The Jamestown Experiment (13 page)

I see, you Pamunkeys, the great desire you have to kill me; and my long suffering your injuries has emboldened you to this presumption. The cause I have forborne your insolence is the promise I made you before the God I serve to be your friend till you give me just cause to be your enemy. If I keep this vow, my God will keep me: you cannot hurt me. If I break it, He will destroy me. But if you shoot but one arrow to shed one drop of blood of any of my men, or steal the least of these beads or copper I spurn here before you with my foot, you shall see I will not cease revenge.
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Smith reiterated his intention only to trade fairly, assuring them that he would free their king and leave them in peace if they would abide by their former promises to load his ship with provisions.
Intimidated by the Englishman’s threats of violence, the warriors put away their bows and went for corn. The men, women, and children of the village brought hundreds of baskets of corn to the Englishmen.
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Smith sailed back to Jamestown, but not before he fended off a few more attempts on his life. He considered the effects of his actions on the future of the colony. He had nearly three hundred bushels of corn to feed the colony for a short time because of his strong-arm diplomacy. It was only a short-term fix that would not alleviate the hunger problem for the long term. He had soured relations with the native peoples that surrounded the fledgling colony, and the colonists could not expect a relief expedition any time soon. The prospects for Jamestown were bleak when Smith stepped ashore, and the news kept getting worse.

In his absence, Smith discovered that two of the Germans sent to work on Wahunsonacock’s house had betrayed the colony. After Smith departed from Werowocomoco, Wahunsonacock kindly offered the two settlers to free them from “those miseries that would happen [to] the colony” and provide all their necessities if they would go to Jamestown and trick the colonists into giving them a large supply of weapons.
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The two Germans did not have any allegiance to the national mission of the English settlers and looked out for themselves. Betting their survival on the Indians rather than the starving colonists, the pair agreed to the deal. Richard Salvage, the young interpreter in Powhatan’s village, and another settler tried to warn the settlement of the betrayal, but they were discovered and held captive while the treachery was carried out.

The Germans, known only as Adam and Franz, set out for Jamestown and met with councilman Peter Winne. They convinced him that Smith had sent them to the settlement to retrieve the fort’s
weapons, tools, and a change of clothing. They even persuaded “six or seven more to their confederacy.” Their subterfuge was so credible that they persuaded Winne to furnish them with “a great many swords, pike-heads, pieces, shot, powder, and suchlike.” Winne even allowed some Indians to carry the arms away without question. Consequently, Wahunsonacock now possessed some three hundred hatchets, fifty swords, eight pieces (with powder and shot), and eight pikes. The balance of power was turning against the English settlers; the werowance and his people were strengthened in their ability to resist John Smith’s demands in the future.
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Smith also learned that while he was gone, Matthew Scrivener had become ambitious and sought to contend with the president— his former ally—for authority. But then Scrivener and Richard Waldo, both members of the council, sailed to Hog Island with nine other men, and their boat capsized in the ice-laden river during an “extreme tempest.” All of them either quickly drowned or died from hypothermia. The deaths were a severe blow to the leadership of the colony.
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As if the problem with the missing weapons were not enough, Smith assessed the woeful state of the provisions. The provisions Newport had left with the colony were nearly a year old by that point and almost completely rotten, moldy, and worm-ridden. They were so spoiled that the hogs apparently refused to eat them. The small harvest was similarly ruined. Still, Smith judged it “sufficient till the next harvest.”
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Upon his return, Smith instituted martial discipline and forced the colonists into a work regimen of at least six hours a day. They were divided into small work teams for a variety of tasks. Smith declared, “He that will not work shall not eat,” but he failed to give them any real incentive to work except to escape “his due punishment” for idleness. He was doing what was fair and just—after
all, it was inequitable for “the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men…to maintain an hundred and fifty idle loiterers.” But none of those two hundred colonists would reap any individual rewards for their hard work.
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While Smith was organizing the colony, the troubles with the rogue Germans and Wahunsonacock continued. Smith learned that one of the Germans was near Jamestown, hiding in the woods, and went out with a party of twenty men to apprehend him. While the settlers were conducting their search for the traitor, Smith was surprised by the chief of the Paspaheghs, Wowinchopunck. Neither man could fire his weapon, and the two grappled with each other. The “strong, stout” Indian maneuvered Smith into the river in order to drown him. Some of Smith’s men heard the noises and ran to the shore, where they saw the pair wrestling for their lives. There was no escape for the Indian even if he killed the Englishman. Suddenly Smith grabbed the chief’s hair “and got such a hold on his throat he had near strangled” his foe. Panting heavily, Smith finally released his adversary and took him back to Jamestown as a prisoner. Smith learned that Wahunsonacock was behind the attempted murder.
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Wowinchopunck escaped from the settlement, which fired Smith’s bent for revenge, since he feared that appearing weak by not answering the violence would “but encourage the savages.” He led a retaliatory raid against the Paspaheghs, slaying seven or eight Indians in the attack, and torched several homes. Smith and his men stole the Indian fishing weirs and canoes and brought them back to Jamestown. Wowinchopunck sent a messenger to Smith to parley. The chief promised to share some of the harvest, but he warned Smith that if he proceeded on his violent course, “we will abandon the country…[and] you will have the worse by our absence.”
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Smith fully understood the precariousness of the settlers’ position
and the Indians’ knowledge of that fact. He continued to seek alternatives to keep the colonists alive.

