Illustration: The First English Church in America.]
'Tis just three hundred years ago
We sailed through unknown Narrows
And landed on an unknown coast
Amid a flight of arrows.
We planted England's standard there,
And taught the Western savage.
In its defence we lightly held
His tomahawk and ravage.
And there, between two forest trees,
We raised our first rude altar;
Roofed by a storm-rent sail we read
Old England's Prayers and Psalter,
An echo in the strange, new land
Awoke to slumber never:
It caught old England's battle-word--
"God and my Right" forever!
THE BIRTH OF THE NATION
JAMESTOWN, 1607
BY
MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR
AUTHOR OF "THE MOTHER OF WASHINGTON AND HER TIMES," "REMINISCENCES
OF PEACE AND WAR"
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY WILLIAM DE LEFTWICH DODGE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1907
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1907.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
M. GORDON PRYOR RICE
IN TOKEN OF
HER MOTHER'S LOVE
AND ADMIRATION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGES
Jamestown Celebration. Legends of the Discovery of America. 1-7
Columbus. The Cabots. Pope Alexander VI. Amerigo Vespucci. The
Power of Spain. Queen Elizabeth's Patent. Sir Humphrey
Gilbert. Our Shores only sighted by the English before 1600
CHAPTER II
Sir Walter Raleigh. Expedition to Islands near North Carolina. 8-15
Glowing Reports. Failure of First Colony. Enmity of Indians.
Second Colony to Roanoke Island. Virginia Dare. Expedition for
Relief of Colony. Colonists had Disappeared. Fate never Known
CHAPTER III
Death of Queen Elizabeth. James I., Appearance and Character. 16-33
Corrupt Court. Poverty of Common People. Highway Robbers.
London Company undertakes Virginia Colony. The Necessities of
a Countess. Extravagance. Political, Religious, and Literary
Aspects of the Time. Royal Charter obtained for New Colony
CHAPTER IV
England's First Colony. Emigrants Subject to Commercial 34-44
Corporation, to Domestic Council, to Superior Council, to
Arbitrary Rule of King. The Three Ships. Christopher Newport.
Allowance for Each Man. Cargo of Ships. Sealed Orders. Robert
Hunt. Books Brought. Character of Colonists. Names of Most
Prominent. Captain John Smith. Motives of Adventurers.
Attitude toward Indians. Little Interest in England. Drayton's
Poem
CHAPTER V
Story of Voyage by Thomas Studley. George Percy. Dissensions 45-55
among Voyagers. Career of John Smith. Ships enter Chesapeake
Bay. A Virginia Welcome. Council as appointed by Sealed
Orders. Wingfield elected President, April 26, 1607. Indians.
Colonists land at Jamestown, May 13. Smith excluded from
Council. Appearance of Forest. Religious Service. First Night
in the New Land
CHAPTER VI
Appearance of New Country. Percy's Description. Flora. Fruits. 56-63
Fauna. Condition and Customs of Indians. Their Implements
CHAPTER VII
Religion of Powhatan's Tribe. Kiwassa. Okeus. Sacrifice of 64-84
Children. Conversion of Indians almost Impossible. Temple at
Uttamussac. Dress and Chants of Priests. Immortality. Fables
taught by Priests. Enmity of Powhatan to English. Suspected of
Massacre of Roanoke Colonies. Prophecies of Priests. No
Written Language of Indians. The Will of the King Law. Law of
Succession. Cruelty of Powhatan. Indian Habitations. No
Furniture. Fire. Light. Occupations and Games of Men. Work
done by Women and Children. Henry Spelman's Story. Indians'
Provision for the Future. Maidens and Young Braves. Music and
Dancing. Traits of Indian Women. Tenderness toward Children.
Powhatan's Unconquerable Hatred. Fate of Indian settled by
Massacre of 1622
CHAPTER VIII
Chief of Paspahegh Tribe welcomes Newport. His Appearance. His 85-95
Behaviour. Work of Colonists. Interviews with Indians.
Wochinchopunck. Indians' Skill in Archery. Expedition up the
River. Town of Powhatan. Percy's Description. Site of
Richmond. Cross Erected. Indians' Assault upon Jamestown. Fort
put in Fighting Order. John Smith under Suspicion. First Trial
by Jury. Smith Acquitted. Reconciliation through Hunt. Smith
admitted to Council. The Eucharist. Savages desire Peace.
Newport leaves for England
CHAPTER IX
The First Mail to England. Enthusiastic Praise of New Country. 96-115
Policy of Colonists to encourage Immigration. Sir Walter
Cope's Letters. Council discuss Abandonment of Colony. Zuñiga
and Newport. Council decides to send Colonists and Provisions.
Letters from Zuñiga to Philip III. of Spain. Letter from
Dudley Carleton. Affairs at the Colony. First Church. Illness.
Percy's Narrative. First Graves in Virginia. England's
Selfishness. John Smith's Narrative. Diverse Elements in
Colony. Character of Wingfield. Deposed, and Ratcliffe put in
his Place. Wingfield's Defence. Indians bring Food. No True
Friendship. Smith seizes Image of Okeus. Savages ransom it
with Provisions. Game of Southern Virginia. Smith takes the
Helm. Log Cabins and Church Built
CHAPTER X
Winter of Unusual Severity. Starvation Threatened. Idleness 116-132
and Waste. Corn procured from Indians. Plans made and
Abandoned. Newport Long Overdue. John Smith explores the
Chickahominy. Important Voyage. Spends a Month with the
Powhatans. Description of Region. Murder of Two of Smith's Men
by Indians. Smith's Adventures. Captured by the Savages. March
to Powhatan. Incident told by William Symondes. Smith's Life
in Danger. Opechancanough tempts Him. Message sent Jamestown.
Indian Orgies. Banquets for Prisoner. Conducted to Powhatan's
Residence on York River
CHAPTER XI
Werowocomoco. Powhatan's Absolute Power. His Cruelty. Indian 133-155
Cookery. Bathing. Worship. Powhatan's Wives and Children. His
Affection for his Children. Pocahontas. The Dress of Indian
Women. The Mirror in the Woods. Smith received by Powhatan.
Powhatan's Costume. A Feast. Pocahontas saves Smith. He is
assigned to her Service. Powhatan asks the Cause of the Coming
of the English. Smith's Reply. Flatters Powhatan. Powhatan's
Attempt to terrify Smith. Professes Friendship. The Truth of
the Pocahontas Incident Discussed. Her Kindness to the English
CHAPTER XII
Indians conduct Smith to Jamestown. His Enemies There. He is 156-176
sentenced to be Hanged. Newport arrives and releases Smith and
Wingfield. Smith sends Gifts to Powhatan. The Character of the
New Colonists. "Newport's News." The King and Carr. Contrast
between Elizabeth and James. Newport's Visit to Powhatan. The
Feast. Finger-bowls and Napkins. Exchange of a Christian for a
Savage. Ill-advised Gifts to Powhatan. Newport Outwitted. A
Disaster from Fire. The Gold Fever. Wingfield and Archer
return to England. Twenty Swords for Twenty Turkeys
CHAPTER XIII
The Church Rebuilt. The Arrival of the _Ph[oe]nix_. Smith's 177-186
"True Relation of Virginia." Powhatan's Plot. Indian Thieves
Captured. Released at the Prayer of Pocahontas. Age of
Pocahontas. Her Visits to the Fort. Her Attire and "Wheels."
Chanco. A Comparison and a Contrast
CHAPTER XIV
Exploration. Greed of the London Company. Dread of Banishment 187-205
to Virginia. A Voyage of Adventure. Smith's Map of Virginia.
Golden Dreams Dispelled. Mutineers. Smith made President of
Virginia. A New Ship and an English Maid. Orders from England.
A Violent Quarrel. Foolish Gifts from James I. to Powhatan.
Indian Ceremonies. Nymphs. Diplomacy. The Coronation of
Powhatan. The Departure of Newport. Illicit Traffic. Flying
Squirrels. "A Rude Answer"
CHAPTER XV
Famine Threatened. "Gentlemen" and Hard Work. A Remedy for 206-227
Profanity. "Noblesse Oblige." Indian Summer. Soap and the
Plague. The First Marriage. A Fortunate Family. Powhatan
Hostile. Indians refuse Supplies. Smith secures Food. Heavy
Snow. The Colonists in Terror of Starvation. Smith's Daring
Plan. Powhatan's Cunning. A Friendly Chief. Smith's Interview
with Powhatan. The Long Harangues and an Apologia. Powhatan's
Scheme foiled by Pocahontas. A Savage Lear. Smith wrests
Supplies from Opechancanough. The Perfidy of Two Dutchmen. Ten
Colonists Drowned. Pocahontas again to the Rescue. Smith
returns to Jamestown
CHAPTER XVI
Smith's Enemies in England. A New Charter. Its Most 228-242
Significant Article. Limits of the Colony Defined. New Rulers
for Virginia. The Governor's Arbitrary Power. This Nation's
Real Founders. The King's Position. His Poverty. Interest of
the Clergy in Virginia. Strachey's Description. Zuñiga's
Anger. Nine Vessels sail to Virginia. John Rolfe and his First
Wife. A Hurricane and the Plague. Many of the New Settlers
Worthless and Profligate. The _Sea Venture_. Sir George
Somers. The Bermudas. The Scene of Shakespeare's "Tempest."
Andrew Marvel's Poem. Prayer, Marriage, and Birth. Ambergris.
New Ships Built
CHAPTER XVII
Smith Hard at Work. The Traitor Dutchmen. Wochinchopunck 243-271
captured and Escapes. Smith's Retaliation for Indian Outrage.
An Indian's Eloquence. Smith gains Influence over Indians.
Search for Raleigh's Lost Colony. Silk Grass. Smith's Energy.
Rats. Argall's News. Seven Vessels reach Jamestown. Ratcliffe
claims Authority. Resistance and Chaos. New Colonies Planted.
Smith buys Place near Present Site of Richmond. Mutineers.
Relations with Indian Emperor Closed. Career in Virginia
Ended. Percy made President _pro tem._ Character of Smith.
Visits and names New England and Boston. Extracts from
Writings. Diverse Opinions of Smith. Thomas Fuller's View.
Smith's Closing Years in London. His Poverty. Grave and
Epitaph in St. Sepulchre. Attitude toward Pocahontas. English
Unwilling to marry Indians. Indian Resentment. Smith's Offer
to subdue Indians after Massacre of 1622 Declined. America's
Debt of Gratitude to Smith
CHAPTER XVIII
Unruly Youths returned to England. Mischievous Letter from 272-293
Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe's Death. Percy's Administration.
"Beggar's Bush." Loss of Smith Disastrous. Indian Risings.
Disease. Famine. "The Starving Time." Coming of the
_Deliverance_ and the _Patience_. Condition of Jamestown. The
New Governor. Machumps and Namontack. All the Colonists embark
for England. Turned back by Lord Delaware. A New Order of
Things. The Church repaired and Adorned. Services Frequent.
Mortality of Early Settlers
CHAPTER XIX
Delaware's Wise Rule. A Nemesis for Traitors. Delaware's 294-313
return to England. Strachey's Manuscripts. Friendly Indians.
The Marriage of Pocahontas to Kocoun. Indian Marriage Customs.
The Costume of an Indian Princess. Human Sacrifices to Okeus.
Pocahontas held for Ransom. John Rolfe's Letter to Governor
Dale. The Baptism of Pocahontas. Her Marriage to John Rolfe.
"The Lady Rebekah"
CHAPTER XX
Governor Dale asks in Marriage Powhatan's Youngest Daughter. 314-321
Powhatan's Reception of the Messenger. The Alliance Politely
Declined. The Last Years of the Old Emperor. His Successor.
The Great Massacre. Jamestown saved by Chanco. The capture and
Death of Opechancanough
CHAPTER XXI
Pocahontas at Court. Smith writes the Queen of her Goodness to 322-331
the Colony. Her Dignified Deportment. King James's Jealousy.
Pocahontas reproaches John Smith. Her Death and Burial. Her
Son and his Descendants. John Randolph of Roanoke
CHAPTER XXII
The Patriots of Jamestown. Their Services as Founders of the 332-339
Freedom of America. Address of Hon. Roger A. Pryor. The Town
after Seat of Government was removed to Williamsburg. The Old
Graveyard. The Lone Cypress. The Gift of Jamestown, by Mr. and
Mrs. Barney, to the Association for the Preservation of
Virginia Antiquities. Gift of the Government to Women of the
Association. Restoration by Them. The Old Town Exhumed. Relics
found beneath the Mould of More than Two Centuries
CHAPTER XXIII
Legends of the Old Stone House: Pocahontas; Smith; Blackbeard 340-352
and his Hidden Treasure; Nathaniel Bacon. Conclusion
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The First English Church in America Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Queen Elizabeth 8
King James I. 20
Old London--1607 44
Memorial erected by Clergy of the Episcopal Church at 52
Jamestown Island
"The trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it 68
with bated breath"
Smith's Island, where John Smith was captured by the 124
Indians
The Mirror in the Woods 138
"She rushed forward, and laid her own head upon his" 144
King James and a Petitioner 162
Powhatan Oak, over Three Hundred Years Old 166
Old Fort--Jamestown Island 180
"The newly crowned potentate started with terror" 200
"'Powhatan comes to kill you all'" 222
Captain George Percy 258
St. Luke's, near Smithfield, built in 1623. The 266
Oldest Protestant Church in America
Captain John Smith. From the Bust by Baden-Powell 270
Lord Delaware 286
Pocahontas Memorial Window 290
Marriage of Pocahontas 312
Powhatan Rock, under which the Indian Chief is said 320
to be Buried
Pocahontas at Court 322
Royal Palace, Whitehall 328
Jamestown Church Tower 336
THE BIRTH OF THE NATION
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
We are about to commemorate the settlement of the English at Jamestown
three hundred years ago. Under God's blessing, we are not only at peace
with all the world, but are bound by ties of close friendship to the great
kingdoms and republics on earth. Therefore, we may confidently expect to
welcome numbers of their representatives to our three hundredth birthday
celebration. Many will be the banners unfurled in waters which ebbed and
flowed in awful silence but three hundred years ago, or were stirred only
by the paddle of the Indian canoe; and loud the thunders of welcome and
greeting from shores which echoed then with the scream of the eagle and
the war-whoop of the savage.
The story of a world emerging from the darkness in which it had been
hidden for countless ages will always thrill the imagination. Phantom
ships loom dimly out of the mists of a far-off time. Strange names are
whispered in vague traditions, which are found in no written record--names
of mighty mariners, who were blown by tempests upon a strange
coast,--Arthur; Malgro; Brandon; a "Fryer of Lynn," who by reason of his
"black art" reached the North Pole in 1360; Madock, "sonne of Quinneth,
Prince of Wales," a man of peace, who sought refuge in a wilderness
because of strife among his brethren; Leif, the Norwegian; Nicolo Zeno,
the Venetian; Hanno, the Carthaginian! Colossal figures tremble for a
moment on the horizon, and are lost in fog and doubt.
At last the great Genoese sails forth, and becomes a tangible figure
in history. Often as his story may be told, familiar as it is to every
schoolboy in the land, we can never hear it without a keen realization of
its personal relations to ourselves. "It would be impossible," said Daniel
Webster, "for us to read the discovery of our continent without being
reminded how much it has affected our own fortunes and our own existence.
It would be unnatural for us to contemplate with unaffected minds that
most touching and pathetic scene when the great discoverer of America
stood on the deck of his shattered bark, the shades of night falling
on the sea, yet no man sleeping; tossed on the billows of an unknown
ocean, yet the stronger billows of alternate hope and despair tossing his
own troubled thoughts; extending forward his harassed frame, straining
westward his anxious and eager eyes, till Heaven at last granted him a
moment of rapture and ecstasy, in blessing his vision with the sight of
an unknown world."
Intensely interesting are the narratives of the daring adventurers who
followed Columbus--of the Cabots who landed and claimed the country
for the English crown; of the Spaniards and Portuguese upon whom Pope
Alexander the Sixth generously bestowed the world, giving to the Spaniards
the western, and to the Portuguese the eastern part of it,[1] for in those
days it was but necessary for any pirate or sea adventurer from either
nation to land and erect a stone or stick on the coast, to constitute a
valid claim to possession in the name of Spain or Portugal and a right to
drive out or exterminate the ancient inhabitants and owners of the land.
But of all the early adventurers none is so interesting to us as Amerigo
Vespucci, whose name we bear. He won for himself this honour simply and
solely because of his literary ability, which enabled him to write an
interesting narrative of his adventures. The historian is fortunate who
has no one to contradict him. He may draw his pictures from imagination
and make them as gorgeous as he pleases. There is no reason to believe
that Vespucci failed to make liberal use of this privilege; but that did
not in the least retard the success of his book. It has been repeatedly
asserted that it was not through his fault that the name of this continent
was given to him, rather than to the man who deserved that honour; that
his German translator, Martin Waldsemüller, suggested it; that the idea
was comical enough to catch the fancy of the Portuguese, who at once
adopted it. The Spaniards, on the other hand, resented it, and complained
bitterly that the honour was stolen from the rightful possessor. On
the death of Columbus, Vespucci entered the service of Spain, and was
stationed at Seville, with the title of pilot-major. Part of his duty was
to mark out on charts the tracks to be followed by Spanish navigators,
and he always distinguished the new world, first, by the words "Amerigo's
Land," and presently, "America"! This settles his responsibility for a
fraud which never did and never will deceive anybody. He was a skilful
navigator,--a great man in his day and generation,--but no renown to him
has gone with the name he strove to make immortal. Vespucci has ever been
deemed a very inconsiderable person in comparison with Columbus, although
it has come to pass that half the world bears his name.
The Spaniard, with fire and sword, swiftly followed Vespucci. He took
possession of Florida, overthrew the temples and idols in Mexico,
conquered Peru! The French were already here,--that did not signify,--the
power of Spain was speedily established. Before the English flag "floated
over so much as a log fort, Spain was mistress of Central America." Her
ships crept along the coast, peered into Chesapeake Bay, and explored
harbours and inlets with reference to future possession.
It was quite time for England to remember and confirm her claim. Spain
was her enemy. Spain was growing rich from American gold, and powerful
by reason of American possessions. Already four hundred vessels came
annually from the harbours of Portugal and Spain (and some from France and
England), to the shores of Newfoundland. Queen Elizabeth granted a liberal
patent[2] to one of her bravest soldiers, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, with the
right to establish a colony. With Sir Walter Raleigh's aid, he equipped
a squadron of three ships, but misfortunes befell his little vessels,
and he attempted to return to England with two ships, the _Hind_ and the
_Squirrel_. A great storm arose; the oldest mariner had "never seen a more
outrageous sea," and in it the _Squirrel_ perished. The _Hind_ returned
to tell the story of Sir Humphrey's devotion and courage; how out of the
darkness a brave voice rang out--the voice of the good old knight to whom
the Queen had given with her blessing a golden anchor set with pearls--"Be
of good cheer, my friends! We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land,"
and how his ship went down in the night!
Such was the spirit of the few Englishmen who came hither before 1600 on
fruitless voyages--sighting our shores only--like sea-birds which hover
on restless wing near the coast for a moment, then wheel and return to
their nests in some far-away island.
CHAPTER II
With Sir Walter Raleigh the history of the English colonies in America
begins. He was a prime favourite with Queen Elizabeth, and she knew how
to exalt and abase, to create and destroy. To Raleigh she gave viceregal
powers over any and all of England's prospective colonies, with no limit
to his control over territories, of which he could bestow grants according
to his pleasure. He sent out an exploring expedition to the islands
near North Carolina. The adventurers returned with glowing accounts of
the country. The season was summer--seas were tranquil, skies clear; no
storms ever gathered on those peaceful shores; all was repose. The gentle
inhabitants were in harmony with the scene; flowers and fruit abounded,
grapes were clustered close to the coast and cooled by the spray of a
quiet sea; there was no winter, no cold. A hundred islands clustered along
the shores, inhabited by "people the most gentle, loving, and faithful,
void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the
golden age." No wonder a new expedition of one hundred and eight colonists
was soon organized. Seven vessels were equipped, and sailed under the
happiest auspices. But, alas! the "gentle people" living after the manner
of the golden age proved thievish and deceitful; disasters, many and
varied, followed; the adventurers forsook the "paradise of the world,"
and the enterprise came to naught.
[Illustration: Queen Elizabeth.
From an engraving after the painting by Zucchero.]
History has preserved no stranger, more mysterious story than the next
experiment of Sir Walter Raleigh. To insure the permanence of his second
colony, he decided to send families, women and children, to the fruitful
Islands of Roanoke, to make a permanent home, and found "the City of
Raleigh." A fleet of transport ships carried eighty-nine men, seventeen
women, and eleven little children, with every appliance for comfort, and
ample provision of implements of husbandry. The colony arrived in August,
after a five months' voyage, and were dismayed to find the island strewn
with human bones. They had "expected sundry decent dwelling-houses"; they
found the ruins of the houses and forts their predecessors had erected.
The men who had been left behind by the first governor had been murdered
by the loving, gentle, and faithful people.
There was nothing to do but make the best of it. But the charm was
broken. The colonists were alarmed and disheartened. The Indians were not
friends--that became evident at once. Realizing their danger, weakness,
and utter dependence upon England, the heartsick immigrants looked with
dismay upon the departure of the ships, and they implored their Governor
to return and represent their true condition to Elizabeth, "the Godmother
of Virginia," and to the powerful Raleigh, her servant.
On the 18th of August, according to the ancient author's report, "Ellinor,
the Governour's daughter, and wife to Ananias Dare, was delivered of
a daughter in Roanoke, which being the first Christian there borne,
was called 'Virginia.'" The Governor was loth to leave his colony, his
daughter, and grandchild, but they "thought none would so truly procure
theire supplyes as he, which though he did what he could to excuse it,
yet their importunitie would not cease till he undertooke it; and had it
under all their hands how unwilling he was but that necessity and reason
did doubly constraine him."
Of course, the Governor promised to hasten his return. The story is a
strange one--of feeble effort, cupidity, indifference.
The Governor did not reach England until November. Raleigh at once fitted
out two small vessels which sailed the following April, but the crew,[3]
"being more intent on a gainful voyage than the relief of a colony, ran
in chase of prizes, were themselves overcome and rifled." In this maimed,
ransacked, and ragged condition, they returned to England, and, the writer
adds, "their patron was greatly displeased." After this, for a whole year
no relief was sent. Raleigh had now spent forty thousand pounds on his
colonies with no return, and he turned them over to Sir Thomas Smith. When
White sailed again with three ships, history was repeated. He "buccaneered
among the Spaniards, until three years elapsed before he actually arrived
at Roanoke."
Nothing was to be seen of the settlers there! The Governor seems to have
taken things with admirable coolness! His own account is an amazing bit of
narrative, when we remember the one hundred and fifteen men, women, and
little children, his own Ellinor, and Virginia Dare! He tells first of
his troublesome voyage. The sea was rough and his "provisions were much
wet"; the boat when they attempted to land tossed up and down, and some
of his sailors were drowned, so it was late when he arrived. The Governor
was romantic. He and his company sang old familiar English songs, but no
chorus came in response from the silent shore. "Seeing a fire through
the woods we then sounded a trumpet, but no answer could we heare. The
next morning we went to it, but could see nothing but the grasse and
some rotten trees burning. We went up and downe the Ile and at last found
three faire Romane Letters carved: C. R. O., which presently we knew to
signifie the place where I should find them, according to a secret note
betweene them and me: which was to write the name of the place they would
be upon some tree, dore, or post: and if they had beene in any distresse,
to signifie it by making a crosse above it. But we found no sign of
distress" (doubtless the writer had been tomahawked before he finished
his signal), "then we went to a place where there were sundry houses, and
on one of the chief posts, carved in fayre capitall Letters, C. R. O. A.
T. A. N., without any signe of distresse." Lead and iron and shot were
scattered about overgrown with weeds, and some "chists were found which
had been hidden and digged up againe, which when I saw I knew three to be
my owne, but books, pictures, and all things els were spoyled. Though it
much grieved me, yet it did comfort me to know they were at Croatan."
But the Governor never went in search of them at the Indian village
indicated! He weighed anchor to that end, but cables broke, etc.
Considering they had but one anchor and their "provision neare spent,"
they determined to go to Trinidad or some other island "to refresh
ourselves and seeke for purchase that winter, and the next spring come
againe to seeke our countrymen." But they met in the meantime with "many
of the Queene's ships and divers others," and "left seeking our colony,
that was never any of them found nor seene to this day 1622. And this was
the conclusion of this plantation after so much time, labour, and charge
consumed. Whereby we see," continues the Governor, who was poetic as well
as romantic:--
"Not all at once nor all alike, nor ever hath it been,
That God doth offer and confer his blessings upon men."
A most philosophic Governor, truly! Even to this day we feel more emotion
at the possible fate of these hapless Englishmen. Had they perished from
famine? Had they fallen before the Indian tomahawk? Had the women and
children been spared and given to the chiefs according to savage custom?
Alas for Virginia Dare! Three years they had looked for succour, and been
basely forsaken by their countrymen. They were not forgotten altogether.
Part of the errand of every ship thereafter, and part of every order
sent out to the colony, was to "seek for Raleigh's men." But they had
disappeared utterly--as silently and surely as the morning dew before the
sun. Twenty years later friendly Indians told a story of doubtful value
to William Strachey and others; but the secret is still a secret, and this
disappearance of more than a hundred human beings is one of the strangest
events in history.
CHAPTER III
When Lord Bacon was informed that his great Queen Elizabeth had died just
before daybreak, he exclaimed, "A fine morning before sun-rising,"--the
rising of King James the First. Far more appropriate would have been the
words, "The sun has set before the night."
James the First shambles across the pages of history a grotesque figure
enough,--tottering on weak legs which seem incapable of supporting his
padded dirk-proof doublet, with pockets further distended by the unread
petitions ("sifflications" as he termed them) of his unhappy subjects.
From his mother, so conspicuous for grace and beauty, he seems to have
inherited nothing, unless we may credit the painters, who have given him
beautiful hands. His broad Scotch was rendered more uncouth by a thick
tongue which filled to overflowing his coarse mouth. His lips never closed
over his teeth. This body was a fitting casket for a depraved mind and
heart. In vain may the elder D'Israeli and others modify, apologize, and
cunningly seek out redeeming traits! His was a low, base nature, proven
by every action--and never disproven by the brave words and pious formula
with which he adorned his speech.
Only three years before the Virginia colonists set forth upon their
momentous enterprise, Sir Charles Percy and Thomas Somerset had posted
down to Scotland to hail James Stuart King of England. As King James
of Scotland he had led rather a hard life--and although his mother's
beautiful head had but lately fallen under an English axe, and although
he had vowed eternal vengeance upon her murderers, he accepted the crown
with childish eagerness.
His first request was peremptory: he must have money forthwith for his
journey to London, and the crown jewels of England must be immediately
forwarded for the use of his homely wife. The Council ventured to ignore
the latter. They thought he would hurry to London to attend the funeral
of Elizabeth--seeing she had herself named him as her successor. "Give
not my crown to a _rascal_!" she had said with her dying breath; "My
cousin of Scotland is a _king_!" It was not to be supposed, however,
that he would hasten his movements to honour "the defunct Queen," as he
called her (seeing she had cut off his mother's head), so he dawdled on
the way, hunting, feasting, and discovering the charms of "Theobald's" in
Hertfordshire, where he afterwards spent so much of his royal time. All
the way, in season and out of season, he would indulge in the oft-repeated
words, "I am the King," as if to reassure himself of the fact and recall
his powers and privileges. Casting about for opportunities to use them,
his eye fell upon a petty thief, a cut-purse who had stolen some trifling
coin from a courtier, had confessed his guilt, and begged for mercy. James
had the man hanged without legal trial, and when some cringing follower
suggested that this procedure was irregular, had exclaimed, "God's wounds!
I make what likes me law and gospel." (His oath--and each one of England's
sovereigns had his own favourite profanity--was a little milder than
Elizabeth's "God's death" and stronger than previous kings' "God's blood,"
"God's eyes," etc.) "God's wounds," stammered King James, "I make what
likes me law and gospel!"
He also made what liked him knights and lords. Shutting his eyes, which
could never endure the sight of a naked blade (and good reason!), he laid
the knight-conferring sword on shoulders which might well tingle under
the accolade, seeing how narrowly eyes escaped being put out, and ears
cut off. He bestowed this distinction upon nearly every person he met
during his journey. By the time he set foot in his palace of Whitehall,
he had knighted two hundred individuals, without respect to distinction of
merit or station. Before he had been three months a king, he had bestowed
the hitherto highly esteemed honour of knighthood upon seven hundred. It
seemed to be a relief to his feelings, immediately after a tedious oration
or ceremony, to create twenty or more knights.
Nor was he chary even of the honour of the English peerage, which
Elizabeth had held at so high a value. He presently added sixty-two names
to the list of peers. By that same token those of us who hunger for noble
descent are very shy of the strawberry leaves that grew in James the
First's time, and diligently seek for those that flourished under the
smiles of earlier potentates.
[Illustration: King James I.]
This was the grotesque figure before which England's great noblemen
kneeled down and did their homage: Lord Bacon, Cecil, the Earl of
Northumberland, Lord Grey, and hosts of others. To Northumberland Lord
Bacon had written: "Your Lordship shall find a prince the furthest from
vain-glory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form
than of the latter time. His speech is swift and cursory, and in the full
dialect of his nation, in speech of business short, in speech of discourse
large," etc. Other persons, however, were less indulgent than Bacon. They
marked his "legs too weak to carry his body, his tongue too large for
his mouth, his goggle eyes, rolling and yet vacant, his apparel neglected
and dirty, his unmanly fears and ridiculous precautions," and expressed
their consequent astonishment and disgust. As time went on, these personal
defects paled in importance compared with the low tastes and principles
he developed. It matters not that he was learned in the Latin tongue,
and an obstinate supporter, in word at least, of the Protestant faith.
All history of poor human nature proves that taste, beauty, learning may
coexist with diabolical wickedness. It is hard to believe it, although we
see it every day. It was abundantly proven in King James's reign.
Of course we may imagine the society led by such a court. Never was there
more injustice, outrageous favouritism, disregard of the rights of birth
and property, more vice in high places, more extravagance, drunkenness,
and debauchery. It was unsafe to walk in the streets of London after
nightfall. A portion of the city was set apart as a refuge for murderers
and lawbreakers, whence the law had no power to drag them. Life was held
cheap in King James's time. Heads fell on the block as a matter of course.
Great ladies drove in their coaches to see Mrs. Turner executed. "Saw
three men hanged and so to breakfast," said Samuel Pepys a little later.
The common people were wretchedly poor. They slept on straw and lived on
barley. Only the servants of the rich could eat rye bread. Vagrants and
beggars swarmed over the kingdom. In a pamphlet entitled "Grievous Groans
of the Poor," the writer complains that "The country is pitifully pestered
with those who beg, filch, and steal for their maintenance, and travel
the highway of hell until the law bring them to fearful hanging." What to
do with these swarming "rogues," in case they could not be hanged, was a
tough question with Lord Coke,[4] conveniently answered later by imposing
them upon the starving colonists.
The picturesque beggar was not a very costly luxury. A curious pamphlet
entitled "Stanley's Remedy, or the Way to Reform Wandering Beggars,
Thieves, Highway Robbers, and Pickpockets," was published in 1646, in
which the cost of the diet and maintenance of every thievish, idle,
drunken person in the kingdom was estimated at threepence a day at least.
Of course it was unsafe for "true men" to travel except in numbers and
well armed, and whoever was about to take a journey had to wait until a
tolerably strong caravan had mustered for the same route. Among the chief
places of danger was Gadshill in Kent, where Falstaff achieved the glory
of killing the already dead Percy.
Thieves are always more interesting in a story than noblemen, but the
Virginia colony was more intimate with the latter than the former; at
least until the King graciously reënforced their numbers with a cargo of
outlaws. The company that undertook to support the colony was a London
Company, and the adventurers were mainly citizens of London. Those who
held the title of "gentlemen" may reasonably be supposed to have known
something of the luxuries they were now exchanging for the hardships of
colonial life. Some idea of the extravagance of the time may be gleaned
from old diaries and letters.
A very curious letter has been preserved, which reveals the domestic
economy of a family of distinction during the reign of James the First.
It is from the daughter of Sir John Spenser and wife of the Earl of
Northampton to her lord soon after their marriage. It is an amusing list
of the necessities of a lady of rank: "My sweet life, now I have declared
to you my mind for the settling of your estate, I suppose it were best
for me to bethink and consider within myself what allowance were meet
for me," and she proceeds to ask the sum of £2600, to be paid quarterly.
In addition to this, she must have £600 quarterly for sundries not to be
accounted for. In addition, the lady feels that she needs "three horses
that none shall dare lend or borrow," two gentlewomen and a horse for
each; six or eight mounted gentlemen, two coaches lined with velvet, four
horses to each; a coach for each of her women with gold lace, scarlet
cloth; four horses, and two coachmen for each coach; carriages for six
laundresses and other serving women; a gentleman usher on horseback; two
footmen; all of which to be maintained by her husband. For apparel she
needs twenty gowns, £6000 to buy jewels, £4000 to buy a pearl chain, in
all $76,000. For her house she wishes him to furnish beds, stools, chairs,
cushions, carpets; silver warming-pans; fair hangings, and cupboards of
plate, "all things fine and delicate." And in addition to all these she
thinks it would save trouble to have £2000 in case of emergency. The
letter concludes, "It is my desire that you lend no money, as you love
God, to my Lord Chamberlain, who would have all, perhaps your life, from
you." And then, on second thoughts, she asks that when her husband becomes
an earl £2000 more be allowed her and double attendance.[5] A note to the
letter adds, "Her husband went out of his wits."
We cannot begin to describe the Elizabethan magnificence in dress. The
artificial taste for dainty and costly living was also abundantly evident
in the epicurism of the time. The court that allotted a scanty diet of
cereal, oil, and vinegar to the men it sent out to subdue a wilderness,
could partake of no simple food or drink. The cookery was complicated and
consisted mainly of "villanous compounds" of great cost. Butter, cream,
marrow, ambergris, lemons, spices, dried fruits, oranges, the scarce
sugar--all of these entered largely in the composition of dishes. We read,
among the simple dishes, of an artificial hen made of paste, sitting upon
eggs in each of which, enclosed in paste, was a fat nightingale seasoned
with ambergris, then the most costly of flavours. There were snails stewed
or fried in oil, vinegar, and spices; frogs dressed into fricassees. There
was a wonderful receipt for cooking herring. "In hell they'll roast thee
like a herring," was the warning to Tam O'Shanter, but herrings were not
roasted in King James's time, Scotchman although he was. Here is a receipt
for salted herring[6] or "herring-pie," a little bit of which might serve
as an appetizer: "Take salt herrings being watered (soaked), wash them
between your hands and you shall loose the fish from the skin; take off
the skin whole, and lay them in a dish; then have a pound of almond paste
ready; mince the herrings and stamp them with the almond paste; two milts
or roes; five or six dates, some grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water
and saffron; make the composition somewhat stiff and fill the skins; put
butter in the bottom of your pie, lay on the herring, and on them dates,
gooseberries, currants, barberries, and butter; close it up and bake it;
being baked, liquor it with butter, verjuice, and sugar."
There was once a gathering of marquises, lords, knights, and squires
at Newcastle to celebrate a great anniversary, and each guest was
required to bring a dish. The specimen of Sir George Goring was reckoned
a masterpiece. It consisted of four huge, brawny pigs, piping hot,
bitted and harnessed with ropes of sausages all tied to a monstrous
bag-pudding.[7] The narrator explains that "on some occasions a coarse
and clownish dish was a pleasing variety."
We can imagine George Percy, John Smith, Gosnold, Newport (all of whom
were doubtless received in court circles), dining on this costly fare, and
drinking healths on their knees when the King was toasted. So much of the
drinking was attributed to Danish influence that it was a common saying
that "The Danes had again conquered England."
Before we join our colonists in their perilous enterprise we briefly
sketch some of the peculiarities of the life whence they came. This will
help to account for some things that follow. Of the political and literary
aspects of the times, we must be allowed a short notice, in order that
the ensuing story may be better understood.
A great convulsion, incident upon the Reformation, had passed over
the world. It raged on the Continent, and then extended to England and
Scotland, where it lasted until the death of Queen Elizabeth and the
accession to the throne of James the First, when Protestantism was
firmly established. The Roman Catholics were in high disfavour. The
dreadful Gunpowder Plot had aggravated the bitterness against them.
