John Smith in Virginia

THE life of Captain John Smith reads like a chapter from The Cloister and the Hearth. It abounds in incidents such as we call improbable in novels, although precedents enough for every one of them may be found in real life. The accumulation of romantic adventures in the career of a single individual may sometimes lend an air of exaggeration to the story ; yet in the genius for getting into scrapes and coming out of them sound and whole, the differences between people are quite as great as the differences in stature and complexion. John Smith had a genius for adventures, and he lived at a time when one would often meet with things such as nowadays seldom happen in civilized countries. In these days of Pullman cars and organized police, we are liable to forget the kind of perils that used to dog men’s footsteps through the world. The romance of human life has not all disappeared, but it has changed its character since the Elizabethan age, and consists of different kinds of incidents, so that the present generation has witnessed a tendency to disbelieve the stories of the older time. In the case of John Smith, for whose early life we have only his autobiography to go by, much incredulity has been expressed. To set him down as an arrant braggadocio would seem to some critics essential to their reputation for sound sense. Such a judgment, however, may simply show that the critic has failed to realize all the conditions of the case. Queer things could happen in the Tudor times. Lord Campbell tells us that Chief Justice Popham, when he was a law student in the Middle Temple, used, after nightfall, to go out with his pistols and take purses on Hounslow Heath, partly to show that he was a young man of spirit, partly to recruit his meagre finances, impaired by riotous living !¹ The age in which such things were done was that in which Smith grew to manhood.

He was born at Willoughby, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1579. The death of his parents, when he was thirteen years old, left him a comfortable fortune, for which his guardians, he says, had more regard than for him. A thirst for adventure led him, at the age of sixteen, to France, where he served as a soldier for a while ; afterward he spent three years in the Netherlands fighting against the Spaniards. In the year 1600 he returned to Willoughby, “ where within a short time, being glutted with too much company wherein he took small delight, he retired himself into a little woody pasture a good way from any town, environed with many hundred acres of woods. Here by a fair brook he built a pavilion of boughs, where only in his clothes he lay. His study was Machiavelli’s Art of War and Marcus Aurelius ; his exercise a good horse, with lance and ring ; his food was thought to be more of venison than anything else.” However, he adds, these hermit-like pleasures could not content him long. “ He was desirous to see more of the world, and try his fortune against the Turks ; both lamenting and repenting to have seen so many Christians slaughtering one another.” In passing through France he was robbed of all he had about him, but his life was saved by a peasant, who found him lying in the forest, half dead with hunger and grief, and nearly frozen. He made his way to Marseilles, and embarked with a company of pilgrims for the Levant ; but a violent storm arose, which they said was all because of their having this heretic on board, and so, like Jonah, the young adventurer was thrown into the sea. But he was a good swimmer, and “ God brought him,” he says, to a little island, with no inhabitants but a few kine and goats. Next morning he was picked up by a Breton vessel, which carried him as far as Egypt and Cyprus. The commanding officer, Captain La Roche, knew some of Smith’s friends in France, and treated him with great kindness and consideration. On the return voyage, at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea, a Venetian argosy fired upon them, and a hot fight ensued, until the Venetian struck her colors. The Bretons robbed her of an immense treasure in silks and velvets and Turkish gold and silver coin, as much as they could carry without overloading their own ship, and then let her go on her way. When the spoil was divided. Smith was allowed to share with the rest, and thus received £225 in coin, besides a box of stuff worth nearly as much more. After Captain La Roche, of whom he speaks with warm affection, had set him ashore in Piedmont, he made a comfortable journey through Italy as far as Naples, and seems to have learned much and enjoyed himself in “ sight seeing,” quite like a modern traveler. At Rome he saw Pope Clement VIII. with several cardinals creeping on hands and knees up the Holy Staircase. He called on Father Parsons, the famous English Jesuit; he “ satisfied himself with the rareties of Rome ; ” he visited, in like manner, Florence and Bologna, and gradually made his way to Venice, and so on to Gratz. in Styria, where he entered the service of Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and was presently put in command of a company of two hundred and fifty cavalry, with the rank of captain. On one occasion he made himself useful by devising a system of signals, and on another occasion by inventing a kind of rude missiles which he called “fiery dragons,” and which sorely annoyed the Turks by setting fire to their camp.

