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CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

EDITED BY

JARED SPARKS

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

By
GEORGE S. HILLARD

Vol. 4

HARPER & BROTHERS

PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON J902

Ad4cd Copy
£^R

GIFT

£1

37?

I? 03
v./

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

His Birth, early Adventures, and brilliant
Achievements in the Turkish Wars .... 3

CHAPTER II

His Captivity, Escape, and Return to Eng
land 20

CHAPTER III

State of public Feeling in England in Regard
to Colonizing the Coast of America. — Smith
becomes interested in the Subject. — Establish
ment of the Virginia and Plymouth Com
panies. — An Expedition sets Sail from Eng
land. — Dissensions on the Voyage. — Arrival
in Virginia 3°

CHAPTER IV

Early Struggles of the Colony.— Active Exer
tions of Captain Smith in providing Food
and suppressing Insubordination 42

M'77579'7

CONTENTS
CHAPTER V

PAGE

Captain Smith's Captivity among the Indians.
— His Life is saved by Pocahontas. — His
Return to Jamestown 55

CHAPTER VI

Arrival of Newport from England. — His Visit
to Powhatan. — His Return 69

CHAPTER VII

Captain Smith explores the Chesapeake in two
Expeditions. — He is chosen President of the
Colony 82

CHAPTER VIII

Second Arrival of Newport. — Abortive Expe
dition to explore the Interior. — Injudicious
Conduct of the Council in England. — Their
Letter to Captain Smith. — His Reply . . . 104

CHAPTER IX

Difficulties in procuring Provision. — Captain
Smith's unsuccessful Attempt to obtain Pos
session of Powhatan' s Person 119

CHAPTER X

Captain Smith's Adventures with Opechanca-
nough, Chief of Pamunkey. — His Return to

Jamestown 134

iv

CONTENTS
CHAPTER XI

PAGE

Troubles with the Indians. — Scarcity of Pro
visions. — Mutinous and treacherous Dispo
sition of some of the Colonists. — Arrival of
Captain Argall . . . . 143

CHAPTER XII

New Charter granted to the Virginia Compa
ny. — Expedition despatched to Jamestown.
— Confusion which ensues on its Arrival. —
Captain Smith returns to England .... 158

CHAPTER XIII

Remarks on Captain Smith's Administration
in Virginia 171

CHAPTER XIV

Captain Smith's first Voyage to New England 179

CHAPTER XV

Captain Smith sails a second Time for New
England. — Is taken by a French Squadron
and carried to France. — Makes his Escape.
— Arrives in England. — Publishes his De
scription of New England 184

CHAPTER XVI

Visit of Pocahontas to England. — Captain
Smith's Interview with her. — Death of Poca
hontas 193

CONTENTS
CHAPTER XVII

PAGE

Captain Smith's Examination by the Commis
sioners for the Reformation of Virginia. —

His Death.— His Character 210

vi

THE

LIFE AND ADVENTURES

OF

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

BY

GEORGE S. HILLARD

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.

CHAPTER I.

His Birth, early Adventures, and brilliant
Achievements in the Turkish Wars.

AMONG the adventurous spirits, whom a rest
less love of enterprise called from the bosom of
repose in England to new scenes and untried
perils in our Western wilds, there is no one whose
name awakens more romantic associations, than
CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. His life is as brilliant
and exciting as a Fairy tale; and the remarkable
adventures he went through served to develop
fully his no less remarkable character. It was
his good fortune to live in stirring and event
ful times, congenial to his bold and roving dis
position, and, luckily for posterity, his adventures
have been preserved in a characteristic narra
tive written by himself, from which the principal
facts in the following biographical sketch have
been drawn.

He was born in Willoughby in the county
of Lincolnshire, in the year 1579, and was de-
3

4 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

scended from an ancient family which belonged
to the county of Lancashire. His wild spirit of
enterprise and dislike to confinement displayed
themselves in early boyhood; for, at the age
of thirteen, being, as he himself says, "set upon
brave adventures," he sold his satchel, books,
and whatever other property he had, in order
to raise money to furnish him with the means
of going privately to sea; but this hopeful enter
prise was frustrated by the death of his parents,
who left him a competent estate. His guar
dians put him apprentice, at the age of fifteen, to
Mr. Thomas Sendall of Lynn, " the greatest mer
chant of all those parts ;" but the compting-house
desk seems to have been as irksome to him as the
school-boy's form. He quitted his master's em
ployment, and, with but ten shillings in his pocket,
furnished him by his friends (to use his own
words) "to get rid of him," he entered into
the train of the second son of the famous Lord
Willoughby, who was travelling into France.

On arriving at Orleans, he was furnished with
funds sufficient to carry him back to Eng
land; but such a step was very far from his
intention. He went over into the Low Coun
tries, the battle-ground of Europe, where he
served for three or four years under the com
mand of Captain Joseph Duxbury. Of the nat
ure of his service he does not inform us, but

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 5

he probably belonged to a company of English
auxiliaries, who were aiding Prince Maurice in
his gallant and successful struggle against the
power of Spain, which resulted in the inde
pendence of the Netherlands. He met with
a Scotch gentleman abroad, whose name was
David Hume, who supplied him with money,
gave him letters to his friends in Scotland, and
assured him of the favor and patronage of King
James.

He set sail for Scotland accordingly, and, after
having suffered shipwreck and a severe fit of
sickness, arrived there, and delivered his letters.
By those to whom they were addressed, he was
treated with that warmth of hospitality, which
seems to have been characteristic of the Scotch
nation from the earliest times; but he found no
encouragement to enter upon the career of a
courtier. He returned to Willoughby in Lin
colnshire; and, finding himself thrown among
those in whose society he took no pleasure,
and being perhaps a little soured by disap
pointment, he built himself a sylvan lodge of
boughs in a wood, and studied military history
and tactics. He amused himself at the same
time with hunting and horsemanship. He was
not, however, a genuine and independent man
of the woods; for he kept up an intercourse
with the civilized world by means of his servant,

6 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

who supplied his woodland retreat with all the
comforts of artificial life. Rumor soon spread
about the country the tale of a young and ac
complished hermit, and brought to his " lonely
bower " an Italian gentleman in the service of
the Earl of Lincoln, of great skill in horseman
ship, who insinuated himself into the favor of
Smith, and induced him to return with him into
the world.

His military ardor soon revived, and he
set out a second time upon his travels, intend
ing to fight against the Turks, whom all good
Christians in those days looked upon as nat
ural enemies. The first stage of his journey
was the Low Countries, where he met with
four French adventurers, who, seeing the youth
and inexperience of Smith (being at that time
but nineteen years old), formed a plan to rob
him. One of them pretended to be a noble
man, and the others personated his attendants.
They persuaded him to travel with them into
Prance, and they accordingly embarked together
on board of a vessel for that purpose. His
treacherous friends found in the captain a kin
dred spirit in villany, and by his assistance their
plans were put into execution. In a dark night
they arrived at St. Yalery in Picardy; and, by
the contrivance of the captain, the four French
men were put on shore with the baggage of

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 7

Smith, he himself remaining on board, in utter
ignorance of the disposition which had been made
of his property. The boat with the captain re
turned the next day towards evening, a delay
which he alleged to be in consequence of the
high sea, but which was in reality to enable
the robbers to escape with their booty. His vil-
lany was strongly suspected by the passengers,
who, indignant at his baseness and strongly sym
pathizing with Smith in his misfortune, proposed
to him to kill the captain and take possession
of the vessel and cargo. This offer, so charac
teristic of the lawlessness of the times, was re
jected by Smith, with a promptness worthy of his
honorable and high-minded character.

On his being landed, Smith found himself in
such straits as to be compelled to sell his cloak
to pay for his passage. One of his fellow pas
sengers generously compassionating his forlorn
situation, supplied him with money and brought
him to Mortain, the place of residence of the
villains who had robbed him. He found it im
possible to obtain any satisfaction, however, for
the injuries he had received at their hands, the
word of a friendless and unknown stranger prob
ably not being deemed sufficient evidence of their
guilt; and he could not be aided by his gener
ous fellow passenger, who was an outlawed man
and obliged to live in the strictest seclusion.

8 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

The rumor of his misfortunes awakened the ac
tive sympathy of several noble families in the
neighborhood, by whom he was most hospita
bly entertained and his necessities liberally re
lieved.

A life of ease did not suit his restless tempera
ment, and his high spirit could not endure his be
ing the constant subject of favors, which he had
no means of repaying. He set out upon his
wanderings with a light purse, a stout heart, and
a good sword. His slender means being soon ex
hausted, he was reduced to great sufferings, so
much so, that one day, in passing through a
forest, his strength, worn out by grief and ex
posure, entirely failed him, and he threw himself
down by the edge of a fountain, with little hope
of ever rising again. Here he was providentially
found by a rich farmer, who acted the part of the
good Samaritan towards him, and furnished him
with the means of prosecuting his journey.

Jn rambling from port to port in search of a
ship of war, he met, near a town in Brittany, one
of the villains who had robbed him. They both
drew without exchanging a single word, and the
prowess of Smith gave him an easy victory over
one, whose arm was paralyzed by the conscious
ness of a bad cause. He obliged him to make an
ample confession of his guilt in the presence of
numerous spectators. He obtained nothing, how-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 9

ever, but the barren laurels of victory, and direct
ed his course to the seat of the Earl of Ployer,
whom he had formerly known. By him he was
treated with the utmost kindness and hospitality,
and his purse liberally replenished. Taking leave
of his friendly host, he travelled by a circuitous
route to Marseilles, where he embarked for Italy.
New troubles awaited Smith in this passage.
The author of the manuscript Latin memoir, al
luded to in the Preface, remarks, that it is curious
to observe how ingenious Fortune is in contriving
peculiar disasters and perils to try the temper of
heroes and great men, the ordinary mishaps of life
not being sufficient for that purpose; a reflection
naturally enough suggested by the adventures of
his hero. On board the vessel was a great crowd
of Catholic pilgrims of various nations, who were
bound to Rome. They encountered a violent
storm, which obliged them first to put into the
harbor of Toulon, and afterwards to anchor under
the small island of St. Mary, which lies off Nice,
in Savoy. The enlightened devotees, who were
sailing with him, took it into their heads, that the
tempest was sent from heaven, as a manifestation
of its displeasure at the presence of a heretic, who
was, among so many of the true church, like " a
dead fly in the compost of spices." They at
first confined themselves to angry reproaches, di
rected not only against Smith himself, but against

10 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Queen Elizabeth, an object of especial dread and
aversion to all good Catholics. Their displeas
ure soon displayed itself by more unequivocal
signs. The writer above alluded to says, that
Smith disdained to stain his sword with the blood
of so base a rabble, but that he belabored them
soundly with a cudgel; but this probably belongs-
to that large class of facts, for which historians
and biographers are indebted to their own imag
inations.

Be that as it may, the result was, that Smith
was thrown into the sea, like another Jonah, a&
a peace-offering to the angry elements. He was
so near the island of St. Mary, that he could
reach it without any difficulty by swimming. The
next day, he was taken on board a French ship,
commanded by Captain La Roche, a friend and
neighbor of the Earl of Ployer, who, for his sake,
treated Smith with great kindness and consid
eration. They sailed to Alexandria in Egypt,
and, delivering their freight, coasted the Levant.
In the course of their voyage they met with a
Venetian argosy, richly laden. The captain of
the French ship desired to speak her, but his
motions were misconstrued by the Venetian ship,
which fired a broad-side into her, mistaking her
probably for a pirate, or supposing, what was
probably true in those troubled times, that he
could expect none but the treatment of an enemy

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 11

from those of any other than his own nation.
An engagement naturally enough ensued, which
resulted in the defeat of the Venetian vessel,
after a loss of twenty men, her adversary losing
fifteen. Her rich cargo was plundered by the
victors, and the most valuable and least bulky
portions of it taken on board their own vessel.
The valor of Smith had been most signally dis
played in this engagement, and he received, as
his share of the spoils, five hundred sequins,
besides a "little box" (probably of jewels),
worth nearly as much more. He was set on
shore in Piedmont, at his own request. He made
the tour of Italy, and gratified his curiosity by a
sight of the interesting objects with which that
country is filled. Mindful of his original purpose,
he departed from Venice, and travelling through
Albania, Dalmatia, and Sclavonia, came to Gratz
in Styria, the residence of Ferdinand, Archduke
of Austria, afterwards Emperor of Germany.

The war was at that time raging between Ko-
dolph the Second, Emperor of Germany, and
Mahomet the Third, the Grand Seignior. Smith's
desire to display his prowess against the Turks
was soon gratified. He met with two of his
countrymen, who introduced him to Lord Ebers-
paught, Baron Kissell, and the Earl of Meldritch,
all of them officers of distinction in the Imperial
army.

12 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

This was in the latter part of the year 1601.
The Turkish army, under the command of Ibra
him Bashaw, had besieged and taken, in the month
of October, the strong fortress of Canisia, in Hun
gary, and were ravaging the neighboring country.
They were laying siege to Olympach, with twen
ty thousand men, and had reduced the garrison,
commanded by Eberspaught, to great extremities,
having cut off all communication and supplies.
Smith served as a volunteer in the army of the
Baron .Kissell, the general of artillery, who an
noyed the besiegers from without. He was de
sirous of sending a communication to the com
mander of the garrison, but found no one bold
enough to undertake so perilous an enterprise.
Smith then communicated to him a plan of tel
egraphic intercourse, which he had before made
known to Lord Eberspaught, anticipating that the
chances of war would give rise to an emergen
cy, in which a knowledge of it might be highly
useful. By KisselFs order, Smith was conveyed
at night to a mountain seven miles distant from
the town, and communicated with the commander
of the garrison, and conveyed to him the follow
ing message. " On Thursday at night, I will
charge on the east; at the alarm sally you;" an
answer was returned, " I will." The besieged were
also aided further by Smith's inventive genius.
On the eve of the attack, he had several thousand

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 13

matches, fastened to strings, extended in a line
and fired, so that the report sounded like a dis
charge of musketry, and gave to the Turks the
impression that there was a large body of men in
that quarter, and they consequently marched out
to attack them, and at the same moment they
found themselves assaulted by Baron Kissell's
army and by the garrison of the besieged fortress,
who had made the concerted sally. They were
in consequence thrown into great confusion and
made but a feeble resistance. Many of them
were slain, and others driven into the river and
drowned. Two thousand men were thrown into
the garrison, and the Turks were obliged to aban
don the siege. This brilliant and successful ex
ploit obtained for our adventurer the command
of a troop of two hundred and fifty horse in the
regiment of Count Meldritch.*

* Smith's telegraph was by means of torches, each
letter from A to L being designated by showing one
torch as many times as correspond to the letter's place
in the alphabet ; each letter from M to Z, in like man
ner, by showing two torches. It is essentially the same
as that described in the tenth book of Polybius and in
Rees's Cyclopsedia, Art. Telegraph. Smith had proba
bly met with it in Polybius, a writer whose military
spirit would be congenial to his taste ; and the use he
thus made of his boyish acquisitions is a proof that a
" little learning " may be a very good thing, even to a
soldier.

14 A M E R I C A X BIOGRAPHY.

In the year 1601, the campaign began with
great spirit and vast preparations. The Emperor
raised three armies, one commanded by Gonzago,
Governor of Hungary, one by Ferdinand, Arch
duke of Styria, and the third by the Archduke
Matthias, the Emperor's brother, whose lieutenant
was Duke Mercury, who raised with him an army
of thirty thousand men, and under whom Smith
served. He laid siege to Alba Regalis, a strong
ly fortified town in Hungary. Smith's talents as
an engineer were here called into exercise; for
he contrived a sort of bomb or grenade, to be dis
charged from a sling, which greatly annoyed the
Turks in their sallies, and two or three times set
the suburbs of the place on fire. The city was
finally taken by an ingeniously contrived and
boldly executed military manoeuvre; a loss so
great to the Turks, that it is related that the
Bashaw of Buda, who was a prisoner in Vienna,
on hearing of it, abstained from eating a whole
day, prostrate upon his face, praying to Moham
med, who, as he said, had been all that year
angry with the Turks.

The Sultan had raised an army of sixty thou
sand men, under the command of Hassan Ba
shaw, for the purpose of relieving Alba Regalis.
He, having heard of its capture, still continued
his march, in the hope of taking it by surprise.
Duke Mercury, though far inferior in numbers,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 15

inarched out to meet him, and encountered him
in a desperate battle on the plains of Girke, which
resulted in the defeat of the Turks, with the loss
of six thousand men. In this action Smith be
haved with great valor, was severely wounded,
and had a horse shot under him.

Duke Mercury, after this, divided his forces
into three parts, one of which, under the command
of Count Meldritch, was sent into Transylvania,
which was the seat of a triple war. Sigismund
Bathor, the native prince, was contending for his
crown with the Emperor of Germany, and, at the
same time, waging war against the Turks, who
were also the foes of the Emperor; so that each
party had their attention distracted and their
forces thinned by a common enemy. Meldritch
had been ordered to join the army of the Emper
or, which was acting against Sigismund. But
Meldritch was himself a Transylvanian and little
inclined to oppose himself to his countrymen, to
whom he probably wished success in his heart.
He and his officers were most of them soldiers
of fortune, bound by slack allegiance to the Em
peror, and ready, like Captain Dugald Dalgetty,
to enlist under that leader, who could give them
the highest pay and the best chance for gaining
booty; and the Emperor, it seems, was not a very
prompt paymaster. He therefore offered his ser
vices to Sigismund, by whom they were cordially

16 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

accepted; and from him he obtained permission
to turn his arms against the Turks, an enterprise
to which he was stimulated by personal feeling,
for they had possession of that part of Transylva
nia in which his own family estates were situated.

In the course of the desultory and partisan war
fare, which he carried on, he laid siege to Kegal,
a frontier town in the mountainous parts of Tran
sylvania, so strong by nature and art as to be
deemed impregnable, and garrisoned by a motley
assemblage of Turks, Tartars, renegades, and rob
bers. Count Meldritch had with him eight thou
sand men, and he was afterwards joined by Prince
Moyses with nine thousand more, to whom he
surrendered the chief command.