England, all the corruption at court notwithstanding, was full of
religious enthusiasts. With them the experiment in Virginia was only the
beginning of the conversion of a great multitude of savages. The first
charter expressed[8] a pious longing that "so noble a work may by the
providence of God hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in the
propagating of the Christian religion to such people as sit in darkness
and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God." "This
is the work we first intended," says a writer of the time, "and have
published to the world to be chief in our thoughts; to bring the infidel
people from the worship of Devils to the service of God." "The end of this
voyage is the destruction of the Devil's Kingdom," said the good clergyman
who preached to the adventurers on the eve of their embarkation.
A more restless, inconsistent age cannot possibly be imagined. In
literature a race of giants appeared whose works were the expression
of the times. The epoch flowered in the great names which have made the
age of Elizabeth so illustrious. Bacon had published his "Advancement of
Learning," Spenser his "Faerie Queene," Shakespeare was at the head of
a great group of literary giants. A fine stage was set for the monarch,
just three years on his throne. He might have been the central jewel of
a splendid setting! He might have been the inspiration of a noble era.
All the material was at his hand. As it was, it is marvellous he did
not plunge the country into ruin. Old England owes much to her House of
Commons: "A troublesome body," said James, "but how can I get rid of it?
_I found it here!_"
When Bartholomew Gosnold, Richard Hakluyt, Robert Hunt, John Smith, and
others succeeded in obtaining a royal charter from the King, he busied
himself in drawing up the instrument for the government of the colony.[9]
"Everything began and ended with the King." A council of thirteen in
London, appointed by himself, was to govern, controlling a subordinate
council in Virginia. Trial by jury was allowed to criminals. The Christian
religion was to be preached to the Indians. In other respects, the colony
would have no rights other than those which King James the First chose to
allow it. There were to be two colonies, one hundred miles to intervene
between the boundaries of the two. The boundaries of the southern colony
were enlarged and exactly defined in 1609. It was to embrace the territory
two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of the mouth of James
River, and "to reach up into the land from sea to sea."
This vast territory was coolly claimed by the King of England, without
the slightest regard to the present sojourners on the soil. Had they
been wandering tribes never remaining long in one place, had the area
of country been a debatable land, the claim might have been reasonable,
but it soon appeared that the kingdom of Powhatan had descended to him
from generation to generation, or been acquired by conquest. The land was
accurately measured and "staked out," and was owned by his captains, who
knew and respected their boundaries.
All these things combined, we can better understand the disasters and
sufferings which ensued upon the landing of our adventurers.
CHAPTER IV
The most momentous hour in the history of this country was when three
small ships "fell down the Thames from London," freighted with one hundred
and five Englishmen on their way to plant England's first colony.
"This was the event," said a great American, "which decided our own fate;
which guided our destiny before we were born, and settled the conditions
in which we should pass that portion of our existence which God allows to
men on earth."
The story of the company which was organized in London for this
expedition, of the charter granted by James the First, of the means
adopted to insure its success, and the mistakes we can now so easily
perceive--all this has been told in many histories. It is a long story;
also one involving side issues not within the scope of this writing.
It is sufficient to say that the emigrants were subjected[10] to the
ordinances of a commercial corporation of which they could not be members;
to the dominion of a domestic council in the appointing of which they had
no voice; to the control of a superior council in England which had no
sympathy with their rights; and finally to the arbitrary legislation of
the sovereign.
Of the names of the three little ships which fell down the Thames,
we can be quite sure of two, the _Discovery_ and the _Goodspeed_. The
other--the flagship--is quoted sometimes as _Sarah Constant_, again as
_Susan Constant_. They were small ships, one only a "pinnasse"; and were
under the command of another Christopher--Christopher Newport. Christopher
Columbus discovered us, Christopher Newport colonized us. He was an
"experienced navigator"; but his career in Virginia abundantly illustrated
the fact that England's great hero was not the only admiral who could do
some very foolish things on land. However, he brought our colony safely,
and through many sea perils, to Virginia.
We happen to know something of his men, and everything of his cargo. Of
the latter, we have a careful list. Each man had one suit of "apparrell,
three paire of Irish stockings, four paire of shooes," and canvas to make
a bed. Of arms and tools he had no stint, also iron utensils for cooking
and wooden spoons and platters. The ration for each man was twelve bushels
of cereal (oatmeal or peas), one gallon of aqua vitæ, two gallons of
vinegar, one of oil. This for a whole year! Some of the grain was to be
carefully "kept for sowing." For meat the immigrant must rely on his gun,
and the rivers would yield him food.
The admiral was provided with a goodly cargo of small mirrors, bells, and
glass beads with which to purchase the friendship of "the naturells," and
also substantial articles of food. The Virginia real estate was not to be
purchased. King James had a simpler method of acquiring it. The tiny ships
afforded small space for furniture, bedding, or other household articles.
The officers of the colony, Governor, Council, etc., were not yet known,
and could therefore claim no privileges. The eccentric King had ordered
their names to be placed in a sealed box, to be opened when they landed.
Some private packages were, however, allowed. The clergyman, Master Robert
Hunt, carried "a goodly number of books." Master Wingfield had also, as he
tells us, "sorted many books in my house to be sent up to mee in a truncke
at my goeing to Virginia with divers fruits, conserves and preserves,
which I did sett at Master Croft's house at Ratcliff. I understand that
my truncke was thear broken up, much lost, my sweetmeates eaten at his
table, some of my bookes seene in his hands, and whether amongst them my
Bible was there ymbeasiled I knowe not." That his divers conserves and
preserves should have been given precedence over his Bible and books was
not without reason. Books and Bibles could be bought or borrowed, but very
little sugar was imported into England at that time, and sweetmeats were a
rare and costly luxury. The Englishman had no marmalade for his breakfast
until the Queen of Scots introduced it.
There were, as we have said, one hundred and five men who went forth
to subdue the wilderness. These men were to make the reign of James
the First memorable as the commencement of the English colonies in
America--"colonies," says Hume, "established on the noblest footing that
has been known in any age or nation." They were destined for more than
this--more than the historian's fancy could have foreseen in its wildest
flight into the regions of romance.
Most of the company were "gentlemen," unused to labour, who probably
had never handled an axe or suffered a physical privation. There were
forty-eight "Gentlemen" and twelve "labourers,"--"a halfpenny-worth of
bread to an intolerable deal of sack,"--one surgeon, one blacksmith,
two bricklayers (for a country where there were no bricks), a drummer,
and some boys. They were going to a wilderness in which not a house was
standing and there were only four carpenters! In the next supply jewellers
and perfumers were sent out to help subdue the American wilderness.
Their recognized guide and leader, during the voyage, was their captain,
Christopher Newport. To his care was committed the sealed box of
instructions which was to remain unopened until the adventurers reached
Virginia. The box, they knew, contained the names of their future rulers,
and they felt great solicitude on this subject. Every prominent man
was scanned and measured, and strong party feeling grew up immediately
among them. It was not possible, they well knew, that any choice of
their own would decide the matter. Of the two "experienced navigators"
whose services had already been acknowledged by the King--Gosnold and
Newport--one only would be eligible. Captain Newport was to take the
ships back to England, but Gosnold might be their Governor. One who was
preëminently conspicuous was Captain John Smith, who had commenced life
as a poor orphan, and was already famous at twenty-seven. It was possible
he might be their ruler despite his years. He was old in experience, in
suffering, and in those elements which lie at the foundation of greatness.
Then there was the son of the great Earl of Northumberland, George
Percy, of the same age as John Smith, but in striking contrast to him in
every respect,--fresh from the cloisters of the Middle Temple; quiet,
thoughtful; of the ancient powerful family of Percy and yet taking his
place modestly with the rest. Wingfield was on board, also Master Crofts,
and Gabriel Archer, Thomas Studley, John Martin, and Anas Todkill, all
to be heard from again in the colony of which they were to become the
historians. These and others were "gentlemen" and possible rulers. A
certain John Laydon appears among the "labourers," destined to win the
first English maiden who set foot on the soil of Jamestown, and to become
the father of the first child born in the established colony of Virginia.
Without doubt, Smith, Gosnold, Newton, and some others were possessed with
the prevailing spirit of adventure, the incentive of rivalry, and a high
ambition for the glory and honour of England. Not so, alas, George Percy,
to whom England had been a stern mother indeed; not so Robert Hunt, whose
heart burned with the spirit of the Christian missionary, and (if need be)
of the Christian martyr as well; not so the spendthrift "gentlemen" who
sought the "pearle and gold" promised by the poet; nor the boy who frankly
confessed that he had run away "being in displeasure of my friends." The
company seems to have been gathered at haphazard--not at all with regard
to its fitness, but simply by accepting the few who were willing to brave
the dangers of life among the savages.
Of the Indian they had learned enough to fear him. He had early dropped
his "gentle and loving" mask, and revealed himself in his true colours.
"An Englishman was his natural enemy to be slain wherever seen,"--shot to
death with arrows if distant, and clubbed by wooden swords if nearer at
hand; ambushed and trapped, deceived and betrayed, whenever circumstances
forbade open warfare. And yet there was no military preparation for this
expedition. Its authors affected to be inspired solely by zeal for the
conversion of the Indian to Christianity, and their messengers were men of
peace. Whatever their station, whatever their motives, these were the men
ever to be held by us in grateful remembrance. They made many mistakes,
of which we learn from their own confessions and criticisms of each other;
but the sacrifices and sufferings awaiting them were beyond all precedent.
They "broke the way with tears which many followed with a song."
The sailing of the ships awakened so little interest in England that
the event is hardly noticed in history. All England was shaken to its
foundations by the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, and punishment of
the conspirators. That three little vessels were to depart, as many had
departed before, to seek a footing in America, was, by comparison with
the troubles at home, of small consequence. The poet Drayton, however,
composed a lyric in honour of the occasion, which I commend to the
indulgence of my reader. It is not for me to criticise an Elizabethan poet
or deny him space on my pages!
"You brave heroique minds
Worthie your Countries' name
That honour still pursue,
Go and subdue;
Whilst Loyt'ring hinds
Lurke here at home with shame.
"Britons, you stay too long!
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry gale
Swell your stretch'd sail
With vows as strong
As the winds that blow you.
"And cheerfully at sea
Success you will intice,
To get the pearle and gold,
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise.
"And in regions far
Such heroes bring yee forth
As those from whom we came;
And plant our name
Under that starre
Not knowne unto our North."
And so with prayer and psalm and song--and doubtless tears--our pilgrims
were sped on their way. New Year's day, 1607, found them on the great
ocean in tiny vessels which were to be their homes for five wintry months.
[Illustration: Old London--1607.]
CHAPTER V
The voyage of the Virginia colonists began, as it ended, in a storm. One
of their number, Thomas Studley, tells the story in quaint language:[11]
"By unprosperous winds we were kept six weekes in the sight of England;
all of which time, Maister Hunt our Preacher was so weak and sicke that
few expected his recoverie. Yet although he were but 10 or 12 miles from
his habitation (the time we were in the Downes), and notwithstanding the
stormie weather, nor the scandalous imputations (of some few little better
than Atheists, of the greatest ranke amongst us) suggested against him;
all this could never force from him so much as a seeming desire to leave
the businesse so many discontents did then arise; had he not, with the
water of patience, and his godly exhortations (but chiefly by his true
devoted examples) quenched those flames of envie and dissension."
By "the Atheist of greatest ranke" was meant, doubtless, George Percy, the
Roman Catholic; but in the light of his subsequent career it is impossible
to believe him guilty of "scandalous imputations" or "disastrous designs."
We can imagine young Percy wrapped in his cloak and pacing the deck of
the ship, his face perhaps turned northward where lay his forefathers'
estates, crowned by Alnwick Castle, the princely home for many generations
of the Percys, Earls of Northumberland, "for virtue and honour second to
not any in the country." From Alnwick Castle had gone forth more than one
Harry Hotspur to risk all and lose all in the Border wars, and later in
the intestine wars of England. An Earl of Northumberland had taken arms
in defence of the unhappy Queen of Scots and paid for his devotion on
the scaffold. His brother Henry, Earl of Northumberland, father of George
Percy, had been committed to the Tower, accused of conspiring to liberate
Queen Mary, and had destroyed himself "to balk Elizabeth of the forfeiture
of his lands." Decision between conflicting parties had often been forced
upon these noble earls, and been met openly, bravely, and loyally, whether
or no the cause had prospered.
Upon the accession of James to the throne, the fortunes of the family
had seemed to revive. To George Percy's brother had been assigned the
honour of announcing to him the death of Elizabeth. The present Earl of
Northumberland (the eldest brother of George Percy) had rapidly risen in
favour. Then the discovery of the fatal Gunpowder Plot--the treason of
fanatic Catholics--had revealed a Percy among its most active ringleaders.
Although a distant relative of the Earl, he was still a Percy; and all who
bore the name suffered from unjust suspicion. The Earl of Northumberland
was now a prisoner in the Tower, accused of no crime except a desire to
be a leader of the detested Roman Catholics. George Percy could hope for
no honour, no career, no home in England. Nor could he expect to find
career, home, honour in the wilderness, but there he could at least hide
his breaking heart!
That he was a brave, honourable gentleman we know from the testimony of
those who laboured with him for the good of the colony. Without doubt he
held himself aloof from his fellows on the voyage. He was on the deck on
the night of the 12th of February, and perhaps turning his longing eyes
toward his northern home, when he saw a blazing star,--which flashed
out of the sky for a moment and was as suddenly hidden in darkness,--fit
emblem of the fallen fortunes of his house. He simply records the fact
in his calm "Discourse of the Plantation," adding "and presently came a
storm."
The baleful "flames of envy and dissension" were not altogether quenched
by good Master Hunt's "waters of patience." They broke out again and again
during the long voyage of five months. John Smith appears to have angered
his fellow-travellers in some way, and he was held in confinement during
part of the voyage. It is even stated that when they arrived at the island
of Mevis a gallows was erected for him, but "he could not be prevailed
upon to use it." He was, by far, the ablest man among the first colonists.
In the twenty-nine years of his life he had adventures enough for all the
historical novels of a century. Perhaps he boasted of them too much, and
thus excited "envy and dissension." Have they not filled nearly a thousand
pages of a late story of his life? He could tell of selling his books and
satchel when he was a boy to get money to run away from home; of startling
events all along until he fought the Turks in Transylvania; of cutting
off the heads, in combat, of three of them "to delight the Ladies who did
long to see some court-like pastime"; of inventing wonderful fire-signals
which were triumphantly successful in war; of beating out the brains of a
Bashaw's head; of imprisonment and peril, in which lovely ladies succoured
him. What wonder that all this, and more, told in a masterful way, should
have aroused suspicion that he intended to seize the government of the
colony, aided and abetted by conspirators already at hand in all three of
the ships!
Evidently the voyage was not a dull one. It was diversified also by
frequent storms--no light matter in the little rolling vessels. The path
of the ships was not the one we now travel in six days. The mariner in the
sixteenth century and the early days of the next knew but one path across
the ocean--that sailed by Columbus. They turned their prows southward,
"watered" at the Bahamas, and then sought the Gulf Stream to help them
northward again.
Captain Newport's destination was Roanoke Island; part of his duty was to
search for Raleigh's lost colony. Three days "out of his reckoning," his
passengers, like Columbus's crew, grew discontented and discouraged, and
wished to return homeward. At last they sighted the shores of Virginia,
and a tempest blew them within the capes of Chesapeake Bay. Upon one
of these they erected a cross, naming the cape "Henry" in honour of the
Prince of Wales. The opposite point was named after the King's second son,
the Duke of York, afterward Charles the First. Attempting to land here,
they were met with a flight of arrows--a stern Virginia welcome--and two
of their number were wounded. The new nation was born in a storm, its
baptism was of blood, and the Furies relentlessly hovered over its cradle.
When the sealed box was opened, the appointed council was found to be
Bartholomew Gosnold, Edward Maria Wingfield, Christopher Newport, John
Ratcliffe, John Martin, George Kendall, and their prisoner John Smith.
These were to elect their own President for one year. Later they elected
Wingfield.[12] He and the Council were invested with the government;
affairs of moment were to be examined by a jury, but determined by the
Council. The first presidential election in the United States of America
was held April 26, 1607.
Seventeen days were spent in quest of a place of settlement, sailing up
and down the river, on the banks of which the Indians were clustered like
swarming bees. Sundry adventures of small moment introduced them rather
favourably to the Indians, who seemed, Percy thought, "as goodly men" as
any he had "ever seen of savages, their prince bearing himself in a proud,
modest fashion with great majesty." What they thought of the English had
already been expressed in an unequivocal manner. They, however, offered
no further violence.
[Illustration: Memorial erected by Clergy of the Episcopal Church at
Jamestown Island.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
According to instructions in their locked box, the colonists were
admonished not to settle too near the bay because of the Spaniards, nor
away from the highway--the river--because of the Indians. At last they
found a peninsula which impressed them favourably. It was on the north
side of the river Powhatan, as James River was called by the savages, and
fifty-eight above the Virginia capes.[13] The peninsula, now an island,
was small, only two and three-fourths miles long and one-fourth of a mile
wide. It was connected with the mainland by a little isthmus, apparent
only at low tide; and this was the spot selected for the settlement which
was named, in honour of the King, Jamestown.
They could hardly have made a worse selection. The situation was extremely
unhealthful, being low and exposed to the malaria of extensive marshes
covered with water at high tide. The settlers landed, probably in the
evening because of the tide, on the 13th of May, 1607.[14] This was the
first permanent settlement effected by the English in North America,
after a lapse of one hundred and ten years from the discovery of the
continent by the Cabots, and twenty-two years after the attempt to
colonize it under the auspices of Sir Walter Raleigh. Upon landing, the
Council took the oath of office; Edward Maria Wingfield, as we have seen,
was elected President, and Thomas Studley, Cape-Merchant or Treasurer.
Smith was excluded from the Council upon some false pretences. Dean Swift
says, "When a great genius appears in the world, the dunces are all in
confederacy against him."
One reason for the selection of the low peninsula was the fact that the
water was deep enough near the banks of the river for the ships to be
moored close to the land and tethered to the trees, thus facilitating the
transportation of the cargo. These trees presented a novel appearance to
the Englishmen. The Indians had stripped them of their lower branches as
high as a man could reach, for they had no axes to aid them in collecting
fuel. All the tangled undergrowth had been cleared away and burned.
A horseman could safely ride through them. The grove was like a great
cathedral with many columns, its floor tiled with moss and sprinkled with
flowers. We may be sure that good Master Hunt gathered his flock around
him without delay, and standing in their midst under the trees uttered,
for the first time in the western world, the solemn invocation:
"The Lord is in His Holy Temple;
Let all the earth keep silence before Him."
The new land had been claimed for an earthly potentate; he now claimed
it for the King of kings. Immediately "all hands fell to work." Every
article, every utensil, was removed from the ships, which were to be
no longer the homes of the colonists. The stores were brought on land
and covered with old sails; a hasty barricade was thrown up for defence
against the savages; tents were set up; but we are told that the soft
May air was so delicious, the men elected to lie upon the warm earth; and
there, having set their watch to "ward all the night," with nothing but
the whispering leaves between them and the stars, they slept the sweet
sleep of weariness of body and contentment of soul.
CHAPTER VI
When the colonists looked around them on the first day in their new home,
they beheld a scene which will never again in the history of this world
be spread before the eyes of man.
Before them lay a vast land just as God made it. No furrow had followed
the plough or wheel of civilization. The earth had been pressed by nothing
sterner than the light hoof of the reindeer or the moccasined foot of the
Indian. No seed had ever drifted hither on the winds, or been brought by
a bird wanderer from a distant country. The land was bounded by vast,
untravelled seas. The earth had been stirred in cultivation only by
the hands of women and children, unaided by any implement of steel or
iron. In the forests and fields the great mystery of birth and death and
birth again had silently gone on unmarked for countless ages. There was
literally no known past, no record of a yesterday which might explain the
problems of to-day.
Of course the English colonist would be keenly curious as to the fauna
and flora of the new land. There were "such faire meadowes and goodly
tall trees," says Percy,[15] "with such Fresh-waters running through the
woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof. My selfe and
three or foure more walking into the Woods, by chance we espied a path-way
like to an Irish pace. We were desirous to knowe whither it would bring
us. Wee traced along some foure miles, all the way as wee went having the
pleasantest Suckles, the ground all bespred and flowing over with faire
flowers of sundry colours and kindes as though it had been any Garden or
Orchard in England."
Mute witnesses to the truth of Percy's picture will be found at the
opening of our coming celebration, if our guests can find a convenient
forest. In it will be seen just the flowers that so ravished his soul:
the white honeysuckles, the scarlet trumpet creeper, the clematis, white
and purple tipped, the sweetbrier, violets, swamp roses, red swamp lilies.
"There be many Strawberries," continues Percy, "and other fruites
unknowne. Wee saw the Woods full of Cedar and Cypresse Trees with other
trees (out of) which issues our sweet Gummes like to Balsam, and so wee
kept on our way in this Paradise." There were not many "fruits unknown."
One of these, highly esteemed, was "maracocks"--the seed-pod of the
passionflower,[16] which was not dismissed from the list of Virginia
fruits until the middle of the last century. Until then it was cultivated
in gardens for its fruit as well as its flowers. There was also another
new fruit, still prized by the Virginia schoolboy, and still found by him
to "draw a man's mouth awrie with much torment" if incautiously meddled
with when green or yellow. Only when red is it ripe and "as delicious as
an Apricocke." Need we say this is the Virginia persimmon--a corruption
of the "putchamin" of the Indian? There were no peaches or apples, only
two kinds of plums, grapes, and berries,--strawberries, mulberries,
and whortleberries or "hurts." All other fruits were introduced by the
English. There were no sheep, oxen, goats, or horses, no chickens or other
domestic poultry. There were wild turkeys, none domesticated. The deer
was king, but never used as a beast of burden. Bears, rabbits or hares,
squirrels, the otter and the beaver; birds without number (their king the
eagle)--these were indigenous to the new land, planted there when God made
it, their flesh the food of man, their skins his garment.
And there, too, was man as God made him. To this day nothing is known
of the origin of the North American Indian--whence he came, or what his
early history. There he was--having evolved little for himself. His one
discovery had been fire. He had used what he found, but manufactured
little except bows and arrows, rude mats and baskets woven of grass,
earthen pipes and pots, and uncouth garments fashioned without scissors
or knives, and sewed with the sinews of the deer. He had no textile
fabric of any kind. When necessary to defend himself against the cold, he
had killed a deer or raccoon and slipped his shivering limbs within the
skin, or fashioned a mantle of the warm feathers of the turkey. In these
he exhibited no perception of grace or beauty. Nature offered him her
loveliest expression of both, but when he essayed ornament on his skin or
scant garment, he elected only the terrible. Even the young girls bound
horns to their heads instead of flowers. Writers of the period often speak
of coral--but there was no coral in the Virginia waters. Pearls they had,
and the teeth of animals to string for beads and fringes.
The Indian had made no utensil of iron or the copper he so much prized.
When he needed a canoe or bowl, he burnt the wood, then scraped it with
oyster shells, and burned again, until the wood was hollowed out. How
he ever felled a tree is a mystery! Weeks of scraping and burning were
spent on each canoe. He had no written language, no signs recording past
events. He had done nothing for himself except to minister to the needs
of the hour. There was no hieroglyphic, no testimony of the rocks. Even
the humble art of pottery, the earliest trace of the human race, was not
found among the American Indians to any extent. A few broken earthen pipes
and bowls, arrow-heads of flint, remnants of shell necklaces, these are
all that the ploughshare of the labourer or the pick and shovel of the
antiquarian have ever revealed.
Of the temper and disposition of the "Naturells," as King James called
them, we shall have abundant occasion to learn; but as Powhatan and his
people play a leading rôle in the following story it is indispensable
that my reader be made acquainted with the religion, customs, and habits
of this tribe of Indians. We have given space to a brief sketch of the
English monarch. The American monarch surely claims some attention before
we enter upon the story of the struggle between the two: between the
Stuarts of England and the Algonquins of America!
Historians of the Indians have asserted that the tribes under King Philip
and those subject to Powhatan were of a higher class than many other of
the North American Indians, more restrained by social and tribal laws,
more cleanly in their habits, more intelligent in every way. They are an
intensely interesting and mysterious people, and romantic writers love to
invest them with virtues which the Powhatans, at least, did not possess.
John Smith and Strachey argue that "they are inconstant in everie thing
but what peace constraineth them to keepe. Craftie, timerous, quicke of
apprehension, and very ingenious: some bold, most cautious, all _Savage_:
soone moved to anger, and so malitious they seldom forget an injury."
Schoolcraft, the modern Indian historian, said to me "they had not a
single virtue or single trait of true nobility." They never met a foe
in an open field,--cunning was their best weapon,--but some virtues they
surely had, nevertheless.
CHAPTER VII
Hidden in a dense forest on the banks of the Pamunkey, was Uttamussac,
the greatest temple in Powhatan's kingdom. In every territory governed by
a "werowance" there were smaller temples and priests. Each of the petty
rulers under the great emperor had his spiritual adviser--some priest
or conjurer, wise in the sacred mysteries and beloved of the gods, from
whose decisions in spiritual matters there was no appeal. According to the
wealth of the werowance were the size and dignity of the temple, varying
from a small arbour of twenty feet to a structure a hundred feet long.
The door opened to the east, and there were pillars and windings within,
with rude black images looking down the church to the platform of reeds;
upon which, wrapped in skins, lay the skeletons of dead priests and kings.
Beneath the platform, veiled with a mat of woven grasses, sat "Okeus,"
an ill-favoured black demon, well hung with chains of pearl and copper.
He it was to whom children must be sacrificed, lest he blight the corn,
or cause briers to wound the feet and limbs of travellers through the
forests, or enemies to prevail, or women to be barren or false, or thunder
and lightning to destroy. He it was who had been seen leaping through
the corn-fields, crying "Ohé! Ohé!" just before some signal disaster.
There was also a far-away, peaceable God, variously known as "Ahone" or
"Kiwassa"--"The One All Alone." He too had once walked among them. Are
there not gigantic footprints five feet apart on the rocks yet visible
near Richmond at Powhatan? These are the footprints of the good god as
he once strode through the land of the great chief. To him it was, of
course, unnecessary to sacrifice, inasmuch as he was by nature benevolent.
But he was not as powerful as Okeus--Okeus, who sternly held the scales
of justice, and was to be placated by nothing short of their dearest and
best, their precious, innocent little children.
The pious men who emigrated to Virginia within the first twenty years
of its settlement firmly believed that Satan had here established his
kingdom; that the priests were his ministers, inspired by him to threaten
the people unless they held to the ancient customs of their fathers. It
was remembered that in all ages of the world this arch-enemy of mankind
had demanded human sacrifice from his followers,--from the times of
the ancient Carthaginians, Persians, and Britons. Now, in Florida, he
claimed the first-born male child, and in Mexico prisoners taken in war.
The priests of Powhatan failed not to instruct the werowances that if
the prescribed number of children were withheld, Okeus, who was sure to
prevail in the end, would then be appeased only by a hecatomb of children.
Nor would any sacrifice avert his wrath if a nation despising the ancient
religion of their forefathers was permitted to inhabit among them, since
their own god had hitherto preserved them and from age to age given them
victory over their enemies.
The conversion, therefore, of the Indian was next to impossible, unless
indeed the first step could be the destruction of priest and temple.
Chanco and Pocahontas, and possibly Kemps, were for many years the only
fruits of the labours of the missionaries. Taunted by the powers at home
with this fact, the colonists retorted that they had sent many Indians to
England, not one of whom returned converted to Christianity. The Indian
chief Pepisco was long an object of hope at Jamestown, because of his
apparently candid willingness to believe in the God of the Christian; but
the utmost he could attain was a belief that the Indian gods were suitable
for the Indian, but that the greater nation needed the greater God, for
whose good offices he was willing to entreat through the white man.
Had the fate of the Indian been to live in peace and friendship with his
white brother to this day, it is not probable he would have ever been
at heart a Christian. Druidism long survived, though in obscurity and
decay, the thunder of the imperial edicts. It did more than survive in
Ireland--it flourished until the fifth century, when it fell before the
Christian enthusiasm of St. Patrick. Long after the Druidical priesthood
was extinct, Druidical superstitions, Druidical rites, were dear to the
common people. Nor will they become utterly extinct until we cease to
gather the mistletoe and forget the sports and pastimes at Hallowe'en.
So grim and mysterious was the principal temple at Uttamussac on the
Pamunkey, that the trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it with
bated breath, solemnly casting into the waters pieces of the precious
copper, puccoon, and strings of pearls. In this temple, and in two others
beside it, were images of devils, and upon raised platforms the swathed
skeletons of their greatest kings. The place was so holy that none but
priests entered it. There they questioned Okeus and received verbal
answers.
[Illustration: "The trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it with
bated breath."]
The chief priest and his assistants wore a sacred official robe ornamented
with serpent skins. Their faces were painted in the most frightful devices
they could imagine. Their heads were wreathed, Medusa-like, with stuffed
serpents, and in their hands they carried rattlesnakes' tails, as symbols
of their profession. Their devotion was in antiphonal chants or songs,
led by the chief priest, and often interrupted by his starts, passionate
gestures, and ejaculations. At his every pause the attending priests
groaned a sort of fearsome "amen." We may fancy the Indian on dark nights
hurrying past with muffled paddle as the weird songs and groans were borne
by the midnight breeze to his trembling ears!
They held the belief, common with all mankind, of the immortality of the
soul, of the home--ah! in all faiths, so far away--of the escaped spirit.
But this immortality was the reward only of the faithful. All others
passed into utter nothingness.
Many fables were taught by the priests to the ignorant. Captain Argall was
once trading with Japazaws, a Potomac chief who had been always friendly,
and the latter came aboard the pinnace one cold night, and seated himself
by the fire while one of the men read the Bible aloud to the Captain. "The
Indian gave a very attent eare, and looked with a very wisht eye upon
him as if he longed to understand what was read, whereupon the Captayne
tooke the booke, and turned to the picture of the Creation of the World in
the begyninge of the booke, and caused a boy, one Spelman who had lvyed
a whole yere with this Indian Kinge and spake his language, to shewe it
unto him and interpret it in his language which the boy did." The king, in
return, offered to relate his own articles of belief on the same subject,
and a string of marvellous exploits followed in which a wonderful hare,
an Indian "Brer Rabbit," bore the chief part. Captain Argall instructed
his interpreter to ask of what materials the original man and woman were
made, but Henry Spelman was unwilling to venture so much. Negotiations
were pending for his release after a long residence with the Indians, and
he dared take no liberties.
The persistent enmity of Powhatan to the English was planted long before
their arrival in 1608. Strachey and Purchas, men of high character
and great learning, consider it absolutely certain that he ordered the
massacre of both of the Roanoke colonies. He was said, in 1610, to be more
than eighty years old. He had been a daring, ambitious ruler in his youth,
perpetually on the war-path, enlarging his dominions by conquest,--like
Alexander, only quiet when there were no more worlds to conquer. He
"awaits his opportunity (inflamed by his bloudy priests)," says Strachey,
"to offer us a tast of the same cuppe which he made our poore countrymen
drink of at Roanoke. He has established a line of sentinels, extending
from Jamestown to any house where he holds his court, and news of any
movement by the English ships quickly passes from one to another and
reaches him wherever he happeneth to be. He is persuaded that the English
are come to dethrone him and take away his land."
Prophecies had been made by the priests that a nation would come from
the East which would destroy him and his empire, that twice he should
thwart and overthrow the strangers, but the third time he would fall under
their subjection. This then was the fateful third! "Strange whispers and
secrett, ran among the people. Every newes or blast of rumour struck them,
to which they would open wyde their eares, and keepe their eyes waking
with good espiall of everything that sturred; the noyse of drums, the
shrill trumpets and great ordinances would startle them how far soever
from the reach of daunger. Suspicions bredd straunge feares amongst them,
and those feares created straunge construccions, and those construccions
begatt strong watch and gard especially about their great Kinge, who
thrust forth trusty skowtes and carefull sentinells (as before mencyoned)
which reached even from his owne court down to our palisado gates, which
answeared one another duly."
The Indian, as we have noted, knew not how to express himself by any
kind of letters, by writing, or marks on trees, or pictures, as do other
barbarians. They had no positive laws, their king ruling only by custom.
His will was law. He was obeyed as a king and as a god. Traditional
laws and rules were well understood by his successors, for the descent
was not from father to son, but all the sons of one kingly father ruled
successively, then all the daughters, so the children of one father were
long the sole custodians and interpreters of the laws. The succession
was through the heirs of the sisters, not through the men of the family.
The ruling of the great Powhatan was most tyrannous, the punishment for
trifling faults cruel to an extreme. He personally superintended the
beating, the burning alive, the dismembering of those who displeased him.
The habitations of the Indians were all alike. They had but one style
of architecture. They usually built upon an elevation commanding a view
of their only thoroughfare, the river, and not far from springs of fresh
water. They built under the trees, for defence against winds and storms
and the scorching heat of the summer sun. They planted young saplings in
the earth and tied their tops together, covering all closely with the bark
of trees.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, beautiful arbours of fragrant
cedar were constructed after the Indian fashion as ornamental features
in Virginia landscape gardening--omitting the bark, and shaving close the
green foliage.
The walls of the Indian houses were lined with mats. A doorway was hung
with a skin or mat. There were no windows or chimneys. A hole in the
roof provided for the escape of the smoke from the fire kept burning
immediately beneath it. An old writer remarks that they were "somewhat
smoaky"! There was no furniture of any kind in these rude huts. All
around, in the best houses, ran a low arrangement of poles, forming
the sides of the sleeping-bunks, and within, on skins and mats, lay the
household of twenty or more, men, women, and children. One was detailed
to watch and replenish the fire while the rest slept. If more light was
needed, it was provided from a pile of resinous sticks--their only candle
or lamp. In these huts they lived all winter, cooking and working on their
household utensils and various articles of dress. They had no needles
or pins, no knives except sharpened reeds, yet they managed with strips
of deerskin to sew skins together for leggings and moccasins, embroider
them with pearl or shells, hollow the wooden blocks into bowls, and
weave mats from grass. Powhatan's favourite wife, Winganuskie, and the
Princess Pocahontas had no better home than this in winter. Pocahontas
knew no other except during the few years of her married life, and of her
captivity before it.
The men spent their time in hunting and fishing and in warfare and manly
sports. In time of peace, they exercised in out-of-door games. They
played "bandy" with crooked sticks, "an auncient game," says Strachey,
who indulged abundantly in the _parole_ of literary men, "as yt seemeth
in Virgil, for when Æneas came into Italy at his marriage with Lavinia, yt
is said the Trojans taught the Latins scipping and frisking with a ball."
The Indians also played a game described as "a forcible encounter with the
foot to carry a ball the one from the other, and spurne yt to the goale
with a kind of dexterity and swift footmanship which is the honour of yt;
yet they never strike up on another's heeles as we doe, not accompting
that praiseworthie to purchase a goale by such an advantage."
All the domestic labour was performed by the poor drudging women and the
children. They also cleared the ground for their gardens and cornfields,
planted corn, beans, pumpkins, "maracocks," and gourds, and kept the
growing plants free from weeds. They pounded the corn in wooden mortars
for bread, sifting it through baskets, and boiling the coarse refuse for
hominy. They dressed all the food and served it. They were also barbers
for their husbands, using two oyster-shells to grate away beard and hair.
Henry Spelman, an English boy who was sold to an Indian chief, lived as
a servant for many years among the savages. He relates an incident of
domestic life in the household of the king of Paspetanzy, who "went to
visitt another king, and one of his wives after his departure would goe
visitt her father, and she willed me to goe with hir and take hir child
and carye him thither in my armes, being a long days journey from the
place where we dwelt, which I refusing she strook me 3 or 4 blows." This
it appears was too much for the free-born Briton. "I gott to hir and puld
hir downe, giving hir some blows agayne which the other King's wives
perseyvinge they fell on me and beat me so as I thought they had lamed
me." It appears the lady's filial intentions were not carried out, the
heavy child being quite too much for her strength. All awaited the return
of the king, and the indignant Henry boldly told his side of the story.