During the years 1601 and 1602 Smith saw much rough service. The troop to which his company belonged passed under the command of Sigismund Bathori, Prince of Transylvania ; and now comes the most noteworthy incident in Smith’s narrative. The Transylvanians were besieging Regal, one of their towns which the Turks had occupied, and the siege made but little progress, so that the barbarians, from the top of the wall, hurled down sarcasms upon their assailants, and complained of growing fat for lack of exercise. One day a Turkish captain sent a challenge, declaring that “ in order to delight the ladies, who did long to see some court-like pastime, he did defy any captain that had the command of a company, who durst combat with him for his head.” The challenge was accepted by the Christian army ; it was decided to select the champion by lot, and the lot fell upon Smith. A truce was proclaimed for the single combat. The besieging army was drawn up in battle array; the town walls were crowded with fair dames and turbaned warriors. The combatants, on their horses, politely exchanged salutes, and then rushed at each other with leveled lances. At the first thrust Smith killed the Turk, and, dismounting, unfastened his helmet, cut off his head, and carried it to the commanding general, who accepted it graciously. The Turks were so chagrined that one of their captains sent a personal challenge to Smith, and next day the scene was repeated. This time both lances were shivered, and recourse was had to pistols ; the Turk received a ball which threw him to the ground, and then Smith beheaded him. Some time afterward our victorious champion sent a message into the town, “ that the ladies might know he was not so much enamored of their servants’ heads, but if any Turk of their rank would come to the place of combat to redeem them, he should have his also upon the like conditions, if he could win it.” The defiance was accepted. The Turk, having the choice of weapons, chose battle-axes, and pressed Smith so hard that his axe flew from his hand, whereat loud cheers arose from the ramparts; but with a quick movement of his horse he dodged his enemy’s next blow, and, drawing his sword, gave him a fearful thrust in the side, which settled the affair; in another moment Smith had his head. At a later time, after Prince Sigismund had heard of these exploits, he granted to Smith a coat-of-arms with three Turks’ heads in a shield.

If there is anywhere an instance of boastful falsehood in Smith’s narrative, surely we seem to have it here. The incidents, of course, are by no means impossible, but the story has very much the look of an old soldier’s yarn, and the reader might well be excused for passing over it as questionable, were it not for one fact. At the Heralds’ College in London, in the official register of grants of arms, we find the record of the coat-of-arms granted December 9, 1603, by Sigismund Bathori, Prince of Transylvania, “ to John Smith, captain of two hundred and fifty soldiers, etc., . . . in memory of three Turks’ heads which with his sword before the town of Regal he did overcome, kill, and cut off, in the province of Transylvania.” This entry is duly approved, and the genuineness of Sigismund’s signature and seal certified, by William Segar, Garter Kingat-Arms. There seems to be thus no room for reasonable doubt that in this instance, at least, Smith’s tale is true. Let me add that in his way of telling it there is no trace of boastfulness. For perfect simplicity and freedom from selfconsciousness Smith’s writings remind me of no other book so much as the Memoirs of General Grant. Inaccuracies now and then occur, prejudices and errors of judgment here and there confront us, but the stamp of honesty I find on every page.

At the bloody battle of Rothenthurm, November 18, 1602, Smith was taken prisoner and sold into slavery. At Constantinople, the young lady, Charatza Tragabigzanda, into the service of whose family he passed, was able to talk with him in Italian, and treated him with much kindness. One can read between the lines that she may perhaps have had a tender feeling for the young Englishman, or that he thought so. It would not have been strange. His portrait, as engraved and published during his lifetime, is that of an attractive and noblelooking man. His story does not make it quite clear how he regarded the lady or what relations they sustained to each other, but she left an abiding impression upon his memory. When, in 1614, he explored the coast of New England, he gave the name Tragahigzanda to the cape which Prince Charles afterwards named Cape Ann, and the three little neighboring islands he called the Turks’ Heads. Through fear lest her mother should sell him, the lady Tragabigzanda contrived to have him sent to her brother, Thmour Pasha, in the East, — probably in Circassia, on the border of the Cossack country, — with a request that he should be kindly treated. But the rude pasha paid no heed to his sister’s message. Our young hero was treated just like the other slaves, of whom this tyrant had more than a hundred. “ Among these slavish fortunes, ” says he, “ there was no great choice ; for the best was so bad, a dog could hardly have lived to endure [it].” He was dressed in the skin of a wild beast, had an iron collar fastened about his neck, and was cuffed and kicked about till he could stand it no longer. As nothing could make him worse off than he was already, he became desperate. One day, as he was threshing wheat in a grange more than a league distant from the pasha’s house, the pasha came in and reviled him and struck him, whereupon Smith suddenly knocked him down with his threshingstick and beat his brains out. Then he stripped the body and hid it under the straw, dressed up in the dead man’s clothes and mounted his horse, tied a sack of grain to his saddle-bow, and galloped off into the Scythian desert. The one tormenting fear was of meeting some roving party of Turks who might recognize the mark on his iron collar, and either send him back to his late master’s place or enslave him on their own account. But in sixteen days of misery he saw nobody; then he arrived at a Russian fortress on the Don, and got rid of his badge of slavery. He was helped on his way from one Russian town to another, and everywhere treated most kindly. Through the Polish country he went, finding by the wayside much mirth and entertainment, till he reached Transylvania again, where Sigismund granted him the coat-of-arms already mentioned, and as a recompense for his services and sufferings gave him 1500 ducats, equivalent to about $2500. This was in December, 1603. In the course of the next year Smith traveled in Germany, France, Spain, and Morocco, and made bis way back to England in the nick of time for taking part in the enterprise projected by the London Company. Meeting with Newport and Gosnold, and other captains who had visited the shores of America, it was natural that his strong geographical curiosity and his love of adventure should combine to urge him to share in the enterprise.