The siege was long and obstinate, owing to
the great strength of the place; and frequent
and bloody, but undecisive skirmishes took place.
The Turks grew insolent at the ill success of the
Christians, and laughed to scorn their slow and
ineffectual movements. One of their number, the
Lord Turbashaw by name, a man of rank and
military renown, sent a challenge to any captain
of the Christian army, to fight with him in single
combat, giving a reason characteristic of the times
for this message, that it was to delight the ladies
of Regal, "who did long to see some court-like
pastime." So many were ready to accept this
challenge, that their conflicting claims were settled

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 17

by lot, and the chance fell upon Smith, who had
burned for the privilege of meeting the haughty
Turk.

On the day appointed for the combat, the ram
parts of the town were lined with ladies and sol
diers. The Lord Turbashaw entered the lists in
a splendid suit of armor, blazing with gold and
jewels, and " on his shoulders were fixed a pair of
great wings, compacted of eagle's feathers, within
a ridge of silver, richly garnished with gold and
precious stones." He was attended by three Jan
izaries, one of whom bore his lance, and two
walked by the side of his horse. Smith soon
followed, attended by a single page bearing his
lance, and rode by his antagonist, courteously
saluting him as he passed. At the sound of the
trumpet, they met in mid career, and the well-
directed lance of Smith pierced through the visor
into the brain of the Turk, and he fell dead from
his horse, without having shed a drop of his ad
versary's blood. His head was cut off and borne
in triumph to the Christian army, and his body
given up to his friends.

The death of the Lord Turbashaw was heavily
borne by the garrison; and a friend of his, by
name Grualgo, burning to avenge him and to
pluck the fresh laurels from Smith's brow, sent
him a particular challenge, which was readily ac
cepted, and the battle took place the next day
iv.— 2

18 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

after receiving it. At their first encounter, their
lances were ineffectually shivered, though the
Turk was nearly unhorsed. They then dis
charged their pistols, by which Smith was slight
ly wounded and his antagonist severely in the
left arm. Being thus rendered unable to manage
his horse, he offered a faint resistance and was
easily slain; and his horse and armor, by previ
ous agreement, became the property of the vic
tor.

The siege was slowly protracted in the mean
while, and Smith found but few opportunities for
signalizing his valor. His high spirit, flushed
with success, could not brook the rust of repose,
and he obtained leave of his general to send a
message into the town, that he should be happy
to furnish the ladies with further entertainment,
and to give to any Turkish knight the opportunity
of redeeming the heads of his slain friends, and
carry off his own besides, if he could win it.
The challenge was accepted by a stout champion,
to whom the Fates had given the unharmonious
name of Bonny Mulgro. Having the privilege
of choosing his own weapons, he avoided the
lance, having had proof of Smith's dexterity
in the use of it, and selected pistols, battle-
axes, and swords. In the encounter, they dis
charged their pistols without effect, and then
fought with their battle-axes. Smith seems to

CAPTA1U J'OHN SMITH. i

been inferior to his adversary in the use of
this weapon, for he received so heavy a blow,
that, the axe dropped from his hands and he
nearly fell from his horse ; and the Turks, seeing
his mishap from the walls, set up a loud shout,
as if the victory were already won. But Smith
quickly recovered himself, and by his skilful horse
manship not only escaped the heavy blows aimed
at him by the ponderous battle-axe, but ran his
foe through the body with his sword. The ladies
of Regal were certainly well entertained by our
adventurer, and they could not complain of disap
pointment when he was master of the feast.

For these brilliant exploits Smith was reward
ed by suitable honors. He was conducted to his
general's tent by a military procession, consisting
of six thousand men, three led horses, and, before
each, the head of one of the Turks he had slain,
borne on a lance. The general received him
with much honor, embraced him, and presented
him with a horse superbly caparisoned, and a scim
itar and belt worth three hundred ducats ; and his
colonel, Count Meldritch, made hirr major of his
regiment.

The siege was prosecuted with renewed vigor
and the place was finally taken, and its brave gar
rison put to the sword, in retaliation of the same
inhuman barbarity, which they had shown to the
Christian garrison from whom they took it The

20 AMERICAN BlOGRAPKYe

prince of Transylvania, hearing of the valc^ of
Smith, gave him his picture set in gold and a peu-
sion of three hundred ducats per annum. He also
bestowed upon him a patent of nobility and a
coat of arms bearing three Turks' heads in a
shield, with the motto " Vincere est vivere." *
This patent was afterwards admitted and recorded
in the Heralds' College in England by Sir Wil
liam Segar, Garter King at Arms.

CHAPTER II.

His Captivity, Escape, and Return to England.

THE summer heaven of Smith's fortunes was
soon to be overcast ; and fate had trials in store
for him, far exceeding any he had before known.
Sigismund, the prince of Transylvania, found that
he could no longer maintain a war against the
Emperor and the Turks at the same time, the
resources of his flourishing principality being ut
terly exhausted by his long-continued and un
equal struggle. He accordingly acknowledged
the Emperor's authority, gave up his station as
an independent prince, and passed the remainder

*The date of this patent is December 3d, 1603, which
was not until after Smith's return from his captivity

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 21

of his days in tne more obscure, but probably
aappier, rank of a private nobleman in Prague,
in the enjoyment of a munificent pension, which
he had received in exchange for the uneasy splen
dor of a crown.

By this arrangement the armies of Sigismund
were thrown out of employment, and transferred
their allegiance to the Emperor. His generals
were somewhat embarrassed by the presence of
so many well disciplined and veteran troops, who
were well known to be devotedly attached to
their old master and not very fond of their new
one ; and they were anxious to keep them con
stantly employed, well knowing that idleness is
the mother of mutiny. An opportunity soon
occurred ; for there was seldom peace in those
days on the frontiers of Christendom and " Hea
thenesse."

The inhabitants of Wallachia, at that time a
Turkish province, unable to endure the tyranny
of their Waywode, or prince, revolted and appli
ed to the Emperor for assistance, who gladly
afforded it ; and the Earl of Meldritch, accompa
nied by numerous officers, and Smith among the
rest, and by an army of thirty thousand men, who
had served under Sigismund, went to support the
claims of the new Waywode, Lord Rodoll. The
former one, whose name was Jeremy, had raised
an army of forty thousand Tartars, Moldavians,

22 AMEKICA.N BIOGRAPHY.

and Turks, to maintain his pretensions. A blooc 7
battle was fought between them, in which the
Turkish army was totally defeated with the loss
of twenty-five thousand men, and Wallachia be
came subject to the Emperor.

The deposed Waywode collected together
some troops, and assumed a dangerous attitude in
the neighboring province of Moldavia ; and the
Earl of Meldritch was sent to reduce him. He
was successful in several skirmishes, in one of
which he was materially assisted by Smith's
ingenuity in the construction of fire-works, a
gift which seems to have been peculiar to him.
Pressing on too eagerly and incautiously, he was
decoyed into an ambuscade, in a mountainous
pass near the town of Rottenton, and attacked
by an army of forty thousand men. The Chris
tians made a gallant and desperate resistance,
but could avail nothing against such immense
odds ; and they were all slain or cut to pieces,
except about thirteen hundred, who, with the
Earl of Meldritch, escaped by swimming a river.

In this unhappy battle were slain many gal
lant noblemen and gentlemen, the flower of Sigis-
.nund's army and his most devoted friends, and,
among the rest, nine Englishmen, whose names
Smith affectionately preserves, who, for the sake
of sustaining the cross and humbling the cres
cent, had exposed themselves to peril and death

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 23

hi an obscure war, and in a remote corner of
Europe. Such is the soldier's unequal lot. Some
are proudly slain on famous fields ; " honor decks
the turf that wraps their clay," and their name?
become in after-times watch-words and rallying
cries ; while others, with arms as strong, heart::
as brave, hopes as warm, and souls as aspiring,
fall in petty skirmishes, the very spot of which
soon becomes uncertain, and tradition itself pre
serves not a record of their names.

Smith was severely wounded and left for dead
upon the field. Some sparks of life were found in
him, and the Turks, judging him to be a man of
distinction by the richness of his armor, healed
his wounds in order to secure a large ransom.
As soon as he was recovered, he was taken to
Axiopolis with many other prisoners, and there
they were all sold, "like beasts in a market
place." Smith was sold to the Bashaw Bogall,
who sent him to Constantinople as a present to
bis mistress, the young Charatza Tragabigzanda
(a name not very manageable in a sonnet), tell
ing her that he was a Bohemian nobleman, whom
he had captured in war.

This young lady viewed with compassion the
afflicted condition of her captive, who was at
that time in the flower of his youth, and adorned
with those manly graces, which make valor more
attractive, and affliction more pitiable. Not hav-

24 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

ing her time so much occupied as modern young
ladies, she would often contrive an excuse for
asking a question of the interesting captive who
dwelt so much in her thoughts, as she had a slight
knowledge of Italian. To her surprise she learnt,
that the story told by her lover was a sheer fab
rication, that Smith was an English gentleman,
who had never seen the Bashaw till he had been
bought by him in the market-place of Axiopolis.
The tender feeling, with which she had, perhaps
unconsciously to herself, begun to regard Smith,
was probably increased by the indignation, with
which she heard of the deception that had been
practised upon her. She drew from him the
whole story of his adventures, to which she did,
like Desdemona, " seriously incline," and, like
Desdemona, " she loved him for the dangers he
had passed," as well as for his graceful man
ners, fascinating conversation, and that noble and
dignified bearing, which the weeds of a captive
could not conceal. She mitigated the pains of
his captivity by all the means in her power ; and,
apprehensive lest her mother (who probably sus
pected the dangerous progress he was making in
her daughter's affections) should sell him in order
to remove him from her sight, she resolved to
cend him, with a letter to her brother Timour,
Bashaw of Nalbritz, in the country of Gambia, and
I* rovinco of Tartary, who resided near the borders
of the sea of Azof.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 25

In this letter she enjoined it upon her brother
to treat Smith with the greatest kindness, and, to
make " assurance doubly sure," she frankly told
him of the state of her feelings towards him,
which disclosure had, however, upon the haughty
Tartar an effect very different from what she an
ticipated. Highly incensed that his sister should
have disgraced herself by an attachment to a
Christian slave, he vented his displeasure upon its
unfortunate object. He ordered his head to be
shaved, his body to be stripped and clothed with
a rough tunic of hair-cloth, and a large ring of
iron to be fastened around his neck. He found
many companions in misfortune, and, being the
last comer, he was, as he says, " slave of slaves
to them all ; " though, he continues, " there was
no great choice, for the best was so bad, that
a dog could hardly have lived to endure."

Smith does not inform us of the length of his
captivity, nor have we any data for ascertaining
i*, but it could not have been many months ; for
the battle, in which he was taken, was fought in
1602, and we hear of his return from slavery, to
Transylvania in December, 1603. He has left an
account of the manners and customs, religion and
government, of the " Crym-Tartars," as he calls
them, which does credit to his powers of observa
tion, and the retentiveness of his memory, but
which would be neither new nor interesting to the

26 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

reader. Of their offensive and comfortless style
of living he speaks with the energy of personal
disgust, but makes honorable mention of their
justice and integrity. For their military equip
ments, knowledge, and discipline he expresses the
contempt natural to a thorough master of the art
of war, but does justice to their bravery, their
skill in horsemanship, and their powers of en
durance. The brave spirit of Smith could not be
conquered even by the galling chains of bond
age, which were rendered heavier by his despair
of being ever able to throw them off; for he says,
that " all the hope he had ever to be delivered
from this thraldom was only the love of Traga-
bigzanda, who surely was ignorant of his bad
usage ; for, although he had often debated the
matter with some Christians, that had been there
a long time slaves, they could not find how to
make an escape by any reason or possibility ; but
God, beyond man's expectation or imagination,
helpeth his servants, when they least think of
help, as it happened to him." He was employed
to thresh corn in a country-house belonging to
Timour, which was a league distant from his resi
dence. His cruel master, who felt a particular
ill-will towards him, never passed him without
displaying it by gross abuse, and even persona
violence. His ill-treatment, on one occasion,
was so outrageous, that Smith, maddened tnd

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 27

transported beyond the bounds of reason by a
sense of insult, and reckless of consequences,
knowing that, happen what might, his miserable
condition could not be changed for the worse,
rose against him and beat out his brains with
his threshing-flail. The instinct of self-preser
vation is fertile in expedients. He clothed him
self in the rich attire of the slain Timour, hid
his body under the straw, filled a knapsack with
corn, mounted his horse, and galloped off to the
desert.

Save the exulting sense of freedcm, his con
dition was but little improved, however, and he
could hardly hope for any thing but a death
more or less speedy, according as he was re
captured or not. He \vas in the midst of a
wild, vast, and uncultivated desert, dreading to
meet any human beings, who might recognise
him as a runaway slave by the iron collar which
he still wore about his neck, and again reduce
him to bondage. He wandered about two or
three days without any end or purpose, and
in utter loneliness and despair ; but Providence,
who had brought him out of captivity, befriended
him still further, and directed his random steps
to the main road, which leads from Tartary into
Russia.

After a fatiguing and perilous journey of six
teen days, he arrived at Ecopolis, upon the river

28 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Don, a garrison of the Russians ; where, he says,
" the governor, after a due examination of those
his hard events, took off his irons, and so kindly
used him, he thought himself new risen from
death, and the good lady Calamata largely sup
plied his wants." This last clause is character
istic of Smith. His gentlemanly courtesy prompts
him to acknowledge the kind attentions of a
lady, while his modesty forbids him to mention
any of the reasons which induced her to take
an interest in him, still less to exaggerate that
interest into a warmer feeling.

Being furnished by the friendly governor with
letters of recommendation, he travelled, under
the protection of convoys, to Hermanstadt in
Transylvania. His journey through these deso
late regions was made delightful by the kind at
tentions which he constantly received. He says,
" in all his life, he seldom met with more respect,
mirth, content, and entertainment, and not any
governor, where he came, but gave him some
what as a present, beside his charges." Their
own exposed situation on the frontiers made them
constantly liable to be carried into slavery by the
Tartars, and they could sympathize with one
who had just escaped a fate of which they were
continually apprehensive.

On his arrival in Transylvania, where he found
rxany of his ok! friends and companions in arms,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 29

and where his brilliant exploits had made him
generally known and popular, he was received
with enthusiasm as one risen from the grave,
and overwhelmed with honors and attentions. He
says, that " he was glutted with content and
near drowned with joy," and that he never would
have left these kind friends, but for his strong
desire to " rejoice himself" in his own native
country, after all his toils and perils. At Leipsic
he met with his old Colonel, the Earl of Mel-
dritch, and Prince Sigismund, who gave him a
diploma, confirming the title of nobility he had
previously conferred upon him, and fifteen ducats
to repair his losses. From thence he travelled
through Germany, France, and Spain, visiting
the places most worthy of note in each.

Hearing that a civil wrar had broken out in
Barbary, eager to gain new honors and encoun
ter new perils, he sailed in a French ship of war
to the African coast, and went to the city of Mo
rocco ; but, finding that the contending parties
were equally treacherous and unworthy, he re
fused to throw his sword into either scale. He
describes some of the objects most worthy of
note in the cities of Morocco and Fez, and gives
a slight sketch of the conquest and discoveries
of the Portuguese in the southern portions of
Africa. He departed from Morocco in the same
vessel in which he had come, and which, on

30 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

the vo)age, sustained a desperate fight against
two Spanish men-of-war, and succeeded in beat
ing them off. He returned to his own country
about the year 1604.

CHAPTER III.

State of public Feeling in England in regard
to Colonizing the Coast of America. — Smith
becomes interested in the Subject. — Establish
ment of the Virginia and Plymouth .Compa
nies. — An Expedition sets Sail from England.
— Dissensions on the Voyage. — Arrival in
Virginia.

THE times, of which we are writing, were
fruitful alike in great enterprises and in great
men. The brilliant discoveries of the Portuguese
in the East, and of Columbus and Sebastian
Cabot in the West, had startled the civilized
world like the sound of a trumpet, and given to
the human mind that spring and impulse, which
are always produced by remarkable events. The
fiery and adventurous spirits of Europe found
the bounds of the old world too narrow for them,
and panted for the untried spheres of our new
and broader continents.

CAPTA N JOHN SMITH 31

The wealth and fertility of the newly discover
ed lands, of course, lost nothing in the narratives
of the few, who had by chance visited them, and
returned home to astonish their admiring and less
fortunate friends with tales of what they had seen
and heard. They had seen climes which were
the favorites of the sun, and his burning glances
filled the earth, the air, and the sea with strange
beauty. There were birds of gorgeous plumage,
dazzling the eye with their motions and colors,
flowers of the richest hues and most delicate
odors, and aromatic forests that made the air faint
with perfume, and " old Ocean smile for many
a league." But the most extravagant accounts
were given of the mineral treasures of the new
countries. Gold and silver were so plentiful,
that the most common utensils were made of
them ; and every one had some story to tell of
" the Eldorado, where " (in the words of Mike
Lambourne in " Kenilworth ") " urchins play at
cherry-pit with diamonds, and country wenches
thread rubies for necklaces instead of rowan-tree
berries ; where the pantiles are made of pure
gold, and the paving-stones of virgin silver."
The good and bad passions of men were alike
stimulated. There were savages to be civil
ized and heathen to be converted ; there were
worlds to be conquered and laurels to be won ;
avarice was allured by dreams of untold wealth,

32 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

and enterprise by prospects of boundless ad
venture.

England was strongly infected by the general
feeling, and the genius and accomplishments of
Sir Walter Raleigh kindled in all ranks a strong
passion for foreign adventures. Several attempts
had been made in the reign of Elizabeth, under
the auspices of that remarkable man, to plant a
colony in North America, the earliest settlement
having been made, in 1585, on the island of
Roanoke, in Albemarle Sound, on the coast of
North Carolina ; but no one had taken firm root.
The history of these short-lived colonies, and an
examination of the causes which led to their fail
ure, would be out of place here. *

At the time of Smith's arrival in England
there was not any English colony on the con
tinent of North America ; but the public at
tention had been strongly awakened to the sub
ject by the animated representations of Captain
Bartholomew Gosnold, who, in 1602, had made
a prosperous voyage to the coast of New Eng
land, and had, on his return, spoken in the
warmest terms of its fertility and the salubrity
of its climate, and strongly urged upon his coun-

* The reader will find a minute and accurate account
of their fortunes in Stith's History of Virginia, and a
succinct and well-written one in Grahame's History of
the United States.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 33

trymen the importance of colonizing it. He and
Captain Smith seem to have been drawn to
wards each other by that kind of instinct, which
brings together kindred spirits, and Smith entered
into his plans with characteristic ardor. It was
indeed precisely the enterprise to be embraced by
a man like Smith, who panted for action, who
dreaded nothing so much as repose, who sighed
for perils, adventures, " hair-breadth 'scapes,"
and " moving accidents by flood and field."

