The Jamestown Experiment (8 page)

John Smith took over the daily management of the company,
imploring the men to work and setting an example of industry. The men, he complained, “would rather starve and rot with idleness.” He directed them in building houses and thatching them against the elements. But the colony was still very low on food supplies, especially since the Indians had stopped bringing provisions. Smith and the other leaders could force the colonists to work under threat of great punishment, but they could not offer any better incentive to work hard. When individual workers did take initiative, they were not rewarded for it. Under the circumstances, the men did enough labor to avoid punishment and continued to consume the food in the common storehouse.

Smith went out to trade with the Indians for corn to survive.
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Smith and a handful of workmen (who were not sailors) sailed downriver in the pinnace to the Kecoughtans at the mouth of the James; this tribe had attacked them when the colonists had first arrived in Virginia. The Indians were shrewd traders. At first they “scorned him as a famished man.” Seeing how desperate the settlers were, the Indians derisively offered Smith and his companions a “handful of corn” or “a piece of bread” for the Englishmen’s muskets and swords. Smith was greatly angered by the contemptuous terms and decided that bold actions on strong terms were required rather than courtesy. He fired his musket into the air to frighten them and ran his boat aground, causing them to flee.
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Smith stormed into the nearby village and saw great heaps of corn. Sixty or seventy armed warriors suddenly appeared, wielding clubs, bows, and arrows. Smith and his company fired their muskets, felling several Kecoughtans and smashing an idol. The rest of the warriors fled into the woods, but they returned shortly to make peace with the Englishmen.

The two sides were now ready to trade fairly with each other.
The Indians brought “venison, turkey, wildfowl, and bread” in return for beads, copper, and hatchets. This combination of using firm tactics to press for fair trading terms would be the basis of the soldier’s future trade expeditions among the Indians. Smith returned to the colony and then set out on three or four more trade voyages. He discovered the Chickahominy tribe, who came by the hundreds with baskets to trade when they learned of the impending arrival of Smith’s ship.
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During one of Smith’s returns to Jamestown in November, President Ratcliffe physically beat a smith named James Read, who returned the blow against the leader of the colony and his social better. Read was condemned to be hanged. He was standing on the gallows with a noose around his neck, and just before the ladder was kicked away, he bellowed for clemency and warned that a conspiracy was afoot. Read nervously stated that he wished to speak with Ratcliffe privately. The two conferred for several minutes while the rest of the colonists wondered what was being said. The president soon announced that Read had accused George Kendall “of a mutiny.”
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Read gained a last-minute reprieve with his accusation and thereby escaped the death penalty himself, but Kendall was sentenced to die. A short time later, Kendall “was executed being shot to death.” The shots of the firing squad rang out a lesson to all who witnessed the event.
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On December 10, as the winter cold descended upon the Chesapeake, John Smith led some men back up the Chickahominy River to discover its source. Only this time, the colonists at the fort had sufficient supplies of corn and harvested crops. They had also acquired an abundance of waterfowl from the James and animals from the woods. So this time, Smith’s group took the barge upriver until
they could proceed no farther in the shallow waters. They stumbled across a couple of Indians in canoes who were willing to guide the Englishmen. Smith gave strict orders to the remaining men “not to go ashore until my return” because of the potential danger. Thomas Emry and Jehu Robinson climbed into the canoe with Smith, and the small party set out.
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Smith and his companions paddled some twenty miles upriver, observing the depth and breadth of the river. Stopping for a meal and to stretch their legs, Smith decided to explore a bit with one of his Indian guides. Fearful of an attack, he ordered Emry and Robinson to “discharge a piece” to signal to Smith “for my retreat at the first sight of any Indian.” He was gone for no longer than fifteen minutes when he “heard a loud cry, and a hollering of Indians.” No warning shots had been fired, but the scream was enough of an alarm for Smith.
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Immediately suspecting a trap, Smith believed he had been betrayed by his guide. He immediately “seized him and bound his arm fast to my hand in a garter, with my pistol ready bent to be revenged on him.” The Indian claimed ignorance about the attack and told the Englishman to fly into the woods to escape the raiding party. Smith’s mind was racing as he decided what to do. But it was too late to take a different course of action—the camouflaged Indians already surrounded him.
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Suddenly, an arrow pierced Smith’s right thigh. He quickly scanned the woods, confirming that he had been deceived. Several Indians came into view and tightened the circle around him. He was afraid but maintained his discipline, drawing a bead on two warriors who were pulling back the strings of their bows to shoot again, “which I prevented in discharging a French pistol.” The noise frightened them off, giving him a moment to reload his weapon. The warriors moved closer and drew their bows back.
Again, they were momentarily frightened by the firing of Smith’s weapon. He shot at his enemy a few more times; they answered with twenty or thirty arrows. Fortunately for Smith, the arrows could not penetrate his thick winter clothing.
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Two Indians lay bleeding on the ground, but Smith was surrounded by as many as two hundred warriors. Escape was impossible. Smith’s terrified captive called out to the others that Smith was a leader among his people, hoping to stop the flights of arrows intended for Smith and protecting himself as well. Smith tried to parley and asked to “retire to the boat,” but the Indians “demanded my arms.” They tried to discourage him by claiming that his companions were dead. During the tense standoff, Smith used his prisoner as a shield and began moving slowly toward the river. Hundreds of arrows were trained on him.