There had been quarrels and fights before in the king's household, and he
knew how to deal with them. The remedy was at hand. Taking up a "paring
iron" he struck his wife and felled her to the ground, whereupon Henry, by
no means sure upon whom the instrument of domestic discipline would fall
next, fled to a neighbour's house and hid. His position was a perilous
one, his fate uncertain. The Indian baby settled the question. Henry had
been an affectionate nurse and perhaps bedfellow to the little pappoose,
who now lifted up his voice in loud lamentations, howling for his white
friend until midnight. The king was weary and longed for sleep. Search was
made for Henry, and at midnight the child was sent to him, as he says "to
still; for none could quiet him so well as myself."
The king, having had a good night's rest, was up early next morning to
interview Henry, and to assure him that no evil intent was cherished
against him, that his "Queene" was all right, that everybody loved him,
and none should hurt him; his Majesty content, as we all can understand,
to eat a good bit of humble-pie rather than lose a good nurse! "I was loth
to goe with him," says Henry, "and at my cumminge the Queene looked but
discontentedly at me, but I had the Kinge's promise and cared ye less for
others frownes." There is something very pathetic in the boy's narrative.
He was the son of an eminent scholar, Sir Henry Spelman, but, impatient
of restraint, had run away from a comfortable English home, and here
he was in the great wilderness, soothing the hunger of his heart in the
companionship of a savage baby.
The Indian knew no means of providing for the future, except the
husbanding, in great baskets, of his corn, drying persimmons on hurdles
and oysters on strings. He never herded wild cattle or tamed the wild
turkeys. Each season Nature brought of her abundance to these her
untutored children, fish, game, fruits, melons, and in the hardest times
acorns and roots. When famine seemed imminent, they would migrate in
great companies to hunt the deer, the women going before, bearing on their
backs mats, household utensils, skins for bedding, and even poles for the
temporary huts. They would stake out the camp and make all ready for the
men. Then in leisure hours the young maidens, round, pretty creatures with
small hands and feet, would freshly paint themselves a brilliant red, and
seated at the door of the sylvan arbour watch the young braves,--heavy,
thick-lipped, thick-nosed fellows, but active and straight-limbed;
magnificent and terrible in skins decorated with the dried hands of their
enemies, claws of beasts and birds; and with green and yellow snakes
thrust alive through their ears,--while they practised shooting arrows
at a mark. The straightest, surest marksman would find no trouble in
winning the prettiest maiden. Pretty maidens, all the world over, have
realized that they needed game, furs, pearls, and copper. The arrow won
them in 1607 as surely as a _coup_ in Wall Street or in trade wins them
in 1907. The comment of our historian seems to us as reasonable as it is
quaint: "Every man in tyme of hunting will strive to doe his best, for
thereby they wyn the loves of their women, who will be sooner contented
to live with such a man by the readyness and fortune of whose bow they
perceave they are likely to be fedd well, especially of fish and flesh;
for indeed they be all of them huge eaters, and these active hunters by
their continuall ranging and travell do know all places most frequented
and best stored with deare or other beasts, fish, fowle, roots, fruits,
and berries."
The Indians, like all barbarous people, danced to some kind of metrical
sound, either from a cane on which they piped as on a "recorder," or
drums stretched over hollow bowls or gourds, or rattles contrived from
shells. These accompanied the voice in "frightful howlings." They had
also "amorous ditties," and scornful songs inspired by their hatred of
the English. The historian Strachey gives a copy, in the Indian language,
of one of these, of four stanzas,--not rhyming but metrical, in which
they not only exult over the men they had killed in spite of our guns,
but they tell how Newport had never deceived them for all his presents
of copper and the crown for Powhatan; and how they had continued to kill
and take prisoners, "Symon" and others, for all their bright swords and
tomahawks, ending each verse with the chorus or cry, "Whe, whe! yah, ha,
ha! Tewittawa Tewittawa!" expressive of scornful, mocking exultation.
The Indian women, unless frantically insane from revenge, were tender and
gentle, especially to children. George Percy witnessed one of the horrible
sacrifices, when the women themselves with tears and lamentations gave
their babes up to the priests. The dead children were cast in a heap in a
valley, and the poor women returned, singing a funeral dirge and weeping
most bitterly. They were faithful, poor souls, to the instincts of nature.
Surely life held small compensation for them. A nurse was once captured,
and ordered to reveal the hiding-place of her foster-child, now her
mistress, or suffer death. She chose the latter, and her mistress escaped.
Vindictive and merciless as was Powhatan, he had his tender emotions and
even caressing words for his daughters.
But for the massacre of 1622 much might have been said in praise of the
Indian. That event proved that no kindness, no confidence, could eradicate
his deep-rooted hatred of the white man. For years he kept the secret of
the promised universal butchery, and rose as one man at the appointed
hour. He gloated over the mangled corpses, insulting, spurning, and
mutilating them, sparing none, not even the devoted missionary, Thorpe,
who was giving to their welfare, comfort, and instruction all his life
and energy. That massacre settled the fate of the Virginia Indian, and
yet to a Virginia Indian the colony at Jamestown was indebted for its
preservation. Chanco, whose master "treated him as a son," was visited on
the eve of the massacre by his own brother, with whom he slept that night.
The dreadful secret of the impending slaughter of every white man, woman,
and child was confided to Chanco, with the command of the chief as to his
own part therein. He was to rise at daybreak and not later than eight in
the morning murder his master and all his household! The brother then went
on his way with similar orders to the Indians residing near the settlers.
Chanco immediately awoke his master, and warning was given in time to save
Jamestown.
CHAPTER VIII
As Newport had settled his men on land owned by the Paspaheghs, that
tribe was the first to hold intercourse with the colonists. Before the
landing, when Captain Newport was exploring the river, the chief, or
"werowance," of the Paspaheghs had come down to the bank playing on a
flute made of reed to welcome him. His body was painted all over with
crimson puccoon,[17] his sole garment a chain of beads around his neck,
and bracelets of pearl on his arms. His face was painted blue, besprinkled
with shining powder, which Newport's men mistook for silver. A bird's
claw was in each ear and feathers in his hair. We can imagine him piping a
welcome to the wonderful white man whom he had not yet been commanded by
the great Emperor Powhatan to hate. He could utter but two intelligible
words, one, "wingapoh," with gestures which interpreted the word to mean
"friends"; and his own name, "Wochinchopunck"; but he made the Englishmen
understand that he desired to entertain them at his own "palace," and
conducted them thither with great ceremony, through "fine paths[18] having
most pleasant springs which issued from the mountains, and through the
goodliest cornfields ever seen in any country. Arrived at the palace"
(which is not described), "he received them in a modest, proud fashion, as
though he had been a prince of civil government, holding his countenance
without laughter or any such ill-behaviour. He caused his mat to be spread
on the ground where he sate down with a great majesty." How little could
he foresee a not distant day when he would fiercely resent the intrusion
upon his own land--land to which he now welcomed the strangers with
every gesture and expression of friendship, and yet another day when the
avenging sword of the Englishmen would reach his own heart!
A week later the colonists were busy clearing their ground, strengthening
their half-moon barricade of brushwood, laying off ground for corn and
vegetables, making seines for catching fish, felling trees and shaping
them (with only axes and hand-saws) into clapboards for freighting the
returning vessels, when they were visited by two great savages "bravely
drest" in the lightest possible summer attire--for the weather in May is
extremely warm in lower Virginia--wearing nothing whatever except crowns
of coloured deerskin. I often marvel at the long discourses which our
historians record as having occurred in the first days of their residence,
remembering that there were no interpreters, that the Indian language is
unlike any other, ancient or modern, upon the globe, and that the sign
language of a savage must have been unimaginable to an educated Briton.
However, these two "bravely drest savages" conveyed the information that
they were "messengers from the Paspaheghs, and that their Werowance
was coming" and would "be merry" with them "with a fat Deare"! As the
Englishmen had quietly settled themselves without leave or license upon
land owned by this prince, the suggestion of a surprise party bringing
its own refreshments must have been reassuring.
A few days later the werowance, Wochinchopunck, arrived, with one hundred
armed men at his back, guarding him in a very warlike manner with bows
and arrows; "thinking," says George Percy, "at that time to execute their
villany." The chief made great signs to the Englishmen to lay aside their
arms, but finding that he was regarded with some suspicion, he desisted
and made pacific gestures of good will, indicating that they were quite
welcome to the land they had taken. But unfortunately, while this was
going on one of his men contrived to steal a hatchet from one of the
Englishmen, who detected him in the act and struck him over the arm.
A fight was imminent, and the colonists took to their arms, which the
werowance perceiving, he went away with all his company in great anger,
leaving, we trust, the fat deer done to a turn on a spit before the
camp-fire.
But curiosity prevailed over distrust, and in a few days the same
werowance "sent fortie of his men with a Deere, but they came," says
Percy, "more in villany than any love they bare us. They faine would have
layne in our Fort all night but wee would not suffer them for feare of
their treachery."[19]
The Indian is proud and vain, and when the Paspaheghs saw our wonderful
firearms, they were filled with envy. Unerring aim with bow and arrow is
the Indian's great accomplishment, learned by practice from infancy. When
the Indian woman prepared breakfast for her children, she sent her boys to
practise at a mark, and the smallest boy knew he could have none unless he
had shot well. One of the Paspaheghs observed that a pistol bullet failed
to penetrate a thick target, and proudly "took from his back an arrowe
an elle long, drew it strongly to his Bowe and shot the Target a foote
through and better." An Englishman then set up a steel target; the Indian
shot again and shivered his flint arrow-head into pieces. He pulled out
another, bit it savagely with his teeth, seemed to fall into great anger,
and went away in a rage, a pathetic instance of the wounded pride of the
poor savage.
On[20] the 4th of June, Newport, Smith, and twenty others were despatched
to discover the head of the river on which they had planted themselves.
The natives everywhere were delighted to exchange their bread, fish,
and strawberries for the wonderful things Newport gave them, needles and
pins, bells, small mirrors, and beads, and they followed him all the way
from place to place. At last they reached a town of twelve wigwams called
Powhatan. It was situated on a bold range of hills overlooking the river,
with three islets in front. This spot, on which a colonial mansion was
afterward erected, is still known as Powhatan.
The voyagers were in every way delighted with the river. Percy says,
"This River[21] which wee have discovered is one of the famousest Rivers
that ever was found by any Christian." "They were so ravisht with the
admirable sweetnesse of the streame and with the pleasant land trending
along on either side that their joy exceeded, and with great admiration
they praised God."
On a high hill was the habitation of the great "King Pawatah"[22] (a son
of Powhatan). There, on Whitsunday, they feasted the king, giving him
beer, aqua vitæ, and sack, and making him so ill he feared he had been
poisoned. They also "saw a Savage Boy about the age of ten yeeres which
had a head of haire of a perfect yellow and a reasonable white skinne."
Was this a descendant of Ellinor Dare, or some other of the lost colony?
Alas, nobody inquired.
Leaving "Pawatah" very drunk, Newport visited one of the islets at the
mouth of the falls in the river, where Richmond now stands, and there
erected a cross with this inscription, JACOBUS REX, 1607, and his own
name beneath. They then prayed for their King, for their own prosperous
success in his service, and proclaimed his majesty King of the country
"with a greate showte." Of course the Indians wished to know the meaning
of all this, but they were satisfied with the explanation that the upright
staff connected and bound in friendship the two arms: one the English, the
other the Indian nation. That night Newport returned to the sick king,
and found him still suffering and attributing his "greefe" to the "hot
drinks," but he was all right next morning.
The personal accounts of this pleasant excursion are all interesting. The
adventurers turned their faces homeward full of hope, and much refreshed
and reassured by the apparent kindness of the natives. But just here they
learned their first lesson of savage perfidy. There is very little doubt
that the King Powhatan had commanded an assault upon Jamestown, while its
force was weakened by Newport's absence. Two hundred Indians had attacked
it fiercely, killed one boy, and wounded seventeen men, including the
greater part of the Council. During the assault a cross-bar shot from one
of Newport's little vessels had struck down a bough of a tree among the
assailants and caused them to retire, but for which all the settlers would
probably have been massacred, as they were, at the time of the attack,
planting corn and without arms. Wingfield, who had contended that the
Indians might be suspicious and estranged if the fort were palisaded, now
consented to put it in fighting order, with cannon mounted and men armed
and exercised. From that time attacks and ambuscades on the part of the
natives were frequent. The English, by their careless straggling, were
often wounded, while the fleet-footed savages easily escaped.
Newport was now about to return to England. All this time John Smith had
been under a cloud of suspicion. His enemies had never slept. They now
proposed, affecting pity, to refer his case to the Council in England
rather than overwhelm him on the spot by an exposure of his criminal
designs; but he defied their malice, defeated their base machinations,
and all saw his innocence and the malignity of his enemies. Says Thomas
Studley, "He publicly defied the uttermost of their cruelty. Hee wisely
prevented their pollicies, though he could not suppresse their envies."
He demanded trial at Jamestown,--there was the charter,--and in this,
the first trial by a jury of his countrymen in the new home, he was
triumphantly acquitted, and a fine enacted from his enemies, which he
turned over to Studley for the good of the colony. "Many[23] were the
mischiefs that daily sprong from their ignorant (yet ambitious spirits),
but the good doctrine and exhortation of our preacher Maister Hunt
reconciled them and caused Captain Smith to be admitted to the Council."
The next day all received the Communion. The day following some of the
savages voluntarily desired peace, and tendered their friendship and
support as allies. On June 21 Captain Newport dined with the colonists,
partaking of their "dyet from the common Kettell," and on the 22d, "having
set things in order he set saile for England, leaving provision for 13 or
14 weeks."
CHAPTER IX
Captain Newport found the friends of the colony eager for news from
Virginia. He had brought over the first mail from America--a small
package of letters which he could easily bestow in one of his pockets.
He represented, in his own person, our entire Foreign Postal Service. The
mail was small, but important. It contained a "Relatyon of the Discovery
up the James River," and letters to Prince Henry, to his Majesty's Prime
Minister, and other persons of authority.
Virginia had few presents to send home, only the clapboards, a barrel
of yellow earth (afterwards irreverently termed "Fool's Gold"), and a
very small sample of real gold, the result of the experiments of John
Martin, who was supposed to possess skill as a mineral expert. Was he not
the son of Sir Richard Martin, Master of the Mint in England? Practical
experience might surely be expected of him. The letters contained the most
enthusiastic praise of the new country--of the grand river, the trees,
fruits, flowers; "such a land as did never the eye of man behold, with
rocks and mountains that promised infinite treasure."
Such representations were in accordance with the policy of the colonists
to encourage immigration. Nothing was said in these early letters of
privation or anxiety for the future; nothing of any scheme for the
conversion of the heathen. Master Hunt doubtless wrote to his bishop,
but a discouraging letter was sure to be suppressed. Sir Walter Cope, a
member of the Council, received Newport's report, and wrote to the Earl
of Salisbury:[24]--
"RIGHT HONOURABLE MY GOOD LORD:
"If we may believe words or letters we are fallen upon a land
that promises more than the land of promise. Instead of milk we
find pearl--and gold instead of honey. There seems a kingdom full
of the ore. You shall be fed by handfuls or hatfuls!...
"To prove there is gold your Lordship's eyes I hope shall
witness. To prove there is pearl the King of Pamont[25] came with
a chain of pearl about his neck, burnt through with great holes
and spoiled for want of the art to bore them and shewed the shells
from whence they were taken. Pohatan, another of their kings, came
stately marching with a great pair of buck's horns fastened to
his forehead, not knowing what esteem we make of men so marked."
It seemed that the poet's dream of "pearle and gold" was already realized,
but unfortunately a few days later Sir Walter was constrained to write
another letter to Cecil:--
"SIR:
"It hath ever been incident to the Secretary's place to receive
with the same hand both the good and the bad news. This other day
we sent you news of gold, and this day we cannot return you so
much as copper. Our new discovery is more like to prove the land
of Canaan than the land of Ophir. This day we seal up under our
seals the golden mineral till you return. We have made four trials
by the experienced about the city. In the end all turned to vapor.
Martin hath cozened the poor Captain" (Newport), "the King and
State, and meant as I hear to cozen his own father" (the Master
of the Mint), "seeking to draw from him supplies which otherwise
he doubted never to obtain"--
by which token we can better understand John Martin's mistakes.
When the Council met, it was seriously discussed whether so unpromising a
venture should not be abandoned. But there was the country, so fruitful
and delightful; and here at court was Zuñiga, the Spanish ambassador,
urging its abandonment. Here, too, was Captain Newport, refusing to
relinquish the enterprise and stoutly adhering to his first opinion, that
gold would finally reward their search.
The fate of the colony hung upon a slender thread, but finally the
president of the Council informed Cecil that they had decided to send
Newport out again with one hundred settlers and "all necessaries to
relieve them that be there," hoping to arrive the next January, and taking
out with his ship a "nymble Pinnace" in which to return quickly and make
report.
The advice of the King could not be had. He was away at Theobald's for the
August shooting, and woe to that man who should interrupt him! Zuñiga's
ears were wide open to the news from Virginia, and he wrote to the King
of Spain: "It is very desirable that your Majesty make an end of the few
who are now in Virginia, as that would be digging up the Root so it could
put out no more. It will be serving God and your Majesty to drive these
villains out from there, hanging them in time which is short enough for
the purpose."
Philip III wrote regularly to his minister, agreeing with him, but doing
nothing. The Spanish Council of State advised the King instantly to
make ready a fleet "and forthwith proceed to drive out all who are in
Virginia," and this, they argued, "will suffice to prevent them from again
coming to the place."
After the resolution of the London Council, Zuñiga again urges Philip: "I
hear that three or four ships will return to Virginia. _Will your Majesty
give orders that measures be taken in time:_ because now it will be very
easy; and very difficult afterwards when they have taken root. If they are
punished in the beginning the result will be that no more will go there."
But Philip was disposed to take his own time--overruled by that Providence
which brought us safely through so many perils. He had his own private
schemes. A princess of England was growing up, and he meant to ask her
hand in marriage.
Finally he agreed that the colonists were to be driven out, but the thing
must be done secretly. Zuñiga continued to be his faithful spy, reporting
every step taken by the London Council. It was Zuñiga, we remember,
who was sent to London a few years afterwards to ask for the Princess
Elizabeth.
Before we return to the little colony, happily unconscious of its
many enemies, we must be allowed one more of the letters incident upon
Newport's return. All of them are extremely interesting as illustrative
of the time, but we must not pause too long in our history--a history so
rich in events that it is difficult to choose the most important.
The letter is dated August 18, 1607, and informs John Chamberlain that--
"Captaine Newport is come from our late adventures to Virginia,
having left them in an Island in the midst of a great river 120
mile into the land. They write much commendation of the aire and
the soile and the commodities of it: but silver and golde have
they none, and they cannot yet be at peace with the inhabitants
of the country. They have fortified themselves and built a small
towne which they call 'Jamestowne,' and so they date their
letters; but the towne methinks hath no gracefull name, and
besides the Spaniards, who think it no small matter of moment how
they stile their new populations, will tell us, I doubt, it comes
too neere 'Villiaco.'
"Master Porie tells me of a name given by a Dutchman who wrote
to him in Latin from the new towne in Virginia, 'Jacobopolis,'
and Master Warner hath a letter from Master George Percie who
names their town, 'Jamesfort,' which we like best of all the rest
because it comes neere to 'Chemes-ford.'
"Yours most assuredly,
"DUDLEY CARLETON."
The "small towne" was a bit of prophetic imagination. Up to the hour of
Newport's sailing the colonists had been employed, with infinite labour
and toil, in felling trees and hewing them into clapboards for freighting
the two returning ships, the _Goodspeed_ and _Susan_ (or _Sarah_)
_Constant_. The _Discovery_, a little pinnace of twenty tons, was left
behind for the use of the colony, in case of flight from the savages. It
is wonderful, in view of ensuing events, that the colonists did not at
once reëmbark in the pinnace and seek some healthier spot for the proposed
town. The river--the "famousest river in Christendom"--seems to have held
them with a strange fascination.
There was absolutely no dwelling of any kind erected during the
summer.[26] Some of the settlers slept in holes in the ground, roofed with
rails. A rough palisade had been made of boards, and rude cabins covered
with sail cloth sheltered the ammunition and stores. The first church
was a log between two trees to serve as a lectern, and a rotten sail was
stretched overhead in case of rain; for in all weathers, rain or shine,
the good Master Hunt ministered to his flock, morning and evening, leading
them in supplication for protection to Almighty God; and from an unhewn
log as an altar, administered to them the holy emblems of the Christian
faith.
Before the men could begin to build comfortable quarters, they were
smitten with illness, which continued until September. More than half of
their number perished. The story is told so well by George Percy that I
will be pardoned for giving it in his own words:--
"Our men were destroyed with cruell diseases, as Swellings, Flixes,
Burning Fevers, and by warres; and some departed suddenly; but for the
most part _they died of meere famine_!
"There were never Englishmen left in a foreigne Country in such miserie as
wee were in this new discovered Virginia. Wee watched every three nights,
lying on the bare, cold ground, what weather soever came; and warded all
the next day; which brought our men to bee most feeble wretches. Our
food was but a small Can of Barlie sodden in water to five men a day.
Our drinke, cold water taken out of the River; which was at a flood verie
salt; at a low tide full of slime and filth; which was the destruction of
many of our men.
"Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distresse,
not having five able men to man our Bulwarkes upon any occasion. If it
had not pleased God to put a terrour in the Savages hearts, we had all
perished by those wild and cruell Pagans, being in that weake estate as
we were; our men night and day groaning in every corner of the Fort most
pitifull to heare. If there were any conscience in men, it would make
their harts to bleed to heare the pitifull murmurings and outcries of
our sicke men without reliefe; every night and day for the space of six
weekes; some departing out of the Worlde, many times three or foure in
a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their Cabines like
Dogges to be buried. In this sort did I see the mortalities of divers of
our people."
Among those who perished was our friend, Thomas Studley, the "Cape
Merchant," and another was Elizabeth's brave mariner, Bartholomew Gosnold,
the projector of the enterprise, and one of the Council. How strange
that he should, after his many voyages, have so eagerly insisted upon
this colonization of Virginia, to find there his own grave--far away
from the England whose honour he loved so ardently! His unhappy comrades
did what they could. Smitten with fever and weakened by starvation,
they bore him to his humble grave, reverently and decently, "having all
ordinance of the fort shot off, with many vollies of small shot." Thus
old Virginia received her first-born into her bosom! She lovingly holds
him there still. We can imagine these scenes, softened by the faithful,
untiring care of Thomas Walton, the surgeon, and the priestly offices and
consolations of good Master Hunt.
It seems unthinkable that England should have so starved her colony. In
Elizabeth's reign the narrow, selfish charter and the meagre outfit would
have been impossible. All things were possible to James that could in
any way contribute to his own self-aggrandizement. Bitter as was the lot
of the unhappy adventurers, they were too manly to complain. "When some
affirm," says a historian of the time,[27] "that it was ill done of the
Council to send forth men so badly provided, this incontradictable reason
will show them plainly they are ill-advised to nourish such ill conceits:
first, the fault of going was our own, what could be thought fitting or
necessary we had; but what we should find or want or where we should be,
we were all ignorant, and supposing to make our passage in two months,
with victuall to live, and the advantage of the spring to work; we were
at sea five months where we both spent our victuall and lost the time
and opportunity to plant by the unskilful presumption of our ignorant
transporters that understood not at all what they undertook. Such actions
have ever since the world's beginning been subject to such accidents
and everything of worth is found full of difficulties; but nothing so
difficult as to establish a commonwealth so far remote from men and means
and where men's minds are so untoward as neither to do well themselves
nor suffer others."
The closing sentence was a very mild commentary indeed upon the state of
things at Jamestown. The miniature republic--for such it rapidly grew to
be in nearly everything except in name--held within its borders just the
elements that distinguish the great republic of to-day: some noble spirits
with high aims and fervent patriotism; some sordid souls intent alone on
gain; some unprincipled, desperate characters; others simply useless,
idle, and ignoble. Of the latter class, the President, Wingfield, was
notably conspicuous. It was evident, from the first, that he was utterly
unfit for his position. One of the earliest efforts of the convalescents
was to get rid of him.
The store held in common, of "oyle, vinegar, sack and aqua vitæ," being
nearly all spent, the Council ordered that the sack should be reserved
for the Communion table, and all the rest sealed up against greater
extremities--if there could be greater. John Smith accused Wingfield of
using the reserved stores for his own benefit and that of his friends.
Wingfield soon appeared in his true character, and added cowardice to
incapacity. He made an effort to seize the pinnace and escape to England,
thus leaving the colony to the mercy of the savages. This baseness
roused the indignation even of the emaciated survivors, and they deposed
him and appointed Captain Ratcliffe in his place. Wingfield's defence,
addressed to his government, now preserved among the manuscripts of
Lambeth Palace Library, is a curious mixture of dignified, not to say
lofty, sentiments--for all the colonial writers used a formula of pious
aspiration--and of fierce invective and very petty unworthy gossip; but
if England has seen fit to preserve it all, we may quote a representative
part of it.
He attributes many of his misfortunes to John Smith, others to Master
Archer. His old enemy, Master Crofts--whom we remember as having thriven
so well upon the precious preserves and conserves prepared for Wingfield's
voyage--comes well to the fore in the long discourse addressed to the
Council in England. "Master Crofts feared not to saie that, if others
would joyne with him, he would pull me out of my seate and out of my
skynne too." He could hardly have threatened more, but this was not all:
"I desired justice for a copper kettle which Master Crofts did deteyne
from me. Hee said I had given it him; I did bid him bring his proofe of
that. He confessed he had no proofe. Then Master President [Ratcliffe] did
aske me if I would be sworne I did not give it to him. I said I knew no
cause whie to sweare for myne owne. He asked Master Crofts if hee would
make oathe I did give it to him which oathe he tooke and wann my kettle
from me, that was in that place and tyme worth half its weight in gold."
He protests against the charge of using the "oyle, vinegar, and aqua
vitæ." "It is further said I did deny the men and much banquet and ryot
myself. I allowed a Bisket to every working man for his breakfast by means
of provision brought by Captain Newport. I never had but one squirrell
roasted whereof I gave part to Master Ratcliffe then sick; yet was that
Squirrell given me. I did never heate a fleshe-pott but when the common
pott was so used likewise," and much more to the same purpose. The matter
resulted in the impeachment of the President and appointment of Ratcliffe
to fill his unfinished term of office. Kendall also, a prime aider and
abettor of the deposed President, was "afterwards committed about hainous
matters which was proved against him."
And so the fifty colonists had their troubles at home and abroad, but they
held on bravely notwithstanding.
For some mysterious reason the Indians ceased to molest them, possibly
because their own great harvesting time was at hand, and also the hunting
season for more profitable game than a few starved Englishmen. However
that may be, they still had their eyes on the intruders, and in order
to enter their fort appeared with a present of "Bread, Corne, Fish and
Flesh in great plentie." Thus the representatives of the proudest nation
on earth suffered the humiliation of becoming pensioners upon the bounty
of savages whose country they had invaded, and whose land they had taken
without purchase or permission.
That there was no true friendship is evident from the fact that John
Smith, going down the river in search of supplies, was received at a
little town with scornful defiance, to which he replied by a volley of
musketry. Following up his advantage, he landed and captured "Okeus," the
god of the Powhatans, and bestowed him, with all his stuffing of moss and
his copper chains, on board the shallop. The terrified Indians, expecting
the sky to fall should Okeus be displeased, immediately ransomed his
Sacredness with a good store of venison, wild fowl, and bread.
Nothing can exceed the plenty in southern Virginia which swarms in sea and
air in the months of October and November. The splendid solan-goose, sora,
wild ducks, and wild turkey were found in 1607 in even greater plenty
than at the present day. No Thanksgiving dinners had thinned their ranks.
The rivers literally swarmed with fish. These were all at the command
of the settlers. Of corn for bread there was always scarcity--but surely
Newport had not forgotten them! They would boil the roots and gather the
persimmons until he came. Then, too, some of the disturbers of the peace
had been silenced. Kendall had been tried by a jury and shot; Ratcliffe
and Archer had attempted to steal the pinnace, and been foiled by Smith's
vigilance and resolution.
The helm of affairs had been intrusted to John Smith as Cape Merchant, and
he now took the lead. His strong hand was soon recognized in the colony.
He set the colonists to work and worked with them, mowing, building, and
thatching log cabins,--he himself always performing the heaviest tasks. In
a short time shelter was provided for all,--now numbering only forty-five
individuals,--and a church was built on the site to which pilgrims now
resort as to a Mecca.[28] It was not an imposing structure, but it was
a regular church. The chronicles describe it as a log building, covered
like the cabins with rafts, sedge, and dirt. Thus the Virginians,--despite
their enemies, barbarian and Spanish,--with all their conflicts, illness,
and death, had made a good beginning. They had felled trees, built houses,
and erected a church, and were saying their prayers in it, like honest
people who were bent on doing their duty in that state of life in which
it had pleased Heaven to place them.
CHAPTER X
The month of December found the colonists anxiously apprehensive of
starvation during the ensuing winter, a winter which was long remembered
in Europe as one of unprecedented severity.
Newport had been for many weeks overdue. The weather was already bitterly
cold. A great central camp-fire was kept burning, day and night, which
they fed from the limbs of the trees they had felled in building their
fortifications, church, and humble cabins. Over this fire hung the "common
kettle," lately redolent with savoury odours of venison and wild fowl, but
now relegated to its original uses,--the boiling of barley in the grain.
Of this only a small portion remained. Captain Smith had carefully laid up
some of the autumn's plenty, and "the idlers had as carelessly wasted it."
Finding upon measurement that only "fourteen daies victualls were left,"
he sallied forth to tempt the Tappahannocks[29] to trade, sending Captain
Martin to the nation of the Paspaheghs on a similar errand. They found
the Indians of those tribes sulky and reluctant, at that scarce season,
to part with their provisions, but they managed to secure from kindlier
sources seven hogsheads of corn.
The "idlers" now began to murmur because no effort had been made to
explore the country; and complained that the royal order to go in search
of the "South Sea"--that sea which was to open to them the riches of the
East--had not been obeyed. The great sea perhaps lay not far distant.
Communication with it would be found, they had heard, through some river
running from the northwest. There was the Chickahominy flowing in that
direction,--why was this river not explored?
Their number had now been so much reduced that they hesitated to send any
of their strong men far away from the fort. They remembered the fate of
the Roanoke colony. Perhaps, after all, they had better keep together,
antagonistic as was their attitude towards each other.
Plans were made and abandoned: to return to England or send thither for
supplies; to send to Newfoundland, or to the southern islands. Finally
they resolved to wait as long as possible, and hope for Newport's return.
Anxious eyes scanned the horizon from the moment the sun streamed up from
the sea in the east until he sank behind the mysterious hills in the west.
No sail appeared upon the silent waters. Perhaps they had been abandoned!
Perhaps Newport would never come!
But the frost and snow had already come. The birds had long ago sought
a warmer climate, and the fish would soon be locked in the ice-bound
streams. They durst not wander far enough away from the fort to track
the deer or capture the wild-fowl that abound in winter upon the Virginia
marshes. More than one of their number had ventured only a short distance
away, and been shot full of arrows. Wherever there was a tangle of grass,
or of thick-growing reeds, there would some savage lie in hiding with his
evil eye upon the hated white man.
Finally John Smith yielded to the complaints of the "idlers," and
taking Emry, Casson, and six others, set forth in a barge to "discover
up the Chickahominy river." They set out December 10, in a very severe
spell of cold weather, "to make the famous discovery of the great South
Sea," according to the orders of the London Council. The attempt in the
dead of winter to penetrate a country swarming with savage enemies was
extremely hazardous. In describing his perils and privations, Smith seems
constrained to apologize for the risk to which he exposed himself and his
party. "Though some men," he says,[30] "may condemn this too bould attempt
of too much indiscretion, yet if they will consider the friendship of
the Indians in conducting me" (his two guides), "the probability of some
lucke, and the malicious judges of my actions at home--as also to have
some matters of worth to incourage our adventures in england--might well
have caused any honest mind to have done the like, as well for his own
discharge as for the public good."
This voyage was destined to be an important event in the history of
the birth of our nation, and every step of it merits our attention and
interest.
Captain Smith spent about a month with the Indians and became thoroughly
acquainted with them in their own homes, observed their habits of domestic
life, their rites and ceremonies, and learned something of their strange
language. His residence was solely with the tribe of the Powhatans,
who inhabited the tide-water region of Virginia. Of the Indians in the
interior beyond the mountains he learned nothing except through vague
traditions. But for this voyage we should have lost the beautiful romance
so dear to the hearts of Virginians, and now so sternly challenged and
defended by the historians of the present day.
The barge or shallop proceeded about forty miles up the river without
interruption. At one point a great tree, which he cut in two, hindered the
passage. The land was low and swampy--"a vast and wilde wilderness." Many
years ago, before the days of steam-engines and railway cars, I traversed
this region in a high-swung old Virginia chariot; and the dark river,
coloured from juniper berries, the oozy swamps, the tangled undergrowth,
the rotting trees, with mottled trunks like great serpents, the funereal
moss hanging from the twisted vines, the slimy water-snakes, filled me
with childish fear. I saw it all as John Smith had seen it.
When at last the barge could advance no farther, he returned eight miles
and moored her in a wide bay out of danger. Leaving her in charge of all
his men except two, and taking an Indian guide with him, he went up the
river twenty miles in a canoe. He expressly ordered the men in the barge
not to land until his return. This order they disobeyed, being minded to
make some discoveries of their own. Two of the number left behind were
murdered in the most cruel manner by the savages. The others escaped,
and reached Jamestown in safety. "Having discovered," says Smith, "twenty
miles further in this desart, the river still kept his depth and breadth,
but was much more combred with trees. Here we went ashore, being some 12
miles higher than the barge had bene, to refresh ourselves during the
boyling of our victuals. One of the Indians I tooke with me to see the
nature of the soile and to cross the boughts [windings] of the river.
The other Indian I left with Maister Robinson and Thomas Emry, with their
matches lighted and order to discharge a peece for my retreat at the first
sight of an Indian."
Doubtless this Indian left behind betrayed the party. Doubtless every
step Smith took from the mouth of the Chickahominy was reported by the
spies of Powhatan. No warning shot was fired, and it afterwards appeared
that Robinson and Emry had been slain. Within a short time he heard the
savage war-whoop. His guide, a submissive, peaceful fellow, stood by
him; but Smith thought it unwise to trust in the fidelity of a savage,
and unbuckling one of his garters tied the Indian to his left arm as
a shield. The poor savage "offered not to strive." The two retreated,
walking backward, Smith firing all the way, hoping to reach the canoe;
but he was presently surrounded by two hundred savages with drawn bows.
The great chief Opechancanough was at their head. He writes: "My hinde
treated betwixt them and me of conditions of peace; he discovered me to
be the Captaine. My request was to retire to the boate: they demanded my
arms, the rest they saide were slaine, onely me they would reserve.
"My Indian importuned me not to shoot. In retiring, being in the midst
of a low quagmire and minding them more than my steps, I stept fast in
the quagmire and also the Indian. Thus surprised I resolved to trie their
mercies; my armes I caste from me, till which none durst approach me,
whereupon they drew me out and led me to the king."
[Illustration: Smith's Island, where John Smith was captured by the
Indians.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n.]
The Indians chafed his benumbed limbs and warmed him by their fire.
His old friend Wochinchopunck, king of the Paspaheghs, interceded for
his release, but he was taken into the presence of Opechancanough. He
presented the chief with a small compass. This incident is told in so
remarkable a manner by William Symondes, "Docteur of Divinitie," that I
venture to give it in his own words. He was the friend of "good Maister
Hunt," and his "Discoveries and Accidents" bore the _imprimatur_ of John
Smith's signature.
"They shewed him Opechakanough, king of Pamawnkee; to whom he gave a
round Ivory double compass Dyall. Much they marvailed at the playing of
the Fly and needle which they could see so plainly and yet not touch it,
because of the glasse that covered them. But when he demonstrated by that
Globe-like Jewell the roundness of the earth, and skies, the spheare of
the Sunne, Moone and Starres, and how the Sunne did chase the night round
about the world continually; the greatnesse of the Land and Sea, the
diversitie of Nations, varietie of complexions, and how we were to them
_Antipodes_ and many such like matters, they all stood as amazed with
admiration." If this address was really spoken as quoted, one cannot fail
to admire the courage and self-possession of a captive who could deliver
a comprehensive address, including land, sea, and the heavens, in a new
language, and in the most unfavourable circumstances that can well be
imagined. We dare not challenge the truth of the assertions. There is the
signature of the Docteur of Divinitie, the friend of good Maister Hunt!