The brevity of Smith’s narrations now and then leaves the story obscure. Like many another charming old writer, he did not always consult the convenience of the historians of a later age. So much only is clear : that during the voyage across the Atlantic the seeds of quarrel were sown which bore fruit in much bitterness and wrangling after the colonists had landed. Indeed, after nearly three centuries some smoke of the conflict still hovers about ihe field. To this day, John Smith is one of the personages about whom writers of history keep losing their tempers in renewing old quarrels or getting up fresh ones. Modern authors have sometimes sought to belittle him, but the turmoil that has been made is itself a tribute to the potency and incisiveness of his character. Weak men do not call forth such belligerency. Amid all the contradictory statements, too, there comes out quite distinctly the contemporary recognition of his dignity and purity. Never was man known, says one old writer, “ from debts, wine, dice, and oaths so free;” a stanch Puritan in morals, though not in doctrine, for he was an upholder of Elizabeth’s ideas as to the relations of State and Church.

Captain Newport’s voyage was a long one, for he followed the traditional route, first running down to the Canary Islands, and then taking Columbus’s path, wafted by the trade-wind straight across to the West Indies. It seems strange that he should have done so, for the modern method of great - circle sailing,—first practiced on a large scale by Americas Vespucius, in 1502, in his superb voyage of four thousand miles in thirtythree days, from the ice-clad island of South Georgia to Sierra Leone, — this more scientific method had lately been adopted by Captain Gosnold, who in 1602 crossed directly from the English Channel to Cape Cod. As Gosnold was now second in command in this expedition to Virginia, it would seem as if the shorter route might once more have been tried to advantage. So many weeks upon the ocean sadly diminished the stock of provisions. In the course of the voyage some trouble arose between Smith and Wingfield, and while they were stopping at Dominica, on the 24th of March an accusation of plotting mutiny was brought against the former, so that he was kept in irons until the ships reached Virginia. After leaving the West Indies the voyagers encountered bad weather and lost their reckoning, but on the 26th of April they found the cape which they named Henry, after the Prince of Wales, as the opposite cape was afterwards named for his younger brother, Prince Charles. A few of the company ventured on shore, where they were at once attacked by Indians, and two were badly wounded with arrows. That evening, the sealed box, which had been brought from London, was opened, and it was found that Bartholomew Gosnold, Edward Wingfield, John Smith, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall were appointed members of the council, — six in all, but the president was to have two votes. As the ships proceeded into Hampton Roads, after so much stress of weather, they named the promontory at the entrance Point Comfort. It seems likely that the point at the upper end of the Roads received its name of Newport News from the gallant captain. On several old maps I have found it spelled Newport Ness, which is equivalent to Point Newport. The name of the broad river which the voyagers now entered speaks for itself. They scrutinized the banks until they found a spot which seemed suited for a settlement, and there they landed on the 13th of May. It was such a place as the worthy Hakluyt (or whoever wrote their letter of instructions) had emphatically warned them against, — low, and damp, and liable to prove malarious. At high tide the rising waters half covered the little peninsula ; but in this there was an element of military security, and the narrow neck was easy to guard : perhaps it may have been such considerations that prevailed. Smith says there was a dispute between Wingfield and Gosnold over the selection of this site. As soon as the company had landed here, the members of the council, all save Smith, were sworn into office, and then they chose Wingfield for their president for the first year. On the next day the men went to work at building their fort, a wooden structure of triangular shape, with a demilune at each angle, mounting cannon. They called it Fort James, but soon the settlement came to be known as Jamestown. For a church, they nailed a board between two trees to serve as a reading-desk, and stretched a canvas awning over it; and there the Rev. Robert Hunt, a high-minded and courageous divine, first clergyman of English America, read the Episcopal service and preached a sermon twice on every Sunday.

Smith’s enemies were a majority in the council, and would not admit him as a member, but he was no longer held as a prisoner. Newport’s next business was to explore the river, and Smith, with four other gentlemen, four skilled mariners, and fourteen common sailors, went along with him, while the Jamestown fort was building. They sailed up about as far as the site of Richmond, frequently meeting parties of Indians on the banks, or passing Indian villages. Newport was uniformly kind and sagacious in his dealings with the red men, and they seemed quite friendly. These were Algonquins, of the tribe called Powhatans, and the natives who had assaulted the English at Cape Henry belonged to a hostile tribe, so that the incident furnished a bond of sympathy between the Powhatans and the white men. After a few days the explorers reached one of the principal Powhatan villages, which Thomas Studley, the colonial storekeeper, describes as consisting of about a dozen houses “ pleasantly seated on a hill.” Old drawings indicate that they were large clan houses, with framework of beams and covering of bark ; similar in general shape, though not in all details, to the long houses of the Iroquois. The Powhatans seem to have been the leading or senior tribe in a loose confederacy. Their principal village was called Werowocomoco, situated on the north side of York River, about fifteen miles northeast from Jamestown as the crow flies. The place is now called Putin Bay, a name which is merely a corruption of Powhatan. At Werowocomoco dwelt the head war-chief of the tribe, by name Wahunsunakok, but much more generally known by his title The Powhatan, just as the head of an Irish or Scotch clan is styled The O’Neill or The MacGregor. Newport and Smith, hearing that The Powhatan was a chief to whom other chiefs were in a measure subordinate, spoke of him as the emperor, and of the subordinate chiefs as kings, — a grotesque terminology which was natural enough at that day, but which, in the interest of historical accuracy, it is high time for modern writers to drop. The Englishmen were bewildered by barbaric usages utterly foreign to their experience. Kinship among these Indians, as so commonly among barbarians and savages, was reckoned through females only; and when the English visitors were told that The Powhatan’s office would descend to his maternal brothers, even though lie had sons living, the information was evidently correct, but they found it hard to understand or believe. So when one of the chiefs on the James River insisted upon giving back some powder and balls which one of his men had stolen, it was regarded as a proof of strict honesty and friendliness ; whereas the more probable explanation is that a prudent Indian, at that early time, would consider it bad medicine to handle the thunder-and-lightning stuff, or keep it about one.