The statements of Gosnold having been amply
confirmed by subsequent voyagers, and King
James, who was well-inclined to any plan, which
would give employment to his frivolous and rest
less mind, and increase his power and conse
quence, encouraging the plan of establishing a
colony, an association was formed for that pur
pose. Letters patent, bearing date April 10th,
1606, were issued to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir
George Somers, Richard Halduyt, and their
associates, granting to them the territories in
America, lying on the seacoast between the
thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north lati
tude, together with all islands situated within a
hundred miles of their shores. The associates
were divided into two companies, one consisting
of London adventurers, to whom the northern
part was assigned, and under whose auspices New
England was afterwards settled. It was provided,

iv.— 3

34 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

that there should be at least one hundred miles
distance between the two colonies. The terms of
this charter were strongly expressive of the King's
arbitrary character, and of that jealous regard for
his prerogatives, which, in after times, proved so
fatal to his race. The most important provision
was, that the supreme government was vested
in a council resident in England, to be nomi
nated by the crown, and the local jurisdiction was
confided to a colonial council, appointed and re
movable at the pleasure of the crown, who
were to be governed by royal instructions and
ordinances from time to time promulgated.

The royal favor was yet more abundantly
vouchsafed to them. The King busied himself
in the employment, highly agreeable to his med
dling and insatiable vanity, of drawing up a code
of laws for the colonies that were about to be
planted ; which, among other things, provided,
that the legislative and executive powers should
be vested in the colonial council, with these
important qualifications, however, that their laws
were not to touch life or limb, that they should
conform to the laws of England, and should
continue in force only till modified or repealed
by the King or the supreme council in Eng
land.

It was not until the 19th day of the follow
ing December, that an expedition set sail from

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 35

England. This delay arose from a variety of
causes, and especially a want of funds. On that
day a hundred and five colonists embarked from
London in a squadron of three small vessels, the
largest of which did not exceed a hundred ten-*
in burden. Among the leading adventurers wer*
Captains Gosnold and Smith, George Percy, broTh
er of the Earl of Northumberland, Edward M~
Wingfield, a London merchant, and Mr. Robert
Hunt, a clergyman. The transportation of the
colony was intrusted to Captain Christopher
Newport, who was esteemed a mariner of skill and
ability on the American coast. Orders for govern
ment were given to them, sealed in a box, which
was not to be opened till their arrival in Virginia.

They ivent by the old and circuitous route of
the Canary Islands and the West Indies. Be
ing detained by contrary winds for six weeks up
on the coast of England, troubles and dissensions
sprang up among them, as often occurs in those
expeditions, in which unanimity and harmony of
feeling are of the most vital importance. Peace
was with difficulty restored by the mild and ju
dicious counsels of Mr. Hunt, who, though af
flicted with a severe illness and the object of
special dislike to some of the leading men, (who,
as we are told, were " little better than Athe
ists,") devoted himself with unshaken firmness
to his duty, and preferred the service of God

36 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

and his country in a perilous and irksome en
terprise, to the comforts and security of his own
home, which was but twenty miles distant from
the spot where the wind-bound fleet was ly
ing.

On their arrival at the Canaries the flames of
discord broke out with renewed fury, and Cap
tain Smith became the victim of unjust suspi
cions and groundless enmity. His high reputa
tion and frank, manly bearing had made him
popular with the majority of the colonists, and
his influence over them had excited the envy
and dislike of some of the leaders ; while his
pride of character and conscious innocence pre
vented him probably from making any exertions
to conciliate them. He was accused by Wing-
field and others of entering into a conspiracy to
murder the council, usurp the government, and
make himself king of Virginia. Upon these ri
diculous charges he was kept a prisoner during
the remainder of the voyage.

From the Canaries they steered to the West
Indies, where they traded with the natives, and
spent three weeks in recruiting. They then set
sail for the Island of Roanoke, their original desti
nation, but a violent storm providentially overtook
them on the coast and carried them to the mouth
of the Chesapeake Bay. They discovered land
on the 26th of April, 1607, which they named

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 37

Cape Henry, in honor of the Prince of Wales.
They sailed into the James River, and explored
it for the space of forty miles from its mouth.
The appearance of the country on each side filled
them with delight. It was fertile and well water
ed, the landscape picturesquely varied with hills,
valleys, and plains, and newly decked with the
green mantle of spring. To the sea-worn voy
agers, the scene was like enchantment, and this
spot seemed to be pointed out by the finger of
Heaven, as their resting-place and home.

They were employed seventeen days in pitch
ing upon a convenient spot for their settlement.
Upon the very first day of their arrival they went
on shore, and were attacked by some Indians,
who came ''creeping upon all fours, from the
hills, like bears," and who wounded some of the
party with their arrows, but were forced to re
tire by a discharge of muskets. They found, in
one of the shallow rivers, abundance of oysters,
" which lay on the ground as thick as stones,"
and in many of them there were pearls. Going
on shore, says the writer,* " we past through
excellent ground, full of flowers of divers kinds
and colors, and as goodly trees as I have seen, as
cedar, cypress, and other kinds ; going a little
further we came to a little plat of ground, full of

* See note on page 40.

38 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

fine and beautiful strawberries, four times bigger
and better than ours in England." The north
ern point at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay they
named Point Comfort, because they found there
deep water for anchorage, " which put them in
good comfort." Landing on this point on the
fourth day after their arrival, they saw five Indians,
who were at first alarmed at the sight of the Eng
lish, " until they saw the captain lay his hand
upon his heart," upon which they came boldly up
and invited them to Kecoughtan, their town.
This invitation they accepted ; and on arriving at
the village they were kindly entertained by the
Indians, who gave them corn-bread, tobacco, and
pipes, and expressed their welcome by a dance.
Four days afterwards, they were kindly entertained
by the chief of the Pashiphay tribe, and received
an invitation from the chief of the Rappahannas
to come and visit him. He sent them a messen
ger to guide them to his habitation, and stood on
the banks of the river to meet them as they land
ed, " with all his train," (says the writer,) " as
goodly men as any I have seen of savages or Chris
tians, the Werowance * coming before them, play
ing on a flute made of a reed, with a crown of
deer's hair, colored red, in fashion of a rose, fasten-

* A name by which the chiefs of tribes in Virgkua
and its neighborhood were designated.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 39

ed about his knot of hair, and a great plate of cop
per on the other side of his head, with two long
feathers in fashion of a pair of horns placed in the
midst of his crown. His body was painted all
with crimson, with a chain of beads about his
neck ; his face painted blue, besprinkled with sil
ver ore, as we thought ; his ears all behung with
bracelets of pearl, and in either ear a bird's claw
through it, beset with fine copper or gold. He
entertained us in so modest a proud fashion, as
though he had been a prince of civil government,
holding his countenance without laughter or any
such ill behavior. He caused his mat to be
spread on the ground, where he sat down with
a great majesty, taking a pipe of tobacco, the rest
of his company standing about him. After he
had rested a while, he rose and made signs to us
to come to his town. He went foremost, and all
the rest of his people and ourselves followed him
up a steep hill, where his palace was settled
We passed through the woods in fine paths, hav
ing most pleasant springs which issued from the
mountains. We also went through the goodliest
corn-fields that ever were seen in any country.
When we came to Rappahanna town, he enter
tained us in good humanity."

On the 8th day of May they went farther up
the river. They went on shore in the country
belonging to the tribe ol Apamatica, where they

40 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

were met by a large body of Indians armed " with
bows and arrows in a most warlike manner, with
the swords at their backs beset wit4i sharp stones
and pieces of iron, able to cleave a man in sun
der." But, on making signs of peace, they were
suffered to land without molestation. On the
13th day of May, they pitched upon the place
of their settlement, which was a peninsula on the
north side of James River, about forty miles from
the mouth, to which they gave the name of
Jamestown. The shore was so bold, that their
ship could be in six fathoms of water, and be
moored to the trees on the land.*

From this date the history of the United States
of America begins, after a lapse of one hundred
and ten years from the discovery of the continent
by Sebastian Cabot, and twTenty-two years after
the first attempt to colonize it by Sir Walter
Raleigh. Who can look back and compare the
past with the present without reflections of the
most serious and interesting cast ? In this little

* This slight sketch of their proceedings, after their
arrival in James River, and before they settled in James
town, is taken from a Narrative in Purchas (Vol. IV.
p. 1685), written by George Percy, the brother of the
Earl of Northumberland, one of the early settlers, and as
distinguished for high character as for high birth. He
succeeded Captain Smith aa governor. His Narrative
is comprised in six folio pages, and is very interesting.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 41

handful of men, occupying a strip of land in the
southeastern corner of Virginia, surrounded by
pathless woods and savage men, we behold the
" seminal principle " of a mighty people, destined
to subdue the vast continent to the mild sway of
civilization, letters, and Christianity, and to con
nect two oceans by a living and unbroken chain.
Owing their political existence to the charter of
a tyrant, which deprived them of some of the
most valuable privileges of Englishmen, the colo
nists laid the foundations of a state, in which the
sternest and fiercest spirit of liberty was to be
developed, and which was destined to break out,
in little more than a century and a half, in deadly
opposition to that mother-country, to whose am
ple robe they had so long clung for support ; not
so much to obtain redress for actual oppressions,
as in denial of the right to oppress, and in defence
of those principles of truth, freedom, political
equality, and natural justice, which descended to
them with their Saxon blood and Saxon speech.
The tree of liberty was first planted in the soil of
America by despotic hands. The results which
followed the settlement of this country were such,
as the most sagacious wisdom could not have
foreseen, nor the most visionary enthusiasm have
hoped. History, no less than revelation, teaches
us our dependence upon a higher Power, whose
wise and good plans xve can as little comprehend

42 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

as oppose, who is ever bringing real good out of
seeming evil, and who, in the discipline with
which he tries both men and nations, is ever
inaking misfortune, discouragement, and struggle,
the elements of unbounded growth, progress, and
prosperity.

CHAPTER IV.

Early Struggles of the Colony. — Active Exer
tions of Captain Smith in Providing Food
and Suppressing Insubordination.

BEFORE going any further it will be proper to
give the reader a short account of the original
inhabitants of the soil, as their history becomes
almost immediately blended with that of the col
ony. At the time of the first settlement by the
Europeans, it has been estimated that there were
not more than twenty thousand Indians within the
limits of the State of Virginia. Within a circuit
of sixty miles from Jamestown, Captain Smith
says, there were about five thousand souls, and of
these scarce fifteen hundred were warriors. The
whole territory between the mountains and the
sea was occupied by more than forty tribes, thirty
of whom were united in a confederacy under

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 43

Powhatan, whose dominions, hereditary and acj
quired by conquest, comprised the whole coun
try between the rivers James and Potomac, and
extended into the interior as far as the falls of
the principal rivers.

Campbell, in his " History of Virginia," states
the number of Powhatan's subjects to have been
eight thousand. Powhatan was a remarkable
man ; a sort of savage Napoleon, who. by the
force of his character and the superiority of his
talents, had raised himself from the rank of a
petty chieftain to something of imperial dignity
and power. He had two places of abode, one
called Powhatan, where Richmond now stands,
and the other at Werowocomoco, on the north
side of York River, within the present county of
Gloucester. He lived in something of barbaric
state and splendor. He had a guard of forty
warriors in constant attendance, and four sentinels
kept watch during the night around his dwelling.
His power was absolute over his people, by whom
he was looked up to with something of religious
veneration. His feelings towards the whites were
those of implacable enmity, and his energy and
abilities made him a formidable foe to the infant
colony.

Besides the large confederacy of which Pow
hatan was the chief, there were two others, with
which that was often at war. One of these,

44 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

called the Mannahoacs, consisted of eight tribes,
and occupied the country between the Rappa-
hannoc and York rivers ; the other, consisting of
five tribes, was called the Monacans, and was
settled between York and James rivers, above
the Falls. There were also, in addition to these,
many scattering and independent tribes.

Captain Smith describes at considerable length
their manners and customs, dress, appearance,
government, and religion. They did not differ
materially, in any of these respects, from the
northern tribes. They had the straight black
hair, the tall, erect, and graceful forms, and the
copper complexion. Their characters displayed
the same virtues and vices, which those, who are
in any degree familiar with the early history of
cur country, recognise as peculiar to the Indian
race. They were equally removed from the ro
mantic beau-ideal, which modern writers of fic
tion have painted, and the monstrous caricature,
drawn by those, who, from interested motives,
have represented them, as " all compact " of
cruelty, treachery, indolence, and cowardice.

As soon as the colony had landed, the box
containing their orders was opened ; and it was
found that Edward M. Wingfield, Bartholomew
Gosnold, John Smith, Christopher Newport, John
Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall were
appointed a council. They were to choose a

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 45

Piesident from among their own number, who
was to hold his office a year, with the privilege
of having two votes. The council made choice
of Mr. Wingfield as President.

It is curious that almost the first act of the
council should have been one of disobedience to
their superior power; for, though Captain Smith
had been expressly named one of the council,
they excluded him, and gave their reasons for so
doing in a speech made probably by the President,
to the whole colony. However dissatisfied they
might have been, the time was too precious to be
spent in brawls and wrangling. All hands set
themselves diligently to work. The council
planned a fort, others cut down trees to clear a
place to pitch their tents, while others were em
ployed in making nets and preparing spots for
gardens. The " overweening jealousy " of the
President would not permit any military exercises
or any fortifications to be erected, except a bar
rier of the boughs of trees in the shape of a
half-moon. Soon after, an expedition was sent
to discover the head of James River, consisting
of twenty men, under the command of Newport
and Smith, whose noble nature did not suffer him
for a moment to abate any thing of his zeal for
the good of the colony, under the influence of
personal pique or disappointment. They passed
by several habitations, and on the sixth day ar-

46 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

rived at the Falls, and erecting a cross, took pos
session of the country in the name of King
James. Here they visited Powhatan, whose
town consisted of but twelve houses, pleasantly
situated on a hill. He received them with seem
ing kindness, and gratefully accepted a hatchet
which Captain Newport presented to him. Their
further progress up the river was obstructed by
the Rapids or Falls. They were kindly and hos
pitably treated by the natives, whom they en
countered in their excursion.

On their return they found, that the colony
had in their absence suffered from the careless
ness of the President in leaving them without
military defences ; for the Indians had attacked
them, wounded seventeen men, and killed one
boy. The writer of the narrative contained in
Smith's History says, that had not a cross-bar
shot from the ship, struck off a bough from a tre*
in the midst of the Indians and caused them tc
retire in affright, the colonists would have been
entirely cut off, they being securely at work and
unarmed. The President, made wiser by expe
rience, ordered the fort to be palisadoed, the
ordnance to be mounted, and the men to be
armed and exercised. They were frequently
attacked by the savages, whose numbers and ac
tivity generally gave them the advantage, notwith
standing the superiority *ii Inc.- whites in arms

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 47

At the end of six weeks, Captain Newport,
who had been engaged merely to transport the
colony, made preparations for returning to Eng
land. The enemies of Captain Smith pretended,
out of compassion to him, a desire to refer him
to the council in England to be reprimanded
by them, rather than expose him to the pub
licity of a legal trial, which might injure his
reputation and endanger his life. But he was
not a man to be bullied or cajoled. He was
strong, not only in the consciousness of innocence,
but in the affections and respect of a large ma
jority of the colonists. He loudly demanded a
trial, the result of which was highly honorable
to him. The arts of his enemies were revealed,
and those who had been suborned to accuse
him betrayed their employers. He was acquit
ted by acclamation, and the President condemn
ed to pay a fine of two hundred pounds, which
Smith generously added to the public property
of the colony. Many other difficulties had
arisen, which were amicably adjusted, by the
" good doctrine and exhortation " of Mr. Hunt,
who seems to have richly deserved the blessing
promised to the peace-makers, and, by his in
fluence, Captain Smith was admitted a member
of council. On the next Sunday, they all pat-
took of the communion, as a bond of Christian
narmony, and a pledge that their recent recon-

48 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

ciliatioi* was sincere. On the following day, the
Indians in the neighborhood voluntarily sued for
peace. Captain Newport sailed for England,
on the 15th of June, leaving one hundred and
four persons behind, and promising to return
again in twenty weeks with fresh supplies.

The colony, owing to gross mismanagement
and improvidence in the council in England,
were very inadequately furnished with provisions.
While the ships remained, they did not suffer from
want, as they could always, either for "love
or money," obtain a portion of the sailors' stores,
of which they had great abundance. But this
resource was cut off by the departure of the
squadron, and they were reduced to a daily al
lowance of a half-pint of barley and the same
quantity of wheat, both of the worst quality, and,
from their long remaining in the ship's hold,
alive with insects. Their historian says, with
melancholy mirth, that " had they been as free
from all sins as gluttony and drunkenness, they
might have been canonized for saints ; " for th's
wretched fare, with some sturgeon and shell-fish
from the river, was all they had to subsist up
on till the month of September. Disease and
death made frightful havoc among them ; for,
besides their scanty and unhealthy food, their
constitutions were weakened by extreme toil in

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 49

the heat of the summer, by imperfect shelter,
and by the sudden change from the habits and
comforts of civilized life to constant labor and
exposure. Before September, fifty of their num
ber had died, including Captain Gosnold, the
first projector of the expedition.

The President, Wingfield, by embezzling the
public stores and converting them to his own use,
had escaped the general famine and sickness,*
but had thereby much increased the dislike,
which had always been felt towards him. In
the beginning of the autumn he laid a plan ta
escape to England in the colony's bark, which
treacherous conduct (to borrow the language
of the historian) "so moved our dead spirits,
that we deposed him." Captain John Rat-
cliffe was elected in his place. Kendall, who
was concerned with him in the plot, was ex
pelled from the council, so that it was now re
duced to three members, the President, Martin,
and Smith. After the discovery of this conspir
acy, the sufferings of the colonists reached
their utmost extent. Their provisions were con
sumed, no prospect of relief appeared, and they
were in hourly expectation of an attack from

* This charge seems hardly credible ; but it is posi
tively asserted by Smith, whose honesty and integrity
are beyond suspicion, and not contradicted by any wri
ter to my knowledge.