There is the signature of Captain John Smith.
Presently the Indians bound him to a tree and were about to shoot him to
death when the chief, holding up the compass, commanded them to lay down
their bows and arrows. He had not fully understood the "cosmographicall
lecture," and he wished to have the mysterious needle, which he could
see and not touch, made clear to his comprehension. Besides, he was
fully persuaded that he held captive the white man's great commander,
and so important a personage must be brought before his king. Smith was
accordingly fed and refreshed, and they set out with him on a triumphal
march through the land of Powhatan. Marching in Indian file, they led
their captive, guarded by fifteen men, about six miles to a hunting town
in the upper part of the swamp, for this was a hunting party; their women
and children, according to their custom, had built their arbours covered
with mats, kindled the fires, and made ready for the hunters when they
should return laden with deer. All these women and children swarmed forth
to meet the hunters and stare at the strange white man. The chief was
in the finest spirits. He and his followers indulged in the wild Indian
dance of triumph, and their barbarous shouts reached the ears of Smith,
as he lay in the "long house," closely guarded, and trying to solve the
problem of their intentions with regard to himself,--seeing that they
sent him enough bread for twenty men, but refused to eat with him. Were
they fattening him for the sacrifice? Were they cannibals? Alas, he knew
not! "For supper," he writes, "the Captain sent me a quarter of venison
and 10 pounds of bread, and each morning 3 women presented me three great
platters of fine bread, and more venison than ten men could devour I had."
He might well dread, with Polonius, that he was to eat that he might be
eaten. True, William White, one of the boys brought out with the colony,
had run away, and lived among them six months, and had been returned
through some caprice. The boy had discovered they were "noe Cannabells."
Still their god, Okeus, might demand a human sacrifice; and who so
acceptable to the deity as the irreverent white man who had captured his
image but a short time before!
Opechancanough had deeper reasons for his clemency than the desire to
possess and understand the mariner's compass. He had long meditated an
attack upon Jamestown, and he now sought to entice Smith to join and aid
him. We read that he offered him life, liberty, and as many wives as he
wanted,--and although there were no interpreters, Captain Smith seems
to have understood him. Indian words go far--there are few of them. By
gesture, intonation, accent, the Indian can give to one word as much
meaning as an Englishman can express in half a dozen. It is a strange
language, this of the Powhatans, but it had one excellence: under no
circumstances could a dialect story be evolved from it!
The information of a projected assault upon Jamestown filled Captain
Smith with alarm. He managed to make Opechancanough understand that
presents would be sent to him if he could communicate with Jamestown,
and finally three men were placed at his disposal as messengers. Tearing
a blank leaf from the little book he carried, he wrote a note, probably
to George Percy, telling of the proposed assault, directing what means
should be used to terrify the messengers, and what presents should be sent
to placate his captors. Three naked savages set forth on his errand "in
as bitter weather as could be of frost and snow; and in three days they
returned with the presents to the wonder of them all that heard it, that
he could either divine, or the paper could speake." The colonists had
done their part. The messengers brought thrilling reports of the terrors
by which the fort was environed, the mines, and the monstrous guns,
exploding with infernal smoke, and belching with thunder. The attempt
upon the colony was abandoned for the present and the march resumed, no
doubt undertaken in the same spirit that inspired the Roman conquerors,
when they led their captives in triumph. The route of the procession was
arranged to gratify the curiosity of all the tribes who were on terms
of friendship with the chief. Their priests and conjurers were brought
to terrify the prisoner with their infernal incantations. Smeared with
oil and paint, begrimed with black and red, garbed in the skins of wild
beasts, they danced around him for three days, shaking snake-rattles
over his head with shrieks and howling, "as if," writes the "Docteur of
Divinitie,"
"neere led to hell
amongst the Devills to dwell."
The details of their orgies are too disgusting for repetition. No wonder,
as the captive tells us, he had hideous dreams! As our rhyming clergyman
hath it:--
"His wakynge mind in hideous dreams did oft see wondrous shapes
Of bodies strange and huge in growth and of stupendous makes."
But he preserved a bold front, this stout-hearted Briton, and for aught
his enemies knew to the contrary his courage never forsook him. They had
captured a bag of gunpowder in the barge, and he encouraged them to keep
it for the spring-sowing that it might yield an abundant crop like grain.
They returned his pistol, that he might instruct them in its use, but he
contrived to break the lock of the weapon as if by accident.
When near the end of their journey, they received an invitation from the
great chief, Opitchipan, Powhatan's brother and heir to the kingdom,
to spend a few days at his house. There a banquet was spread for the
prisoner, whether to impress him with a sense of the chief's grandeur, or
to strengthen him for enduring the fate that awaited him, we cannot tell.
Great platters of bread, venison, and wild fowl were spread before him,
"but not any one would eat with him." The fragments in every case were
collected in baskets and hung over his head while he slept, or feigned to
sleep, and if rejected a second time were given to the women and children.
At length, after a long journey by a circuitous route which brought him
within twelve miles of Jamestown, he was conducted to Werowocomoco, the
residence of the great Powhatan, situated on the north side of York River.
He was not immediately conducted into the presence of the emperor, but
remained for several days in the forest at some distance. His reception,
it appears, was to be the occasion of much pomp and ceremonial, far
exceeding anything he had yet seen. These despised palefaces, who wore
outlandish garments and hair on their faces, who could fire great guns
that battered down the limbs of trees, who had no wives of their own and
declined to accept them from others--these fellows should see how the
great Powhatan held his court. Kept in waiting, accordingly, the captive
was thronged by curious crowds who watched him from morning until night.
"Grim courtiers," he tells us, "more than two hundred, who stood gazing
as they had seen some monster."
CHAPTER XI
The Emperor Powhatan was now living at Werowocomoco, twelve miles
from Jamestown. This had been his favourite residence until the
arrival of the English, but he soon "tooke so little pleasure in their
neighbourhood--seeing they could visit him against his will in six or
seven hours--that he retired himselfe to a place in the desarts at the
top of the river Chickahomnia."
In all the countries which had come to him by inheritance he had houses
"built after the manner of arbours"--of saplings, thatched with boughs of
trees, and lined with mats. Some of these houses were a hundred and twenty
feet long, and at every house provision was kept for his entertainment
when it pleased him to make a royal progress through his dominions.
Besides these, he kept for his own use a treasury building at Orapakes,
filled with skins, copper, pearls, beads, bows and arrows, also a store
of the precious red paint, with which the ladies of his court adorned
themselves. At the four corners of this house were four images rudely
carved out of the trunks of trees--one represented a dragon, another a
bear, the third a leopard, and the fourth a man, signifying that the great
Emperor was lord of beast and man. Indeed, his power was absolute. He had
under him inferior kings of his own kindred, and all paid him tribute.
Eight of ten parts of everything they acquired--game, corn, skins, beads,
dye-stuffs, and the precious copper--were reverently laid at his feet. At
his least frown they trembled with fear, for cruel and ingenious he could
be in devising tortures for the punishment of those who offended him.
The arrow and the tomahawk were his most merciful agents in despatching
them. Before the door of his rural palace many a victim had been, in the
presence of his women and little children, flayed alive, dismembered by
degrees, thrown alive into a pit of fire.
On this fifth of January some such divertisement was keenly anticipated.
His family and retainers were awake early, and bustling about in
preparation for an unusual event.
There was to be a great gathering of the neighbouring
chiefs,--Opechancanough and Opitchipan, his brothers and successors, and
others. Early in the morning fires were kindled all over the settlement,
and before them haunches of venison were spitted for the slight roasting
deemed essential before the boiling, according to the invariable custom of
the Indians in preparing flesh and fowl. Beneath the fires flat rocks were
heating, to be withdrawn for the baking of bread. Some of the loaves were
laid in the ashes, as they are to-day by the Virginians, who are indebted
to the Indian, not only for his corn, but for his peculiar methods of
cooking it. Now, as then, the "hoe-cake" is baked before the fire, and
turned to brown on both sides; the homelier "ash-cake" is washed as soon
as withdrawn from its humble bed of ashes, and dries immediately from
its own heat. Now, as then, the Indian corn is beaten into "hominy," and
boiled for food. We have not lost its Indian name, nor the Indian's name
for the small loaf. He called it "pone"--where did he find a word so near
kin to the Latin _panis_ and the French _pain_?
Every morning men, women, and children ran down to the river and plunged
into the ice-cold water. There were no bathing-houses for an after-toilet.
They were unnecessary. Then, at the first peep of the sun, the entire
assembly would turn, with uplifted hands, eastward, and in a wild chant
of invocation worship the rising luminary, the men strewing the water with
powdered tobacco as sacrifice. The Indian, as we have seen, worshipped no
God of mercy! If God was good, why, then, it was unnecessary to placate
him by adoration or sacrifice. He feared and worshipped "Okeus." And he
also worshipped strength and force,--the fire that burned him, the water
that drowned him, the great mysterious orb that was the source of the
destroying fire.
When an Indian made a solemn oath, he laid one hand on his heart, raising
the other reverently to the sun. "These people," says Percy, "have a great
reverence to the Sunne above all other things; at the rising and setting
of the same they lift up their hands and eyes to the Sunne, making a
round Circle on the ground with dried Tobacco; then they begin to pray,
making many Devillish Gestures with a Hellish noise, foming at the mouth,
staring with their eyes, wagging their heads and hands in such a fashion
and deformitie as it was monstrous to behold." Thus they ever strove to
avert evil.
The settlement at Werowocomoco was a large one. Besides Powhatan's own
house with many rooms, there were houses or arbours for his bows and
arrows, and for his granaries, and stores of dried fish and venison.
He had ten or twelve wives, and a number of young women of inferior
position always in attendance upon him. He had many children around him:
Nantauquas, "the handsomest, manliest savage ever seen," and his brothers;
Matachanna, Pocahontas, and Cleopatre, and other princesses whose names do
not appear. Matachanna was married, or about to be married, to Tocomocomo,
"a wise and knowing priest." Pocahontas was a small maiden about ten
years of age; Cleopatre (where did Powhatan get the name Cleopatre?) was
destined to figure in history as soon as she reached the marriageable
age of twelve. None of these young people lived with their own mothers.
Powhatan never kept a wife after the birth of a child, but made a present
of her to some chief or captain. But he was extremely fond of his own
offspring, a sentiment which civilized man deems a high virtue, but which
is shared with keen intensity by savage man, and savage beast as well.
[Illustration: The Mirror in the Woods.]
Powhatan's favourite wife at this moment was Winganuskie, his favourite
child Pocahontas. She was doubtless a mischievous maiden, active,
adventurous, and daring. Strachey calls her "a wanton daughter of
Powhatan." We read, among other adventures, of her attempting to swim
across the Piankatank River, of her rescue by one of the Englishmen, and
the consequent gift by Powhatan of Gwynne's Island to the colony; of the
wild entertainment she devised and led for her friend, Captain Smith, all
before she was a year older than at the time of which we are writing.
She was small, slender, and graceful. Of her beauty a few years later,
my readers are able to judge for themselves from the authentic portrait
we present in this book. These, with all the other wives, and attendant
females of a more doubtful position, with Matachanna and Cleopatre, and
the minor princesses, made haste, upon coming up from their bath, to array
themselves for the coming ceremonies. They had no mirrors of polished
steel or glass, but the Indian woman must have been a very dense woman
indeed if she had failed to recognize and regard critically the picture
reflected in the pool or bowl of water. In their dark hair they fastened
pompons and aigrettes of white marabout feathers (down), after the manner
of modern dames. They painted themselves freshly with brilliant red
"puccoon," faces and all. On their arms above the elbow they had long worn
elaborate bracelets tattooed into the skin, and just below the knee were
others, quite as elaborate and quite as durable. On certain wider spaces
of their bodies were ornaments of similar material--lizards, serpents,
turtles, birds. All these their enlightened sisters wear in emeralds
and diamonds. The Indian could, however, rival her civilized sister in
pearls. Many chains of these hung from their necks--large, fresh-water
pearls--somewhat discoloured, it is true, by rude boring. They wore brief
aprons of skins, and moccasins on their feet. Besides these,--_rien de
tout_!
My chivalrous friend, John Esten Cooke, the Virginia historian, takes the
liberty, after the manner of latter-day society reporters, of arraying the
lady he describes according to his own taste. He has dressed Pocahontas
on the occasion of Captain Smith's reception in a robe of doe-skin, lined
with down from the breast of the wood pigeon, with coral ear-rings, coral
bracelets on wrists and ankles, and a white plume in her hair, the badge
of royal blood. Thus my friend saw her, casting his eyes backward two
hundred and seventy-five years; but John Smith, who saw her face to face,
has, in his picture of the scene which made her famous, presented her
clad in her own charms and in these alone. Before the age of thirteen,
the early historians[31] tell us, Indian children wore no garments.
Their mothers rubbed into their skins ointments which rendered them proof
against "certaine biting gnats such as the Greekes called _scynipes_ that
swarm within the marshe,"--our snipelike long-billed mosquitoes,--and
also against extremes of heat and cold. The paint-pot could furnish the
little maid with a new dress every day, if she desired it--red, white, or
even black! I am afraid the little princess whose statue is to adorn the
Jamestown Park, fared like the rest of her people, unless the severe cold
constrained her to encumber her active limbs with a "mantell of feathers."
When a loud shout announced the approach of the escort conducting the
distinguished prisoner, Powhatan made haste to put himself into position
to receive them. Forty or fifty of his tallest warriors stood without
and formed a lane through which the captive was conducted. Within, the
emperor was discovered lying in an easy Oriental fashion before a great
fire, and upon a dais a foot high covered with ten or twelve mats. "He[32]
was hung with manie chaynes of great Pearles about his neck, and covered
with a great covering of raccoon skins and all the tayles hanging by. On
either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each
side the house two rowes of men and behind them as many women with all
their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with
the white down of birds but every one with something; and a great chayne
of white beads about their necks. Powhatan held himself with such a grand
majesticall countenance as drave me into admiration to see such state in
a naked savage. He is of personage a tall, well-proportioned man with a
sower looke. His head is somewhat gray, his beard so thinne it seemeth
none at all. His age neare 60,[33] of a very able and hardy body to endure
any labour. This King will make his own robes, shooes, pots, bowes, and
arrows; and plant, hunt, or doe anything as well as the rest."
At the entrance of the escort with their captive all the people cheered
and shouted. The Queen of Appamatuck was ordered to bring him water to
wash his hands. Another queen offered a bunch of feathers to be used as
a towel. These ceremonies concluded, platters containing food were served
of which we may well believe he partook with an anxious heart. The rhyming
Docteur of Divinitie quaintly comments upon the situation:--
"They say he bore a pleasant shew
But sure his heart was sad
For who can pleasant be, and rest
That lives in fear and dread:
And having life suspected, doth
It still suspected lead."
After the dishes were removed, the captors stated their case in several
heated orations and then held with the emperor a long consultation.
Smith had ample time to look around him. He was always gentle to
children, giving back to them in the starving-time half the corn he
had been compelled to exact from their parents,--"the bravest are the
tenderest,"--and it may be that his eyes softened as they fell upon the
little Pocahontas so gravely silent and observant. She probably thought
him the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. At all events, when two
great stones were brought, and she saw the certain reënactment of scenes
to which she was familiar, she implored her father to spare his life, and
when he was dragged forth and his head laid upon the stones, she rushed
forward, gathered him into her arms, and laid her own head upon his.
[Illustration: "She rushed forward, and laid her own head upon his."]
The Indians are extremely superstitious. Anything contrary to nature,
as they saw nature,--such as madness or idiocy,--they construed into a
manifestation of supernatural agency. Evidently John Smith was destined
to be spared, and for the sake of the little maiden. To her service he
was accordingly assigned, "to make her bells, beads, and copper." He was
retained some days as the guest of the emperor, who soon put to him the
crucial question, "What was the cause of the coming of the Englishmen?"
Captain Smith must have had command, not only of his feelings but of the
Indian language. He quickly invented a plausible story.[34] He told the
emperor that being in a fight with the Spaniards (Powhatan's enemies)
and being overpowered, and almost forced to retreat, they had, because
of extreme weather, made for the shore, and landing at Chesapeake been
received with a flight of arrows. At Kequoghton,[35] however, the people
had been kind, and in an answer to their inquiry about fresh water, had
directed them up the river to find it. The pinnace had sprung a leak, and
they were forced to stay and mend her to be ready for Captain Newport when
he came to take them away.
But the shrewd old emperor was not satisfied. He had something more to
ask: Why had they gone up the river to the falls? That was not the way
to mend a pinnace or take on fresh water! The captain was ready with a
perfectly satisfactory reply. His father Newport, in that fight with the
Chesapeakes, had a child slain, whose death they intended to revenge. They
attributed the murder to the Monocans, the enemies of Powhatan, etc., etc.
"A lie," defined the Sunday-school boy in answer to a catechism question,
"is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in time of
trouble." Powhatan saw no reason to doubt the plausible statements of
Captain Smith, and entered upon a friendly discourse about the South
Sea and other matters of interest, the Monocans and tribes beyond the
mountains, and his own very great power and grandeur. His whilom captive
made good use of his opportunities, admired the greatness of Powhatan, and
flattered him into an avowal of friendship, with the promises of corn and
venison in return for hatchets and copper.
All this seems marvellous in view of the difficulty in understanding the
uncouth Indian tongue. But Captain Smith seems to have instructed himself.
He has been accused of colouring his narratives too highly, indeed, of
inventing some of them. For myself I admire him too much to concede more
than the _cum grano salis_, with which, alas, we daily and hourly season
much that we hear.
He has given us a practical illustration of his success in mastering the
language of the Powhatans. After a short list of Indian words, he has
given us a whole sentence, which doubtless he used on this occasion when
parting with Powhatan, and inviting him to send his daughter to visit
him. It is this: "Kekaten pokahontas patiaquagh niugh tanks manotyens neer
mowchick rayrenock audowgh," which means, "Bid Pocahontas bring two little
baskets, and I will give her white beads to make a chain."
The captain was not allowed to return to Jamestown without a further
trial to his nerves, and another opportunity of noting the family likeness
between kings. It must be remembered he saw all these fearful things at
night--but without the help, in Powhatan's camp, of sack or aqua vitæ.[36]
The night before he left, Powhatan caused him to be brought to a great
house in the woods, and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone.
Not long after, from behind a mat that divided the house, came the "most
dolefullest" noise that was ever heard. Presently Powhatan, who had hidden
(like King James behind the arras), appeared, painted more like a devil
than a man, and with two hundred men painted black like himself. After
sundry fearful contortions and wild antics,--seeing he could not smite
the captain dead with fear,--he expressed himself in a friendly manner,
and offered to be a father to him, and esteem him as he did his handsome
son Nantauquous, also to give him the country of Capahowsick in return
for two great guns and a grindstone.
I have told you this story as it was told by Captain Smith. "The Newes
from Virginia," which he wrote immediately upon his return to Jamestown,
contained no word of complaint of the Indians. On the contrary, it is
full of grateful appreciation of their kindness. Nor does it relate
the incident of Pocahontas as the saviour of his life! "The Newes from
Virginia" was carefully worded to encourage immigration. He could not
frighten away immigrants by stories of bloodthirsty savages; he could
not tell of the heroism of Pocahontas without revealing the fact of his
own imminent danger. He told the whole again and again afterward. None of
the early historians questioned it. All repeated, accepted, and admired
it,--Hamor, Strachey, and Stith, who read every written word, and knew
every tradition relating to the subject. The later historians--John
Burke, Bishop Meade, Gilmore Simms, Charles Campbell, and John Esten
Cooke--accept the story without any thought of questioning its truth. So
do James Graham and Edward Arber, in England. There seems to have been
no adverse suggestion until a few years ago. Those who incline to doubt
the truth of John Smith's story will be strengthened by reading Doyle's
"English Colonies in America," and "The First Republic," by Alexander
Brown. These are only a few of the writers _pro_ and _con_ upon this
interesting question. Melvin Arthur Lane in _The Strand_, London, August,
1906, thus bewails our possible loss of the beautiful romance: "For years
antiquarians and other iconoclasts--worthy men, no doubt, but terrible
shatterers of other men's ideals--have taken from us, one by one, the
historic objects of our love and scorn. Henry VIII, they tell us, was
a very good fellow, much less black than he was painted. Richard III
likewise was a perfect gentleman. He sent the little princes to the Tower
that he might be near them and take a kindly interest in their welfare, as
became such a benevolent uncle. Paul Jones, whom we have just reinterred
with great honour at Annapolis, is said by some people to have been the
bloodiest of pirates, most cruel of men. Captain Kidd may soon turn out
to have been a distributer of tracts, Columbus a lifelong landsman, and
Bluebeard a model of all the domestic virtues."
He might have made his list longer, and included George Washington and
many others whom we have been taught to honour and revere. John Smith,
like all strong characters, had good haters as well as devoted lovers. He
had the misfortune of living in an age which did not appreciate him. But
one must belong to the former prejudiced class, and be a very good hater
indeed, to believe him capable of weaving a romance "out of the whole
cloth," and retailing it in a dignified letter to his Queen; at a time,
too, when Pocahontas was at court and could herself have contradicted it.
It is not possible that the attendants upon Queen Anne's Court should have
been ignorant of the interesting feature in the letter from John Smith,
or failed to refer to it in conversing with Pocahontas and her husband.
Nor is it possible that the Christian woman would have assented, even by
silence, to a falsehood.
For myself, I see nothing improbable in her action. A reckless, impulsive
child will face dangers and take risks that appall those of mature years.
Nor was she the only Indian maiden who saved the life of her father's
enemy.[37] Hakluyt tells of "John Ortiz, who was captured in Florida in
1528. The Indian chief Ucita was about to have him put to death, but at
the intercession of an Indian princess, one of Ucita's daughters, his life
was spared. Again, when her father was about to sacrifice him to their
god (they being worshippers of the devil), the same maiden rescued him by
night and set him in the way to escape, and returned because she would not
be discovered." She would have been quite capable of daring even more had
she been a little child of ten or eleven years.
I do not believe Pocahontas was an inspired maiden, like Joan of Arc,
nor that she was actuated by purely lofty and unselfish motives. I
believe that she was a very ardent, impulsive child, fond of trinkets,
grateful for favours, absolutely uncontrolled, and with plenty of wild
Indian blood in her veins. Whether or no she saved John Smith's life,
she deserves our homage for her kindness in warning him of danger, in
rescuing Henry Spelman, in bringing food to the colonists during the hard
winter of 1608-1609. She knew John Smith for only sixteen months, and yet
in that brief time the two have occupied the stage to the exclusion of
many noble and good men, such is the eagerness with which we welcome the
romances that enliven the prosaic pages of history. She owes much of the
interest attending her life to the fact that the child of a savage should
be presented at court, and receive attention from the highest lords and
ladies in the land. The Beggar-maid was as nothing compared with her, and
Cophetua a very humdrum prince indeed beside Captain John Smith.
In his usual style, he was wont to repeat that but for her succour when
the colonists were starving, the enterprise would have probably come to
naught. The colonists were in worse condition two winters after John Smith
left them, and Pocahontas never entered Jamestown after he departed. The
colony did not "come to naught." God had planted it; and although it was
watered with blood and tears, forgotten often by its friends, constantly
threatened and devastated by its enemies, and more than once in peril
of utter extinction, it grew and prospered. Never was the prophetic
declaration that "a little one shall become a thousand and a small one
a strong nation," more wonderfully exemplified than in the planting and
rearing of this colony.
CHAPTER XII
The sun was just rising, on a frosty morning in February, when the
sentinels on guard at Jamestown challenged a company of Indians who
were seen defiling through the woods; and were answered by the shout
"wingapoh," on their part, and "friends" in a voice they knew. These
were the Indians sent by Powhatan to conduct Captain Smith to Jamestown.
Doubtless his heart swelled with grateful emotion at the sight of the
humble huts of the little town which meant home to him. He was joyfully
welcomed[38] back after his seven weeks' absence by all except Archer
and two or three confederates. Archer, who had been illegally admitted
into the Council, had now the audacity to indict Smith for the death of
Robinson and Emry, who were slain by the Indians on the Chickahominy,
claiming that he had led them into the snare which caused their death,
and should be executed, according to Levitical law.
The little town proved no city of refuge to the weary captain. True,
he had friends, but his enemies were stronger than his friends. The
turbulent, selfish, and ignoble were often in the majority in the
colony, and nothing short of the interposition of Providence could
have prevented their being in the ascendant as well. The miracle of its
enduring life lies in the fact that a mere handful of men were enabled,
through superhuman courage and patience, to overcome obstacles, the most
tremendous that ever confronted a company of adventurers.
In vain Captain Smith explained that Robinson and Emry had fallen victims
to their own imprudence, and neglect of his express orders. In vain was
he sustained by George Percy, Robert Hunt, and other true men. His story
was not believed by the men who had been his enemies from the hour he left
the shores of England; and now, on the day of his return, he was tried
and sentenced to be hanged the next day.
But the Divine Power that had guided him through so many difficulties
did not forsake him now in his extremity. Early in the night, as he
lay closely guarded, he heard shouts and signals all along the line of
sentinels. They had descried, in the moonlight, a ghostly sail on the
river, and Newport, the long overdue Newport, was coming in with the tide.
Probably Newport's first inquiry was for Wingfield, his second for John
Smith. Learning of their imprisonment, he indignantly released them
both,--Smith from the hands of the guard, and Wingfield from the pinnace,
where he was still in duress.
Smith now bethought himself of his promise to send guns and a grindstone
to Powhatan. His guides, with Powhatan's trusty servant, Rawhunt, were
still in the fort, without doubt amazed at the turn things had taken.
Smith now appeared, and conducting them to a spot where two demi-culverins
and a millstone were lying, gave them permission to carry them home to
their king. Of course such a formidable present could not be borne on
the men's shoulders. To give them an idea of the power of the guns, a
cannon was charged with stones and fired at the boughs of a tree. As
the icicle-laden branches came crashing down, the "savages took to their
heels," but presently returning, the captain loaded them with gifts for
Powhatan, his wives and children, and sent them on their way. Doubtless
Pocahontas had not forgotten to entrust to Rawhunt the two little baskets
for white beads to make her a chain.
Thoughtful men among the first settlers must have regarded Newport's
addition to their number with dismay. There were a few "labourers,"
a great many "gentlemen." A jeweller, a perfumer, two refiners, two
goldsmiths, and a pipe-maker were sent out to help subdue the wilderness!
There was not one soldier to aid in protecting the colony against an army
of savages. But there were six tailors! These professors of the fine arts
were evidently intended for the service of the "gentlemen."
Newport had brought stirring news, and we can imagine the eagerness
with which the homesick exiles listened. He had left England with two
vessels, but the _Ph[oe]nix_, well equipped with men and supplies, had
been separated from his ship in a storm, and he had reason to fear she
was lost. He could report the disappointment of the London Company at the
failure of the gold test, and their discontent that no immediate return
of value seemed likely to reward and reimburse them for all they had
adventured. Surely Newport had tarried in Virginia long enough to bring
home some treasure, some news of Raleigh's lost colony, or some hope of
finding the South Sea! His Majesty's subjects in the rich new land had
evidently been remiss. Of course, letters were received by Percy, Master
Hunt, and the "better class." Percy learned that his noble brother, the
Duke of Northumberland, was still with Sir Walter Raleigh, confined in
the Tower, and that London's learned and scientific men flocked thither
to be entertained by them. Will Shakespeare had written a new play, "King
Lear," and although the distinguished prisoners were not allowed to join
the ardent crowds at the Globe and Blackfriars, they could read and enjoy
the great master as well perhaps in their comfortable apartments in the
Tower, as in the "dingy pit under the smoking flambeaux." John Smith was
especially interested, as his own "fatal tragedies," he once complained,
"had been acted on the stage."
But the cream of Newport's news was the London gossip. What story could
he tell of the court? Was peace concluded with Spain? Was the Guy Fawkes
conspiracy forgotten? How did the new King promise, and what nobleman was
now in power? The answer to the latter was interesting. A young Scotchman
had broken one of his legs at a tilting in the King's presence, and had,
with this unfair starting, won more than halfway in the race to royal
favour. In one hour he had found all that is meant by the magic word
"favourite." He was poor, even beyond the limits of Scotch poverty, but he
was straight-limbed, well-favoured, strong-shouldered, and smooth-faced,
"with some sort of cunning and show of modesty." The King adored him,
loaded him with jewels and fair raiment, and conferred upon him the honour
of knighthood. People predicted (and truly) that Sir Robert Carr would
rise to be a peer of the realm. The highest dignitaries, Cecil, Suffolk,
and all, vied with each other which should most engage his favour.
When Lady Raleigh on her knees begged her king not to take her captive
husband's estate from her children, he replied, "I maun have the land! I
maun have it for Carr!"
[Illustration: King James and a Petitioner.]
As to the King, he was continuing to lead his life of indolence and ease,
hunting much of the time, and lying in bed the greater part of the day
when he had no amusement on hand. His subjects could but rarely gain
access to him. They lay in wait for him whenever he stirred abroad, and
thrust their "sifflications" into his unwilling hands, to be stuffed
unread into convenient pockets. He went so far as to say he would rather
return to Scotland than be chained to the Council table. He dressed in
fantastic colours and wore a horn instead of a sword at his side. His
queen, however, covered her plain person with jewels and behaved with no
more personal dignity than her husband. They were both extravagant beyond
precedent, squandering great sums upon their favourites and their own
pleasures, and always in want of money. Of course the king was cordially
hated by all except his sycophants and men like himself. His perpetual
refrain was, "I am the King! My subjects must honour and fear me." "Your
Queen Elizabeth," said Lord Howard, writing to Harrington, "did talk of
her subjects' love and affection, and in good truth she aimed well: our
King talketh of his subjects' fear and subjection, and herein I think
he doth well too--_as long as it holdeth good_"--all of which seemed a
fantastic fairy tale to his Majesty's starving exiles in Virginia. Some
of them, George Percy for example, felt the pressure of "sorrow's crown
of sorrow, remembering happier things," but there were others, always
present in the colony, and little better than cutthroats, who exulted
in the royal example, and who revelled in the license and freedom of the
remote province, safe from swift chastisement at the strong hands of the
English law. For these, strong hands, cruel hands, were sent out later.
At present, however, the coming of Captain Newport was the occasion of
feasting, trading with the sailors, and a general relaxation from all
labour.
Powhatan soon heard of Newport's arrival, and sent a present, with an
invitation to Werowocomoco. Newport returned his courtesy with presents,
and began to prepare the pinnace to visit him.
He was accompanied by Captain Smith and Master Scrivener, "a very wise,
understanding gentleman, newly arrived and admitted to the Counsell,"
and thirty or forty chosen men for their guard. But when they reached
the point on York River nearest the residence of Powhatan, a wholesome
fear of that potentate seized Newport. Would the savage king keep faith?
How about ambuscades, arrows, and tomahawks? What was the meaning of the
traplike contrivances over the small streams that must be crossed before
audience could be had of the monarch? Newport shook his head, and finally
Smith, who feared nothing, dead or living, volunteered, with twenty men,
to go ahead and "encounter the worst that can happen." To this Newport
gladly consented, and while he remained beyond range of arrow-shot in
the pinnace with half the escort, Smith set out with his "twenty shot,
armed in Jacks"--_i.e._ quilted jackets then in use which afforded
partial protection against Indian arrows. A novel way this, to accept a
house-party invitation to a palace!
Powhatan received Smith with a great show of rejoicing and state. He had
much to say to his former captive. "Where is your father [Newport], and
where are the guns and grindstone you promised?" Satisfactory answers
being ready for these questions, he proceeded to promise Smith corn,
wives, and land, provided the twenty men then present would lay their
arms at his feet, as did his subjects. "I told him," said the Captain,
"that was a ceremonie our enemies desired, but never our friends," so that
request, which was to be made perpetually afterwards, was waived for the
present.
Powhatan then called his guest's attention to certain embellishments he
had made in his grounds since Smith's last visit. A long line had been
stretched between two trees, and upon it, waving in the crisp air, were
the bloody scalps of an entire tribe--the people of Piankatank, his
nearest neighbours and subjects. How they had displeased their emperor
does not appear. Numbers of their women were at work in the royal kitchen
and gardens, and hapless little children, destined to lives of slavery,
were scattered about among them. Great ostentation was made of these to
Smith, and afterwards to Captain Newport.
[Illustration: Powhatan Oak, over Three Hundred Years Old.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
The emperor then walked about his ground with Captain Smith, and down to
a bend in the river where lay his fleet of canoes--a fleet in which the
savage king felt as much pride as did our President in a recent review of
our magnificent North Atlantic squadron.
But while indulging in this affable and amiable conversation, a fanfare
of trumpets arrested Powhatan's attention, and he saw in the distance
Newport--who seems to have found means to strengthen his nerves--with his
escort, making their way inland; whereupon Powhatan hastily retreated to
prepare the reception ceremonies.
These repeated, in every particular, the tableau we have already
described: the pose on the dais, the embroidered pillow, the robes and
chains, the two seats of honour for the two beauties, the wives and their
attendants all in full dress, beads, pearls, paint, and girdles--and
without doubt Pocahontas, Matichanna, and Cleopatre. His "chiefest men"
also sat in the arbour-house, and forty platters of bread, or more, were
in two rows before the door, while five hundred people stood without as
a guard. Beyond, the mute but eloquent scalps waved ominously in the air
as it was rent by a mighty shout of welcome.
Powhatan feasted his guests at an abundant dinner of venison, wild fowl,
dried persimmons, nuts, and bread. Mats were laid in order and each guest
sat upon his own small square mat of woven grasses. Indian civilization
had not yet demanded a table. Women, before the feast, handed wooden
finger-bowls and feather napkins. Each guest had his portion in a wooden
platter, gravely laying the platter beside him when empty. From gourds or
wooden bowls they drank the not unpleasant liquid prepared with crushed
walnut-meats and water. There were no knives or forks, but for that matter
neither were there forks in Queen Elizabeth's time. She, and all her
court, used nature's first implement, and found it perfectly convenient
and satisfactory. The dinner knife of the Indian was simply a sharpened
reed. Before eating, each Indian solemnly uttered a few words and cast
a morsel of food into the fire. After the meal finger-bowls were again
offered with the bunch of feathers. Not for one moment did the guests
abate their vigilance! Matches were kept burning to touch off the powder
in their pieces at a moment's notice. Powhatan once argued that the arms
must always be left behind, because these "smoking[39] things made his
women sick!"
Newport had brought his host a suit of crimson cloth, a white greyhound,
and a hat. He now presented him with a boy named Thomas Savage, whom
Newport called his son, for whom Powhatan gave "Namontacke his trustie
servant and one of a shrewd and subtill capacitie." Purchas remarks in
a marginal note, "The exchange of a Christian for a Savage,"--refraining
from the suggestive pun (a favourite species of English wit at the time)
as being beneath his dignity. The gift, however, was really a loan, and
not understood to mean permanent possession.
Namontack, the savage of a shrewd and subtle capacity, was intended by
Powhatan to accompany Newport to England, and bring reliable information
thence of the strength of the country. The poor little Christian boy was
to live in constant companionship with these "devils" that he might learn
their language and serve the colony as interpreter.
Captain Smith, after three or four days spent in feasting and dancing,
and a little traffic in toys, at last proposed trade on a larger basis.
But Powhatan demurred. "It is not agreeable to my greatness," he said
to Newport, "to traffic for trifles in this peddling manner. You, too, I
esteem a great werowance.[40] Therefore lay me down all your commodities
together. What I like I will take, and in recompense give you what I think
their fitting value."
Captain Smith, who was acting as interpreter between the traders, at
once detected Powhatan's cunning, and implored Newport to be chary of his
goods. But Newport, wishing to express a lordly indifference to commercial
interests, offered his entire outfit of mirrors, copper, bells, hatchets,
cloth, and received in return something less than four bushels of corn!
Newport was astounded. He had expected to freight his pinnace! He lost his
temper and quarrelled with Captain Smith, in consequence probably of the
reproaches of the latter. But the captain contrived to display some blue
beads, simply as objects of interest, and not for barter, seeing "they
could be worn only by royalty." Powhatan fell neatly into the trap, and
bought them for two or three hundred bushels of corn! Blue beads rose in
value. Opechancanough was allowed to buy a few, but "none durst weare any
of them but their greate kings, their wives and children."