Spring brought limited hope to the colonists, who were industrious thanks to the rules the president had laid down. The men had dug a well in the fort for a ready supply of water. Twenty houses were erected for shelter, and the church was rebuilt. The fishing weirs and nets were placed in the James River for sturgeon and other fish. A blockhouse held items for trade, and to prevent thievery, an armed guard allowed no one to pass—Indian or Englishman—unless they first secured the president’s approval. The work rules resulted in the production of some commodities, including dozens of barrels of tar, pitch, and soap ashes for export.

Even then, the colony still struggled with its provisions because the Indian corn was found “half-rotten and the rest so consumed with so many thousands of rats that increased so fast…as we knew not how to keep that little we had.” Once again, the English were completely at the mercy of the goodwill of the Indians, who brought game to the settlement as Wowinchopunck had promised.
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The lack of food became so serious that Smith was forced to divide the settlement and send several groups away from Jamestown, even though it left them vulnerable to Indian attacks. More than sixty settlers went downriver “to live upon oysters” while George Percy led another two dozen at Point Comfort to live off of whatever fish they could catch. Percy, however, was sick and afflicted with a nasty gunpowder burn, and his men did very little fishing, even though they were starving. Francis West took twenty men up to the falls, but they found nothing to eat “but a few berries and acorns.”
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The settlers were desperate, especially when so little food was found even after they dispersed. The leaders forced them to scavenge for every bit of food before they starved to death or resorted to
cannibalism. They were not too weak to make “exclamations, suggestions, and devices” to overthrow Smith and “abandon the country.” Smith punished one man severely as an example, and he warned if any attempted to steal the ships and leave Virginia, the perpetrators would be caught and sent to the gallows. He appealed to them as he had done during their difficult time exploring the Chesapeake Bay: “I never had more from the store than the worst of you.” This did not relieve their hunger, and the grumbling continued, but they could not accuse Smith of hoarding food the way they had with Edward Wingfield and John Ratcliffe.
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So far, none of Smith’s decisions had really set the colony on a solid foundation. His harsh regimens might have stopped some of the more egregious problems such as not working or pilfering food and weapons from the common storehouse, but he had not found a lasting model for the colony’s prosperity.

So far the Jamestown colony was a nearly complete failure. The death rate from hunger and disease was atrocious. The colonists were dependent upon those they considered inferior for food, and they continually provoked them to increasingly hostile relations. Costly relief expeditions had been sent, but these stores were rapidly consumed and left the colonists as hungry as before. Nothing of great value had been found to reward the company’s investors, and the colonists had not yet developed the natural resources the land possessed. The colonists, whose lives were invested in the survival of the colony, displayed a shocking unconcern about either their lives or the colony.

In England, the Virginia Council attempted to find a formula that would put the colonial venture on a proper footing, discussing what they considered to be fundamental changes for the colony. At that moment, an immense fleet was being prepared to sail for America. The outcome of the venture would determine the fate of the English colony in Virginia.

Chapter Eight

T
homas Smythe stared out one of the windows of his luxurious mansion on Philpot Lane trying to decide on a course of action to take regarding the Jamestown colony. The bleak winter weather that blanketed London did little to revive his mood. The normally busy streets were sparsely populated with bundled people trying to escape the cold. The poor were in desperate circumstances, hunting down spare pieces of wood to stay warm against the elements. The plague had come to London, further dampening the desires of many to go outdoors in the miserable cold. The wharves along the Thames were generally empty, and the traffic along the river had also slowed to a trickle as winter voyages were among the most perilous of all.