While Smith was watching his enemy and holding his prisoner fast, he lost his footing and fell into some water. “In retiring being in the midst of a low quagmire, and minding them more than my steps,” Smith related, “I stepped fast into the quagmire and also the Indian.” Giving into the inevitable, Smith surrendered and “resolved to try their mercy.” The warriors grabbed him out of the muck, stripped him of his weapons, and dragged him before Opechancanough, Chief Wahunsonacock’s brother.

Smith had a history of quick thinking to get out of tight situations. He thought of a way to forestall his execution. Trying to prove himself a man of importance while simultaneously impressing the Indians with his “magic,” Smith pulled out his compass. They “marveled at the playing of the fly and needle, which they could see so plainly and yet not touch it because of the glass that covered them.” He followed up the physical examination of the object with a wondrous explanation of the “roundness of the earth and skies, the sphere of the sun, moon, and stars.” He told them of
the “greatness of the land and sea, the qualities of our ships, shot, and power, the diversity,” and many other things that held their attention rapt.
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Nevertheless, the ploy seemed to fail when they tied Smith to a tree and crowded around to shoot him with their arrows. Then Opechancanough intervened and stopped his warriors from executing the prisoner. Smith was led to the spot where he had disembarked from the canoe. Robinson’s corpse lay nearby with “twenty or thirty arrows in him,” and Emry was presumed dead. Smith was then marched off to a dance and feast, though he was held “by three great savages holding him fast by each arm” and under an armed guard “on each side six…with their arrows nocked.” He was treated rather well and feasted on platters of bread and venison.
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Meanwhile, the seven men Smith left behind ignored his injunction against going ashore. They were lured ashore by several attractive Indian women trying to capture their attention. While approaching the women, they were ambushed by several warriors. The Englishmen ran back to the barge in terror. George Casson tripped while glancing over his shoulder and was unable to get up before he was knocked down again from behind. While he screamed for his departing companions to come back, the Chickahominies seized him and then “stripped [him] naked and bound [him] to two stakes.”
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The Indians started a fire behind Casson and began to torture him slowly. His captors cut off his fingers at the knuckles with shells and threw them into the fire. The Englishman shrieked in agony at the torment, but worse was yet to come. The bloody shells were used to skin him alive, starting with his face. Casson was barely conscious when the warriors slit his abdomen and pulled out his intestines,
which they also tossed into the flames. Casson finally died and was burned at the stake.
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In an Indian village of thirty or forty mat-covered homes, the line of warriors marched in file, guarding Smith and honoring Opechancanough with an escort. The Indians formed into a ring and danced, “singing and yelling out such hellish notes and screeches, being strangely painted.” They danced with quivers of arrows and clubs, celebrating their victory over the Englishmen. Three dances took place before they departed, and Smith was brought to a well-guarded longhouse.
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Smith was kept in captivity for several days but treated well, getting back his compass and cloak. He and Opechancanough discoursed in a civil manner and exchanged information about each other’s cultures. Their mutual admiration and affection grew during the course of their conversations. Smith told the Indian king more about astronomy, about Europe’s oceangoing ships and sailing across the expansive seas, and about the Christian God. In return, Opechancanough told the Englishman about the dominions of Virginia. He explained that the course of the James River was the Northwest Passage because “within four or five days journey of the falls, was a great turning of salt water,” or the Pacific Ocean. Smith also learned that there was a place where “certain men clothed at a place called Ocanahonan, clothed like me” might just be the lost colonists of Roanoke. Both individuals were intrigued by what the other related, with Smith receiving some valuable information about the route to the China trade.
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Opechancanough plied Smith for information about the Englishmen at Jamestown and their military capabilities. The Indians continually “threatened to assault our fort,” which alarmed Smith. He reasoned through a way to alert the settlers at the fort. He asked
to write a letter to Jamestown to inform the colonists that he was alive and being treated well. He let it slip to Opechancanough in a barely concealed threat, “I would write…that I was well, least they should revenge my death.” Since Smith felt that “their cruel minds” were bent on attacking the fort, he exaggerated its strength. He told them about its many cannon and a fictitious minefield.