IV.— 4

,50

AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

the Indians, to whom they could have offered
no effectual resistance, in their present enfee
bled condition. But they, so far from doing
them any violence, supplied them liberally with
provisions ; a treatment so welcome and un
expected, that the grateful piety of Smith as
cribes it to a special interposition of divine Prov
idence.*

Smith's eminent abilities and high character,
it was evident from the beginning, would sooner
or later give him the first place in the colony,
whatever might be his nominal rank. In times
of peril and adversity, men, by a kind of unerring
instinct, discover who is the ruling spirit, and
put the helm into his hands as the only pilot
that can weather the storm. Such times hat!

* The writer in Smith's History acquits the counc J
in England of all blame in respect to their scanty pro
visions, and sums up the causes, which led to thew
difficulties, in the following terms.

"And now where some affirmed it was ill done of
the council to send forth men so badly provided, this
incontradictable reason will show them plainly they
are too ill advised to nourish such ill conceits ; first
the fault of our going was our own ; what could be
thought fitting or necessary we had, but what we should
find or want, or where we should be, we were all ignor
-ant ; and, supposing to make our passage in two months
with victual to live and the advantage of the spring to
work, we were at sea five months, which we both

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 51

now come upon the infant settlement, and they
turned their eyes upon Smith, as the only man
who could rescue them from the difficulties in
which they were involved. The new President
and Martin were neither able nor popular, and
ihe official rank of the former was but dust in
the balance, when weighed against Smith's native
superiority. From this time the chief manage
ment of affairs devolved upon him.

He entered upon his duties with characteristic
ardor and energy. He set about the building of
Jamestown, and by kind words and encouraging
promises, and, more than all, by his own example^
taking upon himself the most laborious and fa
tiguing duties, he pushed on the work with so

spent our victual in passing and lost the opportunity of
the time and season to plant, by the unskilful presump
tion of our ignorant transporters, that understood not at
all what they undertook. Such actions have ever since
the world's beginning been subject to such accidents,
and every thing of worth is found full of difficulties,
but nothing so difficult as to establish a commonwealth
so far remote from men and means, and where men'?
minds are so untoward as neither to do well themselves
nor suffer others." Stith, on the other hand, an accu
rate and painstaking writer, accuses the council and
especially Sir Thomas Smith, their treasurer, of want
of care and thoughtfulness, and says that the same
mismanagement and carelessness marked the whole
of that gentleman's administration of the affairs of
the colony.

52 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

much diligence, that he had in a short time pro
vided most of them with lodgings, neglecting any
for himself. Their stock of provisions being well
nigh exhausted, he resolved to make search for a
fresh supply. His ignorance of the language of
the natives, and his want of men and equipments,
were great impediments to the expedition, but no
discouragement to his adventurous spirit. Attend
ed by only five or six men, he went down the
river in a boat, to Kecoughtan, where Hampton
now stands. The natives, who were aware of
their condition, treated them with contempt as
poor, starved creatures, and, when invited to traffic,
would scoffingly give them a handful of corn 01
a piece of bread in exchange for their swords,
muskets, and clothing.

Finding that kind looks and courteous treat
ment produced only insult and contumely, Smith
felt himself constrained by necessity to adopt a dif
ferent course, though he frankly acknowledges that
he thereby exceeded the terms of his commission.
He discharged his muskets among them and ran
his boat ashore, the affrighted Indians betaking
themselves to the shelter of the woods. March
ing to their houses he found them abounding with
corn ; but he would not permit his men to touch it,
expecting that the Indians would return in large
numbers to attack him, in which expectation he
was not disappointed. Sixty or seventy of them

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 53

soon appeared, some painted black, some red,
some white, and some party-colored, in a square
column, singing and dancing, with their OJcee borne
before them. This was an idol made of skins,
stuffed with moss, painted, and ornamented with
copper chains. They were armed with clubs5
shields, bows, and arrows, and boldly advanced
upon the English, who received them with 3
volley of musketry, which brought many of them
to the ground, and with them their idol. The
rest fled in dismay to the woods. They sent
a priest with a proposition to make peace and re
store their idol. Smith told them, that, if six of
them would come unarmed and load his boat with
corn, he would not only return them their idol,
but give them beads, copper, and hatchets be
sides, and be their friend. These terms were
accepted and the stipulations performed. They
brought ample supplies, not only of corn, but of
turkeys, venison, and wild fowl, and continued,
until the English departed, singing and dancing in
token of friendship.

The success of this expedition induced Captain
Smith to repeat his excursions, both by land and
water, in the course of one of which he discovered
the people of Chickahominy, who lived upon th°
banks of the river of that name. The provisions,
however, which he so carefully and toilsomely pro
vided, the colonists improvidently wasted. When

54 AMERICAN BIOGUAPHY.

ever Smith was out of sight, owing to the Pres
ident's imbecility and Martin's ill health, every
thing was in tumultuous confusion, like a school
in the absence of its teacher. Wingfield and
Kendall, who were smarting under their recent
disgrace, took advantage of one of these sea
sons of insubordination to conspire with some
disorderly malecontents, to escape to England in
the bark, which by Smith's direction had been
fitted up for a trading voyage to be undertaken
the next year. Smith's unexpected return nip
ped their project in the bud, which was not done,
however, without recourse to arms, and in the
action Captain Kendall was slain. Soon afterwards
the President and Captain Archer intended to
abandon the country, which purpose was also frus
trated by Smith, a circumstance which puts in the
strongest light his power and influence. We are
told, " that the Spaniard never more greedily de
sired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more
to abandon the country than he to keep j* "
Having found plenty of corn in the neighborhood
of Chickahominy River, he made an excursion
there, where he found hundreds of Indians await
ing his approach with loaded baskets in their
hands. At the approach of winter too, the riv
ers were covered with swans, geese, and ducks,
which, with corn, beans, and pumpkins supplied
by the Indians, furnished their tables amply and

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 55

luxuriously. This abundance of good cheer had.
its natural effect in producing good-humor and
curing home-sickness, " none of our Tuftaffety
humorists " (to borrow a curious expression of the
historian) desiring to return to England. A crav
ing stomach has in all ages been the fruitful
source of discontent and mutiny ; and Captain
Smith showed his knowledge of human nature, in
taking so much pains to address it with the only
arguments whose force it is capable of acknowl
edging.

CHAPTER V.

Captain Smith's Captivity among the Indians. —
His Life is saved by Pocahontas. — His Re-
urn to Jamestown.

CAPTAIN SMITH'S gleams of prosperity and re
pose were, like the " uncertain glories of an April
day," broken by constant interruptions of clouds
and misfortune. He was murmured against by
some cross-grained spirits, and even rebuked by
the council, for his dilatoriness in not penetrating
to the source of Chickahominy River, a charge,
one would think, the most unreasonable that could
be brought against such a man. Stung by these

56 AfcEBtCAN BIOGRAPHY.

u?a complaints, he immediately set out
\ipoo a revv expedition. He proceeded as far as
his barge could float, reaching that point with
great labor, and having been obliged to cut a
way through the trees which had fallen into the
river. Having left the barge securely moored,
with strict orders to his men not to leave it till
his return, and taking with him two Englishmen
and two Indians as guides, he went higher up in a
canoe. This he left in charge of the Englishmen
and went up twenty miles further to the meadows
at the head of the river, where he occupied him
self in shooting game. The disorderly and ill-
disciplined crew, whom he had left in charge of
the barge, had disobeyed his injunctions and gone
straggling into the woods. They were suddenly
attacked by a party of three hundred bowrmen
commanded by Opechancanough, King of Pa
munkey and brother to Powhatan, and one of
their number, George Cassen by name, was taken
prisoner. The rest, with great difficulty, regained
their barge. The Indians extorted from their
prisoner information of the place where Captain
Smith was, and then put him to death in the most
barbarDus manner. In their pursuit of Captain
Smith, they came upon the two men, by name
Robinson and Emry, who had been left with the
Janoe and who were sleeping by a fire, and dis
charged their arrows at them with fatal effect.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 57

Having discovered Smith, they wounded him in
the thigh with an arrow. Finding himself beset
with numbers, he bound one of his Indian guides
to his left arm with his garters as a buckler, and
defended himself so skilfully with his gun, that
he killed three and wounded many others. His
enemies retreating out of gun-shot, he attempted
to reach his canoe, but paying more heed to his
foes than to his own footsteps, he sunk, with his
guide, up to the middle in a treacherous morass.
Helpless as he was, his bravery had inspired such
terror, that they dared not approach him, until,
being almost dead with cold, he threw away his
arms and surrendered himself. They drew him
out, and led him to the fire, by which his slain
companions had been sleeping, and diligently
chafed his benumbed limbs.

Though in expectation of an immediate and
cruel death, his presence of mind did not forsake
him, and his inexhaustible resources were not
found wanting in that trying hour, when he was
an unarmed captive in the hands of merciless sav
ages. Without asking for his life, which would
only have lowered the respect with which his
bravery had inspired them, he demanded to speak
with their chief. When he was presented to
him, he showed to him a pocket compass which
he happened to have with him. The tremulous
vibrations of the needle, which they rould see,

58 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

but not touch, on account of the glass, amused
and surprised the Indians ; and when Captain
Smith, partly by language, he having acquired
some knowledge of their tongue, and partly by
signs, proceeded to explain to them the nature
and properties of this wonderful instrument, and
the discoveries to which it had led, and also de
scribed to them the courses of the heavenly bod
ies, the spherical shape of the earth, the alterna
tions of day and night, the extent of the conti
nents, oceans, and seas, the variety of nations and
their relative position, which made some of them
antipodes to others, they were filled with wonder
and amazement.*

Notwithstanding this, within an hour they tied
him to a tree and prepared to shoot him with
their arrows. But when the chief held up the
compass, they threw down their arms, and led
him in a sort of triumphal procession, to Orapax,

* The above is the account contained in Smith's His
tory, and, of course, came originally from Smith himself
It is impossible to believe, that the ignorant Indiana
could have comprehended such abstruse matters. They
probably regarded the compass as the Englishman's god,
a " great medicine," like the wig of the officer, which
came off when grasped by his swarthy foe, and cheated
him of a scalp to his inexpressible amazement. A wig
and a mariner's compass would be equally mysterious,
and entitled to equal reverence, in the eyes of these untu
tored children of nature. " Omne ignotum pro magnifico"

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 59

a village situated a few miles northeast of where
Richmond now stands. They marched in single
file, their chief being in the midst, with the En
glish swords and muskets borne before him. Af
ter him came Captain Smith, held by three stout
men, and on each side six archers. When they
arrived at the village, the women and children
flocked round to behold their pale-faced captive.
The warriors who conducted him, after some
military manoeuvres, placing Smith and their chief
in the midst, performed a war-dance around them
with frightful yells and strange contortions of
their limbs and features. After this dance had
been thrice performed, they conducted him to a
" long house," where he was guarded by forty
men. He was served so liberally with provis
ions, that he supposed their intention was to fat
ten and eat him, a reflection which did not at aJl
tend to sharpen his appetite.

At this time one of those little incidents oc
curred which show that even barbarous manners,
fierce hostility, and familiarity with scenes of
bloodshed and cruelty, cannot turn the heart
wholly into stone, or quench the natural instinct
of compassion. An Indian to whom Smith, upon
his first arrival in Virginia, had given some beads
and trinkets, brought him a garment of furs,
which was a most acceptable present, as he
was well nigh perishing with the cold, which in

60 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

that year (1607) was very great both in Europe
and America. The name of this grateful and
benevolent savage was Maocassater. I take pleas
ure in recording it, as well as the anecdote, whioh
has made it so deserving of being preserved, and
is so delightful an exception to the acts of cru
elty, treachery, and oppression, that generally
mark the conduct of both whites and Indians
towards each other.

Two days after this, he was attacked, and, but
for his guard, would have been killed by an old
Indian, whose son was lying at the point of death.
Whether this was a natural sickness, which the
father supposed was occasioned by the sorceries
of Smith, and was therefore provoked to seek
revenge, or whether he had been wounded by
Smith before his capture, we do not learn ; prob
ably the latter. They brought him to the dying
man's side, in hopes that he might recover him
Smith told them that he had a medicine at
Jamestown which would restore him. But they
would not permit him to go after it.

The Indians were making great preparations
to attack Jamestown, and desired to secure
Smith's aid and cooperation. They promised
him in return for his services, not only life and
liberty, but as much land and as many women
as he could wish. He endeavored to dissuade
them from their attempt, and pointed out the

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 61

formidable dangers to which they would be ex
posed from the springing of mines, the can
nons, and warlike engines ; to which they lis
tened with alarmed attention. In order that
his statements might be confirmed, he proposed
to send messengers to the colony, to which they
assented. He wrote a note, in which he in
formed his countrymen of the plans in agitation
against them, desired them to send him certain
enumerated articles, and to give the messengers a
wholesome fright, at the same time informing these
last of all that would happen to them. These
men started off in a season of extreme cold and
arrived at Jamestown. Seeing men come out
to meet them, as Smith had told them would
be the case, they fled with dismay, leaving their
note behind them. Coming again in the even
ing, they found the articles mentioned in the
note, in the very spot where Smith told them
to look for them. They returned in three days
and related their adventures to the great amaze
ment of all, who supposed, that " he could either
divine, or the paper speak."

This incident, which confirmed their suspicion
of Smith's supernatural powers, induced them
to lay aside all thoughts of attacking Jamestown.
They then carried him about in triumph througn
the country, showing him to the various tribes
which dwelt on the Rappahannoc, and Potomac

62 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

rivers, and finally brought him to Pamunkey,
the residence of Opechancanough, which was
situated near the fork of York River. Here
they performed a strange ceremony, the object
of which was, as they told him, to ascertain
whether his intentions towards them were friendly
or not. The following was the order of per
formances. Early in the morning, a great fire
was made in a long house, and a mat spread
on each side, on one of which he was seated,
and then his guard retired. " Presently came
skipping in a great, grim fellow, all painted over
with coal, mingled with oil, and many snakes'
and weasels' skins stuffed with moss, and all
their tails tied together, so as they met on the
crown of his head in a tassel ; and round abou
the tassel was a coronet of feathers, the skins
hanging round about his head, back, and shoul
ders, and in a manner covered his face ; with
a hellish voice and a rattle in his hand." This
personage, who was a priest, commenced his
invocation by a variety of wild gestures and
grimaces, and concluded by surrounding the
fire with a circle of meal. This being done,
" three more such like devils came rushing in
with the like antique tricks," whose bodies
were painted half black and half red, and their
faces daubed with red and white streaks to re
semble mustachios. These three danced about

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 63

for some time, " and then came in three more
as ugly as the rest," with their eyes painted
red and with white streaks upon their black
faces. Finally, they all seated themselves op
posite to the prisoner, three on the right hand
of the priest and three on his left. They then
began a song, accompanying it with their rat
tles ; and when this was done, the chief priest
laid down five grains of com, and after a short
oration, attended with violent muscular exertion,
laid down three more. After that they began
their song again, and then another oration, lay
ing down as many grains of corn as before,
till they had twice encircled the fire. Then,
continuing the incantation, they laid sticks be
tween the divisions of the corn. The whole
day was spent in these ceremonies, during which
time neither Smith nor the performers tasted
food, but at night they feasted abundantly on
the best provisions they had. These rites were
continued for three successive days. They told
him that the circle of meal signified their own
country, the circles of corn the bounds of the
sea, and the sticks his country. They imagin
ed the world to be flat and round like a trench
er, and themselves to be placed in the middle
of it.

They afterwards showed him a bag of gun
powder, which they had taken from him or

64 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

his companions, and which they carefully pre
served till the next spring to plant, as they did
their corn, supposing it to be a grain. He was
afterwards invited by Opitchapan, the second
brother of Powhatan, to his house, and sumptu
ously entertained ; but here, as on all other occa
sions, none of the Indians would eat with him,
though they would partake of the portions which
he left unconsumed.

At last they brought him to Werowocomoco,
the residence of Powhatan, which was situated
on the north side of York River, in Gloucester
County, about twenty-five miles below the fork
of the river. It was at that time Powhatan's
principal place of residence, though afterwards,
not being pleased with its proximity to the
English, he removed to Orapax. Upon Smith's
arrival in the village, he was detained, until
the Indian emperor and his court could make
suitable preparations to receive their captive in
proper state. In the mean while more than two
hundred of his " grim courtiers " came to gaze
at him, as if he had been a monster. Pow
hatan, who was at that time about sixty years
old, is described as having been, in outward ap
pearance, " every inch a king." His figure was
noble, his stature majestic, and his countenance
full of the severity and haughtiness of a ruler,
whose will was supreme and whose nod waf

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 65

law. He received Captain Smith with imposing,
though rude ceremony. He was seated on a
kind of throne, elevated above the floor of a
large hut, in the midst of which was a fire.
He was clothed with a robe of racoon skins.
Two young women, his daughters, sat one on
his right and the other on his left ; and on each
side of the hut there were two rows of men
in front, and the same number of women be
hind. These all had their heads and shoulders
painted red. Many had their hair ornamented
with the white down of birds. Some had chains
of white beads around their necks, and all had
more or less of ornament. When Smith was
brought home, they all set up a great shout.

Soon after his entrance, a female of rank was
directed to bring him water to wash his hands,
and another brought a bunch of feathers instead
of a towel to dry them with. They then feast
ed him in the best manner they could, and held
a long and solemn consultation to determine his
fate. The decision was against him. Two
large stones were brought in and placed before
Powhatan, and Smith was dragged up to them
and his head was placed upon them, that his
brains might be beaten out with clubs. The
fatal weapons were already raised, and the stern
executioners looked for the signal, which should

bid them descend upon the victim's defenceless
iv. — 5

66 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

head. But the protecting shield of divine Prov
idence was over him, and the arm of violence
was arrested. Pocahontas, the King's favorite
daughter, — at that time a child of twelve or
thirteen years of age, — finding that her piteous
entreaties to save the life of Smith were una
vailing, rushed forward, clasped his head in her
arms, and laid her own upon it, determined either
to save his life, or share his fate. Her gener
ous and heroic conduct touched her father's
iron heart, and the life of the captive was spar
ed, to be employed in making hatchets for him
self, and bells and beads for his daughter.