In January 1609 one ship that had braved the elements was captained by the indefatigable mariner Christopher Newport, who was returning from the New World. Newport met with Smythe and other members of the council within days of his arrival in London. Unfortunately, he confirmed their growing suspicions about the dismal state of Virginia and added to the bad news coming out of
the colony. He related to them the difficulties that he had had with President John Smith and delivered Smith’s letter, which was highly critical of Newport and the Virginia Council itself. The leaders of the anti-Smith faction, Gabriel Archer and John Ratcliffe, returned with Newport and also met with Smythe. They harshly censured Smith in no uncertain terms, blaming him for the problems of the colony.

Yet after Smythe listened to the complaints of Smith’s enemies, he and the other members of the council did not place the blame entirely on Smith. Removed from Virginia by thousands of miles and receiving only limited reports, they were intelligent men who appreciated that significant problems would not be resolved by the removal of a single overbearing leader. It was terribly unsettling, but they were honest enough to concede that fundamental changes were necessary. And they were flexible enough to see the changes through to protect their investment. Indeed, they were planning a massive restructuring and sharpening of their vision that they hoped would result in an influx of settlers that would finally establish Jamestown as a permanent colony.

By mid-February, King James granted Smythe and his allies a new second charter, completing reorganizing the Virginia Company. The Crown relinquished its authority over the council and invested the company with full powers to appoint the members of the council. Under the terms of the charter, the Virginia Council of London was expanded to fifty members that read like a who’s who of the nation’s rich and powerful. These included Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell (uncle of the future lord protector), Lord De La Warr, Edwin Sandys, the Earl of Pembroke, and William Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southampton. Smythe continued to run the operations of the colony as treasurer.

The Virginia Council assumed “full and absolute power and authority, to correct, punish, pardon, govern and rule” the colony.
It was bound to follow the laws of England, but the members of the council were otherwise granted autonomy to use their wisdom and good discretion to do whatever they “shall think to be fittest for the good of the adventurers and inhabitants there.” This time they would take no chances that those they appointed to govern in the colony would fail to follow the will of the council in London.
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The faith of the Virginia Council in the system of rule conducted by the local council in Jamestown and its removable president was shattered. After all, overwhelming evidence from the experience of the past two years had led to follies, outrages, and mismanagement by the councilors who were continuously divided by “dissention and ambition among themselves.” Factional government that split the colony led to “idleness and bestial sloth, of the common sort, who were active in nothing but adhering to factions and parts, even to their own ruin.”
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Their solution was to invest “one able and absolute governor” with total authority to rule the colony. When the governor reached Jamestown, the government constituted under the first patent would be thereby abolished, and all documents held by the council were to be handed over to the governor. The Virginia Council would still appoint a local council, but now it was to play only an advisory role to the governor. The council did not have, “single or together, any binding or negative voice or power upon your conclusions, but do give you full authority.” The council would be able neither to overrule the governor nor to depose him at their whim, as had happened previously. The governor’s authority was absolute, and this included the power to declare martial law if necessary.
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The new charter also expanded the territory of Jamestown two hundred miles north and south of Point Comfort, extending across the continent from the Atlantic to the elusive Pacific Ocean. The unhealthful capital at Jamestown would be moved to three other
principal settlements, including Point Comfort. More important, colonists would now be granted private ownership of land. Among the laws would be a prescription to work a certain number of hours per day, and food was still allotted from a common storehouse. The military and corporate organization of the colony was still fundamental to its mission, but a reorientation was occurring that slowly chipped away at the edges of this focus.

The charter enforced religious orthodoxy upon the colonists by requiring them to take the oath of supremacy to the Anglican Church. Worship services were to be conducted according to Anglican forms. Anyone suspected of practicing the “superstitions” of Roman Catholicism was banned from migrating. “Popery” was lumped in with atheism as religious offenses against God that were to be punished.

When the new 1609 charter reorganized the company, the joint-stock company was restructured to make investment more accessible to a wider group of shareholders. Whereas the first charter attracted the money of the very wealthy and influential, the shares of the second charter cost a little more than twelve pounds. The company had discovered that the expeditions carrying supplies and additional settlers to the colony were very expensive. The costs, as well as the risks, could be spread out with a greater number of investors. Moreover, popular enthusiasm for the project would be encouraged if more people and organizations had a stake in the outcome of the mission.

The company planned to pool the money of investors to organize a fleet of ships that dwarfed the original settlement in Virginia. The council members envisioned nine ships that would carry several hundred colonists to Virginia under tighter control. A second, larger expedition would follow the year after. The company turned to two gentlemen adventurers—Sir Thomas West (Lord De La Warr)
and Sir Thomas Gates—to lead the ambitious expeditions and Jamestown colony.

