The Jamestown Experiment (11 page)

The barge sailed as far as Smith’s Falls at the Sasquehannock River, where he was forced to turn back. While they were sailing down the bay, they gave the places English names and left crosses either carved into trees or erected “crosses of brass to signify to any [that] Englishmen had been there.” The company explored the Pawtuxunt and Rappahannock rivers, but they never saw the Pacific as hoped. Smith’s party completed their relatively
comprehensive expedition of the Chesapeake Bay. A gentleman, Richard Fetherstone, perished during the journey and was honored with a volley of shot.
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Chapter Seven

O
n September 7, John Smith sailed back to Jamestown and learned what had transpired in the seven weeks of his absence—the news was mixed. He was greeted by Matthew Scrivener, who had recovered from his illness and fever, and the members of the council. Many of the colonists, however, were dead from the summer diseases and others were still suffering. Former president Ratcliffe was locked up on charges he had fomented a mutiny. Scrivener had been a fine leader and had organized the gathering of the harvest. Unfortunately, most of that year’s crop was spoiled in the common storehouse from rain. Even worse, there would be food shortages again that winter unless Christopher Newport returned with another relief expedition. Smith was prepared to take the reins of government and provide leadership that would permanently establish the law and order he thought necessary for the colony to thrive. He had a sense of destiny (and hubris) that Jamestown would rise or fall depending upon his leadership and did not consider the possibility that it might succeed because of the energies of the individual colonists.

A few days later, on September 10, the council followed the will of those who liked and respected John Smith’s leadership style, and elected him president. The ambitious Smith later enumerated his many accomplishments to contrast himself with his predecessors. He was a gentleman adventurer who wanted to emerge victorious in the contest for glory in the New World, and he was finally about to receive his due.

The church and storehouse were rebuilt and additional buildings prepared “for the supplies we expected.” He strengthened and expanded the fort and renewed the watch duty by the men. The colonists restored military discipline. They trained by squadrons and with the “whole company every Saturday exercised in the plain by the west bulwark.” Curious Indians watched the spectacle and beheld a display of the men firing their weapons. Finally, the boats were trimmed and ready for trade missions. In short, Smith organized all aspects of the fledgling colony for it to survive and thrive. He was aided by the change of the summer tides and the restored health of the settlers. Moreover, Christopher Newport returned to Virginia with provisions on the
Mary and Margaret
.

The supercilious new president seethed when Newport disembarked in Jamestown. Smith did not wish to share his newly acquired power with anyone. The mariner represented the company’s interests in Jamestown and would report what he found there. Smith coveted power and could not restrain his jealousy of Newport, complaining, “How or why Captain Newport obtained such a private commission as not to return without a lump of gold, a certainty of the South Sea, or one of the lost company sent out by Sir Walter Ralegh I know not.” Smith thereby questioned the company’s instructions and the company’s vision for the economic foundation of the colony.

By this time, Smith had doubts that gold or a Northwest Passage existed around Chesapeake Bay because of his own voyages and
investigations with the Indians. He envisioned a lasting colony founded upon an ordered and disciplined community of settlers who would plant crops and find commodities to ship back to England. When Newport informed Smith of his intended voyage to seek gold and a passage through America, Smith objected and wondered “how pitch and tar, wainscot, clapboard, glass, and soap-ashes could be provided to relade the ship.” He was pleased that the company had sent skilled Polish and German artisans to manufacture those goods to ship to England, but he was confounded by the fact that it sent “them and seventy more without victuals.”
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Smith fumed that Newport was foolishly wasting “that time to make provision whilst it was to be had.” Winter would approach soon, but they were not devoting their precious time to stocking up their food supplies. The council, however, disagreed with Smith. Two gentlemen adventurers—Richard Waldo and Peter Winne—were seated on the council, according to the directions of the Virginia Company. Newport, in an ironic reversal that worked against Smith, freed John Ratcliffe, who was “permitted to have his voice” in council decisions. Even Smith’s ally, Matthew Scrivener, supported Newport’s exploratory voyage.
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Rifts opened when Newport informed the council that he was going to invite Wahunsonacock to a “coronation” ceremony in which he would crown the werowance as a local lord in the service of James I with the intent of winning his peaceful allegiance. Newport angrily asserted that Smith’s propositions about provisions and commodities were only “devices to hinder his journey [and] to effect it himself.” Smith, Newport charged, was attempting to cover up the “cruelty he had used to the savages in his absence” during Smith’s previous journeys. Smith denied the allegations and offered to take four men to Werowocomoco to entreat Wahunsonacock to come to Jamestown.

Traveling overland and crossing the Pamunkey River by canoe this time, Smith, with four companions and Namontack, arrived at the capital. Pocahontas informed them that her father was gone but offered them hospitality. As they were sitting on mats in front of a fire, they were suddenly frightened by “a hideous noise and shrieking” from the surrounding woods that made the Englishmen scramble for their weapons. The Indian girl assuaged their fears that they were under attack, and they were soon entertained by a dance of thirty painted young women holding swords, clubs, and arrows. A feast with more singing and dancing finished their evening.
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The following day, Wahunsonacock appeared and granted an audience to Smith. After exchanging pleasantries, Smith bid the werowance to Jamestown “to come to his father Newport to accept those presents and conclude their revenge against the Monacans.”
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Wahunsonacock was a proud and intelligent ruler, and he quickly surmised the Englishmen’s purpose. He turned the tables on Smith, asserting his dominance in the relationship with as much grandeur as Smith ever witnessed. Wahunsonacock retorted, “I also am a king and this is my land.” He dictated the terms of meeting with Newport, even adding a deadline for him to arrive: “Eight days I will 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 bait.”
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The Powhatan leader continued, renouncing any implication that he needed the strength of English arms to assert his imperial might over other native peoples. “As for the Monacans, I can revenge my own injuries,” he averred. With each statement, the confident Indian chief stared into Smith’s eyes and knocked him and his people several notches down.