The outwitted Newport retired in chagrin to his pinnace. Before he sailed,
Powhatan sent a feast of bread and venison, and Nantauquas to beg Captain
Smith to visit him again, but to leave his sword and pistol behind. "But
these," said Smith, significantly, "are requests made by our enemies,
never by our friends."
The next morning there was a parting interview, with promises from
Powhatan to help avenge Newport's son (slain as reported by Smith) by an
invasion of the Monacans. After a good deal of insincere palaver, the
English proceeded on their homeward way, first making a short visit to
the arch-enemy, Opechancanough, at his urgent solicitation.
Powhatan sent thither for the party to return to him, but upon receiving
their respectful regrets, he sent again, this time by little Pocahontas.
With her, they returned for another short visit to Werowocomoco: more
courtesies, more protestations of friendship, and the loan of another
Indian (probably Machumps) with instructions to report the strength and
wealth of the white man's country.
And now a new disaster awaited our unhappy colonists. I like the
temperate, homely words of the old writers,--Anas Todkill, William
Phetiplace, and others--and I shall again borrow them. "Wee returned to
the Fort where this new supply being lodged with the rest, accidentally
fired the quarters; and so the Towne, which being but thatched with Reeds,
the fire was so fierce as it burnt our Pallizadoes, though ten or twelve
yards distant, with all our Arms, Bedding, Apparell, and much private
provision. Good Master Hunt, our Preacher, lost all his Librarie, and
all that hee had (but the clothes on his backe), yet none ever saw him
repine at his losse. Upon any alarme he would be as readie for defence as
any; and till he could speake he never ceased to his utmost to animate us
constantly to persist: whose soule questionlesse is with God."
Newport remained fourteen weeks at Jamestown. He should have left in
fourteen days. Thus his crew again consumed supplies which had been
provided for the colony. But a "small stream of water issuing from a bank
near Jamestown was found to deposit in its channel a glittering sediment
which resembled golden ore. The depositation of this yellow stuff was
supposed to indicate the presence of a gold mine," and presto! all the
little world except Captain Smith "went crazy!" The axe was left in the
tree, the spade in the corn-hill. There was no more thought of tilling or
planting or building. "There was no talke, no hope, no worke, but digge
Gold, wash Gold, refine Gold, load Gold; such a bruit of Gold as one mad
fellow desired to bee buried in the sand least they should by their Art
make Gold of his bones. Little neede there was and lesse reason the shippe
should staye, their wages run on, our victuall consumed,"[41] &c. Purchas,
whose quaint marginal notes bring back our "Pilgrim's Progress" days (he
antedated Bunyan, however), says in the note opposite this page, "Certaine
shining yellow sand (I saw it!) with great promises of gold, like the
promises yeelding sandy performances."
Captain Smith set his face like a flint against this gold-fever, which
seemed likely to rival Frobisher's experiments and failures in 1577, and
declared he was not enamoured of the golden promise, nor could he bear to
"see necessary business neglected to fraught such a drunken ship with so
much gilded dirt." "Till then," continue our historians (Anas Todkill _et
al_.), "we never accounted Captaine Newport a refiner, who being fit to
set saile for England, and we not having any use for Parliaments, Playes,
Petitions, Admirals, Recorders, Interpreters, Chronologers, Courts of
Plea, nor Justices of Peace, sent Master Wingfield and Captaine Archer
with him for England, to seeke some place of better imployment."
Newport carried with him twenty turkeys, a present from Powhatan, who
received in return twenty swords, the beginning of his acquisition of the
arms he so coveted. Newport could hardly have done a more unwise thing.
His foolish prodigality prevented all profitable traffic with the Indians
thereafter, and he put into their hands the weapons destined to reach the
hearts of his own countrymen.
CHAPTER XIII
The church that was burned in the Jamestown fire of January 17, 1608,
was the wretched affair of logs, sedge, and dirt, built by the colonists
to take the place of the awning between two trees under which they first
worshipped. In a map of the Virginia settlement sent by Zuñiga to Philip
the Third in September, 1608, the site of a church is indicated enclosed
within the fort. Captain Newport employed his mariners in rebuilding this
church, "all which works they finished cheerfully and in short time." The
time, it appears, was short indeed. Anas Todkill and his collaborators
assert that it was "little need they should stay and consume victuall
for fourteene days, that the Mariners might say they built such a golden
Church, that _we_ can say the raine washed neere to nothing in fourteene
days."
Our "docteur of Divinitie" duly records that when Newport departed
"Captain Smith and Master Scrivener divided betwixt them the rebuilding
Jamestown, the repairing our Pallizadoes, the cutting down trees,
preparing our fields for planting our Corne and rebuilding our Church."
This, at best only a flimsy affair, was the second Church (we suppose the
mariners' work was mended, not destroyed), and the good preacher, Master
Hunt, was still alive. The day of his death is not known. He was certainly
living in December, 1608, for somebody--and doubtless in the church--then
married John Laydon to Ann Burras; and we know of no minister who came
over until 1610. In the interval between his death and the arrival of Mr.
Bucke, daily prayers, and homilies on Sunday, were said in the church,
although there was no minister. We are aware that it behooves us to be
pretty careful in this matter of churches, now that the shovels and picks
of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities are busy
with the foundations of the Jamestown churches. They will never find the
foundation of the first one, nor of the second, for the very good reason
that they had none.
The 20th of April all hands were at work hewing down trees and planting
corn, when an alarum from the guard caused every man to drop axe and hoe
and take up arms, each one expecting an assault from the savages. But
presently a trumpet blast reached the ear, and a ship was seen sailing
up the James with the red cross of St. George flying from the masthead.
This was the _Ph[oe]nix_, a marine ph[oe]nix, rising from the sea after
"many perrills of extreame storms and tempests." This happy arrival of
Captain Nelson, "having been three months missing after Captain Newport's
arrivall, being to all our expectations lost, having been long crossed
with tempestuous weather and contrary winds, did so ravish us with
exceeding joy that now wee thought ourselves as well fitted as our harts
could wish both with a competent number of men as also for all other
needful provisions till a further supply could come to us." Captain
Francis Nelson, "an honest man and expert mariner," turned his back on
the "fantastical gold," and freighted his ship for her return voyage
with cedar; and when he sailed for home he took with him the gold-hunting
Captain Martin, and Smith's "True Relation of Virginia,"--the first book
written by an Englishman in America,--which was printed at the Greyhound
in Paul's Churchyard in London.
[Illustration: Old Fort--Jamestown Island.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
Our colonists were living so near the Indian Court, that stirring
incidents were constantly occurring to prevent indulgence in peace and
security. Powhatan soon sent Captain Smith a present of twenty turkeys,
upon condition he should in return receive twenty swords. Smith knew that
Newport had been most imprudent in putting arms in the Indians' hands, so
he accepted the turkeys and returned the usual gifts,--copper kettles,
toys, etc.,--at which his Savage Majesty was hugely displeased. He had
sent his "Christian" boy, Thomas Savage, with the turkeys, but certain
indications of Powhatan's treachery induced Smith to keep the boy. An
Indian was captured and frightened into disclosure of Powhatan's plot to
murder the English as soon as the Indian Namontack should be returned by
Newport. Thefts of spades, shovels, swords, and tools were continually
occurring, and it was discovered that Powhatan had received these stolen
goods. Finally several Paspaheghans were arrested and imprisoned in the
fort. The Indians could never suffer the capture of their men, but would
always ransom them with fair words, presents, and promises.
Powhatan, hearing that his braves were detained, "sent his Daughter
a child of tenne years old," accompanied by "Rawhunt, exceeding in
deformitie of person, but of a subtil wit and crafty understanding," to
beg their release. The little girl, he knew, would be refused nothing
by the man whose life had been spared for her sake. She had crossed the
York in a canoe, and walked twelve miles through the woods. We can see
Captain Smith, delighted with the sight of her pretty face and graceful,
childish figure, and refreshing her with the best of the dainties Captain
Nelson had left. His sympathy with children we have already noticed.
Indeed, there is no doubt that Pocahontas was a high favourite with all
the colony. No other female, child or woman, ever visited it until Madame
Forrest and Ann Burras arrived in the following December,--nearly two
years after the coming of the English.
"Rawhunt" (says Smith, whose words are always better than mine), "with
a long circumstance told mee how well Powhatan loved and respected mee;
and in that I should no doubt any way of his kindnesse, he had sent his
child which he most esteemed to see me; a Deare and bread besides for
a present: desiring me that the Boy [Savage] might come againe which he
loved exceedingly. His little Daughter hee had taught this lesson also,
not taking notice at all of the Indeans that had beene prisoners three
daies, till that morning that she saw their fathers and friends come
quietly, and in good tearmes to entreate their libertie. In the afternoon
we guarded them to the Church, and after prayer gave them to Pocahontas,
the King's Daughter, in regard of her father's kindnesse in sending her.
After having well fed them, as all the time of their imprisonment, we gave
them their bowes, arrowes or what else they had and with much content sent
them packing. Pocahontas also we requited with such trifles as contented
her, to tell that we had used the Paspaheyans very kindly in releasing
them."[42] The "Boy" evidently was not returned. The ambassador of a
subtle wit and crafty understanding, failed, it appears, to accomplish
everything.
I give the age of the little princess as Smith gives it. Other historians
have advanced it two years.[43] Yet another class of her admirers fondly
hope she was fourteen years of age, for then she would have been old
enough to fall in love with Captain Smith, pine at his coldness, break her
heart at finding him after her marriage alive, and broken-hearted die in
England. I am personally anxious to believe she could have been not more
than ten or eleven years old when she came with Rawhunt to beg for the
release of the prisoners. Smith says "tenne years old."
It must have been during this summer that she came so often to Jamestown.
Strachey, our learned, reliable historian, describes the dress of Indian
maids and matrons, and informs us that girls before twelve years of age
wore none at all in summer. He says, "the before-mentionde Pocahontas,
a well-featured, but wanton young girle, Powhatan's daughter, sometymes
resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve years; would
get the boyes forth with her to the market place, and make them wheele,
falling on their hands, turning their heeles upwards; whome she would
follow and wheele soe herselfe, naked as she was, all the fort over."
This could not have happened had she been older than eleven or twelve,
nor could it have happened in winter. The next summer she would have
been too old for such a pastime and such attire. A recent journal tells
us that Alphonso of Spain was fond of this sport (wheeling on hands and
feet) the summer he went a-wooing before his marriage. I might, therefore,
imagine it to be an amusement of royalty, had I not seen little negroes in
Virginia excel in it. Evidently it was not given us, by the Indians, along
with corn and tobacco. Those wild English "boyes" at the fort taught it
to our little American princess, and if Strachey failed to admire her,--to
find Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt,--he was unfortunate, besides being
wofully in a minority. All the other Englishmen delighted in her, whatever
she did; and she cordially liked them, and dearly loved the captain who
taught her to call him "father."
We may be sure that she could not have visited the fort so familiarly
without attracting the notice and interest of the good missionary and
clergyman. An Indian boy named "Chanco" was also a favourite with the
colonists, and was the means, like Pocahontas, of rendering essential
service to them. Like her he became a Christian; and I can but think
that both were taught in their early years by that holy man of God,
Robert Hunt. But here the similitude ceases. She saved the life of John
Smith, and perhaps one other: he saved the lives of all the colonists at
Jamestown. She is justly to be immortalized in bronze on the soil that
but for him would have been bathed in Christian blood; yet no statue of
Chanco will tell the world of his heroic action.
"There was a little city and few men within it, and there came a great
king against it.... Now there was a poor man and he delivered the
city--yet no man remembered that poor man."
CHAPTER XIV
Now that the _Ph[oe]nix_ had left food enough to sustain the colony all
summer, Captain Smith had leisure to heed the restless stirrings of his
adventurous spirit. He had long wished to explore the great bay, and he
now accompanied the _Ph[oe]nix_ as far as the capes. As the ship "bore
up the helm," and entered her long path on the great sea, he turned the
prow of his little barge northward to the mysterious unexplored waters of
the Chesapeake. Relying upon Indian information, he had sent, by Captain
Newton, almost a pledge that he would find the outlet to the South Sea
through the northern waters, rather than the James or Chickahominy rivers.
Personally, he had nothing to gain, the crown would be sure to claim
everything; but it behooved him to satisfy the London Company. Christians
and patriots had swelled his sails with pæans and prayers when he left
England, but he had reason to fear that the existence of the colony did
not depend upon the Christian who thought of nothing but the coming of
God's Kingdom on earth; nor upon the patriot who sought only the honour
of old England; but upon a king and company seeking the present gold, and
a path whereby gold-bearing regions might be reached in future.
The colonists had always been reluctant to cultivate food products, and
were by consequence always starving. This was, in part, because they
were not allowed to plant on their own account, except upon condition
of contributing part of their crops and one month's service annually for
the benefit of the London Company. Neither could they leave the country
without special permission. Private letters from England were constantly
intercepted. It is narrated that a passport from the King for the return
of one of the colonists was sewed in a garter to ensure its delivery. The
settlers were, as a matter of fact, slaves and prisoners, chained hand and
foot to a life of privation and peril. Their true position was concealed
for a while from the English people, but the secret was kept for a short
time only. Banishment to Virginia was worse than death. Scott makes his
profligate apprentice consider the alternative of suicide or life in
Virginia. "I may save the hangman a labour or go the voyage to Virginia,"
said "Jin Vincent." Three thieves, under sentence of death, were offered
pardon and transportation to Virginia. One of the three preferred hanging.
The other two were sent to the long-suffering colonists. "The first
country in America," says Stith, "is under the unjust scandal of being
another Siberia, fit only for the vilest of people."
Captain Smith's voyage, made in an open barge, was full of adventure. He
explored every river, every inlet. He visited the site of the future city
of Baltimore, and rowed close under the hill known to-day as Mt. Vernon.
He was sometimes assailed by the arrows of the Indian, and sometimes
adored by him as a god. His adventures were peculiar and thrilling, and it
is my readers' loss that I cannot relate them all in this modest volume.
Perhaps no one of them is more dramatic than the picture he draws of the
dusky crowd that once gathered around him; when, according to his daily
custom, he offered a prayer for God's protection and guidance, and joined
with his comrades in a psalm of praise. All at once the savages turned
their faces eastward, and raising their hands with passionate gestures,
"began a fearful song," and ended by embracing Captain Smith. Poor
fellows! They too had a god! They recognized in the strange white man a
brother!
In these two voyages (for the explorers returned for food once) Smith
sailed about three thousand miles. They returned to Jamestown early
in September (1608), having encountered a terrible hurricane near the
peaceful spot they had named Point Comfort when they first passed between
the capes. Smith made haste to draw his wonderfully accurate map of
Virginia. This map was the recognized authority for many years, and
indeed survives in the maps of to-day. All subsequent researches have only
expanded and illustrated Smith's original view.[44]
He had not found the passage to the South Sea, nor the gold mine that
Powhatan's people had led him to expect. The rainbow still spanned the
continent, and the pot of gold was still at the end of the rainbow, and
there, sure enough, it was found, more than two hundred years afterward!
While this expedition was in progress, the golden dreams of the colonists
were finally dispelled. They awaked to all the miseries of the preceding
summer, sickness, scarcity, disappointment, and discontent. Smith returned
to reanimate their drooping spirits, and refresh their physical wants by
provisions he collected on his voyage.
The chronicles written by one of our trusty "first planters" sums up the
situation at Jamestown, "The silly President (Ratcliffe) had notoriously
consumed the stores, and to fulfill his follies about building a house
for his pleasure in the woods, had brought them all to that misery that
had we not arrived they had as strangely _tormented him with revenge_."
We are left to imagine the grim inventions of the mutineers. The "strange
torment," however, was prevented by Smith, who strove to be a peacemaker;
but the colonists were inexorable. Again was their President deposed, or
allowed to resign; and John Smith, by a popular election, became President
of Virginia.
And now in October an unexpected ship appears on the broad bosom of the
James. The London Company has hurriedly fitted out the _Mary & Margaret_,
and sent Newport back to hasten Smith's discovery of the northward passage
to the South Sea. As the ship approaches, the keen eyes of the crowd on
shore discern something besides the red cross of St. George fluttering in
the autumn breeze. What means this white pennon like a flag of truce? The
amazed watchers rub their eyes and gaze again. "It looks like--but no,
that cannot be--it certainly _looks_ like--yes, _it is_--an APRON!"
Sure enough, on the forward deck a small slip of a maiden stands beside
a matron in ruff and farthingale, and the little maid's apron signals
a greeting to the shore. This is little fourteen-year-old Ann Burras.
Her brother, "John Burras, Tradesman," is on board. She is going to be
a famous woman very soon, young as she is. She is going to marry John
Laydon, and hers will be the first marriage, and her little daughter will
be the first English child born in Virginia, and the London Company will
be proud of her and look to her dower; and so she and her John will found
the genuine "first family" in Virginia. She is very unconscious of all
this as she stands in her ruff and short petticoat, beside her mistress,
Madame Forrest, who is brave in a farthingale, long, pointed bodice, lace
ruff, and broad-banded hat. Her husband, "Thomas Forrest, Gentleman," is
on board, but the "Gentleman" and his Madam signify very little beside
the rosy English maiden who serves them.
The news brought by Newport this time was too exciting to leave room
for interest in Zuñiga's hysterics and the court happenings. Ratcliffe
had written home by the last mail that Smith and his followers intended
to seize the country and divide it among themselves. This the Right
Honourables were ready and willing to believe, having been enlightened,
doubtless, by the disgraced Wingfield. The orders were now explicit. There
were to be no more evasions, no more apologies, no more subterfuge. The
Virginia colonists were to discover and return one of the lost Roanoke
men, to send back a lump of gold, and to find the South Sea--eastward or
northward, or beyond the mountains. Moreover, the returning ship was to be
freighted with goods, the sale of which would reimburse the company for
its present outlay. Failing in obedience to these orders, the settlers
must "consider themselves an abandoned colony," and "remain in Virginia
as banished men." In order to facilitate the progress to the South Sea,
the company had kindly sent out a barge in sections, to be borne on the
men's backs across the intervening mountains, and to be pieced together
when the river running into the South Sea should be reached.
Captain Smith suspected Newport of having instigated these orders, and
a violent quarrel ensued. Smith threatened to send the _Mary & Margaret_
home, and keep Newport for a year, put him to work, and let him see for
himself how matters stood at Jamestown. However, differences were smoothed
over for the present.
King James the First had foolishly amused himself by causing a trumpery
crown of copper to be made for Powhatan the First, and sent it with
instructions for a formal coronation ceremony. Sundry presents were to
accompany the crown--a bedstead, scarlet cloak, ewer, and basin. Smith
was sent overland to invite the Emperor to come to Jamestown for his
coronation.
When he arrived at Werowocomoco, he found Powhatan gone on a journey to
one of his several country houses. A messenger was despatched to fetch
him. Meanwhile a great fire was kindled in a field near a wood, and
before it mats were spread for the party of Englishmen. They were probably
smoking comfortably, after the manner of tired men, when they heard such
a "Hideous noise and shrieking that the five Englishmen betook themselves
to their arms and seized two or three old men by them, supposing Powhatan
with all his power was come to surprise them. But presently Pocahontas
came, willing them to kill her if any hurt were intended; and the
beholders, which were men, women, and children, satisfied the Captain
there was no such matter."[45]
In all our descriptions of Indian ceremonies hitherto, as well as now, it
must not be forgotten that we describe the fashions of the Sylvan Court,
or, if you please, the Court Barbarian. Masques were in high vogue at
this time at the Court of St. James. Here, also, in the western wilderness
was to be a masque, the melodrama to be produced by an amateur company in
private theatricals.
"Presently," says our historian, "thirty young women came naked out of
the woods (only covered before and behind with a few greene leaves), their
bodies all painted, some white, some red, some black, some parti-colour;
but every one different. Their leader had a faire paire of stagge's hornes
on her head, and an otter skinne at her girdle, another at her arme, a
quiver of arrowes at her backe, and bow and arrowes in her hand. The next
held in her hand a wooden sword; another a club; another a pot-stick: all
horned alike. The rest every one with their severall devises.
"These fiends, with most hellish cries and shouts rushing from amongst
the trees, cast themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dauncing
with excellent ill varietie, or falling into their infernall passions and
then solemnly again to sing and daunce. Having spent neere an hour in this
maskarado; as they entered in like manner they departed.
"Having re-accomodated themselves, they solemnly invited Smith to their
lodging; but no sooner was hee within the house, but all these nimphes
more tormented him than ever with crowding and pressing and hanging upon
him, most tediously crying '_Love you not mee? Love you not mee?_'
"This salutation ended the feast was set consisting of fruit in baskets,
fish and flesh in wooden platters: beans and pease there wanted not (for
twenty hogges), nor any Salvage daintie their invention could devise; some
attending, others singing and dancing about them. This mirth and banquet
being ended, with fire-brands (instead of torches), they conducted him to
his lodging."[46]
The next day Powhatan arrived. There were no more "antics," no more mirth.
Diplomacy and cunning ruled the hour. As to the "maskarado," the less we
say perhaps the better, seeing it was meant in kindness. It could hardly
have been an improvised entertainment! Pocahontas had possibly been drawn
to the fort by news of the arrival of the two ships, and had learned of
Smith's proposed visit. It is stated by one of the chroniclers that _she_
was the leader. We will give her the benefit of a doubt. Perhaps she had
already met Madame Forrest and Ann Burras, and been given some Christian
garments; and having ordered the dramatic performance, was seated in
grave dignity among the spectators. We think this is possible. There is no
reason, because she wheeled on hands and feet the last summer, she should
go this length in the autumn.
I can hardly imagine a more brilliant _mise en scène_; the forest in its
gorgeous autumnal splendour, the brightly painted, party-coloured young
girls with deer's antlers on their dusky brows, the fitful footlights of
a blazing fire, the shimmering curtain of smoke! The audience seated in
picturesque groups on the mats of reeds fill in the picture.
Smith was coldly received by the emperor, nor was the latter softened
by the promise of presents, the invitation to Jamestown, and the return
of Namontack. He curtly replied: "If your King have sent me presents, I
also am a King, and this is my land. 8 days will I stay to receive them.
Your father is to come to me, not I to him; nor yet to your fort: neither
will I bite at such a bate. As for the Monacans, I can revenge my owne
injuries; as for the place where you say your brother was slain, it is a
contrary way from those parts you suppose it. As to any salt water beyond
the mountains, the relations you have from my people are false."[47]
This was decisive and squarely to the point; so Newport sent the presents
by water, and he, with fifty of the best shot, went himself by land and
awaited the arrival of the barge.
[Illustration: "The newly crowned potentate started with terror."]
All things ready, a day was fixed for the coronation. The basin and ewer
were presented, the bedstead set up (probably a great four-poster), and
the scarlet cloak with much ado put upon the emperor, "being persuaded by
Namontack they would do him no hurt." But kneel to receive the crown his
Majesty would not. He positively refused to bend his knee. Finally, by
leaning hard on his shoulders, he was made to stoop a little, and Newport
hastily clapped the crown on his head, when at the signal of a pistol
shot, the boats fired such a volley that the newly crowned potentate
started with terror, and could with difficulty be reassured. Regaining
his wonted serenity, he gravely presented his old shoes and his mantle of
raccoon skins trimmed with raccoon tails to Captain Newport. After some
complimental kindness on both sides, he also presented Newport with a
heap of wheat ears, that might when winnowed yield seven or eight bushels;
wherewith the coronation party returned to the fort. There the consensus
of opinion may be briefly stated: "As for the Coronation of Pawhatan, and
his presents, they had been better spared than so ill spent. This stately
kind of soliciting made him so much overvalue himselfe that he respected
us as nothing at all." It was an absurd piece of folly on the part of "the
wisest fool in Christendom."
This was the only order of the company that Newport was able to carry out.
He travelled far in the Monacan country, where the "Stoics of the woods"
received him in an impassive, noncommittal manner. He hunted up and down
for Raleigh's men, for gold, for the South Sea. He found none of these
things, and so, having no greater treasures than pitch, tar, glass, and
soap ashes wherewith to satisfy the Company for its outlay of two thousand
pounds, he was fain to sail away, leaving behind none to regret him.
The colony had suffered much from the presence of the two ships. The
sailors, as usual, consumed a large part of the supplies, and they also
engaged in an illicit traffic with the Indians and men "of the baser sort"
in the colony.
The latter traded "chisels, hatchets, pickaxes, and mattocks with the
sailors for butter, cheese, beefe, porke, aqua vitæ, beere, bisket, and
oatmeale." Out of three hundred hatchets, not twenty could be found when
the ship sailed. And these implements, so much coveted by the Indians,
had been traded again with them for "furres, baskets, muscaneekes [?] and
young beasts." One mariner boasted that he had collected enough furs to
sell for thirty pounds, having paid, probably, a hatchet for them. The
young beasts were great curiosities in England. The Earl of Southampton
in a letter to the Earl of Salisbury wrote in 1609:--
"MY LORD,
"Talkinge with the King by chance I tould him of the Virginia
squirrills which they say will fly, whereof there are now divers
brought into England, and hee presently and very earnestly asked
mee if none of them was provided for him, sayinge that hee was
sure you would gett him one of them. I would not have trobled you
with this but that you know so well how he is affected by these
toyes, and with a little enquiry of any of your folkes you may
furnish yourself to present him att his comminge to London which
will not bee before Wensday next: the Monday before Theobald's
and the Saterday before that to Royston. Your lordships most
assuredly,
"to doo your service,
"H. SOUTHAMPTON."
Captain Smith indulged himself in writing an imprudent, sharp letter
to the "Right Honourables" in London. He entitled his epistle "A Rude
Answer," in which he exhibited in caustic terms the preposterous folly of
expecting a present profitable return from Virginia. As to gold, he had
from the first discouraged all hope of it. The pieced barge for the South
Sea? That, at least, was a feasible project. True, it could not be borne
many hundreds of miles and over mountains on the backs of his men, but he
could burn it and have the ashes carried over in a bag!
He then rallies the company for its prodigality in giving Newport a
hundred pounds a year for carrying news, and informs them that he sends
Ratcliffe home lest the colonists should cut his throat.
All this did but little good to our captain, as he had cause to realize
afterward. "Had Newport suspected the character of the Rude answer," says
Cooke, "it is probable he would have dropped it into the Atlantic. But he
duly took it to England and the Right Honourables no doubt gasped at its
truculence."
CHAPTER XV
In December, 1608, there were two hundred men within the palisades at
Jamestown; already, although the weather was delightful, "affrighted with
famine." The little wooded peninsula, small and marshy as it was, might
with proper foresight and industry have yielded corn and garden products,
but as Captain Smith in his "Rude Answer" had stated: "The one-half of us
are sicke, the other little better. Our diet is usually a little meale
and water, and not sufficient of that. Though there be fish in the sea,
fowles in the aire, and beasts in the woods, their bounds are so large,
they so wilde, and we so weake and ignorant, we cannot trouble them. And
we must long lodge and feed the men you send before they can be made
good for anything. In over-toyling our weake unskilful bodies, we can
scarce recover ourselves from one supply to another. If you would send
out carpenters, husbandmen and diggers-up of trees' roots, they would be
worth more than a thousand of such as we have."
It was always the old "question of bread and cheese," which has settled
adversely many a good cause. Smith, however, did his best with the
effeminate gentlemen who had come in Newport's latest ship. He himself
shrank from no toil, no exposure. Neither danger nor labour discouraged
his manhood, and with his example before them--grappling as he did with
the hardest tasks--his followers were deprived of all excuse for complaint
or discontent. Two very choice "gallants"--Gabriel Beadle and John
Russell, "both proper gentlemen," were among the thirty whom he invited
to join him in the noble art of wood-craft--felling trees, splitting
them with wedges, and shaping them with hatchets into clapboards for
the additional shelter needed by themselves. Meantime they were to lie
in the woods at night. The _Mary & Margaret_ had brought over six mares
and a horse, so these new "gentlemen" would not be forced, as were their
predecessors, to bear this timber on their backs out of the forest.
The novelty had its charm of pleasurable excitement.[48] "Strange were
these pleasures to their conditions, yet lodging, eating, drinking,
working or playing, they doing but as the President, all these things
were carried so pleasantly as within a weeke they became Masters; making
it their delight to heare the Trees thunder as they fell. But the Axes so
oft blistered their tender fingers that commonly every third blow had a
lowd Oath to drowne the Echo."
Captain Smith rarely indulged in the courtly luxury of profane swearing,
and was not inclined to grant privileges to others he did not allow
himself. He resolved to have none of it in his Majesty's colony. As for
himself he did not need it. He could command vigorous English without it;
and so he set about the reformation of the "Gallants and proper Gentlemen"
lately come from the English court. He adopted, as a remedial agent, a
novel punishment. "He had every man's Oathes numbered, and at night for
every Oath a Kan of water was powered down his Sleeve, with which every
Offender was so washed (_himselfe and all_) that a man should scarce
heare an Oath in a Weeke." And so, we gather, the Captain was after all
sometimes overtaken, as well as other people.
The narrator of this incident, Richard Pots, wishes us to make no mistake.
"By this," he continues, "let no man thinke the President or these
Gentlemen spent their times as common Wood-hackers at felling Trees or
such like labours: or that they were pressed to anything as hirelings
or common slaves; for what they did (beeing but once a little inured) it
seemed they conceited it only a pleasure and a recreation. Yet thirty or
forty of such Gentlemen would doe more in a day than one hundred of the
rest that must be prest by compulsion."
This was doubtless due to their President's excellent humour and judgment.
Had he played the martinet with his volunteers, he might have had their
axes about his ears. Doubtless he was highly pleased with his "Gallants
and proper Gentlemen," but he afterwards confessed that "twentie good wor
men had been better than them all."
The haze of the Indian summer (when "the sun looks back with regret") was
hanging over river and forest, and softening the outlines of the hills.
Smoke from many fires in the woods mingled with the purple haze. These
fires were under the kettles of the Dutchmen who were making potash by
evaporating the lye obtained from leaching wood ashes. Alkalis were in
great demand in England, hence the quantity of soap ashes with which
the early ships were freighted. Soap itself was a forbidden article of
domestic use. There was a severe penalty against throwing soap suds in the
open street. The dreadful Oriental plague had appeared in London, and it
was thought then that "not only soap-boilers and vendors of soap, but all
the washerwomen and all they whose business it was to use soap--nay they
who only wore shirts washed with soap--presently died of the Plague."[49]
All hands were called from the forest and the kettles early in December
to attend the first English marriage in Virginia. Of course pretty Ann
Burras found many admirers in a colony of two hundred men, and equally, of
course, she could accept but one. Her bridegroom, John Laydon, Carpenter,
was twenty-seven. They were all young men. Captain Smith and George Percy
were not yet thirty, and they were among the elders.
The ceremony was performed, doubtless, in the church, and by good Master
Hunt, who was soon to be called to the reward of a noble Christian life.
It is altogether probable that Pocahontas was present. "She came as freely
to the fort as to her father's house, bringing corn and game and whatever
she could get for Captain Smith." She was known by all as the "Deare &
Darling Pocahontas," and when a wedding was to the fore we may be sure
she was apprised of it.
Little Ann Burras brought good fortune to her honest carpenter. More
than once they were given land in Virginia, at one time as much as five
hundred acres. She bore many children. There was a Catharine, an Alice,
and a Margaret; but the first child was named "Virginia." The family lived
long, and survived all the hard times--the starvation, the sickness, and
the great massacre of 1622. How different was the fate of Ellinor Dare,
and her hapless little Virginia!
One is tempted to linger in the sweet Indian summer time, and listen to
the wedding bells and cheery talk of the woodsmen in the forest--for these
were the last "good times" these hapless colonists were to know for many
a long day. Just at the moment they were happily unconscious that war,
pestilence, and famine stood hand in hand at their door.
Autumn lingers long on the banks of the lower James. There, near
Jamestown, I have gathered roses on Christmas Day. One peculiarity of the
climate is that summer can depart in an hour,--the sun hidden in darkness
and the face of the earth thickly blanketed under snow. This had not yet
happened, however, and the newcomers rejoiced in the belief that they
had fallen upon a heavenly climate. Captain Smith, George Percy, and the
survivors of the first winter knew better.
They were dependent upon the Indians for corn, as usual, but Powhatan had
evinced no friendship since he perceived that the colony was regularly
reënforced from abroad. Indeed, his attitude was distinctly hostile.
Captain Smith attempted to draw supplies from the Nansemond Indians, but
was repulsed with the message that the emperor had not only forbidden
them to surrender their corn, but ordered them not to allow the English
to enter their river. Whereupon Smith put a torch to one of their houses,
and signified that such should be the fate of all unless the grain were
forthcoming. The argument was answerable in but one way. They made haste
to load his boats, and he set out on his return to the fort. That night
the untimely snow came and covered them in their open barge, so they
landed, dug a space in the deep snow, and built a fire. When the heat had
sufficiently dried the spot, they threw off the fire, swept the ground,
and covering it with a mat, "slept as if it had been a palace." "To keepe
us from the winde we made a shade of another mat; and the winde turned,
we turned our shade; and when the ground grew cold, we renewed the fire.
Thus many a cold winter night have we laine in this miserable manner: yet
those that most commonly went upon these occasions were always in health,
lusty and fat."
Scarcely had the Captain brought his captured supplies in safety to
Jamestown, than he was off upon another foraging expedition. Percy also
set forth with Scrivener on a similar quest, but returned disheartened,
having procured nothing. Powhatan's orders had been general.
But the President, "whom no perswasions could perswade to starve," was
full of resource. There was no time to lose. All nature was now shrouded
in a heavy mantle of snow, and there were few stores in the fort. The
common kettle held only coarsely crushed corn, which was boiled into a
thick porridge. There was absolutely nothing more, except dried sturgeon
and of this a limited supply. The colonists huddled together behind their
palisade, sorely "affrighted" at the thought of famine.
Their President called his Council together--George Percy, Captain Waldo,
Scrivener, and Francis West, brother to Lord Delawarre. He had a plan,
daring beyond precedent; but desperate men are capable of desperate
measures. He proposed to take a number of armed men to Werowocomoco, and
by stratagem or force capture Powhatan, hold him for ransom, and thus
extort supplies. His scheme was thoroughly approved, and the Council set
about the preparation of the pinnace and two barges.
Powhatan was also snow-bound, and he, too, had a plan. If he could
slay Captain Smith, and secure some arms, the rest would be easy. But
he must do everything by cunning. His arrows, in open combat, availed
little against the Englishman's firearms. He now professed to covet
sundry domestic comforts. He sent an invitation to Captain Smith with a
request for men to build him a house,--the four-poster had inspired his
ambition,--and to come himself and "bring him a Grindstone, fiftie Swords,
some Peeces, a Cocke and a Henne, with Copper and Beads, and he would load
Smith's ship with corne."
The Captain, although "not ignorant of his devices," fell neatly into
the trap. He immediately despatched four of his eight Dutchmen overland
to build the house, promising to come by water as soon as he could get
his pinnace ready. But first he wished to reconnoitre a little and to
that end visited on his way the friendly chief of Weraskoyack.[50] The
chief endeavoured to dissuade him from his journey, "advising him in
this manner: Captaine Smith, you shall find Powhatan to use you kindly
but trust him not; and be sure he have no opportunitie to seize on your
armes for he hath sent for you only to cut your throats." This was not a
popular view to take of the situation. Smith thanked him for his counsel,
and departed, leaving his page, Samuel Collier, with the friendly savage
to learn the Indian language. He then, mindful of the express orders from
London, detached from his company a soldier, Michael Sicklemore, gave
him guides and directions to search for the lost company of Sir Walter
Raleigh, and also to "find Silke Grasse,"[51] and set forth on his voyage.
The route was a circuitous one, down the James, around Point Comfort,
then some distance up the bay to the mouth of York River, and thence up
the river to Werowocomoco, nearly opposite to Jamestown. It was the 12th
of January (they had set sail the 29th of December), when their barge
broke the ice at ebb tide opposite Powhatan's settlement. "Master Russell
(whom none could perswade to stay behind) being somewhat ill and exceeding
heavie, so over-toyled himselfe as the rest had much adoe (ere hee got
ashore) to regain his benummed spirits," so they rested in the first house
they could find, and sent to Powhatan for provisions! The next day they
had audience of the emperor, who surprised Smith by coolly enquiring when
they proposed to leave the country, and why[52] had they come to visit
him at the present time?--adding that if provision was the object he had
little corn and his people less, nevertheless for forty swords he would
sell forty bushels.