Smith’s request to send a letter was eventually granted, and three warriors were dispatched to deliver the written message. In the letter, which the Indians could not read and which Smith believed they thought was a magical form of speaking, he gave instructions for the settlers to give the Indian messengers a sample of Jamestown firepower to bring back to the village: they should fire a deafening salvo from the pinnace.
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Smith was marched through several Indian villages and still treated well. At one, he was brought before another brother of Wahunsonacock, Kekatuagh, who asked him to “discharge my pistol” while guarded by forty bowmen. The Indian was attempting to ascertain the strength of Smith’s weapon, and he set up a target more than one hundred feet away to test it. Fearing that the Indians would learn that the English weapons were not accurate at such a distance (while Indian arrows were), Smith decided “to spoil the practice I broke the cock.” The Indians were greatly disappointed not to receive their demonstration.
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After two weeks, Smith was finally escorted to the large home of Chief Wahunsonacock at Werowocomoco on the northern side of the York River. It was the first time that a European was permitted to have an audience with the great werowance.

Wahunsonacock had a “grave and majestic countenance” and welcomed Smith. The chief was covered in a great robe made of raccoon fur and sat before a fire, while “more than two hundred of those grim courtiers” stared at Smith as if he “had been a monster.”
Wahunsonacock was angry that the Englishmen had settled on his lands and demanded to know why they were there. Smith lied and said that they stumbled upon the Chesapeake after a battle with the Spanish and a tempest blew them off course, with one of their boats taking on water. He also related to Wahunsonacock the same message he had delivered to the chief’s brother: the English were a vengeful people. Smith told his host of King James and “the innumerable multitude of his ships…and terrible manner of fighting under Captain Newport, my father.”
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Smith received a great deal of information from Wahunsonacock, which must have pleased the Englishman. Wahunsonacock confirmed the existence of the South Sea that was perhaps five days’ journey away. The chief regaled his visitor with a tale of “people with short coats, and sleeves to the elbows, that passed that way in ships like ours.” It was additional proof of the survival of the Roanoke colonists. Finally, Wahunsonacock divulged that there was a place called “Anone” where “they have an abundance of brass.”
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Wahunsonacock deliberated with his advisors while numerous armed guards looked on. After several agonizing minutes for Smith: “Two great stones were brought before Powhatan. Then as many as could, laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs to beat out his brains.” At that moment, Pocahontas, Wahunsonacock’s daughter, intervened and saved John Smith from death. Or so he believed, since it may have only been a ceremony.
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