Lord De La Warr was only about thirty-two years old but had built up an impressive list of credentials to be selected as the governor of Jamestown. He was related to Queen Elizabeth and had served his queen in the Netherlands, battling the forces of Catholic Spain in the Dutch Revolt. He was knighted for his leadership in fighting the colonial war in Ireland. He followed the common path of gentlemen adventurers in Elizabethan England, and his star was on the rise. Then he was implicated in the Essex rebellion in 1601. Elizabeth nearly had him executed, although he was eventually cleared and actually placed on her ruling privy council. James I asked him to stay on as a member of his privy council. De La Warr naturally supported the national English mission to colonize America in order to challenge Spain in the New World, and the company chose him to be the man who would set things right in Virginia. He would not travel with the first planned expedition, but with the larger second fleet.

Thomas Gates would have the responsibility of bringing over the first group of settlers and establishing order in the colony. Gates was also an experienced gentleman adventurer with a long record of service to the English Crown. He was educated at Gray’s Inn and served as an ambassador to Vienna. He had fought in the Caribbean and had been currently fighting in the Netherlands, having to request leave to serve in Virginia. He was a charter member of the original April 1606 patent and intimately acquainted with the London merchants and fellow adventurers who had endeavored to make Jamestown successful for the last several years. Few men were as invested in the outcome of the colony as Gates. The company was confident in selecting him to be the interim governor until De La Warr arrived in Virginia. The two gentlemen were bold, daring, and
dedicated to establishing a foothold in the New World to challenge England’s greatest rival. They staked their personal reputations and the glory of mother England in agreeing to lead the venture.

Armed with the new charter, and sharing an unambiguous vision and a method of organization to achieve it, the company organized a massive public relations campaign to promote investment and settlement in the new venture. London was soon abuzz with excitement about the Jamestown colony, which quickly drowned out any rumors or hard news of difficulties in Virginia. During the spring of 1609, Londoners were bombarded with glowing words that extolled the bounty of Virginia as well as stirring calls to support the patriotic national mission in the drive to colonize. Ministers preached the message from pulpits around the capital, writers composed numerous pamphlets, and recruiters spread the word in countless conversations in taverns and homes around the city. The promotional campaign reached virtually everyone in London several times.

The message was clear and concise and repeated in all of the venues. It was a broad picture of English national greatness. Jamestown was a focal point of the global struggle with Spain. The colony would reap a growing economic empire that would surpass the wealth of the Spanish treasure fleets. The religious impulse would drive the Christian soldiers onward to convert and civilize the native peoples, especially before they could be converted by Spain to Roman Catholicism. All of this, the promoters argued was God’s will, England’s national destiny, and a mission for imperial greatness.

The message being promoted was scarcely a new one. The search for great wealth, the mission to convert the natives to Protestantism, and the challenge to the rival Spanish Empire were all elements of the 1606 patent and included in the instructions to the original
settlers. Indeed, this national vision had been shaped in the 1570s and 1580s, when gentlemen adventurers plunged into overseas ventures to explore, set up trading companies, fight abroad, and establish colonies. It was the same vision of Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake, and Richard Hakluyt. It remained a martial vision of winning personal and national glory through strict rule instead of individual liberty. But the message to support the Jamestown colony was repackaged and sold to a much broader spectrum of Londoners than any previous publicity campaign.

Robert Johnson, a merchant and Thomas Smythe’s deputy treasurer for the company, penned the pamphlet
Nova Britannia
that grandly described the potential wealth of Virginia in glowing terms. The climate was “most sweet and wholesome.” The deepwater harbors supported oceangoing vessels, and Jamestown would be an important part of the highway of goods and trade stretching across the Atlantic. Virginia contained vast lands with “hidden treasure, never yet searched.” The soils held valuable minerals and supported an array of crops “in great abundance” to sustain a large population.
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Moreover, Johnson asked his readers to imagine the limitless possibilities of wealth that could be produced when “art and nature shall join, and strive together, to give best content to man and beast.” The English believed that the native peoples had not exploited the great bounty of the land. The company planned to “set many thousands to work, in these such services,” producing timber, hemp and flax, silk, pitch, turpentine, and any number of industries. All the colony needed was “people to make the plantation, and money to furnish our present provisions and shipping now in hand.” The sooner interested individuals signed up, their “charge will be the shorter, and their gain the greater.”
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