The account of this beautiful and most touch
ing scene, familiar as it is to every one, can
hardly be read with unmoistened eyes. The in
cident is so dramatic and startling, that it seems
to preserve the freshness of novelty amidst a
thousand repetitions. We could almost as rea
sonably expect an angel to have come down
from heaven, and rescued the captive, as that
his deliverer should have sprung from the bosom
of Powhatan's family. The universal sympa
thies of mankind and the best feelings of the
human heart have redeemed this scene from
the obscurity which, in the progress of time,
gathers over all, but the most important events.
It has pointed a thousand morals and adorned a
thousand tales. Innumerable bosoms have throb-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 67

bed and are yet to throb with generous admi
ration for this daughter of a people, whom we
have been too ready to underrate. Had we
known nothing of her, but what is related of
her in this incident, she would deserve the eter
nal gratitude of the inhabitants of this country ;
for the fate of the colony may be said to have
hung upon the arms of Smith's executioners.
He was its life and soul, and, without the magic
influence of his personal qualities, it would have
abandoned, in despair, the project of permanent
ly settling the country, and sailed to England
by the first opportunity.

The generosity of Powhatan was not content
with merely sparing his prisoner's life. He de
tained him but two days longer. At the end
of that time, he conducted him to a large house
in the woods, and there left him alone upon a
mat by the fire. In a short time, from behind
another mat that divided the house, " was made
the most dolefullest noise he ever heard ; then
Powhatan, more like a devil than a man, with
some two hundred more, as black as himself,"
came in and told him, that they were now friends,
anil that he should return to Jamestown ; and
that, if he would send him two pieces of can
non and a grindstone, he would give him the
country of Capahowsic, and esteem him as his

68 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

own son. He was faithful to his word, and de
spatched him immediately, with twelve guides.
That night they quartered in the woods; and
during the whole journey Captain Smith ex
pected every moment to be put to death, not
withstanding Powhatan's fair words. But, as
the narrative of his adventures has it, " Almighty
God, by his divine Providence, had mollified
the hearts of those stern barbarians with com
passion." Smith reached Jamestown in safety,
after an absence of seven weeks, and treated
his savage guides with great hospitality and
kindness. He showed them two demi-culverins
and a millstone, which they proposed to carry
to Powhatan, but found them too heavy. He
ordered the culverins to be loaded with stones
and discharged among the boughs of a tree cov
ered with icicles, in order to magnify to them
the effects of these formidable engines. When
they heard the report, and saw the ice and the
branches come rattling down, they were greatly
terrified. A few trinkets restored their confidence,
and they were dismissed with a variety of pres
ents for Powhatan and his family.

The generous conduct of Powhatan, in re
storing a prisoner who had given such fatal
proofs of courage and prowess, is worthy of
the highest admiration. There is hardly any
thing in history, that can afford a parallel to

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 69

jt He was stimulated to take the prisoner's life,
not only by revenge, a passion strongest in sav
age breasts, but by policy and that regard to
his own interests, which Christian and civilized
monarchs are justified in observing. He seems
to have acted from some religious feeling, re
garding Smith, either as a supernatural being,
or as under the special protection of a higher
power. How far this may have actuated him,
or how far he may have been influenced by af
fection for his daughter, it is impossible to say ;
but, supposing both to have operated, we only
elevate his conduct by elevating his motives.
He must have been a noble being indeed, in
whom religion or domestic affection could over
come the strong impulses of passion, revenge, and
interest.

CHAPTER VI.

Arrival of Newport from England. — His Visit
to Powhatan. — His Return.

SMITH'S absence from Jamestown seems to
have been always attended with evil consequences
to the colony. The moment his back was turned,
the unruly spirits, whom he alone could curb,

70 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

broke out into disaffection and mutiny. He found
" all in combustion " on his return. The col
ony was split into two factions, the stronger of
which was preparing to quit the country in the
bark. Captain Smith, at the hazard of his life,
defeated this project, bringing his cannon to bear
upon the bark, and threatening to sink her if
they did not stay. In revenge for this, a con
spiracy was formed by several, and among them
the President, to put him to death, for the lives
of Robinson and Emry, whom they said, he had
led to their death, and he was consequently
guilty of their murder. Such cobweb meshes
as these could not hold a man like Smith ; for
" he quickly took such order with such lawyers,
that he laid them by the heels, till he sent some
of them prisoners to England." His relation of
the plenty he had witnessed in the Indian territo
ry, and of the power and liberality of Powhatan,
cheered their drooping spirits, which were re
vived and sustained by the kindness of Poca-
hontas ; whose deliverance of Smith was not a
transient impulse, but consistent with her whole
character, and who, with her attendants, every
four or five days brought them abundance of
provisions, thereby saving the lives of many that
must otherwise have perished with hunger. The
savages also came in great numbers, bringing
presents continually to Captain Smith, and offer-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 71

mg commodities for sale, at the prices which ha
himself set. His influence over them was un
bounded, and they were ready, at his nod, to do
any thing he required. They knew that he wor
shipped one supreme God, the Creator and Pre
server of all things, whom they would call, in
conversation, the God of Captain Smith.

This high opinion was much confirmed by the
arrival of Captain Newport, at the time at which
Smith had predicted to them it would happen,
being in the latter part of the year 1607. Two
ships had sailed from England, one commanded
by Newport, and the other by Captain Nelson,
the latter of which was dismasted on the coast
of America, and blown off to the West Indies.
Newport brought with him a reinforcement of
men and provisions, and all things necessary.
His arrival was a source of great joy to the
colonists, but was in the end productive of some
embarrassments. The President and council
(Ratcliffe and Martin, Smith himself being the
third), who had been always jealous of Smith's
nfluence over the natives, endeavored to raise
iheir credit and authority over them higher than
his, by giving them four times as much for their
goods as he had appointed. To gratify the mar-
jiers also, they gave them liberty to trade as
much as they pleased ; and the consequence was
in a short time that the market was so glutted,

72 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

that a pound of copper could not procure what
was formerly obtained for an ounce, the laws of
political economy operating, before the science
was heard of. Their trade was also injured by-
Captain Newport, who lavished his presents with
the profuseness of a true sailor. They served,
however, to impress Powhatan with a high idea
of Newport's greatness, and made him very de
sirous of seeing him.

Accordingly the bark was prepared for a visit
to Powhatan. Captain Newport was attended
by Smith and Mr. Matthew Scrivener, a gentle
man of sense and discretion, who had come over
with Newport, and been admitted a member of
the council, and by a guard of thirty or forty men.
When they came to Werowocomoco, Newport
began to entertain suspicions of treachery. They
were obliged to cross many creeks and streams on
bridges loosely made of poles and bark, and so
frail that he imagined them to be traps set by
the Indians. But Smith assured him there was
nothing to fear, and with twenty men, leaving the
bark, undertook to go forward and accomplish the
journey alone. He went on, and was met by
two or three hundred Indians, who conducted
him and his companions into the town. He was
received with shouts of welcome on all sides.
Powhatan exerted himself to the utmost to set
before him the most sumptuous and plentiful ban-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 73

quet he could provide. Four or five hundred
men attended as a guard, and proclamation was
made, that no one should do any harm to the
English on pain of death.

The next day Newport came on shore, and
was likewise warmly and hospitably received.
An English boy, named Thomas Savage, wag
given by him to Powhatan, and he received in
exchange, an intelligent and faithful Indian, nam
ed Namontack. Three or four days they spent
in feasting, dancing, and trading, during which
time the old chief behaved with such dignity, dis
cretion, and propriety, as impressed his English
visitors with the highest opinion of his natural ca
pacity. His shrewdness in driving a bargain was
displayed in a manner, which, but for Smith's
superior tact, would have resulted in the great
pecuniary loss of the English.

He would not condescend to haggle and bartei
for specific articles, as his subjects did, and told
Captain Newport that it was not agreeable to his
greatness " to trade for trifles in this peddling
manner," and that, as they were both great and
powerful men, their mutual transactions ought to
be conducted on a scale of proportionate magni
tude. He proposed to him, that Newport should
lay down his commodities in a lump, and that he
should select from them what he wanted, and
give in return what he considered an equivalent

74 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

The proposal was interpreted to Newport by
Smith, who, at the same time, told him that all
these fine words meant merely that Powhatan in
tended to cheat him if he could, and warned him
not to accept his terms. Newport, however, who
was a vain, ostentatious man, expecting to dazzle
the chief with his greatness, or charm him with
his liberality, accepted them, in the hope of hav
ing any request, he might make, readily granted.
The result proved that Smith was right ; for Pow
hatan, in selecting the articles that he wished and
giving others in return, valued his corn at such a
rate, that, as the writer of the narrative says, it
might have been bought cheaper in old Spain,
for they hardly received four bushels where they
counted upon twenty hogsheads.

Smith was much provoked at Newport's being
so palpably overreached ; but, dissembling his cha
grin so as to avoid suspicion, he determined to
obtain an equivalent advantage over the wily sav
age. He took out, as if accidentally, a variety of
toys and gewgaws, and contrived to let Powhatan
observe some blue beads. His eyes sparkled with
pleasure at the sight, and he eagerly desired to
obtain them. Smith, however, was reluctant to
part with them, they being, as he said, composed
of a very rare substance, of the color of the skies,
and fit to be worn only by the greatest kings in the
world. Powhatan's ardor was inflamed by oppo*

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 75

sition, and he resolved to have the precious jewels
at any price. A bargain was finally struck to the
satisfaction of all parties, by which Smith ex
changed a pound or two of blue beads for two or
three hundred bushels of corn. A similar negoti
ation was entered into with Opechancanough at
Pamunkey. These blue beads were held in such
estimation among the Indians, that none but their
principal chiefs and the members of their families
were allowed to wear them.

They returned with their treasures to James
town, where, shortly after, a fire broke out, which
burnt several of their houses (they being thatch
ed with reeds, which rendered them very com
bustible), and occasioned them a considerable loss
in arms, bedding, wearing-apparel, and provision.
Among the principal sufferers, was their good
clergyman, Mr. Hunt, who lost all he had, in
cluding his books, which must have been a most
severe affliction to a scholar in that lone wilder
ness. Yet we are told, that no one ever heard
him repine on account of his loss. Notwithstand
ing this misfortune, their remaining stock of oat
meal, meal, and corn would have been sufficient
for their wants, had not the ship loitered in the
country fourteen weeks, when she might have
sailed in fourteen days, and thereby greatly in
creased the number of mouths to be fed. They
were also obliged, on the departure of the ship,

70 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

to furnish to the crew abundant provisions with
out any equivalent, as they had neither money
goods, nor credit. All this was to be done cheei
fully, that the report of it might induce others
to c ome, and gain " golden opinions " for them
from the council at home. " Such," says Stith,
" was their necessity and misfortune, to be under
the lash of those vile commanders, and to buy
their own provisions at fifteen times their value ;
suffering them to feast at their charge, whilst
themselves were obliged to fast, and yet dare
not repine, lest they should incur the censure of
being factious and seditious persons." Their stock
of provisions was so contracted by these means
and by their unlucky fire, that they were reduced
to great extremity. The loss of their houses
exposed many, with very imperfect shelter, to
the severity of a most bitter winter; and not a
few died before spring, from the combined ef
fects of cold and hunger.

The delay of Newport's ship was occasioned
oy one of those gold-fevers which break out so
frequently among men, to the great prejudice
of their reason and common sense. As it is
well known, the most extravagant notions were
entertained in Europe of the riches of the New
World ; and it is not going too far to say, that
it was thought impossible to thrust a shovel into
American soil, without bringing up a lump of

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 77

gold. As a proof that Virginia formed no excep
tion to this general rule, among those who left
England with Captains Newport and Nelson, were
two goldsmiths, two refiners, and one jeweller;
artificers, one would think, in very little demand
in a new colony, where most men would, like
/Esop's cock, prefer a grain of barley to the most
precious gem in the world.*

* There appears to have been a great want of judg
ment shown in the selection of the colonists. Of
eighty-two persons, whose names are preserved, that
first came over to Jamestown, forty-eight were desig
nated gentlemen, four were carpenters, twelve were
laborers, and the others boys and mechanics. Of
seventy- four names of those who came out with Newport
and Nelson (one hundred and twenty in all), thirty-
two were gentlemen, twenty-three were laborers, six
were tailors, and two apothecaries. These " gentlemen "
were probably dissolute, broken-down adventurers, bank
rupts in character as well as fortune, needy and ex
travagant younger sons of good families, whom their
friends were happy to be quit of on any terms ; in
capable alike of industry and subordination, indolent,
mutinous, and reckless. These are the men, who so
constantly tried the patience of Smith, a saving grace,
which, as the reader may have perceived, he had not
in great abundance ; and who provoked him to write
in the following terms ; " Being for the most part of
such tender educations and small experience in mar
tial accidents, because they found not English cities,
nor such fair houses, nor at their own wishes any of
Uieir accustomed dainties, with feather beds and down

78 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

In a small rivulet near Jamestown was found
a glittering, yellowish sand, (its lustre probably
derived from particles of mica,) which their
excitable imaginations immediately believed to
be gold This became the all-absorbing topic
of thought and discourse, and " there was no
talk, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash
gold, refine gold, load gold." The unskilful
refiners, whom Newport had brought over with
him, pronounced this shining sand to be very
valuable ore, forgetting that " all that glisters
is not gold." This, of course, carried the
frenzy to its height, and, confirmed by the testi
mony of men of supposed skill and experience,
every one indulged in the most magnificent

pillows, taverns and ale-houses in every breathing-
place, neither such plenty of gold and silver and dis
solute liberty, as they expected, they had little or no
care of any thing, but to pamper their bellies, to fly
away with our pinnaces, or procure their means to re
turn for England. For the country was to them a mise
ry, a ruin, a death, a hell, and their reports here and
their actions there according." Another writer, describ
ing the character of the colonists at the time of Smith's
departure for England, observes, after enumerating1 a few
useful mechanics, " All the rest were poor gentlemen,
tradesmen, serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten
times more fit to spoil a commonwealth, than either
begin one, or but help to maintain one." — Smith's Vir*
(Richmond Edition,) Vol. I. p. 241.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 79

visions of wealth and aggrandizement. Nothing
would content Newport, but the freighting of his
ship with this worthless trash, to the great mor
tification and chagrin of Captain Smith, who
was no believer in golden dreams, and fore
saw the evil consequences of neglecting duties
of the most important nature, to chase phantoms
and bubbles. The writer of this portion of the
History of the colony says, " never did any
thing more torment him, than to see all neces
sary business neglected, to fraught such a drunk
en ship with so much gilded dirt." Wingfield
and Captain Archer returned with Newport
to England, which afforded to Smith a slight
balm of consolation for his troubles and vexa
tions.

As soon as the spring opened, Smith and
Scrivener (who had been admitted a member
of the council) set themselves diligently to work
to rebuild Jamestown, to repair the church, store
house, and fortifications, and to cut down trees
and plant corn for the ensuing season. While
they were thus occupied, Captain Nelson arrived
in the Phoenix, from the West Indies, where he
had remained during the winter. He was receiv
ed with great joy, as he had long been given up
for lost. He brought an ample stock of provis
ions, enough to relieve the colony from all appre
hensions Df want for the next half-year. Hij

80 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

generous and manly conduct endeared him to the
settlers, and his presence seemed to diffuse a gen
eral activity and spirit of enterprise among them.
Even the President was roused from his usual
sluggishness and imbecility ; for, says the writer of
this portion of the History, " to re-lade this ship
with some good tidings, the President (not holding
it stood with the dignity of his place to leave the
fort) gave order to Captain Smith to discover and
search the commodities of the Monacans' coun
try beyond the Falls." Sixty men were allotted
to him for this expedition, which he was prevent
ed from undertaking, by troubles near at hand.

At Captain Newport's departure, Powhatan,
who perceived the superiority of the English
weapons over the rude ones of his own people,
made him a present of twenty turkeys, as a to
ken of his regard, desiring him to send in return
twenty swords, which request was inconsiderately
granted. He afterwards made a similar present to
Captain Smith, expecting a like return ; but, find
ing himself disappointed, he ordered his people
to hover round Jamestown, and take possession
of the Englishmen's weapons, whenever they had
an opportunity, either by stratagem or force.
These orders were faithfully executed, and were
productive of great annoyance and inconvenience
to the colonists. No notice was taken of their
depredations for a time, because they had stiici

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 81

orders from England to keep on the best possible
terms with Powhatan and his people. " This
cnaritable humor prevailed till well it chanced
they meddled with Captain Smith," who then
took the matter into his own hands, and acted with
such promptness and energy, punishing so se
verely the offenders whom he detected, that Pow-
hatau found he was playing a losing game ; so
" he sent his messengers and his dearest daugh
ter Pocahontas with presents, to excuse him of
the injuries done by some rash untoward captains,
his subjects, desiring their liberties for this time,
with the assurance of his love for ever." *
Smith dismissed his prisoners, after giving them
" what correction he saw fit," pretending to be
thus merciful only for the sake of Pocahontas.
His conduct was too resolute and spirited to meet
the approbation of his colleagues in the council ;
though it had struck such terror into the Indians,
and that too without any bloodshed, that they no
longer molested the colonists, whereas before they
" had sometime peace and war twice in a day,
and very seldom a week but they had some
treacherous villany or other."

The Phoenix was sent home in June, 1608,

*How consistent is tyranny! Powhatan's disavowal
of his express orders is worthv of King John or Louii
the Eleventh.
IT. — 6

82 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

with a load of cedar, by Captain Smith's in
fluence ; though Martin was very anxious that
she also should be loaded with golden sand. He
was " willingly admitted " to return with her to
England, being a sickly and inefficient man, and
having his head so full oi golden dreams, as to
make him useless, whatever might have been his
natural capacity.

CHAPTER VII.

Captain Smith explores the Chesapeake in two
Expeditions. — He is chosen President of the
Colony.

THE enterprising character of Captain Smith
prompted him to an arduous undertaking, namely,
the examination and survey of Chesapeake Bay,
to ascertain more completely the resources of the
country and to open a friendly communication
with its native inhabitants. He set out in an open
barge of about three tons' burden, accompanied
by Dr. Russell and thirteen others. They left
Jamestown on the 2d of June, 1608, in company
with the Phoenix, and parted with her at Cape
Henry. They then crossed the bay to the east
ern shore and fell in with a cluster of islands

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 83

of Cape Charles, to which they gave the
name of Smith's Isles, in honor of their command
er, an appellation still retained.