Smith answered by showing him the men there present who had brought him
the invitation, whereat the king concluded the matter with merry laughter:
asking, however, for "Gunnes and swordes, and valueing a basket of Corne
more precious than a Basket of Copper, saying hee could eate his Corne
but not his Copper."
After more sparring, the truth came out. "Captaine Smith," saith the king,
"some doubt I have of your comming hither, that makes me not so kindly
seeke to releeve you as I would; for many doe informe mee your comming is
not for Trade, but to invade my people and possesse my Country; who dare
not come to bring you corne seeing you thus armed with your men. To cleere
us of this feare leave aboord your weapons for here they are needlesse,
we being all friends and Powhatans."
The captain answered that he had many courses to have made provision, but
had neglected everything to oblige his Majesty in the matter of the Cock
and Henn, Beads, and copper; and also had neglected the building of his
own house to send his carpenters for Powhatan's building. As to swords
and guns, he respectfully reminded his Majesty that he long ago told him
he had none to spare, etc., etc.
As our captain had no stenographer, we are amazed at the great length,
minuteness of detail, and apparent accuracy of the long harangues that
filled all that day and the next. His memory was good. His enemies have
argued that his imagination was better. He undoubtedly laid himself
open to this criticism, but although we may indulge ourselves in the
hope that so great a man betrayed no foible, still we are all human; and
which of us, having a good story to tell, can resist the temptation to
embroider it a little? Does not Talleyrand say that he who can suppress a
_bon mot_ deserves canonization? Is not a gorgeous bit of history worth
more than a poor little _bon mot_? The brave Captain has suffered much
at the hands of his stern, truth-loving fellow-man. But if we must take
something _cum grano_, must we reject all? "No one thinks Herodotus a liar
because he relates in minute detail conversations which no man could have
remembered." Smith lived in an age of bewilderment, and amid scenes of the
wildest intoxication. No doubt he had his dreams, visions, and exaggerated
fancies. It is hard, but if a historian sees men in buckram in a moment
of hallucination, he may really meet and overthrow an army with banners,
and a wicked world will remember those men in buckram!
Powhatan and our captain may have made all those long speeches, which
were so creditable to the latter. At the conclusion of every one of the
emperor's utterances, he demanded that the English should come to him
unarmed. One of Smith's speeches--nay, all of them, I should like to
repeat here, but one of them pleases me more than the rest. At the end of
two days' travail the Captain sums up:--
"Powhatan, you must knowe as I have but one God, I honour but one King;
and I live not here as your subject, but as your friend (!) to pleasure
you with what I can. By the gifts you bestowe on me you gaine more than
by trade; yet would you visit mee as I doe you, you should knowe it is
not our customes to sell our courtesie as a vendible commoditie."
The story is too long to relate here. The struggle was between an angry,
jealous savage and a very hungry Englishman. It ended in Smith's attempt
to carry out his plan and capture Powhatan, in the flight of the latter,
in two or three perilous positions in which Smith came near falling
into traps set for him and losing his life,--and finally, in a scheme of
Powhatan's to make friends again, load the pinnace with corn, and invite
all the visiting party to a series of merry entertainments, feasting, and
dancing. A great banquet was to follow this merriment. At this banquet
every white man was to be massacred. It is a peculiarity of the Indian
that when he means mischief he feeds his victim with one hand and brains
him with the other.
[Illustration: "'Powhatan comes to kill you all.'"]
"The eternal all-seeing God did prevent Powhatan, and by a strange meanes.
For Pocahontas, his dearest jewell and daughter, in that darke night came
through the irksome woods, and tolde our Captaine great cheare should be
sent by and bye: but that Powhatan and all the power he could make, would
after come and kill us all, if they that brought it could not kill us with
oure owne weapons when we were at supper. Therefore, if we would live,
shee wished us presently to be gone.
"In requital for this information, our President would have given her such
things as she delighted in, but with teares running downe her cheekes,
she said she durst not be seene to have any; for if Powhatan should know
it she were but dead; and so she ranne away as she came."[53]
Touching as is this proof of the devotion of the Indian girl to Captain
Smith, one cannot but pity the old emperor. He had just declared himself
the sole survivor of three generations of his people--generations who were
lords of the inherited lands of their fathers. The stranger from across
the seas was slowly but surely increasing in strength and numbers. He
could hope for nothing while the intruder fought behind those terrible
things with eyes of lightning and a voice of thunder. Possessing these,
the Indian might be the peer of the white man, and drive the usurper from
the country. Evil as were the designs of this savage, cruel as were his
methods of revenge, his instincts were perfectly natural; instincts born
of a consciousness of his own rights and desire to protect them which in
civilized rulers have ever been reckoned noble.
We can but sympathize with this King Lear of the western world, betrayed
in his old age by his "dearest jewell, his darling daughter." Well might
he exclaim with the ancient Briton:--
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!"
Of course it is not for us to blame Pocahontas for her humane treason.
She, too, had her instincts. The man she adored was about to be murdered
in her father's house. It is useless to affect that the devotion she
constantly expressed was for the colony. She never set foot in Jamestown
after Captain Smith left it! She never brought corn in that terrible time,
the winter after he sailed away. It was for his sake, I am constrained to
believe, that she hid Wyffin, and rescued Henry Spelman.
Smith's next attempt was to wrest his supplies from Opechancanough, and
here he succeeded by seizing the chief by his scalp-lock, and with a
pistol pressed to his bosom, held him thus until the corn was forthcoming.
So in the end his "plan" was not wholly unsuccessful, while that of the
subtle savage seemed to fail utterly. He too was partially successful,
however. He availed himself of the perfidy of Adam and Francis, two of
the house-building Dutchmen, and sent them quickly overland to the fort,
to say that the interview had ended happily, but that Captain Smith,
having need of all the arms he could get, had sent for a supply from
the fort. These two men, Adam and Francis, had confederates there, and
savages waited outside to carry the arms away. A great number of swords,
pikes, pieces, etc., were stolen and sent to Powhatan. Another consort,
"Samuel," who had remained with the emperor, had also acquired three
hundred hatchets, fifty swords, and eight pikes. These Dutchmen persuaded
Powhatan that he was not safe at Werowocomoco, and advised him to leave
the building of his house and move to Orapakes, one of his interior seats.
Before Captain Smith could reach home, a bearer of bad news sought him
at Werowocomoco. Scrivener, Antony Gosnell, and eight others had been
drowned near Hog Island. The messenger Wyffin perceived such "preparation
for warre at Werowocomoco that he did assure himselfe [the President not
being there] that some mischief was intended. Pocahontas hid him for a
time, and sent them who pursued him the cleane contrary way to seeke him,
and by her meanes and extraordinary bribes and much trouble in three days
travell" at length he found the President with Opechancanough, "in the
middest of turmoyles."
"And so," continues our historian (Wyffin, or Abbot, or Phettiplace, or
Todkill, we know not which, for all sign it), "the President finding his
intent frustrated and that there was nothing now to be had and an unfit
time to revenge abuses, sent Master Michael Phettiplace to Jamestown,
whither we sayled with all the speed we could; wee having in this journey
kept 46 men six weeks, and for 40 lbs. of Iron and Beads, and 25 lbs. of
Copper, we got neere 200 lbs. of deere suet [which was used as butter]
and delivered to the Cape Merchant 479 Bushels of Corne." They arrived at
Jamestown February 8, 1609.
CHAPTER XVI
While Captain Smith was engaged in the life-and-death struggle for food
with the Indian Emperor, Newport was arriving in England and unloading,
along with his clapboards and soap-ashes, a large budget of news adverse
to the President of the Virginia colony. Wingfield, Archer, Martin,
Nelson, Ratcliffe, and Newport were willing contributors.
The "Governors and Councillors established for the Plantation of Virginia"
were apprised of sundry errors which it was necessary to rectify, besides
"outrages and follies" committed by the President of the Council of
Virginia. The managers of the enterprise, "perceivinge that the plantation
went backwards rather than forwards," held special meetings at the
Earl of Exeter's house and elsewhere in London, and after consultation
with Hakluyt, Hariot, and others, "of all the inconveniences in the
three supplies (1606, 1607, 1608), and finding them to arise out of two
rootes--_the forme of government_, and length and danger of the passage
by the southerly course of the Indys, they determined to petition the King
for a special charter,"[54] etc.
Accordingly a new charter was drawn up by Sir Edwin Sandys, then leader
of the independent party in Parliament. The twenty-first article of this
charter was, in view of future events, most significant. It inserted these
words in italics: "_and every of their children which shall happen to be
born within any of their Limits ... shall have and enjoy all Liberties,
Franchises and Immunities of free Denizens and natural subjects with
any of our other Dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had
been abiding and born within this Realm of England or any other of our
Dominions_." To this chartered right--"the unalienable rights of freeborn
Englishmen," our forefathers appealed when they protested against the
royal form of government in America.
The special charter was promptly granted by James the First, but it had
to go through a long routine before it could be signed and sealed by the
King.
By the new charter, the limits of the colony were extended two hundred
miles north and two hundred miles south of the mouth of James River;
the western boundary, the undiscovered ocean. The members of the London
Council were to be chosen by the Company, not appointed by the King;
Virginia was to be ruled by a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Admiral,
who were empowered, in case of necessity, to declare martial law. These
officers were now appointed: Sir Thomas, Lord Delaware, was to be Governor
and Captain-General; Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-Governor; Sir George
Somers, Admiral. These were men of rank and high character. It was
supposed that Wingfield, Ratcliffe, and Smith had been too obscure for
their position. A fleet of nine vessels and five hundred settlers, men,
women, and children, were to be sent out to do the work which the little
trio, _Susan Constant_, _Discovery_, and _Goodspeed_, had undertaken when
they dropped down the Thames in 1606.
By the provisions of the new charter the Virginia colony became indeed
more independent and republican, but under the new system the Governor
was endued with arbitrary power and authorized to declare martial law;
and the condition of the colonists was infinitely worse than before.
This they found to their bitter cost a few years later, when the hapless
sojourners at Jamestown fled from their homes and hid among friendly
Indians to escape the brutality of one of their governors. The sudden
repeal of the old charter evinced a cold ingratitude for the services of
Captain Smith and his associates, who had endured the toil, privations,
and dangers of the first settlement. These "true men" were not consulted.
They were utterly ignored, or branded as injurious to the interests of
the plantation. They will always live in history, which honours their
memory, as the real founders of this nation; while the motley multitude
sent to supersede them perished and came to naught within a very few short
months.[55]
Remembering the King's jealousy of his own honour and rights, one is
naturally surprised at his prompt acquiescence in the new charter. Those
around him knew him well. It was explained to his satisfaction that he was
now relieved of embarrassment in his relations to the Spanish government;
and that under the company's charter he could "owne it at his pleasure or
disavowe it as might be best for his honour and service."
"If it take not success, it is done of ther owne heddes. It is but
the attempt of private gentlemen: the State suffers noe losse, noe
disreputation.
"If it takes success, they are your subjects, they doe it for your
service, they will lay all at your Majesty's feet, and interess your
Majesty therein."[56]
This suited James exactly. He had much to interest him at home without
being bothered about colonial matters. He could always divide his time
"between his inkstand, his bottle, and his hunting." If he had a mind
for politics, there was plenty across the Channel, in the negotiations
between the Hollanders, Spain, France, and last and _least_ himself.
The Hague Treaty was signed this year (March 29, 1609), and James,
although distinctly snubbed by the Powers, regarded himself a mediator
and peacemaker. Besides, he had much ado to maintain himself,--this
heaven-descended pauper King,--a ruler of whom his subjects complained
that his hands were always in their pockets, and if they did not look
out he would keep them there. Often he could neither pay his servants nor
decently supply his own table.
Early in March, the Virginia Council in London addressed a letter to
the Mayor and Aldermen, beseeching them to take an active interest in
Virginia, as "an action concerning God and the advancement of Religion,
as well as the honour of the Kingdom." The Lord Mayor responded by sending
copies of their letter to the several city companies, asking them to "make
some adventure in so good and honourable an undertaking." The clergy of
the Church of England now evinced the warmest interest in the movement.
Sermons and tracts were written and sent broadcast throughout the country.
Among the prominent bishops, deans, and reverends who earnestly pleaded
for the conversion of the savages, we find our "Docteur of Divinitie,"
Rev. William Symondes.
The enthusiasm for Virginia caused by these efforts of the clergy, the
change in the charter, and the news of the decay of the plantation are
thus described by Strachey, in the elaborate style of the day:--
"Not a yeare of a romain-jubilee, noe, nor the Ethnick Queene of Ephesus,
can be said to have bene followed with more heate and zeale; the discourse
and visitation of it took up all meetings, times, termes, all degrees,
all purses, and such throngs and concourse of personal undertakers, as
the aire seemed not to have more Lights than that holie cause imflamed
Spirits to partake with it." Zuñiga was almost beside himself. He wrote
to his King, entreating him in the most earnest manner to "give orders to
have those insolent people in Virginia quickly annihilated."
On May 11 Edward Reed wrote from London to Mr. Coke of Wedgnocke: "The
sickness increaseth. The Virginians go forward next week." The expedition
of nine vessels, carrying men, provisions, and the plague, sailed from
Plymouth toward the end of May, 1609.[57] Gates and Somers were each
severally authorized, whichever might happen first to reach Jamestown,
to supersede the existing administration until the arrival of Lord
Delaware, who was not to embark for several months, and did not reach
Virginia until more than a year after the fleet sailed. Newport, Gates,
and Somers, finding it impossible to adjust the point of precedence among
themselves, embarked together by way of compromise, in the same vessel,
the _Sea Venture_. In the same ship John Rolfe and his first wife sailed
(the second was Pocahontas), also George Sandys, Strachey the historian,
and the Rev. Mr. Bucke; also Namontack and Matchumps (Machumps?), two of
Powhatan's Indians who were, it appears, in England in May, 1609.
The fleet, contrary to directions, followed the old circuitous route,
_via_ the Canaries and West Indies, and, of course, as always, were
"caught in the tail of a hurricane." Some of the vessels lost their masts,
some their sails from the sea breaking over the ships. One small vessel
was lost and never heard from again, and the _Sea Venture_, with Governor,
Lieutenant-Governor, Admiral, charter, and all, was separated from the
other ships of the fleet. The other vessels, badly shattered by the storm,
their stores spoiled with sea water, and many of their passengers dead or
dying with the plague, arrived at Jamestown in August, 1609.
They brought back the early agitators, Martin, Archer, and Ratcliffe,
together with "sundry other captains, divers gentlemen of good means
and high birth, and about three hundred settlers; the greater part of
them profligate youths, packed off from home to escape ill destinies,
broken-down gentlemen, bankrupt tradesmen, and the like, decayed tapsters,
and ostlers, trade-fallen; 'the cankers of a calm world and long peace.'"
Among the "youths"--we hope only a wild youth and not "profligate,"--was
the Henry Spelman, son of Sir Henry Spelman, of literary fame, whom we
remember as a fine fellow and good nurse. He came over in the _Unity_, and
had a career of adventure second to none in the colony. He was rescued
once from massacre by Pocahontas, was a valiant soldier and expert
interpreter, and fell at last, in 1623, under the tomahawk of the Indian.
The story of the _Sea Venture_ is a thrilling one. Who can read unmoved
of Sir George Somers, the brave old Admiral, who scarce took leisure
to eat or sleep day or night, but stood at the helm and kept his ship
upright until she was jammed between the ledges of two rocks on one of
the Bermudas! His crew had given themselves up as lost, and some having
"comfortable waters" on board, drank themselves into oblivion after
pumping vainly night and day. "Neither living or dying are we the better
for being drunk," said the old Admiral.
They found themselves castaways on the "Isles of Devils," as the Bermudas
had been named by the buccaneers who had visited them. This was the
wreck which is said to have suggested Shakespeare's "Tempest." The author
had evidently read Strachey's "True Repertory," and followed it in his
descriptions of the "vexed Bermoothes": the cries of the mariners, the
trembling star, flaming among the shrouds, which had appeared to the
excited imagination of the weary and fasting Admiral at the helm. "On this
strand at moonlight, the hag-born Caliban might roll and growl: Sycorax,
the blue-eyed witch, might hover in the cloud wracks: and the voices of
the winds whisper strange secrets."
The shipwrecked voyagers found an earthly paradise; and long afterward
Andrew Marvel immortalized, in a lovely poem, the boat song of the exiles
while they dreamed away the long months before they could reach the haven
to which they were bound. May I, too, be allowed to dream awhile, pausing
in my story of misery, cold, ingratitude, war, famine, and pestilence?
Perhaps some of my readers may have forgotten the poem, and will forgive
me for recalling part of it:--
"Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along
The listening winds received this song:
"'What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks
That lift the deep upon their backs;
He lands us on a grassy stage
Safe from the storms and prelate's rage.
He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything.
He hangs in shades the orange bright--
Like golden lamps in a green night;
And does, in the pomegranites close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shewes.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet:
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergrease on shore.
He cast (of which we needs must boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks, for us, did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
O let our voice His praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault;
Which then perhaps resounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay!'
"Thus sang they in the English boat
A holy and a cheerful note,
And all the way, to guide their chime
With falling oars they kept the time."
The brave old Christian Admiral immediately set about the building of a
cedar ship in which to return to his duty. From the wreck of the _Sea
Venture_ he brought a bell ashore, hung it on a tree, and rung it for
morning and evening prayers and for Sunday services. There was one "merry
English marriage" on the island and two births--a boy and a girl, to whom
the names "Bermudas" and "Bermuda" were given. The latter was the daughter
of John Rolfe. And here too was found the largest piece of ambergris in
the then known world, weighing eighty pounds. Ambergris, so highly prized
and so costly, was long "a beauty and a mystery" to its admirers. Was
it the solidified foam of the sea or the tears of the mermaid? Science
declares that the whale's intestines, irritated by starfish, evolves the
gum.
They are an interesting party, these sea adventurers on the lovely
island--these finders of treasure; but our stage is set on an island of
a far different character, where the actors neither smile nor sing, nor
build boats for escape, but are chained by inexorable fate to a hard lot.
Our place in this story is with them.
And so we leave the grand old Admiral, settling his differences with the
Lieutenant-Governor in the best way,--by dwelling apart from him on the
island (each to build his own ship); and while they hew the fragrant cedar
trees, and prepare for their return to Virginia, we will go thither and
watch over the storm-rocked "Cradle of the Republic"--Jamestown.
CHAPTER XVII
Utterly unconscious of the mine about to be sprung under his feet, Captain
Smith mustered all his forces for effective work in the planting season.
He probably gave no thought to affairs in England; he had plenty of
trouble with his enemies at home.
The traitor Dutchmen continued to live with Powhatan and to instruct
his people in the use of powder, shot, swords, and tools, which they
constantly obtained through their confederates in the fort. The rendezvous
of the thieves was a building in the woods which had been erected as a
house for the manufacture of glass, and seems now to have been abandoned.
There the thieves "lay in Ambuscades," together with forty men sent
by Powhatan under the guidance of "Francis," one of the Dutchmen, with
instructions to waylay, capture, or kill Captain Smith and seize firearms
and tools. The latter heard of these visitors, and with twenty men set
out to destroy them. But upon arriving at the glass house they found the
conspirators fled. The Captain's men pursued them to drive them out of the
peninsula, while he returned alone to Jamestown. To his surprise he met
in the woods his old acquaintance Wochinchopunck, king of the Paspaheghs,
who had piped a welcome at the coming of the English. The king now saluted
with an arrow-shot, and Captain Smith, grappling with him, was drawn unto
the water. There the Captain held the savage by the throat and was about
to cut off his head (he was an expert in this!) when the savage begged so
piteously for his life that Smith pitied him and hesitated. Just then two
of the Polish potash-boilers ran up, and helped him draw the savage out
of the water and conduct him to the fort and lock him up.
Francis was soon brought in by the other party. He had a plausible story
to relate in broken English: he and his comrades were detained by Powhatan
against their will, he had escaped at great hazard, and was on his way
home. Hungry and weary he had paused in the wood to gather a few walnuts.
He was not believed, but "went by the heeles" (was put in irons), the
Paspaheghan king also fettered, and held until the return of all the
Dutchmen who had run away to the enemy.
Wochinchopunck's relatives and friends came daily with presents entreating
his release, and were sent to Powhatan with the captors' terms--the
surrender of the Dutchmen. To this the old gentleman with the "sour look"
returned churlish replies: what cared he for the Dutchmen? they might go
and welcome; he had told them so again and again, but they refused to
stir. What more could he do? Could he put them on the backs of his men
and send them? His men were unable to carry those heavy Dutchmen on their
backs fifty miles from Orapakes! It was quite clear the captive king had
nothing to hope from his emperor. He settled the matter by keeping awake
while his jailers slept and made good his escape; whereupon George Percy
and Captain Winne were sent out to recapture him. They burned the king's
houses, and took two prisoners, Kemps and another. The savages became
exceedingly insolent and aggressive, and the matter ended by Smith's
wholesale assault upon their town, burning their houses, taking their
boats and all their fishing-weirs, and planting the latter in the waters
around Jamestown. This is one of the incidents of "cruel and inhuman
treatment of the Naturells" which helped to swell the long lists which his
enemies in London arrayed against him: ignoring the fact that he could
protect the lives of the colonists only by swift and sharp retaliation
for every Indian outrage or breach of faith.
The native eloquence of the Indian has often been noted. In his translated
speech, as the interpreters render it, there was a marvellous dignity,
and excellence of expression. As Smith was returning from the raid, a
party of the Paspaheghs overtook him and threw down their arms: and one,
a stout young man called Ocanininge, thus addressed him, according to the
interpreter:--
"Captain Smith my master (the King) is here present in this company
thinking it Captain Winn and not you; and of him he intended to have been
revenged, having never offended him. If he have offended you in escaping
your imprisonment, the fishes swim, the fowls fly, and the very beasts
strive to escape the snare and live; then blame not him being a man. He
would entreat you remember your being a prisoner what pains he took to
save your life. If since, he hath injured you, he was compelled to it, but
however you have revenged it to our too great loss. We perceive and well
know you intend to destroy us, that are here to entreat and desire your
friendship, and to enjoy our houses and plant our fields, of whose fruit
you shall participate; otherwise you will have the worst by our absence.
For we can plant anywhere, though with more labour: and we know you cannot
live if you want our harvest, and that relief we bring you. If you promise
us peace we will believe you; if you proceed in revenge we will abandon
the country." Upon these terms the Captain promised them peace until they
did some injury, upon condition they should bring in provision. So all
departed good friends and so continued until he left the country. After
he left, Wochinchopunck, again found hanging around Jamestown, was "thrust
twice through the body with an arming sword."
Smith now addressed himself with all his might to the defences of the
colony. Although he had inspired the Indians with a wholesome fear of
offending him, he knew their servile obedience to Powhatan, and that
monarch had forfeited all claim to his confidence and respect. Powhatan's
one dominant desire was to obtain the arms of the colonists, and with
these arms drive them from the country. A fortunate circumstance changed
the attitude for the present, even of that implacable enemy. A pistol
was stolen from the fort, and an Indian arrested, to be hanged unless
the pistol was returned. The prisoner was committed to the "dungeon."
The night was bitterly cold, and Captain Smith pitied the poor savage and
sent him a good supper and charcoal for a fire. At midnight his brother
brought back the pistol, but upon opening the door of the dungeon the
prisoner was found, stifled by the fumes of the charcoal, badly burned and
apparently dead. His brother's lamentations touched the Captain's heart
and he promised to make him alive again. Accordingly, with aqua vitæ and
vinegar, he was restored, his burns dressed, and he was sent home after
being well rested and refreshed.
The whole country rang with the wonderful news that the Englishman could
raise the dead, and henceforth there was, during his administration,
no trouble from the Indians. They frequently brought presents to the
colonists of game and fruits, and no doubt Pocahontas visited them as of
yore. It is expressly stated that she came as freely to the fort as to
her father's house.
Another party was soon sent into the interior to the country of the
Mangoags, in search of Raleigh's lost colony, and returned with "no newes
except that they were all dead." Sicklemore, who had been despatched to
Chowanock, returned after a similar fruitless search. He found the Chowan
River not large, the country overgrown with pines. As to the "pemminaw,"
the silk grass growing like hemp, there was but little, only a few
tufts here and there. Queen Anne was not yet to have a gown of Virginia
grass-linen. Elizabeth's robe had been woven from North Carolina grass,
and was probably a present from Sir Walter Raleigh.
A marginal note in Purchas's "His Pilgrimes" distinctly states that
Powhatan confessed he had been cognizant of the massacre of Raleigh's
men: also that the Indian king had in his treasure-house articles that had
belonged to them. Strachey, writing in 1610-1611, asserted that Powhatan
himself was their murderer. Expeditions were sent out, for several years,
in search of them. No clew was ever found to their fate. Indians are good
keepers of secrets, as was proven by the great massacre of 1622.
In March, 1609, a few months only remained of Smith's residence in
Virginia. Had he known them to be his last, he could not have worked
with more energy and efficiency. He "dug a well of most excellent sweet
water," he built block-houses in various places--one at Hog Island to
protect his fast-growing herd there. He built the "fort for retreat neere
a convenient river, easie to be defended, and hard to be assalted," around
which in the next century clustered the "Legends of the Stone House."
But scarcity of food constrained him to abandon the work of defence and
address himself to the ever recurring struggle for bread. There were two
hundred men behind the palisades, and only thirty who were willing to
work. He issued a stern threat that every idler would be sent across the
river to shift for himself. No empty porringer would be filled from the
common kettle unless the owner were sick, or had earned his meal. He was
beset with disloyal, unmanly complainers, who were clamorous that the
tools, arms, nay, the very houses should be bartered for corn. Newport had
brought them a terrible, warlike colony of rats, "thousands on thousands,"
which destroyed all the contents of his casks of grain, and baffled the
colonists' efforts to exterminate them. It was supposed that Newport
introduced them into Virginia--they had come originally to England from
the "poisonous East"--but in the early descriptions of the dress of a
savage he is represented as clothing himself with skins, and then adorning
his garment with the dead hand of an enemy or paw of a beast, while a
dead rat hung from his ear, through which the tail was thrust. This rat
was, however, evidently scarce--a rare gem--and not in common use for an
ear-ring like a living green and yellow serpent. I think we shall have to
thank Captain Newport for our rats, as we thank England for our colonists,
and the Dutch for the negroes, who arrived in 1619.
The early spring before the ripening of fruits and berries was always the
scarce season. Captain Smith sent some of his people to feed on Lynnhaven
Bay oysters: and others were billeted with the savages, who treated
them kindly. Roots and acorns were gathered for food. Smith perceived
the folly of keeping the colony crowded into the narrow limits of the
Jamestown peninsula, and projected a settlement in Nansemond, a fort
at Point Comfort, and yet another on the high ground near the present
city of Richmond. But his ardour was soon to be chilled. With the summer
came Captain Argall in his trading-ship, who brought the astounding
intelligence that the present charter and government had been overthrown,
everything reorganized, and President Smith removed.
The reasons for his disgrace were known to Argall. He had been accused
of cruelty to the "Naturells," and of suffering the ships to return
unfreighted. No allowance had been made for Indian outrages, for sickness,
or for any of the difficulties of which I have written.
The seven vessels, shattered by storm and having lost the greater portion
of their supplies, and many passengers by sickness, reached Jamestown
in August, 1609. They brought back the old ringleaders:[58] "Ratcliffe
the mutineer, Wingfield the imbecile, Newport the tale-bearer, Archer an
agitator, Martin a cat's-paw." They had wrangled through the early days of
1607 and 1608, been opposed by the hard workers and fighters, and crushed.
They had, in England, effected by intrigue what they had failed to effect
by force. They had their revenge! Ratcliffe, whose epitaph Hamor wrote in
a few pithy words, "He was not worth remembering but to his dishonour,"
had gained the willing ear of the disappointed London Company, and had
laid the blame of the failure in Virginia wholly and solely upon John
Smith. The "Rude Answer" of the honest fighting man had offended the Right
Honourables, and so they rid themselves of him.
Now, upon landing, Ratcliffe claimed authority. Smith refused to allow
it, until the charter and leaders, who were in the _Sea Venture_, should
arrive. Ratcliffe declared they were lost at sea. All Jamestown was in an
uproar. Ratcliffe and his followers paraded the town denouncing Smith.
His men "drank deep and uttered threats and curses," and their leader
nursed the storm and inflamed them more and more against the tyrant. Chaos
had come again.[59] Those "unruly gallants would dispose and determine
of the government sometimes to one, sometimes to another: to-day the old
commission must rule; to-morrow the new; the next day neither; in fine
they would rule all or ruin all. Yet in charity," continues our early
historian, "we must endure them thus sent to destroy us; or by correcting
their follies bring the world's censure upon us to be guilty of their
blood. Happy had we been had they never arrived, and we forever abandoned,
and as we were left to our fortunes: for on earth, for their number, was
never more confusion, or misery than their factions occasioned.
"The President seeing the desire of these Braves to rule; seeing how his
authority was so unexpectedly changed, would willingly have left all and
have returned for England. It would be too tedious, too strange and almost
incredible should I particularly relate the infinite dangers, plots and
practises he daily escaped amongst this factious crew: the chief whereof
he quickly laid by the heels. Master Percy had his request granted to
return to England, being very sick; Master West with an hundred and twenty
of the best he could choose, he sent to the Falles; Martin with near as
many to Nansemond." These were to establish new settlements according to
a previous plan.
As the term of Smith's presidency was about to expire, he made Martin
President, but the latter soon proved his cowardly incompetency, for,
growing alarmed at the attitude of the Indians at Nansemond, he ran away
and "left his company to their fortunes."
Captain West, returning to Jamestown, after seating his men at the Falls
(near the present site of Richmond), the President concluded to look after
matters there, and found the colony planted on low marshy ground subject
to the river's inundation and other inconveniences.
He had taken with him the bright boy, Henry Spelman, whom (according to
the latter) he now sold to Powhatan in part payment of the place then
(and now) called Powhatan. The rest of the payment he proposed to make
in a promise to aid Powhatan in his wars against the Monacans, and a
"proportion of Copper," with sundry provision for future supplies. But,
lo and behold, the colony at Powhatan rebelled against these terms and
scornfully rejected the scheme! It is supposed they had already built
their huts on the marshy ground and objected to the additional labour of
moving them. Smith regarded them as mutineers, and with five men landed
among them and arrested the ringleaders; but they overpowered him, and
forced him to retire on board of a vessel lying in the river. He set
sail for Jamestown, but his vessel ran aground; and to his surprise the
mutineers thronged him with appeals for protection, for the Indians had
fallen upon them as soon as Smith left, and had slain many of West's
party.
Accordingly the Captain again arrested the ringleaders, and, returning to
Powhatan, settled the colony there in the purchased palisade fort, which
was well fortified and contained good dry cabins and ground ready to be
planted. Smith named it "Nonsuch" after a royal residence of that name in
England.
This incident concluded his relations with the Indian emperor. He was
nevermore to see him; indeed, he had transacted his present business
through agents.
[Illustration: Captain George Percy.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
Our brave Captain's career was over in Virginia. He fell asleep on his
return voyage to Jamestown with his match lighted, and a bag of powder
in his pocket was ignited, "burning him very shrewdly," says the quaint
narrator. His agony was great, and there were no surgeons in Jamestown. He
lay that night in the fort, and there an attempt was made to murder him,
which failed. The murderer looked at him in his delirium, and the "steel
dropped from his nerveless hand." His faithful soldiers flatly refused
to submit to Ratcliffe, Archer, and their confederates, and George Percy
was prevailed upon to surrender his hope of returning to England, and
consented to remain as the President of the colony until news of the _Sea
Venture_ could be had.
At Michaelmas, 1609, the stern soldier and strong writer and true patriot
set sail for England. He had brought only his sword to Virginia, and he
took thence nothing more. Not an inch of the ground he had dug nor a plank
of the houses he had built belonged to him.
"What shall I say,"[60] writes the old historian, "but thus we lost him,
that in all his proceedings made Justice his first guide, and experience
his second, ever hating basenesse, sloath, pride, and indignitie more than
any dangers; that never allowed more for himselfe than his soldiers with
him; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead himselfe;
that would never see us want, what he either had or by any means could
get us; that would rather want than borrow or starve than not pay; that
loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse
than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose losse our deaths."
Nobody denies the services John Smith rendered to the infant colony--and
yet such was his arrogance, his boastfulness, his intolerant, dogmatic
temper, that men took offence, and grudgingly yielded him the honour which
was his due. It is true he never failed to put himself well to the fore,
and never omitted an opportunity to record his fine achievements. For
this men hated him. Diligent as were his enemies, they could not crush him
utterly. He filled positions of trust after he left Virginia, visited the
northern colony, was allowed to name it "New England," gave the name to
Boston and other places on the coast; and thus proved that his colonial
career was highly esteemed at home. Whether he deserves it or not, he
still holds the foremost place in the early history of Virginia.
With all his hauteur and arrogance, he knew how to be gracious and
winning, especially to women. We know of the supreme moment between the
raising and falling of the club to beat out his brains when
"An angel knelt in human form
And breathed a prayer for him."
But there were others--one indeed in every crisis, in every country he
visited--"Princesses and Madams," who befriended or saved him, and we
cannot but suppose that with them his personality possessed the charm of
fascination. But in regard to his soldierly qualities nothing is left
to inference or supposition. We know him to have been beyond compare
brave, enduring, capable of bearing extreme misery and danger with noble
fortitude. He was pitiful to the sick and weak, tender to children,
watchful of the comfort and rights of the unfortunate. His writings
sound a clear, high note of patriotism and devout aspiration. They bear
the impress of the rough mariner and soldier, but nobler writing I know
of nowhere. "The rude sentences rise to the height of eloquence, as he
exhorts his contemporaries in noble words to noble achievements." We give
a few of them.
"Seeing we are not born for ourselves, but each to help the other," he
writes, "and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and
the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds or our bad, by faith in
Christ's merits, is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell,
... let us imitate the virtues of our ancestors to be worthily their
successors."
"Who would live at home idly or think in himself any worth, to live only
to eat, drink and sleep, and so die?"
"Who can desire more content that hath small means or but merits to
advance his fortunes than to tread and plant the ground he hath purchased
by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of virtue and
magnanimity, what to such a mind can be more pleasant than planting and
building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God's
blessing and his own industry without prejudice to any?"
"What so truly suits with honour and honesty as the discovering things
unknown, erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant,
reforming things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native mother
country:--so far from wronging any as to cause posterity to remember thee,
and, remembering thee, ever honour that remembrance with praise?"
"What can a man with faith in religion do more agreeable to God than to
seek to convert these poor savages to Christ and humanity?"
These are the words of a Christian soldier. Men of his temperament,
however, are never regarded with indifference. They are loved devotedly or
hated relentlessly. One writer of his day calls him a "dear noble captain
and loyal heart"; another, "a wonder of nature, mirror of our clime"; "a
soldier of valorous policy and judgment"; another says of him:--
"I never knew a warrior but thee
From wine, tobacco, debts, dice, oaths so free."
On the other hand, his contemporaries brand him as "tyrant and
conspirator"; "full of the exaggerations and self-assertions of an
adventurer"; "a Gascon and a beggar." The adverse opinions, for some
mysterious reason, have crystallized around the Pocahontas incident, and
so eager are his critics to disprove the assertion that she saved John
Smith's life, they would like to believe she never existed at all! The
simple truth is that in the first two of his letters he omitted the fact,
in the third he related it. This inconsistency was observed in 1866 by Dr.
Charles Deane of Massachusetts. Until then no one had doubted the truth
of the story.
Of course the party that had all along questioned the marvellous
Transylvanian adventures eagerly welcomed the new ally to their ranks. A
warfare of words had been going on for more than two hundred years. It
was now given fresh impulse. Boastfulness and arrogance are unpleasant
foibles; lying is a sin. He had been disliked for his foibles, he was
now despised for his sins. Candid, able historians, like Dr. Doyle of
England and Alexander Brown of Virginia, honestly wrote against him; James
Grahame, Dr. Edward Arber of England, and all the Virginia historians
except Brown defended him. The charges remain on the pages of history "not
proven." To those pages (on both sides sincere) I commend the interested
reader. Old Thomas Fuller, however, is not much read by latter-day folk,
and although his opinion of the prisoner at the bar differs from my own,
his ill-concealed sarcasm is expressed in words so delightfully quaint
that I venture to quote him. He certainly gave the key-note to all the
critics that lived after him, for he wrote only thirty years after our
captain's death:--
"John Smith, Captain, was born in Cheshire, as Master Arthur Smith, his
kinsman and my schoolmaster, did inform me. He spent most of his life in
foreign parts. First in Hungary, under the emperor, fighting against the
Turks; three of which he himself killed in single duel; and therefore (so
it is writ over his tomb) was authorised by Sigismund King of Hungary
to bear three Turk's heads as augmentation to his arms. Here he gave
intelligence to a besieged city in the night, by significant fire-works
formed in the air, in legible characters, with many strange performances,
the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they are cheaper credited
than confuted.