When Newport and Smith returned to Jamestown, they found that it had been attacked by a force of two hundred Indians. Wingfield had beaten them off, but one Englishman was killed and eleven were wounded. In the course of the next two weeks these enemies were very annoying ; they would crouch in the tall grass about the fort, and pick off a man with their barbed stone-tipped arrows. Hakluyt had warned the settlers against building near the edge of a wood ; it seems strange that bitter experience was needed to teach them that danger might lurk in long grass. Presently some of their new acquaintances from the Powhatan tribe came to the fort and told Newport that the assailants were from a hostile tribe, against which they would willingly form an alliance ; and they furthermore advised him to cut his grass, which seems to prove that they were sincere in what they said.

Smith now demanded a trial on the charges which had led to his imprisonment. In spite of objections from Wingfield a jury was granted, and Smith was acquitted of all the charges ; so that on the 10th of June he was allowed to take his seat in the council. On the 15th the fort was finished, and on the 22d Captain Newport sailed for England with a cargo of sassafras and fine wood for wainscoting. He took the direct route homeward, for need was now visibly pressing. He promised to be back in Virginia within twenty weeks, but all the food he could leave in the fort was reckoned to be scarcely enough for fifteen weeks, so that the company were put upon short rations. According to Studley, one hundred and five persons were left at Jamestown, of whom, besides the six councilors, the clergyman, and the surgeon, there were mentioned by name twenty - nine gentlemen, six carpenters, one mason, two bricklayers, one blacksmith, one sailor, one drummer, one tailor, one barber, twelve laborers, and four boys, with thirty-eight whom he neither names nor classifies, but simply mentions as “ divers others.” The food left in store for this company was not appetizing. After the ship had gone, says Richard Potts, “ there remained neither tavern, beer-house, nor place of relief but the common kettle ; . . . and that was half a pint of wheat and as much barley, boiled with water, for a man a day ; and this, having fried some twenty-six weeks in the ship’s hold, contained as many worms as grains. . . . Our [only] drink was water. . . . Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for saints.” Chickens were raised, but not enough for so many mouths, and as there were no cattle or sheep a nourishing diet of meat and milk was out of the question. Nor do we find much mention of game, though there were some who warded off the pangs of starvation by catching crabs and sturgeon in the river. With such inadequate diet, with unfamiliar kinds of labor, and with the frightful heat of an American summer, the condition of the settlers soon came to be pitiable. Disease added to their sufferings. Fevers lurked in the air of Jamestown. Before the end of September more than fifty of the company were in their graves. The situation is graphically described by one of the survivors, the Hon. George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland: “ There were neuer Englishmen left in a forreigne Countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new discouered Virginia. Wee watched euery three nights, lying on the have . . . ground, what weather soeuer 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 fiue men a day. Our drink cold water taken out of the Riuer ; which was at a floud verie salt ; at a low tide full of slime and filth: which was the destruction of many of our men. Thus we lined for the space of fiue months in this miserable distresse, not hauing fiue able men to man our Bulwarkes upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to haue put a terrour in the Sauages hearts, we had all perished by those vild and cruell Pagans, being in that weake estate as we were ; our men night and day groaning in euery corner of the Fort most pittiful 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 sick men without reliefe, euery night and day for the space of sixe weekes : some departing out of the World, many times three or foure in a night ; in the morning their bodies being trailed out of their Cabines like Dogges, to be buried. In this sort did I see the mortalitie of diuers of our people.”

In such a state of things, our colonists would have been more than human had they shown very amiable tempers. From the early wanderings of the Spaniards in Darien down to the recent marches of Stanley in Africa, men struggling with the wilderness have fiercely quarreled. The fever at Jamestown carried off Captain Gosnold in August, and after his death the feud between Smith’s friends and Wingfield’s flamed up with fresh virulence. Both gentlemen have left printed statements, and in our time the quarrel is between historians, as to which to believe. Perhaps it is Smith’s detractors who are just at this moment the more impetuous and implacable, appealing as they do to the very common though somewhat churlish feeling that delights in seeing long - established reputations assailed. Such writers will tell you, as positively as if there could be no doubt about it, that Smith engaged in a plot with two other members of the council to depose Wingfield from his presidency and set up a triumvirate. Others will assert, with equal confidence, that Wingfield was a tyrant whose rule became unendurable. A perusal of his Discourse of Virginia, written in 1608 in defense of his conduct, should make it clear, I think, that he was an honorable gentleman, but ill fitted for the difficult situation in which he found himself. To control the rations of so many hungry men was no pleasant or easy matter. It was charged against Wingfield that he kept back sundry dainties, and especially some wine and spirits, for himself and a few favored friends. His quite plausible defense is that he reserved two gallons of sack for the communion table, and a few bottles of brandy for extreme emergencies ; but the other members of the council, whose flasks were all empty, “ did long for to sup up that little remnant ” ! At last a suspicion arose that he intended to take one of the small vessels that remained in the river and abandon the colony. Early in September the council deposed him, and elected John Ratcliffe in his place. A few days later, Wingfield was condemned to pay heavy damages to Smith for defaming his character. “Then Master Recorder,” says poor Wingfield, “ did very learnedly comfort me that if I had wrong I might bring my writ of error in London; whereat I smiled.... I tould Master President I . . . prayed they would be more sparing of law vntill wee had more witt or wealthe.”

