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."