[Illustration: St. Luke's, near Smithfield, built in 1623. The Oldest
Protestant Church in America.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
"From the Turks in Europe he passed to the pagans in America where
towards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (!) such his
perils, preservations, dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men above
belief, to some beyond truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them,
the prose and the pictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to
the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the herald to publish and
proclaim them.
"Two captains being at dinner one of them fell into a large relation of
his own achievements, concluding his discourse with this question to
his fellow: 'And pray, Sir, what service have _you_ done?' To whom he
answered: 'Other men can tell that.' However, moderate men must allow
Captain Smith to have been very instrumental in settling the plantation
in Virginia whereof he was Governor, as also admiral of New England.
"He led his old age in London, where his having a prince's mind imprisoned
in a poor man's purse, rendered him to the contempt of such who were
not ingenuous. Yet he efforted his spirits with the remembrance and
relation of what formerly had been and what he had done. He was buried
in Sepulchre's Church choir, on the south side thereof, having a ranting
epitaph inscribed in a table over him, too long to transcribe. Only we
will insert the first and last verses, the rather because the one may fit
Alexander's life for his valour, the other his death for his religion:--
"'Here lies one conquered who hath conquered kings!'
'Oh, may his soul in sweet Elysium sleep!'
The orthography, piety, history, and divinity are much alike."
As to his feelings with regard to Pocahontas, I can do no better than
quote the words of his contemporaries:--
"Some propheticall spirits calculated that hee had the savages in such
subjection, hee would have made himselfe a king by marrying Pocahontas,
Powhatan's daughter. It is true she was the very nonpareil of his Kingdome
and at most not past 13 yeares of age. Very oft shee came to our fort,
with what shee could get for Captaine Smith; that ever loved and used the
Countrie well, but her especially he ever much respected: and so well she
requited it, that when her father intended to have surprized him, shee
by stealth in the darke night came through the wild woods and told him of
it.
"But her marriage could no way have entitled him by any right to the
kingdome, nor was it ever suspected hee had ever such a thought; or
more regarded her of any of them than in honest reason and discreation
he might. If he would, he might have married her, or have done what him
listed; for there was none that could have hindred his determination."[61]
The Indians[62] eagerly courted intermarriage with the white man, and were
painfully stung by the disdain with which the English receded from their
advances and declined to be the husbands of Indian women. The colonists
forgot that they had inflicted this mortification; but it was remembered
by the Indians, who sacredly embalmed the memory of every affront in
lasting, stern, silent, and implacable resentment. We have seen how often
"wives" were offered to John Smith, and Powhatan eagerly hastened his
daughter's marriage to John Rolfe. Her engagement was no sooner announced
than her old uncle appeared at Jamestown to witness the marriage ceremony.
Captain Smith never returned to Virginia, but after the massacre of 1622
he offered his services as commander of a company to drive the Indians
out of the country. For some unexplained reason this offer was declined.
The king thought it unnecessary! He indeed offered a few of the rusty arms
in the Tower to be sent to the survivors--this much and only this was he
willing to do.
[Illustration: Captain John Smith.
From the bust by Baden-Powell.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
The "old age" of which Thomas Fuller speaks would be now thought the
noonday of manhood. The captain died the 21st day of June, 1631, about
fifty-five years old. The tablet which so offended Fuller has long
ago disappeared. Americans do not need it. American pilgrims visit St.
Sepulchre, sweep the dust from the plate bearing the three Turks' heads,
and render the homage of grateful hearts to the English soldier who served
them so unselfishly in their darkest hour, and then came home to give
"His body to that pleasant country's earth
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long."
CHAPTER XVIII
Five only of the ships of the fleet of nine sailed from Jamestown October
14, 1609,--one had been lost at sea, one had been wrecked at Bermuda;
two, the _Virginia_ and the _Swallow_, were left with the colony, "to
procure the victuals whereof they were exceedingly much in need." Thirty
newly arrived, unruly youths were returned--as they were not wanted in
Virginia,--to their affectionate relatives in England, who doubtless
confronted with dismay the vexed problem of their future disposal.
Among the letters sent abroad at this time was one from Ratcliffe to
the Earl of Salisbury, telling the earl in a candid and confidential
manner the "Truth of some late accidents befalne His Majesties Virginia
Collonye,"--how Captain Smith had "reigned sole Governour without
assistantes, and would at first admit of no councell but himselfe. This
man," he continues, "is sent home to answer some misdemeanours, whereof I
persuade me he can scarcely clear himself from great imputation of blame."
He then gives a list of certain superior persons now in power, including
himself; and adds, "Some few of the best and worthyest that inhabit at
Jamestown are assistantes to us!"
The career of this mischievous hypocrite was destined to be brief.
Remembering Captain Smith's successful visits to Powhatan, he made bold
to seek an interview with that monarch. He was not received with the
pretentious pageant--the dais, the crown and heads, the many wives,
children, and retainers; but was sharply met at the threshold with arrow
and tomahawk, and slain, with all that were with him, except Henry Spelman
and one other, who escaped to tell the story.
Captain Percy now addressed himself to the comfort, advancement, and
protection of the colony. The danger of Spanish invasion was ever present
with the leaders at Jamestown. With perfect ease the Spanish caravels
could sail up the James, anchor immediately before the hamlet which they
called a "Cittie," and make short work of its slender defences. It is
known[63] that Philip, importuned day by day to strangle the colony in
its infancy, had ordered a vessel to be manned and sent from Florida, as
a scout, to the Virginia waters. This ship had seen a great vessel flying
the red cross in the waters near the capes, had ventured near enough to
reconnoitre; and, convinced that this was a lookout ship of a formidable
squadron, had run away as fast as tide and wind could carry it. In reality
there was no ship at the spot,--none whatever,--and the threatening sail
had been a phantom of Spanish imagination.
Captain Percy sent "some 16 proper men" to build a fort at Point
Comfort near the site of the present Fortress Monroe. Percy named the
fortification in honour of the founder of the Percy family, "Algernoune
Fort." This fort was afterward destroyed by fire and another commenced
by the colonists, but not finished. The name was unfortunate. The early
settlers were fond of short alliterative names: "Pace's Pains," "Piping
Poynt," "Pryor's Plantation," "Beggar's Bush." Had the President called
his fort "Percy's Point," I am persuaded it could have held its name until
to-day.
"Beggar's Bush," as a name for a country place, is peculiar. Historians
invariably explain that Fletcher's play suggested the name, but I am
by no means sure that its owner was a reading man. He was probably a
Huntingdonshire man, who remembered in the wild, new country a familiar
saying of the old. "He is on the way to Beggar's Bush," was the comment
when a man lived beyond his means or evinced extravagant tendencies.
Beggar's Bush was a tree on the left hand of the London road from
Huntingdon to Caxton, halfway between the rich and the poor part of the
country. "I have heard," says old Thomas Fuller, "how King James being
in progress in these parts with Sir Francis Bacon, the Lord Chancellor,
and having heard that morning how Sir Francis had prodigiously rewarded a
mean man for a small present: 'Sir Francis,' quoth he, 'you will quickly
come to Beggar's Bush, and I may even go along with you if both be so
bountiful.'"
The numbers at the plantation had again been reduced by sickness to about
two hundred people, who were at war with the Indians, and in need of
ammunition. "The hand of God was heavy on the Colony, and the hand of God
reacheth all the earth! Who can avoid it or dispute with him?"
The Indians had heard of the powder accident from which Captain Smith had
suffered so much, and missing him from the fort, concluded he was dead.
They saw their opportunity. "They all revolted and did spoil and murther
all they encountered." Powhatan resolved to press the war in earnest.
All now felt the loss of the strong, fearless captain. Beverley, the old
historian, says, "as soon as he left them, all went to ruin."
George Percy, enfeebled from illness, was utterly unable to cope with
the difficulties that beset him. His crew at home was a motley one--some
thirty "true men;" some honest labourers, the rest detrimental in every
particular. There were now outlying forts and plantations to be cared for.
At Jamestown,[64] "there was but one Carpenter (John Laydon) and three
others who were only learners; two Blacksmiths; two saylers; and those
we write 'laborers' were for the most part footmen, and such as they that
were adventurers brought to attend them, or such as they could perswade to
goe with them, that never did know what a daye's work was. All the rest
were poore Gentlemen, Tradesmen, Serving-men, libertines and such like;
ten times more fit to spoyle a Commonwealth than either begin one or but
helpe to maintaine one. For when neither the feare of God, nor the law,
nor shame, nor displeasure of their friends could rule them in England,
there is small hope ever to bring one in twentie of them ever to be good
in Virginia."
There was one way to remedy this state of things, and but
one,--annihilation! Many died from yellow fever, many from the London
plague. The rest hastened to destruction from starvation. The hand of God
was heavy--who could avoid it or dispute with Him?
As the days passed on, the disorder increased, and the inevitable
dissolution hastened. Martin's men at Nansemond and West's at the Falls
were assailed by the savages and took refuge in Jamestown. Percy was
now so ill "he could neither goe nor stand." Lord Delaware's kinsman had
sailed in despair for England. With every passing hour the prospect grew
darker. Thirty men seized one of the vessels and became buccaneers. Utter
hopelessness took possession of those left behind. [65]Every day death
visited some house, and when the master was buried, the house was pulled
down for firewood, the living not being able to gather fuel in the woods.
Parts of the defending palisade were burnt, although the inmates trembled
with fear of the Indians. Only the blockhouse was the safety of the few
who lived.
The Indians knew all this weakness and forebore to assault the fort or
hazard themselves in a war on those whom they were assured in a short time
would of themselves perish, yet they killed all stragglers found beyond
bounds. Every particle of food was devoured, and the miserable women and
children begged from the savages, to receive insult and mortal wounds.
Roots, acorns, and the skins of horses were boiled for food. At last dead
Indians were dug up and devoured "by the baser sort."
A horrible, ghastly tragedy froze the blood of the "better sort." A
man killed his wife, and had devoured part of her body, when he was
discovered. He was executed, but that only added horror to horror.
This time marked one of two terrible epochs,--"the starving time" and
the great massacre of 1622. Nearly five hundred persons had lately been
landed at Jamestown, and six months afterward "there remained not past
sixty men, _women and children_, most miserable and poor creatures." Of
five hundred, more than four hundred had perished,--dead of starvation or
brained by the Indian tomahawk.
In May, 1607, the Englishmen had landed in what they termed "a Paradise."
Over the moss-green earth "bespred with faire flowers" the branches of
the stately trees threw lacelike shadows. Flowering vines hung from their
boughs, brilliant birds darted among them, or swooped down to dip their
blue and crimson wings in the clear rivulets. All was happiness, activity,
and hope.
Now, in May, 1610, the earth was trampled bare of all verdure, ragged
stumps of the felled trees were rotting in the ground, noisome vapours
rose from the neglected, filthy yards of a pestilence-smitten town. Men,
women, and children, gaunt and wild-eyed from famine, perishing by inches
slowly but surely, lay about the town, moaning and despairing. The last
agony was near. They knew that without help they could not survive many
hours. Long ago they had ceased to expect it.
We can imagine the frantic joy when two vessels appeared on the river!
These were the cedar ships we left Admiral Somers and Sir Thomas Gates
building at Bermuda: the _Deliverance_ and the _Patience_! The Admiral
and Sir Thomas cast anchor and at once went on shore. The scene that
ensued baffles description. The two mariners looked upon wretchedness
and desolation indescribable. The shipwrecked on sea looked into the eyes
of the shipwrecked on land. Jamestown was in ruins, the town encumbered
with filth. The torn-down palisades, the gates swinging to and fro on
rusty hinges, the church ruined and unfrequented, the dismantled houses,
the emaciated faces, the hollow hungry eyes, and voices hardly able to
articulate the prayer to be "taken home to die,"--these were the piteous
sights and sounds which greeted the commanders as they landed from their
cedar ships. All hope of Virginia was over forever! Even the stout hearts
that had borne storm and wreck in the _Sea Venture_ were appalled by the
spectacle.
Gates and Somers had heard at Algernoune Fort of the sad condition of
the colony. Captain Percy had happened to be in the fort directing the
preparations for its abandonment. "From hence," says Strachey, "in two
days (only by the help of Tydes no wind stirring) we plyed it sadly up the
River; and the three and twentieth of May we cast Anchor before Jamestowne
where we landed, and our much grieved Governour first visiting the church
caused the Bell to be rung, at which all such as were able to come out of
their houses repayred to the church where our Maister Bucke made a zealous
and sorrowful Prayer, finding all things so contrary to our expectation,
so full of misery and misgovernment. After service our Governour caused
me to read his commission, and Captain Percy delivered up to him his
commission, the old Patent and the Councell Seale."
There was another witness to this scene besides the actors therein.
Namontack, Powhatan's man, had returned to England with Newport before
the sailing thence of the fleet, and with him Machumps, the brother of
the king's favourite, wife Winganuskie. These[66] two Indians were on the
_Sea Venture_ when she was wrecked at Bermuda. There, in a lonely spot,
the two had quarrelled and fought, and Machumps killed Namontack, buried
him, and kept the secret from his own people. He revealed it, however,
to his English friends, and told how he had buried Namontack--the whole
of him--for, finding he could dig only a small grave, he had taken the
trouble to cut off his legs and very neatly lay them in order beside him!
Machumps was much esteemed by the colonists. He aided the first explorers
of the James River, and they had named a creek "Machump's Creek," in
his honour. He lived a year or more at Jamestown with Kemps, a former
prisoner, who had also become a friend. The two were more intimate in
their relations to the Englishmen than any other Indians except Pocahontas
and Chanco.
John Rolfe, "an honest gentleman and of good behaviour," was also a
passenger in one of the cedar ships. The little "Bermuda" had died,
perhaps on the voyage, and his wife died soon after, so he was left free
for the romance, a few years later, of his marriage with Pocahontas.
Upon reckoning up the stores brought in the tiny cedar ships, the
Admiral and Gates perceived there were only enough to last sixteen days,
allowing two cakes a day to each person. They accordingly, to the joy
of the colonists, concluded to abandon Jamestown and sail for England
_via_ Newfoundland, where English fishing vessels were supposed to be in
condition to victual the company for England. The wretched remnant of
the colony was overjoyed at this decision. The fort was dismantled and
the cannon buried at the gate. There was little else to take away. Some
of the unhappy sufferers wished to set fire to the houses where they had
endured so much, but the commanders elected otherwise; and to prevent
the destruction of the houses, church, and palisades, Sir Thomas Gates
remained on shore with a party to preserve order, and was the last man
to step into the boat. On June 7, every man, woman, and child, at the
beating of the drum, repaired aboard the _Discovery_, the _Deliverance_,
the _Patience_, and the _Virginia_, and at noon a salvo of small arms
announced to the listening echoes that all was over--all the hope,
expectation, struggle, and despair!
That night they fell down the tide to Hogg Island, and bright and early
next morning set sail again with glad hearts, the tide bringing them to
Mulberry Island.
[Illustration: Lord Delaware.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
There, to their amazement, they met Captain Edward Brewster in a rowboat,
his sailors bending to the oars in great haste to intercept their farther
advance. Lord Delaware was at Point Comfort with three vessels laden
with all things needful, and hearing there of the movements of Somers and
Gates, sent his long boat to command their return to Jamestown. Had the
latter been a few moments earlier, or Captain Brewster a trifle later,
they would not have met. "This was the arm of the Lord of Hosts who
would have his people pass through the Red Sea and the Wilderness, and
then possess the Land of Canaan," exclaims the old writer, who bursts
forth into exclamations of "thanks and praise for the Lord's infinite
goodness! Never had poor people more cause to cast themselves at his very
footstool." The poor people themselves felt differently at the time. "Sir
Thomas Gates the next day, to the great grief of all his company, as wind
and weather gave leave, returned his whole company with charge to take
possession again of those poor ruinated habitations at Jamestown which
they had formerly inhabited. Himself in a boat proceeded down to meet his
Lordship, who making all speed up shortly arrived at Jamestown." Meanwhile
the _Deliverance_, _Discovery_, _Patience_, and _Virginia_ "bore up the
helm," went in advance, and relanded that night. The fires were rekindled,
the guns dug up, and preparation hastily made to receive his Lordship.
[67]Lord Delaware reached Jamestown on Sunday, June 10, 1610, and in the
afternoon went ashore, landing at the south gate of the palisade. Sir
Thomas Gates caused his company in arms to stand in order and make guard,
William Strachey acting on this special occasion as colour-bearer. As soon
as the Lord Governor landed, he fell upon his knees before them all, and
made a long and silent prayer to God. Then arising, he marched up into
the town, Strachey bowing with the colours as he entered the gate, and
let them fall at his Lordship's feet, who passed on into the chapel, where
evening service was read, followed by a sermon by Rev. Richard Bucke, and
after that "caused his ensign to read his commission as Lord Governour
and Captaine Generall during the life of the Colony and Plantation in
Virginia, upon which Sir Thomas Gates delivered up to his lordship his
own commission and the counsell seale." His Lordship then delivered some
few words of warning and encouragement to the colony, and as no fitting
house could be had for him in the town, repaired again to his ship for
his lodging.
Events had followed each other like scenes in a theatre. The curtain had
slowly descended upon a desolate picture of death, darkness, and despair;
it rose with the morning sun on an animated scene of hope and activity.
In the space of three days the Virginia colony had perished and come to
life again.
The government was now invested in one over whose deliberations there
could be no control, and with whom there could consequently be no
rivalry.[68] Steady obedience was required and enforced. Things soon
assumed a wholesome and active appearance. Every man had his own duty and
officers were appointed to see that duty done; and it was not long before
the disturbances and confusion which had been the natural consequences
of disaffection and revolt were succeeded by the happy fruits of peaceful
industry and order.
Let it never be forgotten that in all the time of sore distress there
were steadfast souls who never lost their trust in God or failed in their
religious duties. They were never without a church--in less than six
years they had built or re-built five! In their darkest hour they had
built a church. In it, although the edifice during the starving time fell
into a "ruinous condition," they held daily prayers; and in the absence
of a minister met on Sunday for "prayers and homilies." At their lowest
estate they had faith to pray to be delivered from "battle and murder,
plague, pestilence, and famine," and to implore help in all their "time
of tribulation." Although to their human apprehension the supplication
was not answered, the faith of these pious souls failed not. A prayer
for daily use was sent to them from the mother church in England--a
petition for strength to bear their heavy burdens, for a blessing on all
their work, for the conversion of the savages, and ending with a fervent
invocation, "God bless England, our sweet native country!"
Lord Delaware repaired the church, and in it Pocahontas was baptized and
married. The edifice was of wood, and it was known as the third church. It
was sixty feet long by twenty-four wide, and before the arrival of Lord
Delaware was probably plainly furnished within. He had it fitted with a
chancel of cedar and a communion table of black walnut.
[Illustration: Pocahontas Memorial Window, St. John's Church, Hampton,
erected by the Indian Girls of Hampton Institute.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
"All the pews and pulpit were of cedar, with fair, broad windows, also
of cedar, to shut and open as the weather should occasion. The font was
hewn hollow like a canoe, and there were two bells in the steeple at
the west end. The church was so cast as to be very light within, and the
Lord Governor caused it to be kept passing sweet, trimmed up with divers
flowers."
There was a sexton in charge of the church, and every morning the bell
rang for prayers at ten and again at four in the afternoon.
There was also a sermon every Thursday, and two on Sunday. "Every Sunday
when the Lord Governour went to church, he was accompanied with all the
councillors, captains, other officers, and all the gentlemen, and with
a guard of fifty halberdiers--all in his Lordship's livery, in fair red
cloaks." His Lordship sat in the choir in a green velvet chair, and the
council, captains, and officers on each side of him.
We have the two pictures,--a starved, ragged handful, prostrate before
the altar, responding in feeble accents, "Good Lord, deliver us"; and
the light and colour, the _corps de garde_ in crimson, the Lord Governor
kneeling on his green velvet cushion, the bright flowers filling the
chancel. They are all gone now! "Whose souls questionless," whether proud
or humble, "are with God." Jamestown Island is a graveyard. After Lord
Delaware landed with his accessions to the colony, 900 persons had been
sent from England to Virginia, of whom 700 had perished.[69] In 1619 it
was estimated that 2540 immigrants had landed at Jamestown, of whom 1640
had died.
The total mortality in less than one score years was 6040, out of 7280.
Around the church thousands are buried, the victims of the first season
of starvation and those of the last: good Master Hunt, hardy adventurers,
knights and ladies, paupers and "gentlemen," gentle and simple; and on the
island also Kemps, the Indian; the poor victim of military execution; and
Opechancanough, the savage instigator of three massacres,--friend and foe
they lie together. The kind mother earth covers them all! In winter they
lie beneath the pure snows from heaven, and the summer daisies look up to
God from their ashes: and so they all sleep together "untill the generall
day."
CHAPTER XIX
Lord Delaware followed his prayer at the gate of Jamestown with his own
earnest efforts to bring about its fulfilment. He was a wise ruler and
generous friend to the colony. The terrible old gentleman with the "sour
look" silently observed him, and made no demonstration, friendly or
otherwise, for a few months. He had heard of Captain Smith's death with
mingled feelings of relief and admiration. Machumps had, without doubt,
told him of the pomp and ceremony attending Lord Delaware, who held his
court on board his own ship, disdaining the humble huts of his inferiors.
Robed in crimson and gold, this was altogether a different person from the
rough soldier, John Smith. The Dutchmen, relieved of their fear of Captain
Smith, now proposed to return to Jamestown and ingratiate themselves
with the new administration. They had built a house for Powhatan, with
an immense Dutch chimney, which stood like a giant sentinel until it
was blown down a few years ago. They now came forward and requested
the emperor to send them as ambassadors to Lord Delaware with gifts and
proposals of peace, but Powhatan received their overtures with scorn and
replied sternly, "You that would have betrayed Captaine Smith to mee, will
certainly betray me to this great Lord for your own peace," and so "caused
his men to beat out their braines."
[70]Lord Delaware soon found it impossible to live in the unhealthy
climate of Jamestown, and returned home, leaving Percy once more in charge
of the colony, until a Governor should arrive from England. The number of
colonists was now about two hundred; the stock of provisions sufficient
for ten months, and the Indians, after two or three sallies and as many
sharp rebukes, apparently peaceable and friendly.
We have noted Strachey's account of the wreck of the _Sea Venture_, which
it is said by some inspired Shakespeare's "Tempest." He wrote another
book, "The Historie of Travail into Virginia Britannia," covering the
years 1610-1611 and 1612. Of this book he made two copies in his own
handwriting, one of which, dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, was deposited
in the British Museum; the other, dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley,
lieutenant of the Tower, and father of Lucy Hutchinson, was preserved
among the Ashmolean Manuscripts. There these two priceless manuscripts
slept unnoticed more than two hundred years! They were finally unearthed
in 1849 by R. H. Major of the British Museum, and printed for the Hakluyt
Society.
The book is especially valuable because it treats of the time immediately
following John Smith's residence at Jamestown, of which we have no other
record except Raphe Hamor's later book. Moreover, it is the production
of a highly educated and religious man, who seems to have told his story
with no regard whatever for the prejudices of his readers, but simply as a
matter of duty. He does not appear to have offered it for publication. He
gives a graphic account of Powhatan and his realm, and a reliable picture
of savage manners and customs, having possessed an advantage over the
earlier historians by reason of his intimate association with intelligent
Indians who spoke English, and with the interpreters, Savage and Spelman,
who had lived among the Indians for the express purpose of learning their
language. As compared with John Smith, Strachey is a writer of superior
elegance. Although somewhat pedantic in his classical citations, his style
is clear and interesting. Coming to light after more than two hundred
years, his book has the charm of novelty with the venerable authority of
age. Evidently the author was a man of sober and observing mind, and of
learning after the model of King James, whose taste flavoured much of the
literature of his day.
An intelligent English-speaking Indian, Kemps, lived a year at Jamestown;
and a frequent visitor was Machumps, Winganuskie's brother. "They came to
and fro as they dared, and as Powhatan gave them leave--for it was not
otherwise safe for them, no more than it was for Amarice, who had his
brains knocked out for selling but one basket of corn, and lying in the
English fort two or three days without Powhatan's leave."[71] Why Kemps
and Machumps were thus favoured we know not. The former died in the arms
of his new friends in the winter of 1611. "Machumps was a frequent guest
at Sir Thomas Dale's table, where (upon request) he sometimes repeated the
words with which the Indian always prefaced his meals. Kemps was much made
of by the Lord General, spoke a pretty deal of English and came orderly
to church every day to prayers, and observed with us the keeping of the
Sabbath both by ceasing from labour and repairing to church."
Of course inquiry was made of Pocahontas, who had not been seen at
Jamestown after Captain Smith left. Kemps and Machumps concurred in
explaining her absence. She was "married to a private captaine called
Kocoun, some two years since."[72]
She married, then, the year Captain Smith sailed, and doubtless after
she was told of his death. It is astonishing that so interesting a fact
has not been mentioned by any one of the Virginia historians who have
written since 1849--Charles Campbell, Esten Cooke, or Alexander Brown.
Dr. Doyle, of England, however, relates it. It was not agreeable to the
romantic Virginians that their Indian maiden should have been a widow when
she married John Rolfe. The first news we had in America of Strachey's
book came to us in a _Princeton Magazine_ in 1850. The writer frankly
confesses, "Some of the accounts of Pocahontas are unexpected: _nor dare
we copy them_!" The wheeling in the Jamestown market place was one of the
"accounts." Can it be that Virginians would hold her less "a thing enskyed
and saintly" if they knew her to have been a widow?
This may be natural. Perhaps we would not enshrine the Maid of Orleans
nor the Maid of Saragossa as we do, had one been the "widow Joan" and
the other the "widow Augusta." Very capricious and unreasonable is poor
human nature in matters of love and romance. Pocahontas is to be honoured
all the more inasmuch as she conquered every instinct of her savage
nature, becoming reverent, gentle, pitiful, and patient; and corrected
every blemish in her "manners barbarous," learning to "live civilly," and
behaving, in all situations, with discreet gravity. Like the lovely pond
lily, the root was in slime and darkness; but at the first touch of the
sun the golden heart was revealed of a perfect flower.
Of one thing we may be sure: she was not won unwooed. The customs of her
people forbade any such procedure. Her father may have sold her for a
bushel or two of "rawrenoke," as he sold one of her sisters, but Kocoun
must have followed the prescribed rule of his people.
[73]"Yf a young mayden live under parents," says Strachey, "the parents
must allow of the sutor; for their good-wills the wooer promiseth
the daughter shall not want of such provisions, nor of deare-skynns
fitly drest for to weare; besides he promiseth to doe his endeavor to
procure beades, perle and copper; and for handsell gives her before them
something as a token of betroathing or contract of a further amity. And
he presents the young woman with the fruits of his labours, fowle or fish
or berries--and so after, as the likeing growes; and as soone as he hath
provided her a home (if he have none before) and some platters, morters
and matts he takes her home;" not, however, before the simple marriage[74]
ceremony. Her father calls together his kindred and friends, and in their
presence joins the hands of the contracting parties. The bridegroom's
father or chief friend, having provided a long string of beads, breaks it
over the clasped hands, giving the beads afterward to the bride, and "soe
with much mirth and feasting they goe together."
Thus we are constrained again to observe a strange kinship among all the
children of men. The string of beads endows the bride with all the worldly
goods of her husband. The clasped hands express their mutual interests
and affection. As to the "skynnes, beads and perles," they are quite as
essential to the "further amity" of our brides of the twentieth century as
they were to the savage brides of the seventeenth. Even the copper would
be by no means despised.
After this first marriage, the Indians permitted others--temporary
marriages--marriages on trial! After the trial period expired, the "trial"
wife might be dismissed; if not sent away then, she must be kept always,
"however uncompanionable."
Of the poorer class of Indians we know little. Our society records have
been of the court only. Strachey was immensely exercised in them. There
was an interesting werowance named Pepisco, a religious sort of fellow,
who awakened hope that he might become the third Indian convert in the
little company of two--Pocahontas and Chanco. He must have been a very
proud and spirited savage. He was certainly an imprudent one. This Pepisco
possessed by right of succession a fine principality, where he might
have reigned happily all his days, but he must needs steal the affections
of Opechancanough's chief wife, and in due time stole the lady herself.
[75]"Powhatan conceaved a displeasure against him, and deposed him. Yet
is Pepisco suffered to retaine in this country a little small kassun, or
village, uppon the rivadge of the streame with some few people about him,
keeping the said woman still whome he makes his best beloved. She travels
with him upon any remove in hunting-tyme or in his visitation of us, by
which meanes twice or thrice in a summer she hath come unto our towne;
nor is she so handsome a savadge woman as I have seene amongst them, yet,
with a kind of pride she can take upon her a shewe of greatnes; for we
have seene her forbeare to come out of her quintan or boat through the
water as others, both mayds and married women usually doe, unless she were
carryed forth betweene two of her servants."
The society reporter would not have been at all competent had he omitted
a careful description of the princess' gown. He had peculiar advantages
for observing it.
"I was once early at her howse (yt being sommer tyme), when she was layed
without dores under the shadowe of a broad-leaved tree, upon a pallet
of osiers spred over with four or five fyne grey matts, herself covered
with a faire white drest deer skynne or two. When she rose, she had a
mayd who fetcht her a frontall of white currall, and pendants of great,
but imperfect-couloured and worse drilled pearles, which she put into
her eares; and a chayne with long lyncks of copper which came twice or
thrice about her neck and they acompt a jolly ornament; and sure thus
attired with some variety of feathers and flowers stuck in their heires,
they seem as debonaire, quaynt, and well pleased as (I wis) a daughter
of the house of Austria behune with all her jewells; likewise her mayd
fecht her a mantell which is like a side cloake, made of blew feathers, so
artificyally and thick sewed together that it seemed like a deepe purple
satten and is very smooth and sleeke; and after she brought her water for
her hands, and then a braunch or two of fresh greene asshen leaves as for
a towell to dry them."
A very observant Briton was William Strachey, Gent.! We are grateful for
this glimpse of one of the royal family, whose dress and customs must have
been those of all the others--although, as there was a decided coolness
between the Princess Pepisco and the emperor, probably she did not visit
the Princess Pocahontas.
The mantle of skins or feathers was, however, worn by Indian queens as
late as 1676, when the Queen of Pamunkey, a niece of Powhatan's, appeared
in the House of Burgesses clad in a buckskin robe cut into long fringes.
When Pocahontas, in the painting in the Capitol at Washington, is pictured
in an æsthetic robe of chiffon or some such soft, clinging material,
with a long flowing train (as at her baptism), the artist does her great
injustice. We presume that some good Christian woman at Jamestown may
have provided a garment suitable for the Christian ceremonial, but if
so, it was a short petticoat and ruff! And the Oriental dress swathing
her lithe form in the painting representing her marriage is just as
improbable as the sublime, heroic attitude of her prosaic bridegroom,
as he, with lifted hand and eyes, invokes the Almighty as witness of his
pious self-sacrifice.
The publication, in 1849, of Strachey's "Virginia Britannia" aroused quite
as much interest in London as in this country. I wish I could quote all
of his descriptions of Indian life. The _London Athenæum_ of 1850 calls
attention to the prophetic motto which prefaces the volume: "This shal
be written for the generations to come: and the people which shal be
created shall praise the Lord." It slept in obscurity for nearly twelve
generations--allowing four to a century.
The _Athenæum_ epitomizes the dress, customs, and descriptions of the
Virginia Indians. All these are interesting to us, now that the mysterious
savage is so far away from our observation, but for all these things I
must refer my readers to other historians. The _one_ point which must ever
be accentuated in our estimate of the character of the Virginia Indians
is the secrecy and cruelty of their human sacrifices. Once every year
the tribes were summoned to listen to the dread call of Okeus, for young
children to pacify his anger and ensure success in war, the hunt, and
the harvest. There at Utamussac--the spot that no Indian passed without
trembling--pitiful women surrendered their babes, and when all was over
returned "weeping bitterly," while the men rejoiced and sang. Now all
would be well! The arrow would be directed swiftly and surely to the heart
of the foe, or the deer; no blight would fall upon the corn; the women
would be faithful, the men strong.
Pocahontas was living retired (in her widowhood we are forced to believe)
when Powhatan's old enmity awoke, and more arms were stolen from the
fort, more sneaking depredations made upon the settlements now beginning
to creep along the banks of the river. Captain Argall, who was sent by
Sir Thomas Dale to the Potomac to trade for corn, contrived to ingratiate
himself with Japazaws, a friendly chief, and from him learned that
Pocahontas was living with him. Japazaws had seen a gorgeous copper
kettle on board of Argall's ship, and the latter conceived the design
of exchanging it for Pocahontas, holding her prisoner, and forcing her
father to ransom her. Japazaws had much more interest in the kettle than
in his wife's guest, and Pocahontas was easily persuaded to accompany the
latter on board to "see the ship." The kettle was transferred while she
was alone for a few minutes, and her treacherous friends descended with
it to their quintan and were well on their way to shore when she was told
the truth.[76] She burst into tears, poor little widow, but soon dried
her eyes upon learning that she would be kindly treated and conveyed to
the spot of all others most interesting to her.
Powhatan was enraged! He, however, after thinking the matter over for
three months, sent back some prisoners and a few unserviceable muskets
with many promises of further restitution, of corn, of peace, and amity.
The captors refused to surrender their willing prisoner, Pocahontas, until
full satisfaction should be rendered. Powhatan was deeply offended, and
nothing more was heard from him until another overture from Argall.
Meanwhile Pocahontas found favour in the eyes of Sir Thomas Dale, "a man
of good conscience and knowledge in divinitie," and he ordered that she
should be carefully taught, cared for in every particular, and instructed
in the Christian faith. The pious Rev. Mr. Whitaker was only too happy
to undertake her religious education. As to the rest, her English was
imperfect, and she never learned to write. Everybody at Jamestown knew
of her early devotion to Captain Smith and to the starving colonists,
and honoured her accordingly. Master John Rolfe soon became interested
in her, and it was not long before he wrote the most remarkable letter
to Governor Dale that was ever penned by lover to a lady's guardian. He
tells of the throes of conscience that came near tearing his soul from
his body. He remembers "the heavy displeasure which Almighty God conceived
against the sons of Levi and Israel for marrying strange wives," and he is
fully aware that "her education hath been rude, her manners barbarous, her
generation accursed"--and as these were times when belief in a personal
devil was universal, and also in the malignant influence of witches (only
the latter were never young and beautiful), he is "full of feare and
trembling." His love has caused "a mighty war in his meditations." Nor
does he forget his own social position. He belongs to a very good family
indeed in England, "nor am I so desperate in estate that I regard not what
becometh of mee, nor am I out of hope but one day to see my countrie, nor
so void of friends, nor mean in birth, _but there to obtain a match to my
great content_." How he proposed, in that event, to dispose of Pocahontas
does not appear. He goes on in this strain for fully thirty or more pages
of the foolscap paper of the present time, and we can see the wild-eyed,
haggard widower lover tearing along by the light of a dim wick in oil,
with his quill pen diving deep into his ink-horn.
"Was ever maiden in such humour wooed?
Was ever maiden in such humour won?"
Of course the man of good conscience and knowledge in divinity had a
right to the reasons which overcame all these objections. They were three.
First and always, the desire to convert this unbelieving creature, namely
Pokahuntas." "Shall the base feare of displeasing the world overpower
or withhold me from revealing unto man the spirituall works of the Lord?
Shall I despise to actuate the pious duties of a Christian? God forbid!"
(But just here the Governor with his knowledge in divinity might hesitate,
inasmuch as marriage with the heathen in order to his conversion is no
part of the plan of salvation.)
Second. "The great appearance of her love to me!"
Third. "Her incitements hereunto stirring me up!"