An awful dignity hedged about the sacred person of the president of that little colony of fifty men. One day President Ratcliffe beat James Reed, the blacksmith, who so far forgot himself as to strike back, and for that heinous offense was condemned to be hanged ; but when already upon the fatal ladder, and, so to speak, in extremis, the resourceful blacksmith made his peace with the law by revealing a horrid scheme of mutiny conceived by George Kendall, a member of the council. Of the details of the affair nothing is known, save that Kendall was found guilty, and instead of a plebeian hanging there was an aristocratic shooting. In telling the story, Wingfield observes that if such goings-on were to be heard of in England, “ I fear it would drive many well-affected myndes from this honourable action of Virginia.”

Wingfield’s document expressly admits that Smith was especially active in trading with the Indians for their corn, and that this was a great relief to the suffering colony. With the coming of autumn so many wild fowl were shot that the diet was much improved. At last, on the 10th of December, Smith started on an exploring expedition up the Chickahominy River. Having gone as far as his shallop would take him, he left seven men to guard it, and went on in a canoe, with only two white men and two Indian guides. They had arrived in the neighborhood of White Oak Swamp when an attack was made by two hundred Indians led by Opekankano, a brother of The Powhatan. The Englishmen in the shallop were all killed, and also Smith’s two comrades ; he made a sturdy resistance, slew two Indians with his pistol, and then was taken prisoner. His captors were tying him to a tree, to be riddled with arrows, as he supposed ; but, knowing what we do of Indian customs, it seems not unlikely that a far more frightful death was intended for him. Then he took out a pocket compass, and interested the childish minds of the barbarians in the quivering needle which they could plainly see through the glass, but, strange to say, could not feel when they tried to touch it. He improved the occasion with a brief discourse on astronomy, which may have led his hearers to regard him as a wizard ; at all events, they did not kill him, but marched away, taking him with them.

Why the red men should have made this attack is not clear. Hitherto the Powhatan tribe seems to have maintained friendly relations with the white men. There is a traditional impression that there were two opposing opinions among the Indians as to the most prudent way of treating the strangers, and that Opekankano was one of those who always favored hostility. His attitude would thus remind us of the attitude of Montezuma’s brother Cuitlahuatzin toward the army of Cortes approaching Mexico. Such a view is not improbable. Wingfield says that, two or three years before the arrival of the English at Jamestown, some white men had ascended a river to the northward, probably the Pamunkey or the Rappahannock, and had forcibly kidnapped some Indians. If there is truth in this, the kidnappers may have belonged to the ill-fated expedition of Bartholomew Gilbert. Wingfield says that Opekankano carried Smith about the country to several villages, to see if anybody could identify him with the leader of that kidnapping party. Smith’s narrative confirms this statement, and adds that it was agreed that the captain in question was a much taller man than he. His story is full of observations on the country. Opekankano’s village consisted of four or five communal houses, each about a hundred feet in length, and from the sandy hill on which it stood some scores of such houses could be seen scattered about the plain. Finally Smith was brought to Werowocomoco and into the presence of The Powhatan, who received him in just such a long wigwam. The elderly chieftain sat before the fireplace, on a kind of bench, and was covered with a robe of raccoon skins, all with the tails on and hanging like ornamental tassels. Beside him sat his young squaws; a row of women, with their faces and bare shoulders painted bright red, and chains of white shell beads about their necks, stood by the walls, and in front of them stood the grim warriors.

This was on the 4th or 5th of January, 1608, and on the 8th Smith returned to Jamestown, escorted by four Indians. What had happened to him in the interval ? In his own writings we have two different accounts. In his tract published under the title A True Relation, which was merely a letter written by him in 1608 to a friend in England, he simply says that The Powhatan treated him very courteously, and sent him back to Jamestown. But in the General History of Virginia, a far more elaborate and circumstantial narrative, published in London in 1624, written partly by Smith himself and partly by others of the colony, we get quite another story. We are told that after he had been introduced to The Powhatan’s long wigwam, as above described, the Indians debated together, and presently two big stones were placed before the chief, and Smith was dragged thither and laid upon them ; but even while warriors were standing, with tomahawks in hand, to beat his brains out, the chief’s young daughter Pocahontas rushed up and embraced him, and laid her head upon his to shield him, whereupon her father spared his life.