They were directed by two Indians, whom they
saw, to Accomac, the habitation of their chief,
situated in the southwestern part of Northampton
County. He received them with kindness, and
is spoken of by them as the most affable and
good-looking savage they had ever seen. He
spoke the language of Powhatan, and told them
that his people had been afflicted with a heavy
pestilence, which had carried them almost all ofL
They then coasted along the eastern shore of
the bay, searching every inlet that seemed proper
for habitations or harbors, and landing frequent
ly, sometimes upon the main land, sometimes
upon the islands, which they called RusselFs
Islands, since called Tangier Islands. They dis
covered and sailed up the river Pocomoke in
search of fresh water, for want of which they
suffered a good deal, that which they obtained
being very muddy.

Leaving this river, they directed their course
to certain other islands, and when they were
among them, their sail and mast were blown
overboard by a sudden squall, and for two days
the weather was so stormy, that they had great
difficulty in keeping their boat from sinking.
They named these islands Limbo, in

84 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

ration of their toils and sufferings, a name which
has since been changed to Watts's Islands.

Departing from these islands, they came to
the River Wicomico, on the Eastern Shore of
Maryland, where the natives were at first dispos
ed to resist them, but were conciliated and made
friendly by some toys left in their huts, after
they had been a little frightened by discharges
of fire-arms. These Indians were the wealthi
est and most given to commerce and manufac
tures of any they had ever seen. Finding the
eastern coast lined with low, irregular islands,
and for the most part without fresh water, they
directed their course westward to the mouth of
Patuxent River. They sailed thirty leagues fur
ther to the north without finding any inhabitants,
the coast being well watered but mountainous
and barren, except the valleys, which were fer
tile, well wooded, and abounding in wolves,
bears, deer, and other animals. They passed
by many coves and small streams, and came to
a large river, which they named Bolus, and
which was probably that now called Patapsco.
At this place, discontent broke out among Smith's
crew, who were most of them unaccustomed to a
life of such toil and hardship. They had spent
twelve or fourteen days in an open boat, toiling
at the oar, and their bread was damaged with
the rain ; yet, as we are told, " so good were

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 85

their stomachs that they could digest it." Cap
tain Smith addressed them in terms of mingled
authority and persuasiveness ; told them how dis
graceful it would be for them to return, while
they had such abundance of provision, and be
fore they had accomplished any thing of impor
tance ; and assured them of his readiness to share
every danger and labor, and to take the worst
upon himself whenever there was any choice.
Their reluctance to proceed any further was much
increased by adverse weather, and, three or four
of them falling sick, their piteous entreaties in
duced Captain Smith to return.

On the 16th of June they fell in with the
mouth of the Potomac. The sight of this majes
tic river revived> their drooping spirits, and, their
invalids having recovered, they readily consented
to explore it. For thirty miles, they found no
inhabitants, but were afterwards conducted by two
of the natives up a little creek, where they found
themselves surrounded by three or four thousand
Indians, lying in ambuscade, " so strangely paint
ed, grimed, and disguised, shouting, yelling, and
crying, as so many spirits from hell could not
have showed more terrible." Their demeanor
was very menacing ; but Smith prepared to re
ceive them with great coolness, and, command
ing the muskets to be discharged, the grazing of
the bullets upon the water, and the report, which

"86 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

the woods multiplied into a thousand echoes,
filled them with alarm. They threw down their
arms, and made professions of peace, which was
ratified by an exchange of hostages. They now
treated the English with great kindness, and frank
ly told them that they had been commanded to
lie in wait for them, and cut them off, by Pow-
hatan, who had been informed of the expedition,
and incited to take this step, by some discon
tented spirits at Jamestown, because Captain
Smith obliged them to stay in the country against
their will. This fact alone will give the reader
some notion of the infamy and worthlessness of
some of the colonists.

They were conducted by Japazaws, the chief
of the Indians in that part, to a mine, of which
they had heard a good deal, upon one of the
tributary streams of the Potomac. It produced
a substance like antimony, which the Indians,
after having washed it and put it up in bags, used
to paint themselves and their idols with It
made "them look like Blackamoors dusted over
with silver." Newport had carried some of these
bags to England, and reported that the substance
they contained was half silver. They reached
the mine, and brought back as much of its pro
duct as they could carry, which proved in the
end to be of no value. No mineral treasures
at all were found, but they collected some furs.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 87

The Indians whom they met, generously sup
plied them with the flesh of animals. They
frequently found the waters alive with innumer
able fish, and not having any net, as their bark
was sailing among them, they attempted to catch
them with a frying-pan, " but," the narrative
gravely adds, " we found it a bad instrument to
catch fish with."

They explored the Potomac as far as their
bark would go, and then returned. Though they
frequently were exposed to danger from the open
or treacherous assaults of the savages, Captain
Smith's resolute conduct always averted it. He
invariably met them with great boldness ; and, if
they were desirous of peace, he would demand
their weapons and some of their children, as sure
ties for their good faith, and by their refusal or
compliance he learned in what light to consider
them and what measures to take with them.

Desiring before his return to visit the Indians
whom he had known in his captivity, he enter
ed the mouth of the river Rappahannoc, where,
at low tide, their boat ran aground. While they
were waiting for the flood, they occupied them
selves in sticking with the points of their swords
the fishes, which were left upon the flats in
such numbers, that they took in this way more
in an hour than they could eat in a day. Cap
tain Smith, in taking fiom the point of his sword

88 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

a stingray, (which is described in the narrative
as " being much in the fashion of a thornback,"
but with " a long tail like a riding-rod, whereon
the midst is a most poisoned sting, of two or
three inches long, bearded like a saw on each
side,") was wounded by its sharp thorn, to the
depth of an inch and a half, in the wrist. The
wound, though it drew no blood, became ex
tremely painful ; and in a few hours his arm and
shoulder were so much swollen, that his com
panions concluded his death was at hand, and
were so confident of it, that with heavy hearts
they dug his grave in an island hard by. But
by the timely application of a " precious oil " by
Dr. Russell, after the wound had been probed,
he recovered from the ill effects of it so quickly,
that he was able to take his revenge upon the
fish by eating a piece of it for his supper. The
place, where this accident occurred, was named
in consequence of it Stingray Point, as it is still
called.

They returned to Jamestown on the 21st
of July. By way of frolic, they disguised their
boat with painted streamers in such a way, that
they were mistaken by the colonists for a Spanish
frigate, to their no small consternation. Smith
found that his absence had been attended with
its usual ill consequences. All those who had
lately come over were sick ; and the whole com

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 89

pany were spiritless, discontented, and full of in
dignation against their selfish and inefficient Pres
ident ; who, instead of actively mingling in the
interests of the colonists, and sharing their toils
and privations, had been living in abundance up
on the public stores, and was building for him
self a pleasant retreat in the woods, where his
ear might not be pained by murmurs and com
plaints.

They were somewhat comforted by the ac
counts of the expedition, and (what now cannot
be read without a smile) by " the good hope we
had by the savages' relation, that our bay had
stretched into the South Sea or somewhat near
it." They would not hear, however, of Rat-
cliffe's continuing in the office of President, but
insisted upon his being deposed, which was ac
cordingly done, and Smith chosen in his place ;
by which he was invested with the title and
badges of a station, the substantial authority of
which he had long enjoyed. Being about to de
part upon another expedition, he appointed Mr.
Scrivener, his deputy, who at that time was sick
with a fever. This deputy distributed impartially
the public s:ores which Ratcliffe had engrossed,
and made such arrangements as would enable the
colonists to interrupt their labors during the ex
treme heat of the summer, and thus recruit their
wasted strength.

90 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHF.

Captain Smith remained at home but three
days, and on the 24th of July set out on anoth
er exploring expedition accompanied by twelve
men. They were detained two or three days
at Kecoughtan (Hampton) by contrary winds,
where they were hospitably entertained by the
Indians. At night they discharged a few rockets
into the air, which greatly alarmed their simple
hosts. The first night of their voyage they an
chored at Stingray Point, and the next day, cross
ing the Potomac at its mouth, they hastened
on to the river Bolus (Patapsco). They pro
ceeded onwards to the head of the bay, which
ended in four streams, all of which they explor
ed as far as their boat would carry them. Two
of them they found with inhabitants on their
banks, namely the Susquesahanoc (Susquehanna)
and Tockwogh, since called Sassafras. In cross
ing the bay they met seven or eight canoes full
of Massawomecs. These were a great and pow
erful nation dwelling far to the north, of whom
Captain Smith had heard a great deal among
Powhatan's people. They were a great terror
to the tribes living on the Chesapeake Bay, with
whom they were almost constantly at war. *

* The Massawomecs are supposed to have been the
great Northern Confederacy, called by the French the
Iroquois, and by the English, The Five Nations, and

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 91

They prepared at first to assault the English,
which might have been attended with fatal con
sequences to the whole company, as they had
but six men who could stand upon their feet,
the rest being disabled by sickness. By putting
upon sticks the hats of the sick and stationing
between every two sticks a man with two mus
kets, they contrived to multiply their apparent
strength, so that the Indians paddled swiftly tc
the shore. They were followed, and with some
difficulty persuaded to go on board the barge,
where presents were interchanged. By signs
they intimated that they were at war with the
Indians duelling on the river Tockwogh ; and
the fresh and bleeding wounds upon some of
them showed that there had been a recent bat
tle.

The next day, on entering the river Tock
wogh, they were surrounded with a fleet of canoes
filled with armed men. On seeing the weapons
of the Massawomecs in the hands of the Eng
lish, (which they had received as presents, but
which, sacrificing truth to policy, they gave the
Indians to understand had been taken in battle,)

afterwards, The Six Nations , whose seat was in the
State of New York, but whose conquests were extend
ed so far, that they have been called the Romans of
America. — Slith, p. 67 ; Encyclopedia Americana, Art
Iroquois.

92 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

they led them in triumph to their village and en
tertained them hospitably. They saw among
this people hatchets, knives, and pieces of iron
and brass, which, they said, were obtained from
the Susquesahanocs, a mighty nation, who dwelt
upon the river of the same name, two days'
journey above the Falls, and who were mortal
enemies of the Massawomecs. Captain Smith
prevailed upon them to send an embassy to this
people inviting them to come and see him ; which
was accordingly done, and, in three or four days,
sixty of them came down with presents of various
kinds.

Captain Smith has spoken of these Susquesa
hanocs in terms which would lead one to sup
pose that he borrowed more from imagination
than memory in his description, and that his ro
mantic fancy and ardent temperament made him,
perhaps unconsciously, exaggerate the sober truth.
He speaks of them as a race of giants, " and,
for their language, it may well beseem their
proportions, sounding from them as a voice in
a vault." Their clothing was the skins of bears
and wolves, with the paws, the ears, and the head
disposed in such a way, as to make it at once
more picturesque and terrible. " One had the
head of a wolf hanging in a chain for a jewel, his
tobacco-pipe three quarters of a yard long, pret
tily carved with a bird, a deer, or some such de

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 93

vice at the great end, sufficient to beat out one's
brains ; with bows, arrows, and clubs, suitable to
their greatness." To those who have since seen
this gigantic people, with the unassisted eye of
reason, they have dwindled to the common pro
portions of mankind.

Their tribe was a numerous one, mustering six
hundred fighting men. They dwelt in palisadoed
towns to defend themselves against the Massa-
womecs, their deadly foes. In their manners
they were mild and simple, and knew nothing
of Powhatan or his people except by name.
They informed the English, that their hatchets
and other commodities came from the French
in Canada. They looked upon the English as
beings of an order superior to men, and for Cap
tain Smith their veneration was unbounded. An
incident is related by the narrator of the progress
of this expedition, which shows at once the piety
of Captain Smith, and that natural instinct of re
ligion which dwells alike in the breast of the hea
then and the Christian, the savage and the civil
ized man. " Our order was daily to have prayer
with a psalm, at which solemnities the poor sav
ages much wondered ; our prayers being done, a
while they were busied with a consultation till
they had contrived their business. Then they
began in a most passionate manner to hold up
their hands to the sun, with a most fearful --ong

94 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

then embracing our Captain, they began to adort
him in like manner ; though he rebuked them
jet they proceeded till their song was finished.'
They afterwards invested him with the office oi
a chief, loaded him with presents, and invited hin.
to come and aid them against the Massawomecs.

Leaving these kind and friendly strangers, they
returned down the bay, to the Rappahannoc, ex
ploring every inlet and river of any consequence,
and giving to the various capes and headlands the
names of members of the company or of then
friends. At the extreme points to which they
explored the several rivers, they cut crosses in
the bark of trees, and in some places bored holes
in them, wherein they deposited notes, and, in-
some cases, brazen crosses, to signify that the
English had been there.

In passing up the river Rappahannoc, they
were kindly entertained by a tribe of Indiana
called the Moraughtacunds. They met there an
Indian named Mosco, who is styled an " old
friend," though we hear of him now for the first
time. They had probably seen him on their for
mer expedition. They supposed him to be the son
of some Frenchman, because, unlike every other
Indian whom they had seen, he had a bushy black
beard. He was not a little proud of this distinc
tion, and called the Englishmen " his country
men." He devoted himself to them with grea"

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 95

assiduity and uniform kindness. He advised them
not to visit the Rappahannocs, who lived high
er up the river, as they would endeavor to kill
them for being the friends of the Moraughta
cunds, who had lately stolen three of their chiefs
women.

Captain Smith, thinking that this was merely
an artifice to secure a profitable trade to his own
friends, disregarded his counsels ; but the event
proved that he was right. Under pretence of
trade, the English were decoyed by them into a
creek, where an ambuscade was prepared for
them. A skirmish took place in which the Rap
pahannocs had many killed and wounded, but
none of the English were hurt. They took three
or four canoes, which they presented to Mosco in
requital of his kindness.

Before proceeding any further, they employed
themselves in surrounding their boat with a sort
of bulwark, made of the targets, which they had
received from the Massawomecs, and which they
had found a great protection against the arrows
of the Rappahannocs. They were made of small
twigs, woven together with strings of wild hemp
and silk-grass, so firmly and compactly as to make
therr. perfectly arrow-proof. Their virtue was
soon r-ut to the test ; for on the next day they re
ceived a volley, while they were in a narrow part
of the river, from thirty or forty Rappahannocs,

96 AMERICAN BIOGHAPH1T.

who "had so accommodated themselves with
oranches," that they were mistaken for bushes
growing along the shore. Their arrows, how
ever, striking against the targets, fell harmless
into the river.

They were kindly treated by the rest of the
nations as far as the Falls. While they were up
on the river, they lost one of their number, Mr.
Richard Fetherstone, by death. He had borne an
unexceptionable character from the first, behaving
himself " honestly, valiantly, and industriously."
His remains were buried, with appropriate honors,
on the shore of a small bay, which they called
by his name. The other members of the expe
dition, who had almost all of them been more or
less sick, had now recovered their health.

Having sailed up the Rappahannoc as far as
their bark would carry them, they set up crosses
and carved their names upon the bark of trees,
as usual. While they were rambling about the
Falls, they were suddenly attacked by about a
hundred Indians, who, in their irregular mode of
warfare, kept darting about from tree to tree,
continually discharging arrows, but with no effect-
In about half an hour they retreated as sudden
ly as they approached. As the English returned
from pursuing them they found one of their num-
oer lying upon the ground, having been wounded
in the knee with a bullet. Mosco, who had be
haved with great courage in the skirmish, showed.,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 97

at the sight of him, the unrelenting cruelty of his
race ; for, says the narrative, with more force than
elegance, " never was dog more furious against
a bear, than Mosco was to have beat out his
brains." But he was rescued from this violence ;
and, his wounds having been dressed by the sur
geon, he was in an hour so far recovered as to be
able to eat and speak. By the aid of Mosco, they
learned from him that he was the brother of the
chief of the tribe of Hassininga, one of the four
which made up the nation of the Mannahocs.
When asked why his people attacked the Eng
lish, who came to them with both the intentions
and the appearance of friends, he said, that they
had heard that the English were a nation come
from under the world to take their world from
them. Being further asked how many worlds
he knew, he answered, that he knew of none
but that which was under the sky that covered
him, whose sole inhabitants were, besides his
own nation, the Powhatans, the Monacans, and
the Massawomecs. To the inquiry, what there
was beyond the mountains, he replied, the sun.
They made him many presents and persuaded
him to accompany them.

At night they set sail and proceeded down the
river. They were presently followed by the
Mannahocs on the banks, who kept discharging
arrows at the boat and yelling and shrieking sc

iv.— 7

98 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

loud, as to render it impossible foi their coun
tryman in the boat, whose name was Amorolec,
to make his voice audible to them. But in the
calm of the morning they anchored in a quiet
and broad bay, and their captive was able to
address his countrymen and inform them, how
kindly the English had treated him ; that he had
been promised his liberty if they would be friend
ly ; and that as to injuring the strangers at all
with their inferior weapons, it was quite out of the
question. Encouraged by these statements, they
hung their bows and arrows upon the trees, and
two of them, without suspicion, swam to the bark,
bringing the one a bow and the other a quiver of
arrows, which they presented to Captain Smith in
token of submission. He received them very
kindly, and told them that, if the chiefs of their
four tribes would submit to him, that the great
King, whose subject he was, would be their
friend. This was immediately assented to ; and,
on going ashore on a low, jutting point of land,
the four chiefs came and received their coun
tryman, Amorolec. They wondered at every
thing belonging to the English, and mistook their
pistols for pipes. After giving and receiving
many presents, the English took their departure,
leaving four or five hundred Indians singing, danc-
,'ng, and making merry.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 99

On their return, they visited their friends the
Moraughtacunds, who were desirous that Captain
Smith should make peace with the Rappahan-
nocs, as he had done with the Mannahocs. This
pacific counsel, so foreign to the Indian charac
ter, was probably given, that they themselves
might be more secure, as they were generally
understood to be the friends and allies of the
English. Captain Smith told them that he was
ready to make peace, but that, as the Rappahan-
noes had twice assaulted him without any prov
ocation, and when he came with the most friendly
intentions, he should exact certain conditions from
them. These were, that they should present him
with the bow and arrows of their chief, in token
of submission, that they should never come armed
into his presence, that they should make peace
with the Moraughtacunds and give up their chiefs
son, to be a hostage and a security for the per
formance of the stipulated terms.