All these things working together, the end is accomplished. She is a
_fiancée_ when Argall takes her up the York to make another appeal to
Powhatan, burns a few villages to show he is in earnest, and finally
brings about an interview with her brothers (her father refuses to see
her), in which her engagement is announced. Powhatan is delighted! Before
Argall can reach Jamestown with the little bride, her old uncle Opachisco
and her two brothers are there before him to witness the marriage
ceremony, bearing with them her father's wedding present--a nicely dressed
deerskin.
[Illustration: THE MARRIAGE OF POCAHONTAS AT JAMESTOWN.
Halberdiers
Gov. Sir Thos. Dale
Alex. Whittaker
Mrs. John Rolfe and Child
Mrs. Ed. Easton and Child
Choristers
Mattachanna and Cleopatre
Pocahontas
John Rolfe
Indian Attendants
Capt. George Percy
Brother to Pocahontas
Henry Spilman
William Spence
Thos. Savage
Master Sparkes
Thomas Powell, Wife and Child
Mrs. Horton and Grandchild
Sir Thos. Gates
Opachisco, Uncle to Pocahontas
A Younger Brother to Pocahontas]
Before this time, in April, 1613, Pocahontas had been baptized in the
church Lord Delaware had repaired and beautified. Her savage father had
given her three names,--Matoaca, Amonate, and Pocahontas. Her spiritual
sponsors gave her "Rebekah" at her baptism--no doubt in allusion to the
Rebecca of Genesis, and she was thereafter known in England as "the Lady
Rebekah."
As Sir Thomas Dale had wisely foreseen, the alliance brought the blessing
of peace. The Chickahominies sent an embassy to conclude a treaty by which
they were to become subjects of the English king. John Rolfe and his dusky
bride lived "civilly and lovingly together" at "Varina," which continued
to be her residence until she left Virginia.[77]
CHAPTER XX
We must soon take our leave of the troublesome old gentleman with the
sour look. Governor Dale sends Raphe Hamor on a delicate errand--to ask
for his young daughter in marriage--a proceeding which gives us pause,
remembering that the Governor had a Lady Dale in England. However, we
leave him, wherever he is, to settle that little matter with her, and
avail ourselves once more of a solitary eyewitness to our narrative
in which he figures so mysteriously, as we perforce must do in the
much-challenged Pocahontas incident. Of her marriage with Kocoun, however,
we had two witnesses,--Machumps and Kemps. Hamor took with him two Indian
guides, and Thomas Savage as interpreter; also two pieces of copper,
five strings of white and blue beads, five wooden combs, ten fish-hooks,
and two knives; and, thus equipped, presented himself at Mathcot, one of
Powhatan's residences on the Pamunkey.
Powhatan received him coldly, and, turning to Thomas Savage, whom he at
once recognized, said, "My child, I gave you leave, being my boy, to go
see your friends, and these four years I have not seen you, nor heard
from my own man Namontack I sent to England, though many ships since have
returned thence." Machumps, it appears, had never had the courage to tell
him of the Bermuda incident.
Thomas Savage, we remember, was given to Powhatan by Captain Newport in
exchange for Namontack. Pory, writing in 1624, says that he had "with much
honestie and success served the publique without any public recompense,
yet had an arrow shot through his body in their service." The friendly
Accomac chief known as the "Laughing King" became so much attached to him
that he gave him land upon which his descendants have continued to the
present day. This family enjoys the distinction of being the only one in
Virginia (as far as we know) that can trace in a male line to one of the
first settlers of 1607.
Powhatan had received Hamor out of doors, but after a little more talk
he conducted him to his house, where his guard of two hundred bowmen was
drawn up for whatever might happen.
"The first thing he did," says Hamor, "hee offered me a pipe of tobacco,
then asked mee how his brother Sir Thomas Dale did, and his daughter and
unknowne sonne, and how they lived and loved and liked. I told him his
brother was well and his daughter so contented she would not live againe
with him, whereat he laughed and demanded the cause of my cumminge." Hamor
was ill at ease in the presence of the two hundred bowmen, and informed
the king that he bore a private message from the Governor, upon which
the king granted him audience, with only two wives and the interpreter
present. Hamor presented the Governor's plea. "I told him his brother
Dale, hearing of the fame of his youngest daughter" (this may have been
Cleopatre) "desired him to send her by me unto him, in testimony of his
love, as well for that he intended to marry her, as the desire of her
sister to see her,"[78] and ended with the usual assurances of friendship.
Powhatan, after collecting himself a moment, answered gravely: "I gladly
accept the salute of love and peace which, while I live, I shall exactly
keep. His pledges thereof I receive with no less thanks although they are
not so ample as formerly I have received; but for my daughter, I have
sold her within this few days to a great Werowance for two bushels of
Rawrenoke, and she is gone three days' journey from me."
Hamor seems to have thought this a small obstacle to his Governor's
wishes. He represented that Powhatan could easily recall his daughter,
and repay the rawrenoke to gratify his brother; especially as the bride
was only twelve years old; and that three times the value of the rawrenoke
would be sent him in beads, copper, hatchets, etc.
"His answer was that he loved his daughter as his life, and though hee had
many children hee delighted in none so much as shee, whom if he could not
behold he could not possibly live, which living with us hee could not do,
having resolved on no termes to put himselfe in our hands or come amongst
us, continuing: 'returne my brother this answer: that I desire no more
assurance of his friendship than the promise he hath made. From me he
hath one of my daughters which so long as she lives shall be sufficient.
When she dies he shall have another: I hold it not brotherly to desire to
bereave me of my two children at once. Farther tell him though he hath no
pledge at all he need not distrust any injurie from me or my people. There
have been too many of his men and mine slain, and by my occasion there
shall never be more (I, which have power to perform it, have said it),
although I should have just cause, for I am now old, and would gladly end
my days in peace; if you offer me injury my country is large enough to go
from you. This much I hope will satisfy my brother. Now because you are
weary and I sleepy we will thus end.'" And so the alliance, which would
have been a brilliant one for the Princess Cleopatre, was declined with
thanks.
It is the privilege of royalty to begin and end a conversation, so Hamor
retired, and "the next morning he came to visit us, and kindly conducted
us to the best cheer he had."
After this we hear occasionally of the emperor, now, according to
Strachey, eighty years old. He was once found in possession of a handsome
blank-book, in which he requested an English visitor to write a list of
the articles to be sent to him as presents. His guest coveted the useful
book, but Powhatan refused to part with it, "It gives me pleasure," he
said, "to show it to strangers!"
His crown (sent him by King James) was kept in his treasure-house. Every
autumn his people assembled to husk, shell, and store his corn, bringing
him eight parts out of ten of all grain, game, skins, or pearls they had
acquired; and when the grain was stored it was his custom to put on his
crown, and present beads to those who best pleased him.
[Illustration: Powhatan Rock, under which the Indian Chief is said to be
buried.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
The old emperor lived to hear of the birth of Pocahontas's son. When he
died, a great meeting of all his people took place in the dense woods
around Orapakes, and then and there, it is said, Opechancanough, his
successor, revealed his plan to massacre the English; and bound each man
to secrecy and fidelity. Accordingly, on a day appointed (Pocahontas
being now dead), the savages rose in the morning at eight and wreaked
their vengeance and fury on the English. In some instances the Indians
were breakfasting with the colonists when the hour arrived! Nearly four
hundred men, women, and children perished,--among them John Rolfe and
the good minister Thorpe, who had built a house for Opechancanough,
and established schools for the Indian children, and many other good
friends of the savages. Jamestown alone escaped of all the settlements,
having been warned, as we have seen, by the Christian boy, Chanco. The
horrible brutality of this massacre it is impossible to describe. Nothing
approaching it had ever been known even among the vindictive, cruel
savages. But their punishment was sharp. The entire policy regarding them
was changed, and the colonists ceased not for years to repulse and destroy
them.
Twice again Opechancanough led in attempts to kill all the English.
Finally he was captured and taken to Jamestown, and there shot in the back
by some unknown hand. As the body of a captive was never restored to the
enemy, he was probably buried there.
CHAPTER XXI
Pocahontas seems to have led a quiet life on her husband's tobacco
plantation near the city of Henricus, until she visited England in 1616.
Captain Smith, learning of her presence there, wrote a noble letter to
Queen Anne, beseeching her kindness and relating in detail the story we
have given of her goodness to him and to the starving colony.
She was well received at court. The high dignitaries of the church
entertained her, and she conducted herself with the grave dignity and
propriety demanded by the long, stiff stays which imprisoned her lithe
body. The court was not conspicuous for the gravity or dignity of its own
manners: but it found no fault with those of the American princess.
[Illustration: Pocahontas at Court.]
The shy little Indian woman could hardly have understood the interest she
awakened in the bosoms of those grave and reverend seniors. Archbishops,
bishops, and lesser clergy were all alike to her, differing only in the
cut and richness of their robes. But to them she represented an answer
to fervent prayer, the reward for lavish expenditure of health, hope,
life, and fortune. As she stood before them, dignified in her enforced
reticence, she seemed to them a miracle, the manifest incarnation of the
Holy Spirit--nothing less.
Writers love to dwell upon the wonderful serenity of her manner, "softened
by the influence of the court." The court manners were anything but soft,
gentle, and serene. No coarser age, socially, finds record in English
history. Pocahontas owed much to her limited knowledge of the language
of the court. The coarse jest, the offensive _double entendre_, fell
upon unhearing ears. Her Indian training forbade the least betrayal of
emotion or surprise, and her incomprehensible Indian tongue spared her
the merriment of the volatile court ladies, which might have been provoked
by her _ingénue_ remarks. Mighty is silence,--placing those who adopt it
upon a plane the chatterer never attains.
And so it came to pass that poor little Pocahontas, stiff and
uncomfortable in her long stays and quilted robes, behaved in a manner
which demanded no indulgence and challenged no criticism. Lord and Lady
Delaware were her sponsors and instructors in court etiquette. When
her lips touched the hand of the Queen, no one could find fault with
her demeanour. The clergy declared that less dignity was not to have
been expected, since the hand of Divine Providence was manifest in her
conversion. The _blasé_ courtiers, with small appreciation of spiritual
charms, protested they had "seen many English ladies worse favoured, worse
proportioned, worse behavioured,"--which indeed we can easily believe.
Tradition preserves the astonishing fact that King James was greatly
offended with John Rolfe for marrying a princess without his consent; not
that he proposed to claim an alliance for "Baby Charles" or "Steenie,"
the new favourite and candidate for the peerage, or for any noble of his
realm; but just from pure gossipy meddling, pure fussiness, pure folly;
than which nothing was too foolish for "the wisest fool in Christendom."
Our Indian lady was introduced to Samuel Purchas, and he was present at
the entertainment given in her honour by Dr. King, the Bishop of London;
exceeding in splendour anything the author had ever witnessed. Probably
Sir Walter Raleigh attended this fête. He had just been released, after
thirteen years' confinement in the Tower, having walked out of the iron
doors just as the degraded Earl of Somerset, Robert Carr, and his guilty
wife walked in. It is certain he could not fail to meet Pocahontas. He
was nothing to her, but her presence meant much to him. He had sowed, and
others had reaped. Moreover, he must have scanned the peculiarly feminine
lineaments of her face with wonder and keen interest. Through her he was
brought face to face with the destroyer of his two colonies, so loved and
so betrayed, upon which he had exhausted his treasury.
Her son was born while she was in England, or shortly before her coming
thither, and the London Company made provision for him and for her. The
smoke of London so distressed her that she removed to Brentford. The tiny
smoky hut of her childhood she could bear--but not the London fog. At
Brentford John Smith visited her. In mortal fear of offending the king by
familiarity with a princess, he addressed her ceremoniously as the "Lady
Rebekah," and this[79] wounded her so deeply that she covered her face
with her hands and turned away, refusing to speak for two or three hours!
It appears that he awaited her pleasure, and presently she reproached him
for his distant manner, thinking perhaps that he was ashamed to own her
before his own people. She reminded him that he had always called Powhatan
"father," and so she now meant to call him, and be his child, and forever
and ever his countrywoman; adding, "they did tell me you were dead, and
I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet[80] Powhatan did command
Uttamatomakkin to seeke you and know the truth because your Countriemen
will lie much."[81]
The Indian with the long name was Matachanna's husband, also known on
these pages as "Tocomoco." Powhatan had sent him to number the English,
which he proceeded to do by notches on a stick, but soon grew weary of
such a hopeless task. He took great offence because King James paid him
no attention, and never ceased abusing the English after his return, thus
helping along the massacre of five years later.
Pocahontas was on her way home, "sorely against her will," when she was
smitten with illness on board ship and taken ashore at Gravesend. There
she died, March 1, 1617, sustained by the faith and hope of the true
Christian. She was interred in the chancel of St. George's Church; the
exact spot of burial is, however, not known.
Before she left England her portrait was painted by an unknown artist, and
presented to Mr. Peter Elwin, a relative of the Rolfe family, by Madame
Zucchelli. As Zucchero was a painter of the time, the name Zucchelli might
have been mistaken for his. Zucchero painted a beautiful portrait of Queen
Elizabeth with a marvellous jewelled stomacher, but without the monstrous
fanlike wings of gauze at the throat with which we are familiar.
[Illustration: Royal Palace, Whitehall.]
John Rolfe left his son in England to be educated, and he found his
"match" once more, and married the daughter of a rich man at Jamestown.
Pocahontas's son married also, and was the progenitor of some of
Virginia's most distinguished citizens and statesmen. He visited his uncle
Opechancanough and his aunt "Cleopatre" after he returned to Virginia.
He was not ashamed of his Indian relatives! Nor are his descendants. The
names of Pocahontas, Powhatan, and Matoaca are still borne by them.
It has been said that Pocahontas died of smallpox. We know nothing from
printed record or parish register except that she was buried in the
chancel of the church at Gravesend in the County of Kent; that the church
was destroyed by fire in 1727, and a new church, St. George's, erected
upon the site of the old one; and that the Rev. John H. Haslam, later
rector, placed a commemorative tablet in the chancel recording all that
careful investigation has yielded of the spot where her ashes lie. One
could wish that she might have found her last resting-place under the
skies of her native country; that from her "unpolluted flesh violets"--the
lovely wild violets of Virginia--might "spring" with every return of
summer.
The infant son of Pocahontas, Thomas Rolfe, was placed under the care
of Sir Lewis Stukely, Vice Admiral of Devon; and here again the story
of the Indian girl touches that of Sir Walter Raleigh.[82] It was this
Stukely who afterwards basely betrayed his friend, Sir Walter, and by this
treachery covered himself with infamy. The son of Pocahontas did not long
breathe the atmosphere polluted by this traitor. He was removed to London
and educated by his uncle, Henry Rolfe.
Thomas Rolfe's immediate descendants married into the families of Bolling,
Randolph, Gay, Eldridge, and Murray. No trace of the Indian in feature
or character survives in those highly esteemed Virginia families. The
haughty, vindictive spirit of the cruel Powhatan may have burnt itself
out in the veins of John Randolph of Roanoke, who left no descendants.
Pocahontas will always be interesting to the student of colonial history.
The story of her life was a strange one, and stranger the story to its
end. Her father and her kindred were consigned to the tomb with the rites
and lamentations of the savage, and with wild heathenish invocations to
the Devil of their imaginations. She, alone of all her tribe, simply as
a consequence of one noble act, received Christian burial, in hallowed
Christian soil, and is embalmed forever in grateful Christian hearts.
CHAPTER XXII
The time is at hand when the curtain must be rung down upon the scenes I
have tried to present. I was constrained to follow the fortunes of John
Smith and Pocahontas, for do what we will we cannot eliminate them from
an all-important place in the early history of Virginia. Others were just
as deserving, but the historians of their day failed to leave us material
regarding them. Like my great favourite, the modest, brave George Percy,
who lived long at Jamestown, they quietly slipped back into the shadows
from which they only emerged to suffer and toil awhile for the common
good.
I find it hard to leave my story. A glorious chapter in the history
of Jamestown awaits a stronger pen than mine. At Jamestown, "in 1619,
a year before the _Mayflower_ skirted the coast of Massachusetts,
the Virginians inaugurated representative government on the American
continent--'an example never lost but ever cherished as the dearest
birthright of freemen.' There, on June 21, 1621, the Virginians extorted
the concession that 'no orders of court shall bind the said Colony unless
they be ratified by the General Assemblies.' In 1624 they there asserted
the right of self-taxation and control of the public purse, protesting
that 'the Governor shall not lay any imposition upon the Colony, their
land or commodities otherwise than by the authority of the General
Assembly, and employed as the said Assembly shall appoint.' Though loyal
to the King, in 1635, at Jamestown, Governor Harvey was 'thrust out,'
for encroaching upon the rights of the people. Nay, after the downfall
of monarchy they confronted Cromwell himself (who sent his threatening
ships to Jamestown) and only yielded to his usurpation upon an honourable
capitulation, acknowledging their submission as 'a voluntary act not
forced or constrained by conquest,' and guaranteeing them 'such freedom
and privileges as belong to the free-born people of England.' After the
Restoration they broke out in open rebellion against the oppressions of
government and anticipated by a century the final and victorious struggle
for the liberties of America. On the untimely death of their leader--the
well-born, the gallant, the accomplished, the eloquent Bacon--their
revolt was quenched in blood; but even so, without any surrender of their
chartered rights."[83]
These events are the glory and honour of our country, but my plan was to
tell only of the birth of the nation, not its restless youth or strong
manhood. My task was an humbler one: to honour the men who failed,--but
not in courage or fortitude; who put their hands to the plough and never
looked back; who devoted their lives, with no hope of reward, to carrying
on the work assigned them; who fought the battle and fell on the field,
regardless of the discouragement, disloyalty, and detraction meted out
to them. They sowed; but others reaped the rich harvest. They laid the
foundation; others built the fair structure. God be thanked, they suffered
not in vain! When the kings of the earth send their navies into Virginia
waters, when multitudes throng the gates, when cannon speaks to cannon,
when orators bring their choicest words to grace the hour, a voice more
eloquent than all these will rise from the sands of the desolate little
island of Jamestown,--"We who lie here in unmarked graves died for _you_!"
* * * * *
Ninety-nine years after Jamestown was settled the seat of government
was removed to Williamsburg. There was then no further excuse for the
existence of a town on the little peninsula. Mrs. Ann Cotton, writing
soon after Bacon's Rebellion, gives sufficient reasons for this. "It is
low ground, full of marshes and swamps, which make the aire especially
in the sumer insalubritious and unhealthy. It is not at all replenished
with springs of fresh water, and that which they have in their wells
brackish, ill-scented, penurious and not grateful to the stomach ... and
(in the town) about a dozen families are getting their living by keeping
of ordinaries at extraordinary prices."[84]
So it appears that "the town, even though measured by what would appear to
be a standard of its time, was small, poor, and insignificant. This fact
invests the place with the deepest interest, when it is remembered that
from such a small beginning in the wilderness has sprung what bids fair
to become, if not so already, the greatest nation of the earth."[85]
The town, deserted by all its best citizens, rapidly fell into decay
and ruin. The brick houses tumbled down, the church left nothing but its
sturdy old tower to stand sentinel over the graves of those who had built
it and worshipped within it.
[Illustration: Jamestown Church Tower, Rear View, showing Old Foundations.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
The peninsula, to-day an island, was divided into farms, and "martial
ranks of corn" stood in the plain on which John Smith exercised his men in
military evolutions. Around the church the young trees had it all their
own way, clasping the gravestones and bearing them aloft in their strong
young arms. There was nobody to hinder or protest.
In 1856 the peninsula had become an island, and access to it was by
a rowboat. A large portion of the island was already engulfed by the
waves. The bank was giving away within one hundred and fifty feet of the
old tower of the church. Travellers in the excursion boats to Old Point
Comfort began to observe the singular behaviour of a large cypress tree
in the river opposite the tower. The cypress seemed to be slowly moving
onward. An old traveller remembered that the tree in 1846 stood on land;
it was now two hundred and ninety feet in the water from the shore!
Evidently the shore itself was receding. Through the munificent gift
of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barney, in 1895, twenty-two acres of the island,
including its historic area, came into the possession of the Association
for the Preservation of Virginian Antiquities--a band of daughters of
Virginia organized to rescue from decay and oblivion the sites of her
early history, carving anew, like the Antiquary at the graves of the
slaughtered Presbyterians, the story of those who "broke the way with
tears."
Our guests on our anniversary day will not find the picturesque old church
tower standing alone, looking toward the sea to which the anxious eyes
of the sleepers beneath had been cast in the early days of starvation.
Weakened by the storms of nearly three centuries, the old tower demanded
support. The church has been rebuilt upon the old plan and the old
foundations. A splendid sea-wall has been given by the government to the
women of the Virginia Association--to do what their feeble hands tried
but could not do. All is changed--except the old cypress far out in the
water, which keeps its own secret, and refuses to yield to time, or wave,
or change. Who knows? Perhaps his clasping roots may hold that other child
of the forest, the old brave chieftain Opechancanough.
Part of the humble little town has been exhumed. The walls and foundations
of the third and fourth churches, and of some few houses have been laid
bare. Very few relics have been discovered; the bones of a gigantic man,
the cenotaph of a knight, skeletons which crumbled at the touch of the
air, shot from some alien gun, a bit here and there of broken crockery.
But beneath the mould of two centuries was found evidence of another and
lasting foundation, the fundamental basis of all happiness, all moral
good, and all national prosperity--that of the simple, wholesome domestic
life of the fireside. A pipe, scissors, thimble, and candlestick lay
together in one of the uncovered chambers.
CHAPTER XXIII
LEGENDS OF THE OLD STONE HOUSE
The "Old Stone House" on Ware Creek, according to the Virginia historians,
was the resort, at three different times, of the disembodied spirits
of famous historical characters. "This unfinished stone edifice,
evidently designed for a fortification, stands on a hill facing the
water, and is difficult of access by reason of the impenetrable thickets
and ravines overgrown with mountain laurel by which it is surrounded.
Only by following a narrow path on the top of a wooded ridge can it
be approached."[86] In consequence of its evil name nobody two hundred
years ago ever visited it; and if a belated huntsman stumbled upon it
by accident, he made haste to retrace his steps, frightened by the dark
corners suggestive of hiding-places, and awed by the warning whispers of
the wind as it sighed through the pines.
The country around it is desolate. The ravines are filled with poisonous
vines and tenanted by the deadly rattlesnake. The house itself is a
roofless ruin, embroidered by ivy and caressed by the Virginia creeper,
the long boughs of which, like long arms, wave in the air to warn away
all intruders.
The building is small, of solid masonry, the walls two feet thick, pierced
with loopholes for musketry. There is one door from which stone steps
descend to an underground chamber. This is probably the first stone
house ever built by the English colonists, and is generally conceded
by historians and antiquarians to be the edifice of which in 1609 Anas
Todkill and others wrote to the London Company, "We built a fort for a
retreat neere a convenient river, upon a high commanding hill very hard
to be assaulted and easie to be defended; but the want of corne occasioned
the end of all our worke, it being worke enough to provide victuall."
In this provision of "victuall," the starving colonists, as we have seen,
were aided by Pocahontas, who brought, it is supposed, her "wild train"
laden with baskets of food as far as this house, and there dismissing
them, waited for Captain John Smith. The spot was favourable as a
hiding-place from the fury of her father, the old king whose house was not
far away, with its substantial chimney built by the treacherous Dutchmen.
Here Pocahontas may have rested when she came "through the irksome woods
with shining eyes" to warn her hero of danger and treachery from her own
people.
These are the bits of folk-lore gleaned by that patient and accurate
historian, Charles Campbell. Sixty years ago he visited the Stone House,
and verified the existence then in the minds of the common people of
three distinct legends belonging to the locality. No one doubts the
romantic attachment of the Indian princess to Captain Smith. It sprang
into existence perhaps at the heroic moment when she shielded his doomed
head with her own bosom, and became the dominant influence of her short
and eventful life.
Who can doubt that he early learned enough of her tongue to tell her of
his mighty deeds, of the court of the great Sigismund, of his triumphal
procession thither preceded by the heads, borne on lances, of the three
slaughtered Turks; drawing, the while, pictures in the sand similar to
the marvellous creations with which he illustrated the maps with which
we are familiar? It is pathetic to know that the time was to him only an
episode in a life of adventure. Even the saving of his own life, so often
miraculously preserved, was a matter of little importance, remembered
only in a generous moment, to secure for her an interest with his Queen.
To Pocahontas he was more than a hero--he was little less than the Great
Father himself. To him she was an attractive, beautiful child, and yet of
a nation despised--"all savage," as he termed them.
One does not like to mar the romance by accepting the story of her
marriage to one of Powhatan's captains. So dear is the romance of the
Indian girl's devotion to John Smith, that we are tempted to be unjust to
John Rolfe and to explain her marriage at Jamestown as the consequence
of her longing to belong to the people of her hero,--to be "forever and
ever his countrywoman,"--and to find in the Puritanic John Rolfe, with
his tiresome throes of conscience and long-drawn apologies for loving her,
a counterpart of her gallant captain. When she met John Smith in London,
very pitiful must she have appeared to him, as her portrait does to us, in
her stiff brocade, high, starched ruff, and English hat; she, the swaying,
graceful windflower of the forest!
She must have appeared to him strangely unlike her charming self. Her dark
locks, shaven closely on her temples, as was the custom of her people
while she was a maid, had been suffered to grow since she had become a
matron, and hung rebelliously about her pearl ear-rings; her lithe wrists,
primly sustaining her fan of three feathers, were fettered by broad
English cuffs. Those feathers were the only familiar connecting links
between her past and her present! All else was strange.
We read that she neither smiled nor spoke for two hours when she was
visited by Captain Smith. Presently she said, "They did tell me you
were dead, and I knew no other until I came to Plymouth," and then in
response to his deferential devoirs to "the Lady Rebekah," indignantly
declares that she will have none of such talk! She means always to call
him "Father," and be to him a "child," as she had been in Virginia.
And so the legend begins; and when she finds "her grave," as the quaint
old writer says, "at Gravesend," she could not rest "in ye chauncell of
ye church," but John Rolfe having married another wife, and Captain Smith
having died, she was free to return to her old haunts, to meet her hero
without let or reproof, and explain all that had been so wrong and so
unfortunate. The belated fishermen, returning to their homes on the Ware,
grew accustomed to seeing a thin thread of smoke issuing from the Old
Stone House, and flitting past the loopholes might sometimes be discerned
the dusky form of Pocahontas, with the white plume, the badge of royalty,
in her dark hair. Here she awaited as of yore the coming of Captain Smith,
and here he came and held converse with her. At last the troubled soul is
comforted--the "deare and darling daughter" of Powhatan fades away from
the legends of the old Virginians and is seen no more. Let us hope she
is happy in a state where there are no separations and no mysteries, and
that if she ever revisits the pale glimpses of the moon her errand may be
one of beneficence to her many descendants.
The grim old fortress was untenanted, except by this Indian maiden,
for nearly a hundred years, and then "the dreadful pyrate Blackbeard"
secretes his ill-gotten treasures in the subterranean vault. To and fro
he moves with muffled oars, mans the port-holes with his guns, and rests
secure from assault. With his rifles he can pick out every man who dares
to thread the defile. Presently his outgoing is watched, and one fine
day he is assailed, and conquered on board his own sloop. He was a bold
buccaneer, and had given orders that at a signal his magazine should be
fired and friend and foe perish together. But his followers preferred
surrender to death, and were all brought captive to Jamestown. Very brutal
was the triumph of his captors. He had given trouble and resisted long,
and now they would make sure of him. They returned with his gory head
hanging from the prow of their vessel, and out of the skull that had
housed his busy brain they fashioned a drinking-cup and rimmed it with
silver, after the manner of their fathers in the old days of England.
He became the Captain Kidd of Virginia waters. His phantom ship could be
seen on moonlight nights on the York River, and his headless body would
disembark therefrom and hover over his buried treasure. The treasure
was never found; perhaps it is there still under some stone of the old
fortress.
After this we hear nothing for many years of the Old Stone House.
It crumbled away very little, being so strong; but nobody is tempted
to approach it or use it in any way. The luxuriant vines bear great
trumpet-shaped flowers, and clothe the walls with a brilliant beauty, seen
only by the bats, hanging by crooked black fingers from every projection,
and ready to fly in the face of the intruder, or the noxious serpents
which wind in and out and increase and multiply with no check from man,
their enemy.
Finally, about the year 1776, tenants appear again in the little fortress,
ghostly forms throng the wide door, strange sounds of exultation are borne
by the winds, and fitful unreal lights flit about or hover over the spot.
From a distance these are observed, but there is no investigation, indeed
the times are too stirring to admit of investigation. The Governor of
Virginia has fled from the irate Commonwealth, and digests his chagrin on
board his own sloop, riding at a safe distance near Yorktown. Men are in
arms, burning words leap from lip to lip,--a great crisis is at hand, a
great cloud is rising, soon to darken the land and break in the thunder
and lightning of a mighty tempest.
What wonder, then, that it should be believed that the bugles of the
fast-coming Revolution have reached Nathaniel Bacon in his long sleep
in the York River, where "thoughtful Mr. Lawrence" had sunk his gallant
young body lest it meet with ignominy at the hands of Lord Berkeley; that
Drummond and Carver, and Bland and Hansford, and all the grand spirits
who, with their leader, had lived a hundred years too soon, should meet
him now, to exult and triumph!
What matter, now, that they had bled and suffered, and laid down their
bright young lives, so full of promise, for a "lost cause"! The _cause_
had lived, and soon the young republic would break its shackles and stand
forth with its foot upon the tyrant's neck. The mills of the gods had
not been idle, and here in the mysterious Old Stone House, the fortress
in which no living man had ever dwelt, they met to plan, to rejoice, to
triumph, night after night, until the foes of the country they loved so
well should be driven from her shores in disgrace and defeat.
These are the legends--if they are not too recent to be classed as
legends--with which, a century ago, Virginians dignified the Old Stone
House. The early settlers were firm believers in supernatural influences
and warnings. A blazing star had appeared before a storm when the three
ships set forth to find this country, another in the year of the massacre
of 1622, and yet another on the eve of Bacon's Rebellion. Tongue-like
flames flitted to and fro over the early graveyards, and ghostly lights
hovered over the undrained marshes. The "boat of birchen bark" lighted by
a firefly lamp of the lost lovers in the Dismal Swamp was seen as late
as the nineteenth century. Huntsmen in the cold, freezing nights would
sometimes find themselves suddenly enveloped in a warm cloud,--this was
because a ghost had met them and passed over them in the dark. Sterner
than all these was the belief that witches--malignant spirits--were
suffered to enter human bodies and bend men and women to their evil
purposes.
Ghost stories have long been out of fashion. They have no longer a place
in literature or even beside the winter fireside. The American of to-day
may be a dreamer of dreams and seer of visions, but they are of the
future, not the past. His phantoms are all ahead of him. Perhaps I should
apologise for admitting them into a serious work. And yet I think that
everything connected with the story of the birth of our nation deserves
preservation. I believe, with Carlyle, that "the leafy, blossoming Present
Time springs from the _whole_ Past, remembered and unrememberable."
As Time goes on and touches with effacing finger one and another of the
events that have marked, like milestones, the onward march of the great
Anglo-Saxon race, we may be sure that the birth of this Western nation
will ever be "remembered." "We shall not," said Daniel Webster, "stand
unmoved on the shore of Plymouth while the sea continues to wash it, nor
will our brethren in another early and ancient colony forget the place of
its first establishment till their river ceases to flow by it. No vigour
of youth, no maturity of manhood, will lead the nation to forget the spots
where its infancy was cradled and defended."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Hume's "James I," p. 83.
[2] Hakluyt, III, 174-176.
[3] Stith's "History," p. 25.
[4] Coke, 2 Inst. 729 and 734.
[5] Harleian MS., quoted by Miss Aiken in her "Memoirs of the
Court of James I."
[6] "The Accomplished Cook," by Robert May; London 1685.
[7] Letter of Philip Mainwaring to the Earl of Arundel, Lodge's
"Illustrations," Vol. III, p. 403.
[8] Cooke's "Virginia," p. 8 _et seq._
[9] Ibid., p. 8 _et seq._
[10] Bancroft's "History of the United States," Vol. I, p. 122.
[11] Purchas's "His Pilgrimes," Vol. VIII, p. 469. The quotations
from Purchas in this volume are from the Macmillan edition.
[12] Quoted by Campbell, p. 39, from Stith.
[13] "Site of Old Jamestown," by Samuel Yonge, p. 11.
[14] Stith's "History," p. 46.
[15] Purchas's "His Pilgrimes," Vol. XVIII.
[16] _Passiflora incarnata_ of Linnæus.
[17] _Anchusa Virginiana_ of Linnæus.
[18] Percy's "Narrative," quoted by Campbell, "History," p. 40.
[19] Percy's "Discourse," Smith's "Works," p. lxviii.
[20] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 41.
[21] Brown's "First Republic," p. 29.
[22] His true name was Parahunt. This was the birthplace of King
Powhatan.
[23] Smith's "Works," p. 93. References to the "Works of John
Smith" in this volume are from Professor Edward Arben's edition.
[24] Brown's "The First Republic," p. 43 _et seq._
[25] Possibly "Pamunkey" was meant.
[26] Smith's "Works," p. 957.
[27] John Smith, quoted in Campbell's "History," p. 382.
[28] Cooke's "Virginia," p. 20.
[29] Living in the region now known as Prince George and Surry.
Their chief was Pepisco--otherwise Pepiscumah.
[30] "Newes from Virginia," quoted in E. Arber's "Works of John
Smith," p. 14.
[31] Strachey.
[32] "Newes from Virginia," by John Smith.
[33] Other historians place his age at eighty years.
[34] "Newes from Virginia."
[35] A district near the mouth of James River, on which now
stands the town of Hampton.
[36] Smith's "Works," p. 400.
[37] Brown's "First Republic in America," p. 82.
[38] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 49.
[39] The matches were long coils of cord, chemically treated to
burn slowly, and kept lighted at both ends. The coils were hung
over the shoulder or hooked to the bandolier.
[40] Prince or chief.
[41] Purchas, Vol. XVIII, p. 477.
[42] Smith's "Works," p. 39.
[43] John Smith, in his letters to Queen Anne, gave her age as
"twelve or thirteen yeares."
[44] Cooke's "Virginia," p. 44.
[45] Smith's "Works," p. 436.
[46] Smith's "Works," p. 123.
[47] Smith's "Works," pp. 124-125.
[48] Purchas's "His Pilgrimes," Vol. XVIII, p. 449 _et seq._
[49] "The First Republic," p. 131.
[50] The present county of Isle of Wight.
[51] The colonists wished to send silk grass for a robe to Queen
Anne. Queen Elizabeth had worn such a robe--made of Virginia
grass.
[52] Purchas, p. 507 _et seq._
[53] Smith's "Works," p. 455.
[54] "The First Republic," p. 73 _et seq._
[55] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 76 _et seq._
[56] "The First Republic," p. 76.
[57] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 77. "The First
Republic" gives a later date.
[58] Cooke's "Virginia," p. 63.
[59] Smith's "Works," p. 480.
[60] Smith's "Works," p. 486.
[61] Smith's "Works," p. 168.
[62] Grahame's "History of North America," Vol. I, p. 70.
[63] "The First Republic."
[64] Smith's "Works," p. 487.
[65] Delaware's Report, in "Virginia Britannia," p. xxvi; Cook's
"Virginia," p. 79.
[66] Smith's "Works," p. 635.
[67] "The First Republic," p. 128 _et seq._
[68] Virginia Britannia, p. xiii.
[69] "The First Republic," pp. 285, 329, 612.
[70] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 103.
[71] "Virginia Britannia," p. 53 _et seq._
[72] _Ibid._, p. 54.
[73] _Ibid._, p. 109.
[74] Spelman's "Relation"--Smith.
[75] "Virginia Britannia," p. 57.
[76] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 107.
[77] Cooke's "Virginia," pp. 97-98.
[78] Smith's "Works," p. 517 _et seq._
[79] Smith, pp. 533-534.
[80] One of her descendants, Mr. Robert Bolling of Chelowe,
thus annotated those words in his "Smith": "To find Smith and
inquire of him whether he was dead! A very comical commission,
Grand-mama!"
[81] Smith's "Works," p. 533.
[82] Campbell's "History of Virginia," p. 122.
[83] Address of Hon. Roger A. Pryor before the Virginia Bar
Association, 1895.
[84] "The Cradle of the Republic," p. 51.
[85] "The Site of old 'James Towne,'" by Samuel H. Yonge, p. 8.
[86] Howe's "History of Virginia," p. 390.
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