Which of these two accounts is to be accepted as true ? For two centuries and a half the latter was universally accepted, and the former ignored. Every schoolboy was taught the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, and for most people, I dare say, that incident is the only one in the captain’s eventful career that is remembered. But in recent times the discrepancy between the earlier and the later account has attracted attention, and the conclusion has been easily reached that in the more romantic version Smith is evidently a liar. It is first assumed that if the Pocahontas incident had really occurred we should be sure to find it in Smith’s own narrative, written within a year after its occurrence ; and then it is assumed that afterward, when Pocahontas visited London and was lionized as a princess, Smith invented the story, in order to magnify his own importance by thus linking his name with hers. By Such plausible logic is the braggadocio theory of Smith’s career supported, and underneath it all lies the tacit assumption that the Pocahontas incident is an extraordinary one, something that in an Indian community or anywhere would not have been likely to happen.

As this view of the case has been set forth by writers of high repute for scholarship, it has been very generally accepted upon their authority ; in many quarters it has become the fashionable view. Yet its utter flimsiness can be exhibited, I think, in a few words.

The first occasion on which Smith mentions his rescue by Pocahontas is the occasion of her arrival in London, in 1616, as the wife of John Rolfe. In an eloquent letter to King James’s queen, Anne of Denmark, he bespeaks the royal favor for the strange visitor from Virginia, and extols her good qualities and the kindness she had shown to the colony. In the course of the letter he says, “ She hazarded the heating out of her own brains to save mine.” There were then several persons in London, besides Pocahontas herself, who could have challenged this statement if it had been false, but we do not find that anybody did so. In 1624, when Smith published his General History, with its minutely circumstantial account of the affair, why do we not find, even on the part of his enemies, any intimation of the falsity of the story ? Within a year George Percy wrote a book for the express purpose of picking the General History to pieces and discrediting it in the eyes of the public; he was one of the original company at Jamestown; if Smith had not told his comrades of the Pocahontas incident as soon as he had escaped from The Powhatan’s clutches, if he had kept silent on the subject for years, Percy could not have failed to know the fact, and would certainly have used it as a weapon. There were others who could have done the same, and their silence furnishes a very strong presumption of the truth of the story.

Why, then, did Smith refrain from mentioning it in the letter to a friend in England, written in 1608, while the incidents of his captivity were fresh in his mind ? Well, we do not know that he did refrain from mentioning it, for we do know that the letter, as published in August, 1608, had been tampered with. Smith was in Virginia, and the editor in London expressly states in his preface that he has omitted a portion of the manuscript. “ Somewhat more was by him written, which being (as I thought) fit to be private, I would not adventure to make it public.” Nothing could be more explicit. Now, supposing the portion omitted to have been the passages referring to Smith’s imminent peril and his rescue, what could have been the editor’s motive in suppressing it? We need not go far for an answer, if we bear in mind the instructions with which the first colonists started, — “ to suffer no man . . . to write [in] any letter of anything that may discourage others.” This very necessary and important injunction may have restrained Smith himself from mentioning his deadly peril; if he did mention it, we can well understand why the person who published the letter should have thought it best to keep the matter private. After a few years had elapsed, and the success of the colony was assured, there was no longer any reason for such reticence. My own opinion is that Smith, not intending the letter for publication, told the whole story, and that the suppression was the editor’s work. It will be remembered that in the fight in which he was captured Smith slew two Indians. In the circumstantial account given in the General History we are told that, while Opekankano was taking him up and down the country, a near relative of one of these victims attempted to murder Smith, but was prevented by the Indians who were guarding him. The True Relation preserves this incident, while it omits all reference to the two occasions when Smith’s life was officially and deliberately imperiled, — the tying to the tree and the scene in The Powhatan’s wigwam. One can easily see why the editor’s nerves should not have been disturbed by the first incident, so like what might happen in England, while the more strange and outlandish exhibitions of the Indian’s treatment of captives seemed best to be dropped from the narrative.

But we are assured the difficulty is not merely one of omission. In the True Relation, Smith not only omits all reference to Pocahontas, but he says that he was kindly and courteously treated by his captors ; and this statement is thought to be incompatible with their having decided to beat his brains out. This objection shows ignorance of Indian manners. In our own time, it has been a common thing for Apaches and Comanches to offer their choicest morsels of food, with their politest bows and smiles, to the doomed captive whose living flesh will in a few moments be hissing under their firebrands. The irony of such a situation is inexpressibly dear to the ferocious hearts of these men of the Stone Age, and American history abounds in examples of it. In his fuller account, Smith describes himself as kindly treated on his way to the scene of execution and after his rescue. Drop out what happened in the interval, and you get the account given in the True Relation.