For good measure, Wahunsonacock then deflated the shred of hope that Smith maintained that the Pacific was nearby and that a Northwest Passage might be discovered. He thereby undermined
Newport’s voyage of discovery, as well as one of the main objectives of the colony, in a single blow. Wahunsonacock stated simply, “[As] for any salt water beyond the mountains, the relations you have had from my people are false.”
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Smith was severely beaten in this verbal jousting and contest of authority. He and Newport had no choice but to submit to the chief’s wishes and come before him. He noted simply, “So I returned with this answer.” Whatever Newport thought of Wahunsonacock’s response and Smith’s diplomatic fiasco, he acceded to the reality of the balance of power and set out for Werowocomoco the next day rather than receive the Indian he considered a subordinate.
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Many fine presents were given to Wahunsonacock, including a basin and pitcher, bed, and furniture, although what he thought of them was not recorded. Next a “scarlet cloak and apparel with much ado [were] put on him.” But the werowance adamantly refused to bow down to the English “to receive his crown, he neither knowing the majesty nor meaning of a crown nor bending of the knee.” Wahunsonacock would never submit to the English, particularly in front of his people. He would instantaneously lose his authority with them, as well as his control over his subject peoples.

Wahunsonacock quickly tired of the ceremony and finally bent slightly at the waist and allowed Newport to place the crown on his head. He gave the visitors a trifling gift of a few bushels of corn to thank them, and Newport received his old shoes and his mantle. He had inverted the coronation and enhanced his own prestige. It boded poorly for future relations as the Indian leader gained the upper hand in trade with the colonists and possibly in driving the invaders off his lands. The Englishmen “returned to the fort,” with Smith knowing they had just been bested to their great detriment.

If Smith had further evidence that Newport was a miserable failure at Indian relations, Newport commandeered 120 settlers on
yet another search for gold. The large party sailed up to the falls, where the men disembarked and marched west some fifty miles toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. They established contact with the Monacans, who greeted the English in a neutral manner. Refiner William Callicut used his equipment to dig at some mines and wrongly believed that he “extracted some small quantity of silver.” The fruitless “poor trial” was wasted effort, and their “gilded hopes” were dashed again.
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Meanwhile, President Smith followed what he believed was a more practical desire to find valuable commodities for export. He dispatched teams of men for tar and pitch, and clapboard. He organized work teams, including one to experiment with manufacturing glass. Consistent with his worry about having enough corn for the winter, he ventured out to trade with the Indians for provisions. He first visited the Chickahominies, relating that they refused “to trade, with as much scorn and insolence as they should express.” Smith imagined that Powhatan might be trying to starve out the English by directing others not to trade corn to the settlers. Smith did not cajole them with a coronation ceremony, nor did he lay out his goods for them to inspect. He directly confronted their antagonism and responded with threats of his own in order to force them to trade. He informed them “he came not so much for their corn as to revenge his imprisonment and the death of his men murdered by them.” They complained of “their own wants” because of the low-yielding harvest that year. Smith expressed little empathy for their plight as he loaded the hundred bushels of corn on to his barge.

When Smith returned to Jamestown, he encountered similar resentments and hostility as when he escaped from captivity the previous year, even though he was now the president of the colony. Newport and Ratcliffe, he inferred, were responsible for many of the intrigues against him. The faction may even have attempted
to persuade some of the council members to depose Smith, but they were unsuccessful. His enemies even wanted to use his trade mission as evidence that he had left the colony without the consent of the council. He threatened to charge them with mutiny if they continued their grumbling about his leadership.

Smith had other significant problems to contend with in the colony. The sailors aboard the
Mary and Margaret
repeated the previous year’s scandalous episode by pilfering the ship’s provisions and selling them to the colonists at inflated prices. Colonists and Indians used their “money or wares” to purchase foodstuffs at the waterborne “tavern.” Most infuriating of all, after six weeks at Jamestown, only twenty “axes, hatchets, chisels, mattocks, hoes, and pickaxes” from the original stock of more than three hundred remained. These were intended to produce food to keep the colonists alive, but almost all of them had been sold or bartered away. Alarmingly, the settlers had traded the “pike-heads, knives, shot, [and] powder” to the Indians for pelts, baskets, and young animals to trade for butter, cheese, pork, biscuit, and oil from the ship. “Ten times more care to maintain their damnable and private trade,” Smith railed, “than to provide for the colony things that were necessary.”
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Smith was thoroughly disgusted with Newport, his allies, the sailors, and the company when he sat down to compose a letter to London answering the complaints it had sent him. The company had expressed a great deal of dissatisfaction about the “faction and idle conceits” that were dividing the colony. Meanwhile, it charged, the company was footing the bill for relief voyages to the tune of £2,000 and rarely received any commodities defraying more than a small portion of the cost. The company also protested that the colonists only offered ifs, ands, and buts to the entreaties to find gold and a passage to the Pacific.
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