A message was sent to the chief of the Rap-
pahannocs, who accepted all the conditions ex
cept the last, saying that he had but one son and
could not live without him, a strong instance of
affection, in one of a race, which has generally
been supposed to be peculiarly devoid of the
finer sensibilities of the heart. He offered, in
stead of his son, to give up the three women
whom the Moraughtacunds had stolen from him.

100 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

which proposition was accepted. The womer
being brought before Captain Smith, he presented
each of them with a chain of beads. He then
permitted the chief of the Rappahannocs tc
choose, from the three, the one whom he prefer
red ; to the chief of the Moraughtacunds he gave
the next choice ; and the remaining woman he
gave to Mosco ; an arrangement which was satis
factory to all parties. The triple peace was con
cluded with great rejoicings of men, women, and
children, of whom no less than six or seven hun
dred were assembled. Mosco, to express his love
for the English, changed his name to Uttasan-
tough, which means stranger, the word by which
they were called.

On departing from the Rappahannoc, they ex
plored the Piankatank as far as it was naviga
ble, and steered for home. While they were in
the bay, a few miles south of York River, they
were surprised in the night with so violent a
storm of rain, attended with thunder and light
ning, that they gave themselves up for lost, but
were enabled finally to reach Point Comfort. As
they had discovered so many nations at a dis
tance, they thought it would be hardly consistent
for them to return home, without visiting their
neighbors, the Chesapeakes and Nansemonds, of
whom as yet they had only heard. Therefore
they set sail for the southern shore, and went up

CArTAIN JOHN SMITH. 101

a narrow river, then called the Chesapeake but
Since Elizabeth, on which Norfolk stands. They
sailed six or seven miles, but seeing no living
beings, though they observed signs of habitation
they returned. Having coasted along the shore
to the mouth of the Nansemond, they perceived
there six or seven Indians mending their weirs
for fishing, who fled at the sight of the English,
They went on shore and left some toys in the
place, where the Indians had been working, and
returned to their boat. They had not gone far,
before the Indians returned, and began to sing and
dance and call them back. One of them came
into the boat of his own accord, and invited them
to his house, which was a few miles up the river.
This invitation they accepted and sailed six or
seven miles, the other Indians accompanying
them, running OD the banks. Th^y.saw on the
western shore large corn-fields, and in the midst
of the river an island, AJPPJI \\l\\ck J,wa& situated
the house of the Indian'who was with "them, and
which was also thickly covered with corn. The
Indian treated them kindly, and showed them
his wife and children, to whom they made suita
ble presents. The other Indians invited them
further up the river to their houses, and accom
panied them for some distance in a canoe.

Some suspicious circumstances in their deport
ment led the English to apprehend that all was

102 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

not right, and to provide for the worst, especially
when they perceived that they were followed by
seven or eight canoes full of armed men. They
were not long left in suspense, for they were
suddenly attacked by two or three hundred men,
from each side of the river, who discharged ar
rows at them as fast as they could draw their
bows. Those in the canoes also shot at them ;
but they returned so galling a fire from their
muskets, that most of them leaped overboard, and
swam to the shore. The English soon fell down
the stream, till they reached a position, where the
arrows of the Indians could not touch them, but
which was within musket-shot of their foes, and
a few discharges made them retire behind the
trees. The English then seized upon their de
serted canoes, and moored them in the stream.
Though they .had received -mpre than a hundred
arrows in 'their targets, mid about the boat, no
one was htirX ./.They determined to punish the
treacherous Indians, by burning every thing upon
the island at night, and in the mean time began
to demolish their canoes. At the sight of this,
those on shore threw down their arms and sued
for peace ; which was granted on condition that
they would bring their chief's bow and arrows
and a chain of pearl, and four hundred baskets
of corn, otherwise their canoes should be destroy
ed and their houses burnt. These conditions they

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 103

assented to, and loaded the boat with corn as full
as it would hold, with which the English departed,
and arrived at Jamestown without any further ad
venture, on the 7th of September, 1608.

In these two expeditions Captain Smith was
absent a little over three months, excepting an
interval of three days which was spent at James
town ; and he had sailed, upon his own compu
tation, about three thousand miles. It was an
enterprise of great difficulty and considerable haz
ard, and its complete success is to be ascribed
to his remarkable personal qualities. His inter
course with the natives required the exercise of
the greatest firmness, address, and self-command ;
while, in the management of his own company,
authority and persuasive influence were to be min
gled with the nicest tact. He was obliged to
overawe the refractory, to encourage the sick and
drooping, to enliven the desponding, and to in
fuse his own adventurous and enterprising spirit
into the indolent and timid. He explored the
whole of the Chesapeake Bay, and of the coun
try lying upon its banks, and constructed a map
of it, which is very accurate, taking all circum
stances into consideration.

104: AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

CHAPTER VIII.

Second Arrival of Newport. — Abortive Expe
dition to explore the Interior. — Injudicious
Conduct of the Council in England. — Their
Letter to Captain Smith. — His Reply.

ON their arrival at Jamestown they found that
many had died during their absence and many
were still sick ; but that some, whom they had left
sick, Mr. Scrivener among the rest, were restored
to health. This gentleman had performed well
the duties of deputy-governor, and had provided
for the gathering and storing of the harvest.
RatclifTe, their late President, was a prisoner for
mutiny. On the 10th of September, Captain
Smith was formally inducted into the office of
President, and entered upon the administration of
its duties with his usual spirit and activity. The
church and store-house were repaired, and a new
building was erected for the supplies, which were
expected from England. The fort was put in
order, a watch duly set, and the whole company
was drilled in military exercises, every Saturday,
on a plain towards the west, where the Indians
would often gather round them in great numbers,
to witness the execution done by their bullets
upon the bark of a tree, which they used as a
target.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 105

As il was about the time of the Indian har
vest, an expedition set out under the command
of Lieutenant Percy to trade with the Indians ,
but, meeting Captain Newport in the bay, they
came back with him. He had brought over about
seventy individuals, some of whom were persons
of distinction, and two of whom, Captain Peter
Wynne, and Captain Richard Waldo, were ap
pointed members of the council. In this ship
there came the first Englishwomen, that ever were
in Virginia, Mrs. Forrest and her maid Anne
Burras. The company had also, with singular
want of judgment, sent out eight Germans to
make pitch, tar, glass, and potash, who would
have been welcomed to a populous and thriving
country, but who were useless incumbrances in an
infant colony, which was struggling for existence,
and all the energies of which were directed to
the procuring of daily bread.

The instructions which Captain Newport had
brought out with him, and the authority with
which he had been clothed, are a monument of
the folly of the council in England, in dictating
the measures and course of policy to be pursued
in a colony, three thousand miles distant, and of
whose interests and condition they showed them
selves so thoroughly ignorant. Stith, in his
homely fashion, says of Newport himself, that he
was " an empty, idle, interested man, very fearful

106 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

and suspicious in times of danger and difficulty,
but a very great and important person in his own
talk and conceit." He had a mean jealousy of
Captain Smith on account of his brilliant qualities
and the estimation in which he was held by the
colonists ; and his influence with the council and
company in England induced them to give him
such peculiar powers as would enable him at once
to gratify his own conceit, and, as he thought, to
vex and mortify his rival. He obtained from
them a special commission, by which he was au
thorized to act, in certain cases, independently of
the council, and in which three objects were laid
down as essential. He was not to return without
either discovering the South Sea, or bringing back
a lump of gold or some one of the lost company,
which had been sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh.*
It is difficult to believe that such preposterous
requisitions could have been made by men in
their senses ; but their madness was deliberate, as
its " method " will show. A barge had been
constructed and brought over, which was capable
of being taken to pieces and put together again< and

* This refers to a colony of one hundred persons, w.io
had been left on the island of Roanoke in North CaroA-
na, by Captain White, under the guidance and direction
of Sir Walter Raleigh, in 1587, and were never after
wards heard of, being probably ( ut off by the In
dians.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 107

in which they were to make a voyage to the head
of the river. It was then to be carried across
the mountains and launched upon the streams,
which were supposed to run westerly and flow
intc the South Sea. As they must pass through
Powhatan's territory, it was proper to make ex
traordinary exertions to secure his favor ; and for
this purpose a royal present was brought over
for him, consisting of a bason and ewer, a bed
and furniture, a chair of state, a suit of scarlet
clothes, a cloak, and a crown.

Newport soon opened his budget, and unfold
ed to the council his strange powers and wild
schemes. Captain Smith, whose strong good
sense and knowledge of the country enabled him
to perceive, at a glance, their impolicy and even
impracticability, opposed their execution most
strenuously. He said, that it \vas sheer madness
to employ the precious time of the colonists,
which ought to be fully occupied in providing
for the winter, in the visionary scheme of a search
for the South Sea, through an unknown country,
full of merciless enemies ; and that, worn out
with fatigue and sickness as they were, it would
be impossible for them to carry the boat over
the mountains. As to thd sumptuous presents
brought over for Powhatan, he was opposed to
their being presented, because he said that he
could always be sure of his good-will by a piece

108 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

of copper or a few beads, but that this " stately
kind of soliciting " would make him insolent and
contemptuous beyond all endurance. These ar
guments, convincing in themselves and strongly
recommended by the character and experience
of their supporter, were however overruled in
council principally by means of Newport's san
guine promises and assurances. He was ungen
erous enough to insinuate that Smith's opposition
to his expedition arose from a wish to monopolize
the glory of the discovery himself, and that the
only obstacle to its success would be the desire of
the Indians to take vengeance upon the English
for the cruelties which he had formerly inflicted
upon them.

This decision afforded to Captain Smith an
opportunity to show the real greatness and mag
nanimity of his character. Though he was Presi
dent, no sooner did he find the majority of the
council against him, than, without any further
opposition or sullen obstinacy, he lent his most
vigorous efforts to the prosecution of the plans
they had decided upon. To show how unfound
ed were Newport's charges of cruelty and how
little he himself had to fear from the Indians,
he volunteered to go with four others and invite
Powhatan to Jamestown to receive his presents.
He travelled by land twelve miles and crossed
York River in a canoe to Werowocomoco, where

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 109

he expected to find Powhatan. But he was
thirty miles distant, and was immediately sent for.
Pocahootas and her women did their utmost to
entertain their guests.

As they were seated around the fire, they
suddenly heard a hideous noise in the woods.
The English, supposing that they were betrayed,
seized upon two or three old men who sat near,
as hostages for their safety. But Pocahontas
came running up to them, and assured them that
no harm was intended to them, and that, if any
happened, she would willingly give up the lives
of herself and her women to atone for it. Her
assurances removed their suspicions, and enabled
them to attend to the pageant, which was pre
pared for their entertainment. Thirty young
women sallied from the woods, variously painted,
clothed only with a girdle of leaves, and orna
mented with sundry devices. The writer of the
narrative describes their dance, in the following
rather ungallant terms ; " These fiends with most
hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the
fees, cast themselves in a ring about the fire,
Dinging and dancing with most excellent ill va
riety, oft falling into their infernal passions, and
solemnly again to sing and dance ; having spent
near an hour in this mascarado, as they entered,
rn like manner they departed." This dance was

110 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

followed by a feast, at which the good Captain
was much annoyed by the officious caresses of
the abovementioned masquerading damsels. The
Englishmen were then conducted to their lodg
ings, with firebrands carried before them instead
of torches.

The next day Powhatan arrived, and Cap
tain Smith delivered to him his message, desir
ing him to come to Jamestown, to receive the
presents from the hands of his father, Captain
Newport, and concert with him plans for taking
revenge upon his enemies the Monacans. The
reply of the savage monarch is strikingly char
acteristic of his haughtiness, self-respect, and
knowledge of human nature. "If your King,"
said he, " have sent me presents, I also am a
King and this is my land ; 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 ; as for the Monacans, I
can revenge my own injuries; for any salt water
beyond the mountains, the relations you have
had from my people are false." At the same
time, he drew upon the ground a rude chart
of the countries of which he spoke. After
some complimentary discourses, Captain Smith
took leave of him, and carried his answer to
Jamestown.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. Ill

Whereupon the presents were sent round by
water, and Captains Smith and Newport went
across by land, with a guard of fifty armed men.
All having met at Werowocomoco, the next day
was appointed for Powhatan's coronation. Then
his presents were brought to him, and the bason,
ewer, bed, and furniture were set up. His scar
let cloak and suit were put on, but not until he
had been persuaded by Namontack (the Indian
youth whom he had formerly presented to New
port, and who had been to England with him),
that there was nothing dangerous in them. They
had great trouble in inducing him to kneel in
order to receive his crown. He understood
nothing of the "majesty or meaning" (as the
narrative has it) of a crown, nor of the ceremony
of bending the knee ; which obliged them to use
so many arguments and so much persuasion, that
their patience was entirely worn out. They
succeeded at last in making him stoop a little
by leaning hard upon his shoulders ; and, as
soon as the crown was put upon his head, a
volley was fired from the boats, at which he
started up in great affright, till he was informed
what it meant. What would this sylvan monarch
have said, if he had witnessed the cumbrous splen
dor of a modern coronation ?

By way of making a proper acknowledgment

112 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

of the honors which had been shown to him,
he generously presented Captain Newport with
his mantle and old shoes. He endeavored to
dissuade the English from their wild scheme
of exploring the inland country, and refused to
give them men or guides for that object, except
Namontack. After many civil speeches had
been exchanged, he gave Newport a heap of
ears of corn containing seven or eight bushels,
and about as much more was purchased in the
village, with which they returned to James
town.

Immediately after this, Captain Newport set
out upon his expedition of discovery, with a hun
dred and twenty chosen men, leaving Captain
Smith at Jamestown with eighty or ninety weak
and sickly ones, to load the ship. The enter
prise proved a total failure, and its history may
be told in a very few words. They proceeded in
their boat to the Falls of James River, and then
went by land about forty miles, through a fertile
and well-watered country. They discovered two
villages of the Monacans on the south side of the
river, the inhabitants of which used them neithei
well nor ill, but, by way of security, they took
one of their petty chiefs and led him bound in or
der to guide them. A journey of two days and a
half sufficed to cool their spirit of adventure and to

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.

weary their delicate limbs so much, that they
turned about and resumed their march homeward,
taking with them some quantity of a certain
earth, from which their refiner pretended to have
extracted silver. Th^y arrived at Jamestown
" half sick, all complaining, and tired with toil,
famine, and discontent ; " having gained nothing
but experience. Every thing had turned out
exactly as Captain Smith had foretold, which, of
course, sharpened the sting of disappointment.

Captain Smith, who would allow no man to
be idle, immediately set them all at work ; some
n making glass ; others tar, pitch, and potash.
These he left under the care of the council
at Jamestown, and he himself took thirty men
about five miles down the river, and employed
them in cutting timber and making clapboards.
Among these were several young gentlemen, who
had not been used to felling trees and sleeping on
the ground ; but, as there was something exciting
in the employment, and their President shared all
their toils and hardships, they soon became recon
ciled to their situation, " making it their delight to
hear the trees thunder as they fell." But the
axe frequently blistered their tender fingers, so
that " many times every third blow had a loud
oath to drown the echo." To correct this evil
habit, the President contrived an ingenious and
effectual remedy, which operated without any loss

iv. — 8

114 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

oi good humor on the part of the offenders. He
had a register kept of the number of oaths every
man uttered in the course of the day, and at night,
he ordered the same number of cans of water to
be poured down his sleeve. The consequence
was, that there was hardly an oath to be heard in
a week. The writer of the narrative says, that
though these thirty gentlemen, who worked with
spirit and from choice, would accomplish more
than a hundred who must be driven to it, yet
twenty good stout workmen would do more than
all.

Captain Smith, on his return to Jamestown,
rinding that much time had been unprofitably
spent, and that their provisions were running low,
resolved to go in search of corn among the In
dians. He went up the river Chickahominy, in
two barges with eighteen men, leaving orders for
Lieutenant Percy to follow him. He found the
Indians surly and disobliging, who, though they
knew his wants, refused to trade, with many con
temptuous expressions. Immediately changing
his tone, and appearing no longer in the attitude
of a petitioner for food, he told them that his pur
pose was to avenge his own imprisonment, and
the death of his countrymen whom they had slain.
He then landed his men and drew them up in
military order. This spirited conduct produced
a sudden change of opinion in the Indians, who

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 115

sent ambassadors to make their peace, with pres
ents of corn, fish, and wildfowl. They told him
that their harvest had not been abundant that
year, and that they had hardly enough to supply
their own wants; but they furnished him with
two hundred bushels of corn, which was a most
welcome gift to the colony.

Captain Smith's enemies seem to have turned
his most praiseworthy and successful efforts into
accusations ; for we read, " that though this much
contented the company, (that feared nothing more
than starving,) yet some so envied his good suc
cess, that they rather desired to hazard a starving,
than his pains should prove so much more effect
ual than theirs." A plot was even formed by New
port and Ratcliffe to depose him, because, being
President, he had left his place and the fort
without their consent; but "their horns were so
much too short to effect it, as they themselves
more narrowly escaped a greater mischief."

While the ship remained, a brisk trade was car
ried on between the sailors and the Indians, to the
great gain of the former, but to the prejudice of
the colony. They would even pilfer articles from
the public stores in order to exchange them for furs
and other valuable commodities. And these very
men, after having enriched themselves in this man
ner at the expense of the colonists, would grossly
misrepresent them to the council in England, and

116 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

report that they had great abundance of every
thing; so that they took no pains to supply them
with stores, and would send over crowds of hungry
adventurers to eat up their hard-earned substance.
Captain Smith was so provoked with Newport's
conduct, that he threatened to send the ship home
without him and detain him a year in the colony,
that he might have the benefit of a full experi
ence of their sufferings; but, upon his making
proper submission, he consented to let him go.
He carried with him, in his ship, specimens of
pitch, tar, frankincense, potash, clapboards, and
wainscot, also a quantity of pocones, a red root
used in dyeing.

The council in England had not been satisfied
with the proceedings of the colony. They had lis
tened to misrepresentations and calumnies from
interested or offended individuals, and had taken
little pains themselves to ascertain the true state
of affairs. They were disappointed in not receiving
any gold and silver from Virginia ; and under the
influence of these irritated feelings, and probably
instigated by Newport, they had written by him an
angry letter to Captain Smith. They complained
of the vain hopes with which they had been enter
tained, and the disappointments in which these had
ended; they reproved the colonists for their dissen
sions, and spoke of a project for dividing the coun
try, about which the former President had written

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 117

a letter to the Earl of Salisbury; and threatened
them, that, unless the expenses of the present voy
age, amounting to two thousand pounds, were de
frayed by the ship's return, the colony would be
deserted and left to shift for themselves.