Now, that omission creates a gap in the True Relation such as to damage its credibility. We are told that Smith, after killing a couple of Indians, is carried about the country, till he is finally brought to the head war-chief’s wigwam, and is then forsooth allowed to go scot free, with no notice taken of the blood debt that he owes to the tribe. To any one who has studied Indians such a story is almost incredible. It is true that in 1608 the Powhatans were still unfamiliar with white men, and inclined to dread them as more or less supernatural, but they had thoroughly learned that fair skins and long beards were no safeguard against disease and death. If they did not know that the Jamestown colony had dwindled to eight-and-thirty men, they knew that their own warriors had slain all Smith’s party and taken him captive. As a prisoner of war his life was already forfeited. It is safe to say that no Indian would think of releasing him without some equivalent; such an act might incur the wrath of invisible powers. There were various ways of putting captives to death ; torture by slow fire was the favorite mode, but crushing in the skull with tomahawks was quite common, so that when Smith mentions the latter as decided upon in his case he is evidently telling the plain truth, and we begin to see that the detailed account in the General History is more consistent and probable than the abridged account in the True Relation.

The consistency and probability of the story are made complete by the rescue at the hands of Pocahontas. That incident is precisely in accordance with Indian usage, but it is not likely that Smith knew enough about such usage to have invented it, and his artless way of telling the story is that of a man who is describing what he does not understand. From the Indian point of view there was nothing romantic or extraordinary in such a rescue ; it was simply a not uncommon matter of business. The romance with which white readers have always invested it is the outcome of a misconception no less complete than that which led the fair dames of London to make obeisance to the tawny Pocahontas as to a princess of imperial lineage. Time and again it happened that when a prisoner was about to be slaughtered, some one of the dusky assemblage, moved by pity or admiration or some unexplained freak, would interpose in behalf of the victim ; and, as a rule, such interposition was heeded. Many a poor wretch, already tied to the fatal tree and benumbed with unspeakable terror, while the firebrands were preparing for his torment, has been saved from the jaws of death, and adopted as brother or as lover by some laughing young squaw, or as a son by some grave, wrinkled warrior. In such cases, the new-comer was allowed entire freedom, and treated like one of the tribe. As the blood debt was canceled by the prisoner’s violent death, it was also canceled by securing his services to the tribe; and any member, old or young, had a right to demand the latter method as a substitute for the former. Pocahontas, therefore, did not “ hazard the beating out of her own brains,” though the rescued stranger, looking with English eyes, would naturally see it in that light. Her brains were perfectly safe. This thirteen-year-old squaw liked the handsome prisoner, claimed him, and got him, according to custom. Mark now what happened next. After a couple of days, The Powhatan and his warriors painted their faces till they looked more like devils than men, and with dismal grunts and howls went through a long incantation, after which the chief told Smith that now they were friends, and he might go back to Jamestown ; then, if he would send to The Powhatan a couple of cannon and a grindstone, he should have in exchange a piece of country in the neighborhood, and that chief would ever after esteem him as his son. Smith’s narrative does not indicate that he understood this to be anything more than a friendly figure of speech, but it seems to me clear that it was a case of ceremonious adoption. As the natural result of the young girl’s intercession the white chieftain was adopted into the tribe.

I have dwelt at some length upon this rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, because I have come to regard it as an event of real importance in the early history of the United States. Without it the subsequent relations of the Indian girl with the English colony become incomprehensible. But for her friendly services on more than one occasion the tiny settlement would very likely have perished. Her visits to Jamestown and the regular supply of provisions by the Indians began at this time.

On the very day that Smith returned to Jamestown, the 8th of January, 1608, the long-expected ship of Captain Newport arrived with what was known as the First Supply of men and provisions. Part came now, the rest a few weeks later. Only 38 men had survived the hardships at Jamestown; to these the First Supply added 120, bringing the number up to 158. For so many people, besides the provisions they brought with them, more corn was needed. Smith took his “ Father Newport,” as he called him, over to Werowocomoco, where they tickled “Father Powhatan’s” fancy with blue glass beads and drove some tremendous bargains. As spring came on, Newport sailed for England again, taking with him the deposed Wingfield. The summer of 1608 was spent by Smith in two voyages of exploration up Chesapeake Bay, and into the Potomac, Patapsco, and Susquehanna rivers. He met with warriors of the formidable Iroquois tribe of Susquehannocks, and found them carrying a few French hatchets which had evidently come from Canada. During his absence things went badly at Jamestown, and Ratcliffe was deposed. On Smith’s return in September he was at once chosen president. Only 28 men had been lost this year, so that the colony numbered 130 when Newport again arrived, in September, with the Second Supply of 70 persons, bringing the total up to 200. In this company there were two women, a Mrs. Forrest and her maid, Anne Burroughs, who was soon married to John Laydou, the first recorded English wedding on American soil.

Newport’s instructions show that the members of the London Company, sitting at their cosy English firesides, were getting impatient, and meant to have something done. He was told that he must find the way to the South Sea, or a lump of gold, or one of White’s lost colonists, or else he need not come back and show his face in England ! One seems taken back to the Arabian Nights, where such peremptory behests go along with enchanted carpets and magic rings and heroic steeds with pegs in the neck. No such talismans were to be found in Old Virginia. When Newport read his instructions, Smith bluntly declared that the London Company were fools, which appears to have shocked the decorous mariner. The next order was grotesque enough to have emanated from the teeming brain of James I. after a mickle noggin of Glenlivat. Their new ally, the mighty Emperor Powhatan, must be crowned ! Newport and Smith did it, and much mirth it must have afforded them. The chief refused to come to Jamestown, so Mahomet had to go to the mountain. Up in the long wigwam at Werowocomoco, the two Englishmen divested the old fellow of his raccoon - skin garment, and put on him a scarlet robe, which greatly pleased him. Then they tried to force him down upon his knees — which he did not like at all — while they put the crown on his head. When the operation was safely ended, the forest monarch grunted acquiescence, and handed to Newport his old raccoon - skin cloak as a present for his royal brother in England.

