It is now time to turn to Smith's personal adventures among the Indians
during this period. Almost our only authority is Smith himself, or such
presumed writings of his companions as he edited or rewrote. Strachey
and others testify to his energy in procuring supplies for the colony,
and his success in dealing with the Indians, and it seems likely that
the colony would have famished but for his exertions. Whatever suspicion
attaches to Smith's relation of his own exploits, it must never be
forgotten that he was a man of extraordinary executive ability, and had
many good qualities to offset his vanity and impatience of restraint.
After the departure of Wingfield, Captain Smith was constrained to act
as Cape Merchant; the leaders were sick or discontented, the rest were
in despair, and would rather starve and rot than do anything for
their own relief, and the Indian trade was decreasing. Under these
circumstances, Smith says in his “True Relation,” “I was sent to the
mouth of the river, to Kegquoughtan [now Hampton], an Indian Towne, to
trade for corn, and try the river for fish.” The Indians, thinking them
near famished, tantalized them with offers of little bits of bread in
exchange for a hatchet or a piece of copper, and Smith offered trifles
in return. The next day the Indians were anxious to trade. Smith sent
men up to their town, a display of force was made by firing four guns,
and the Indians kindly traded, giving fish, oysters, bread, and deer.
The town contained eighteen houses, and heaps of grain. Smith obtained
fifteen bushels of it, and on his homeward way he met two canoes with
Indians, whom he accompanied to their villages on the south side of the
river, and got from them fifteen bushels more.
This incident is expanded in the “General Historie.” After the lapse of
fifteen years Smith is able to remember more details, and to conceive
himself as the one efficient man who had charge of everything outside
the fort, and to represent his dealings with the Indians in a much more
heroic and summary manner. He was not sent on the expedition, but went
of his own motion. The account opens in this way: “The new President
[Ratcliffe] and Martin, being little beloved, of weake judgement in
dangers, and loose industrie in peace, committed the management of all
things abroad to Captain Smith; who by his own example, good words, and
fair promises, set some to mow, others to binde thatch, some to builde
houses, others to thatch them, himselfe always bearing the greatest
taske for his own share, so that in short time he provided most of
them with lodgings, neglecting any for himselfe. This done, seeing the
Salvage superfluities beginne to decrease (with some of his workmen)
shipped himself in the Shallop to search the country for trade.”
In this narration, when the Indians trifled with Smith he fired a volley
at them, ran his boat ashore, and pursued them fleeing towards their
village, where were great heaps of corn that he could with difficulty
restrain his soldiers [six or seven] from taking. The Indians then
assaulted them with a hideous noise: “Sixty or seventy of them, some
black, some red, some white, some particoloured, came in a square order,
singing and dancing out of the woods, with their Okee (which is an Idol
made of skinnes, stuffed with mosse, and painted and hung with chains
and copper) borne before them; and in this manner being well armed with
clubs, targets, bowes and arrowes, they charged the English that so
kindly received them with their muskets loaden with pistol shot, that
down fell their God, and divers lay sprawling on the ground; the
rest fled againe to the woods, and ere long sent men of their
Quiyoughkasoucks [conjurors] to offer peace and redeeme the Okee.” Good
feeling was restored, and the savages brought the English “venison,
turkies, wild fowl, bread all that they had, singing and dancing in sign
of friendship till they departed.” This fantastical account is much more
readable than the former bare narration.
The supplies which Smith brought gave great comfort to the despairing
colony, which was by this time reasonably fitted with houses. But it
was not long before they again ran short of food. In his first narrative
Smith says there were some motions made for the President and Captain
Arthur to go over to England and procure a supply, but it was with much
ado concluded that the pinnace and the barge should go up the river to
Powhatan to trade for corn, and the lot fell to Smith to command the
expedition. In his “General Historie” a little different complexion is
put upon this. On his return, Smith says, he suppressed an attempt to
run away with the pinnace to England. He represents that what food “he
carefully provided the rest carelessly spent,” and there is probably
much truth in his charges that the settlers were idle and improvident.
He says also that they were in continual broils at this time. It is in
the fall of 1607, just before his famous voyage up the Chickahominy,
on which he departed December 10th--that he writes: “The President and
Captain Arthur intended not long after to have abandoned the country,
which project was curbed and suppressed by Smith. The Spaniard never
more greedily desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to
abandon the country than he to keep it. But finding plenty of corn in
the river of Chickahomania, where hundreds of salvages in divers places
stood with baskets expecting his coming, and now the winter approaching,
the rivers became covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we
daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpions, and putchamins,
fish, fowls, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could
eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired to go to
England.”
While the Chickahominy expedition was preparing, Smith made a voyage to
Popohanock or Quiyoughcohanock, as it is called on his map, a town
on the south side of the river, above Jamestown. Here the women and
children fled from their homes and the natives refused to trade. They
had plenty of corn, but Smith says he had no commission to spoil them.
On his return he called at Paspahegh, a town on the north side of the
James, and on the map placed higher than Popohanock, but evidently
nearer to Jamestown, as he visited it on his return. He obtained ten
bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives, who closely
watched and dogged the expedition.
Everything was now ready for the journey to Powhatan. Smith had the
barge and eight men for trading and discovery, and the pinnace was
to follow to take the supplies at convenient landings. On the 9th of
November he set out in the barge to explore the Chickahominy, which is
described as emptying into the James at Paspahegh, eight miles above the
fort. The pinnace was to ascend the river twenty miles to Point Weanock,
and to await Smith there. All the month of November Smith toiled up and
down the Chickahominy, discovering and visiting many villages, finding
the natives kindly disposed and eager to trade, and possessing abundance
of corn. Notwithstanding this abundance, many were still mutinous. At
this time occurred the President's quarrel with the blacksmith, who,
for assaulting the President, was condemned to death, and released on
disclosing a conspiracy of which Captain Kendall was principal; and the
latter was executed in his place. Smith returned from a third voyage to
the Chickahominy with more supplies, only to find the matter of sending
the pinnace to England still debated.
This project, by the help of Captain Martin, he again quieted and at
last set forward on his famous voyage into the country of Powhatan and
Pocahontas.