An Indian masquerading scene at one of these visits to Werowocomoco is thus described by one of the English party : “ In a fayre playne field they made a fire, before which [we] sitting upon a mat, suddainly amongst the woods was heard ... a hydeous noise and shrieking. . . . Then presently [we] were presented with this Anticke ; thirtie young women came [nearly] naked out of the woods, . . . their bodies all painted, some white, some red, some black, some particolour, but all differing ; their leader had a fayre payre of buck’s horns on her head, and an Otter’s skin at her girdle, and another at her arm, a quiver of arvowes at her back, a bow and arrowes in her hand; the next had in her hand a sword, another a club, . . . all horned alike. . . . These fiends with most hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dauncing with most excellent ill varietie; . . . having spent neare an houre in this mascarado, as they entred in like manner they departed. Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited [us] to their lodgings, where [we] were no sooner within the house but all these nymphes more tormented us than ever, with crowding, pressing, and hanging about [us], most tediously crying, Love you not me ? This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of fruit in baskets, fish and flesh in wooden platters ; beans and peas there wanted not, nor any salvage dainty their invention could devise: some attending, others singing and dancing about [us] ; which mirth and banquet being ended, with firebrands [for] torches they conducted [us] to [our] lodging.”

The wood-nymphs who thus entertained their guests are in one account mentioned simply as “ Powhatan’s women ; ” in another they are spoken of as “ Pocahontas and her women,” which seems to give us a realistic sketch of the little maid, with her stag-horn head-dress and skin all stained with puccoon, leading her companions in their grotesque capers. Truly, it was into a strange world and among a strange people that our colonists had come. Their quaint descriptions of manners and customs utterly new and unintelligible to them, though familiar enough to modern students of barbaric life, have always the ring of truth. Nowhere in the later experiences of white men with Indians do we find quite so powerful a charm as in those of the early years of the seventeenth century. No other such narratives are quite so delightful as those of Champlain and his friends in Canada, and of Smith and his comrades in Virginia. There is a freshness about this first contact with the wilderness and its uncouth life that makes every incident vivid. There is a fascination, too, not unmixed with sadness, in watching the early dreams of El Dorado fade away as the stern reality of a New World to be conquered comes to make itself known and felt. Naturally, the old delusions persisted at home in England long after the colonists had been taught by costly experiences to discard them, and we smile at the well-meant blundering of the ruling powers in London in their efforts to hasten the success of their enterprise. In vain did the faithful Newport seek to perform the mandates of the London Company. No nuggets of gold were to be found, nor traces of poor Eleanor Dare and her friends, and The Powhatan told the simple truth when he declared that there were difficult mountains westward, and it would be useless to search for a salt sea behind them. Newport tried, nevertheless, but came back exhausted long before he had reached the Blue Ridge ; for what foe is so pertinacious as a strange and savage continent ? In pithy terms does Anas Todkill, one of the first colonists, express himself about these wild projects : 41 Now was there no way to make us miserable but to neglect that time to make our provision whilst it was to be had ; the which was done to perfourme this strange discovery, but more strange coronation. To lose that time, spend that victuall we had, tire and starve our men, having no means to carry victuall, munition, the hurt or sicke, but their own backes : how or by whom they were invented I know not.” How eloquent in grief and indignation are these rugged phrases! A modern writer, an accomplished Oxford scholar, expresses the opinion that the coronation of The Powhatan, although “ an idle piece of formality,” “ had at least the merit of winning and retaining the loyalty of the savage.”² Master Todkill thought differently: “ As for the coronation of Powhatan and his presents of Bason, Ewer, Bed, Clothes, and such costly novelties, they had bin much better well spared than so ill spent; for we had his favour much better onlie for a poore peece of Copper, till this stately kinde of soliciting made him so much overvalue himselfe, that he respected us as much as nothing at all.”

When Newport sailed for England, he took with him Ratcliffe, the deposed president, a man of doubtful character, of whom it was said that he had reasons for using an alias, his real name being Sickelmore. Deposed presidents were liable to serve as talebearers and mischiefmakers. Wingfield had gone home on the previous voyage, and Newport had brought back to Virginia complaints from the company about the way in which things had been managed. Now Smith sent to London by Newport his new map of Virginia, embodying the results of his recent voyages of exploration, — a map of remarkable accuracy, and witness to an amount of original labor that is marvelous to think of. That map is a living refutation of John Smith’s detractors; none but a man of heroic mould could have done the geographical work involved in making it.

With the map Smith sent what he naïvely calls his Rude Answer to the London Company, a paper bristling with common sense, and not timid when it comes to calling a spade a spade. With some topics suggested by this Rude Answer we may concern ourselves in another paper.

John Fiske.