To this tirade, Captain Smith sent a reply by
Newport, combining the dignity proper to his office
with a soldier-like frankness and spirit. He denies
indignantly the charge of awakening hopes which
had never been realized; and, as to the plot for
dividing the country, he says he never heard nor
dreamed of such a thing. He says, that their di
rections sent by Newport had all been strictly fol
lowed, though he was opposed to them himlself, and
that all had been taught by experience to confess
that he was right. For the two thousand pounds,
which the voyage had cost, the colony had not re
ceived the benefit of a hundred. He tells them of
the great preparations, which Newport had made
for his expedition, and its utter failure ; and says,
"As for the quartered boat to be borne by the sol
diers over the Palls, if he had burnt her to ashes,
one might have carried her in a bag; but, as she
is, five hundred cannot, to a navigable place above
the Falls." He takes them to task for their folly
in sending the Germans to make pitch, tar, and
glass; and in his remarks shows great good sense,
and even considerable knowledge of political econ
omy. He tells them, that they could buy, in a

118 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

single week, as great a quantity of these articles
as would freight a ship, in Russia or Sweden,
countries peculiarly adapted by nature to the
manufacture of them; but that it was most im
politic and unprofitable to devote to such occupa
tions any part of the energies of a young colony,
in which they all had as much as they could do
to provide subsistence and defend themselves
against the Indians.

He complains of Newport, of his vain projects,
and his indolence, and contrasts the luxury and
plenty, in which he and his sailors lived, with the
coarse and scanty fare of the colonists. He says,
that Archer and Ratcliffe were the authors of all
their factions and disturbances ; and that the lat
ter is an impostor, whose real name is Sicklemore;
and he sends him home to save his throat from be
ing cut by the colonists, by whom he is detested.
He entreats them to send out carpenters, husband
men, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, and ma
sons, thirty of whom would be worth more than
a thousand idle gentlemen, and to provide for
their support and subsistence for the present, and
leave all projects of gain for the future. At the
same time, he sent them two barrels of stones,
which he conjectured to be iron ore, with labels,
designating the places in which he found them.
To convince them that he could make as ample
a discovery as Newport, and at a less expense

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 119

than he had incurred at every meal, he trans
mitted to them a map of Chesapeake Bay and
its rivers, which he had explored, together with a
description of the same.*

CHAPTER IX.

Difficulties in Procuring Provision. — Cap
tain Smith's Unsuccessful Attempt to obtain
Possession of PowJiatan's Person.

UPON the departure of the ship, the colonists
began to be in apprehension that they should

* This was sent by Captain Nelson, who left James
town early in June, 1608, and it contains a narrative
of events up to that date. It was printed the same
year in London, and does not differ materially from
the accounts subsequently published in the History.
The original pamphlet is rare and curious, being in
black letter and of the quarto size. There is a copy
of it in the Library of Harvard College, but the title-
page is Avanting. In Mr. Rich's Catalogue of Amer
ican Books, the title is printed as follows: " True Re
lation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate, as
hath happened in Virginia since the Planting of the
Colony." There is also a copy of the same work in
Colonel Aspinwall's invaluable collection of books re
lating to America. It was written in the form of a
letter and addressed to an individual ; probably to the
Secretary of the London Company.

120 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

suffer from want of food, their supply being but
scanty. In order to obtain corn, Captain Smith,
with Captain Wynne and Mr. Scrivener, set out
for Nansamond, where, upon his arrival, the Ind
ians not only refused to give him the four hun
dred bushels, which they had promised, but would
not trade with him at all; saying that their
stock was almost consumed, and that they had
been commanded by Powhatan to keep what
was left, and not permit the English to enter
their river. Captain Smith, finding that per
suasion did no good, was constrained to employ
force. At the first discharge of the muskets,
the Indians fled without shooting an arrow.
The English marched towards their houses, and
set fire to the first one they came to. Upon
the sight of the flames, the Indians came for
ward and offered to give them half the corn
they had, if they would desist from further vio
lence.

They loaded the three boats, with which the
English returned to their place of encampment,
four miles down the river. This was an open
plain, sheltered by a hill, and at that time the
ground was frozen hard and covered with snow.
They were accustomed to dig away the snow, and
make a large fire; and, when the ground was
thoroughly warmed, they could remove the fire
and ashes, spread their mats upon the spot

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 121

and lie down, using another mat as a screen
against the wind. When the ground grew cold,
they shifted their fire again. Many cold winter
nights they passed in this manner; and those,
who were thus exposed to the elements in these
expeditions, were always stouter and healthier
than those, who remained at home and slept in
warm beds.

Soon after their return to Jamestown, the first
marriage which took place in Virginia, was cele
brated between John Laydon and Anne Bur-
ras.

Captain Smith, indefatigable in securing the
settlers against even the apprehension of want,
remained but a short time at Jamestown, but,
accompanied by Captain Waldo, went up the bay
in two barges. The Indians, on all sides, fled at
the sight of them, till they discovered the river
and people of Appomatox. These had but little
corn; but that little they divided with the Eng
lish, and received in exchange bits of copper
and other trifles, with which they were well con
tented.

The supplies procured in this manner were,
however, temporary and precarious; and Captain
Smith, who was determined that no one should
be in fear of starvation, while he was President,
resolved upon the bold and questionable measure
of surprising Powhatan, and taking possession of

122 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

all his store. In this project lie was seconded by
Captain Waldo, but opposed by Captain Wynne
and Mr. Scrivener, which latter gentleman had be
come an enemy to him. As if to favor his pur
poses, he was requested by Powhatan to come and
see him, with a promise, that he would load his
ship with corn, if Smith would build him a house,
give him a grindstone, fifty swords, some muskets,
a cock and a hen, and a large quantity of beads
and copper. Captain Smith determined to im
prove the opportunity thus fortunately presented,
although he suspected that the crafty old savage
had some ulterior design in his specious offers.
He accordingly sent two Englishmen and four
Germans to build him a house, giving them in
structions as to their conduct, and unluckily in
forming them of his plans. He soon after set
out himself in the bark and two barges, accom
panied by Captain Waldo and forty-six men. 'As
this was an enterprise of great danger, he took
with him only those who volunteered to go. He
left the government in the hands of Mr. Scrive
ner.

On the 29th of December they departed from
Jamestown, carrying with them provisions for
only three or four days. They lodged that night
at Warraskoyac, an Indian village, a few miles
from Jamestown, where they made additions to
their stores.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 123

The chief of the tribe treated them with great
kindness, and endeavored to dissuade Captain
Smith from going to see Powhatan; but, finding
him resolved, he warned him to be on his guard,
for that Powhatan, notwithstanding all his seem
ing kindness, had sent for them merely for the
purpose of cutting their throats. The Captain
thanked him for his caution, and requested him
to furnish guides to the nation of the Chawon-
ocs, who dwelt between the rivers Nottaway and
Meherrin, in North Carolina, to which he readily
consented. Mr. Michael Sicklemore,a valiant and
honest soldier, was sent upon this enterprise, the
object of which was to obtain silk-grass and to
inquire after Sir Walter Raleigh's lost colony.

The next night they lodged at Kecoughtan
(Hampton), where they were detained several
days by violent storms. This obliged them to
keep their Christmas among the Indians.* But
we are told that they had a very merry one,
warmed by blazing fires, and their tables amply
spread with fish, flesh, oysters, and wildfowl. Af
ter various accidents, they arrived on the 12th

* The narrative states, that they left Jamestown on
the 29th of December, and yet that they afterwards
kept Christmas among the savages. Of course, both
statements cannot be correct. The matter is fortu
nately of little consequence, as there are no means of
ascertaining which is right.

124 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

of January at Werowocomoco, where they found
the river frozen to nearly half a mile from the
shore. They broke the ice to make a passage
for the barge, till she was grounded by the ebbing
of the tide, when they leaped out and waded to
the shore through the ice and mud.

They quartered in the first cabins which they
found, and sent for provisions to Powhatan, who
supplied them with bread, turkeys, and venison.
The next day, after having given them an enter
tainment, he very inhospitably inquired of them
when they purposed to go away, saying, that he
had never invited them to come, and that nei
ther he nor his people had any corn to spare.
Captain Smith then confronted him with the men
who had brought his invitation, and quietly asked
him how he came to be so forgetful; "thereat
the King concluded the matter with a merry
laugh," and asked for his commodities. Nothing
suited him, however, but guns and swords, and
he valued a basket of corn at a higher rate than
a basket of copper. Captain Smith, perceiving
that the wily savage was trifling with him, said to
him with some sternness, that he had confidently
relied upon his promises to supply the colony
with provisions, and had neglected to procure any
from other sources, which he might have done;
and, to testify his regard to him, he had sent me
chanics to construct buildings for him, while his

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 125

own were standing unfinished. He charged him
with having monopolized his people's corn and
forbidden them to trade with the English, in
hopes, by starvation, to bring them to his own
terms. As to guns and swords, he had none to
spare, as he had told him long before; but they
would contrive to keep from starving by the aid
of those which they had, though they would do
him no wrong nor violence, nor break the friend
ship which existed between them, unless con
strained to do so by ill usage.

Powhatan listened attentively to this discourse,
and promised that both he and his people would
supply the English with as much corn as could
be spared, and that they should receive it with
in two days. "But," he added, "I have some
doubts about the reason of your coming here. I
am informed by many, that you come, not to
trade, but to invade my people, and to pos
sess my country. This makes me less ready to
relieve you, and frightens my people from bring
ing in their corn. 'And therefore to ease them of
that fear, leave your arms aboard, since they are
needless here, where we are all friends."

Powhatan's doubts were very reasonable, and
his wary conduct perfectly justifiable ; for Smith's
whole plot had been revealed to him by the Ger
mans, who had been sent to build a house for
him. These men, seeing Powhatan's wealth and

126 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

plenty, and the wretched condition of the colony,
and supposing that he must finally extirpate them,
had, in order to secure his favor, basely betrayed
the purposes of the English. Their treachery
was the more odious, because one of them had
been honored with particular marks of confidence
by Captain Smith on account of his intelligence
and supposed integrity, and had been sent on this
errand to act as a spy upon Powhatan. Captain
Smith was entirely unsuspicious of the fact at
the time, and did not hear of it till six months
afterwards ; so it is easy to see what an advantage
the savage monarch had over him, which he did
not fail to improve to the utmost.

A contest of ingenuity ensued between Cap
tain Smith and Powhatan, reminding us of the
efforts of two skilful boxers, to find an opening to
plant the first blow. The savage chieftain was
very anxious that the English should lay aside
their arms, of which he and his people had a most
wholesome terror ; and he made use of arguments
of the following tenor. " Captain Smith," said
he, "I am a very old man, having seen the
death of three of the generations of my people,
and know well the difference between peace and
war. I must soon die, and my brothers must
succeed me. I wish to live quietly with you,
and I wish the same for them. But the rumors,
which have reached us, disturb us, and alarm my

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 127

people so that they dare not visit you. What
advantage will it be to you to destroy us, who
supply you with food? What can you gain by
war, if we escape to the woods and hide our pro
visions there? Why are you so suspicious of us?
You see we are unarmed, and are ready to sup
ply your wants. Do you think I am so simple
as not to prefer eating good meat, sleeping qui
etly with my wives and children, laughing and
making merry with you, having copper, hatches,
and every thing else, as your friend, to flying
from you, as your enemy, lying cold in the woods,
living upon acorns, roots, and such trash, being
so hunted by you that we can neither rest, eat,
nor sleep in peace, but if a twig break, my men
will cry out, 'Here comes Captain Smith'? In
this miserable manner, I must come to a misera-
hle end, and you likewise, sooner or later. Be
assured of our friendship then, and we will readily
and abundantly supply you with corn. Lay aside
your guns and swords, and do not come armed as
into an enemy's country."

To these sentimental speeches Captain Smith
replied after the following fashion. " As you
will not understand our words, we must make
our deeds speak for us. We have scrupulously
adhered to the terms of the treaty of peace con
cluded between us, which your men have con
stantly violated ; and, though we have had ample

128 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

opportunities for avenging ourselves, we have
refrained out of our regard to you. And you
know enough of us to know, that, if we had in
tended you any injury, we could long ago have
succeeded in doing it. It is our custom to wear
arms in the same manner as clothes, and we can
by no means part with them. Your people
come frequently to Jamestown with bows and
arrows, and are entertained without suspicion or
remark. As to your flying into the woods and
hiding your provisions out of our reach, you
need not think that will trouble us. We have
a way of discovering hidden things, unknown to
you."

Many other discourses, of the same tenor,
passed between them. Powhatan, seeing that
his wishes were not received as law by the Eng
lish, and that they would not lay aside their
arms or omit any of their usual precautions, gave
utterance to these sentiments, with a heavy sigh.
" Captain Smith, I have never treated any chief
with so much kindness as I have you ; but I have
never in return received any at your hands.
Captain Newport gave me swords, copper, clothes,
and every thing else I desired, taking, in ex
change, whatever I offered him. He would at
any time send away his guns at my request.
No one refuses to gratify my wishes, but you.
You will give me nothing, to which you attach

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 129

any value; and yet you insist upon having every
thing from me, which you desire. You call Cap
tain Newport father, and so you do me; but I
see, in spite of us both, you will have your own
way, and we must study to please you. If your
intentions are as friendly as you profess them
to be, send away your arms, and I will believe
you."

Captain Smith, seeing that Powhatan was mere
ly wasting the time in idle speeches, in order to
gain an opportunity to attack them and put them
to death, resolved to strike a decisive blow. He
gave directions to the Indians to break a passage
through the ice, that his boat might come to the
shore, and ordered some more of his men to land,
to aid him in surprising Powhatan. In order to
keep him free from suspicion, till the proper hour
came, he entertained him with " much specious
and fallacious discourse,"* telling him, that he was
his friend and not his subject, and promising the
next day to give up his arms, and to show him,
that he honored him as a father, by trusting im
plicitly to his words. The wily chieftain, when
he heard that they were breaking a passage
through the ice, suspected that all was not right,
and suddenly fled with his women, children, and
luggage. To avoid suspicion, he left two or three

* Stith, p. 88.
iv. — 9

130 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

women to talk with Captain Smith, while he se
cretly made his escape ; and in the mean time his
warriors beset the house, in which they were con
versing. When this was told to Captain Smith,
he boldly sallied out armed with sword, pistol,
and target, with which, as we are told, " he made
such a passage among these naked devils, that,
at his first shot, they next him tumbled one over
another, and the rest quickly fled, some one way,
some another." He reached the main body of his
men without any injury.

The Indians, seeing that he had escaped un
harmed and was guarded by eighteen resolute/well-
armed men, endeavored to put a fair construction
upon their unequivocal doings; and Powhatan,
to excuse his flight and the sudden gathering of
his warriors, sent an " ancient orator," who, like
more civilized diplomatists, sought to gain a favor
able hearing by a present of a great bracelet and
a chain of pearls, and addressed Captain Smith,
as follows : " Captain Smith, our king is fled, fear
ing your guns, and knowing, that, when the ice
was broken, more men would come. He sent the
warriors, whom you assaulted, to guard your corn,
which might be stolen without your knowledge.
Though some have been injured in consequence
of your mistake, Powhatan is still your friend
and will ever continue so. Now, since the ice
is broken, he would have you send away your

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 131

corn; and, if you would have his company, your
guns also, which so affright his people, that they
dare not come to you, as he has promised they
should." The corn referred to in the Indian am
bassador's speech consisted of a quantity amount
ing to eighty bushels, which had been purchased
of Powhatan for a copper kettle.

The English were immediately oppressed with
attentions. Baskets were provided for them to
carry the corn to the boat, and the Indians kind
ly offered their services to guard their arms, that
none might steal them. This favor was, with
suitable acknowledgments, declined. To show the
dread which they had of fire-arms, we are told,
that "a great many they were of goodly, well
proportioned fellows, as grim as devils; yet the
very sight of cocking our matches and being to
let fly, a few words caused them to leave their
bows and arrows to our guard, and bear down our
com upon their backs; we needed not importune
them to make despatch." The English were under
the necessity of waiting for the next tide be
fore they could depart, and the day was spent
in feasting and merry sports.

Powhatan, who burned to get possession of
Smith's head, had prepared his forces to make an
attack upon the English at night, which would
probably have been fatal to them all, had they not
been warned of it by Pocahontas, on this, as on all

132 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

occasions, the guardian angel of the whites. It is
better to relate the incident in the unvarnished
language of the original narrative, than to orna
ment it with any rhetorical embellishments of my
own. After mentioning that a plot had been,
formed by Powhatan, it states that, " Notwith
standing, the eternal, all-seeing God did prevent
him, and by a strange means. For Pocahontas,
his dearest jewel and daughter, in that dark night,
came through the irksome woods, and told our
Captain great cheer should be sent us by and by;
but Powhatan, and all the power he could make,
would after come kill us all, if they that brought
it could not kill us with our own weapons, when
we were at supper. Therefore, if we would live,
she wished us presently to be gone. Such things
as she delighted in he would have given her ; but,
with the tears running down her cheeks, she said
she durst not to be seen to have any; for, if Pow
hatan should know it, she were but dead; and so
she ran away by herself, as she came." This sim
ple and beautiful picture of disinterested attach
ment and heroic self-forgetfulness needs not the
"foreign aid of ornament" to recommend it to
the heart, which has a throb left for generous
deeds and noble qualities.

Pocahontas had been gone less than an hour,
when there came eight or ten stout fellows, with
large platters of venison and other articles of food,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 133

who invited them to sit down and eat, and were
very importunate for them to put out their match
es, the smoke of which, as they said, made them
sick. But Captain Smith made them taste of ev
ery dish (probably to ascertain whether it was poi
soned or not), and sent some of them back to Pow-
hatan, bidding him make haste, for he was ready
to receive him, telling him that he knew upon
what deadly errand his first messengers were sent,
but that he could guard against that as well as
all his other intended villanies. Messengers came
from Powhatan from time to time, to learn the po
sition of things ; but the English passed the night
in such watchful preparation, that no blow was
struck. They departed at high water, and left
behind them the Germans, whose good faith was
entirely unsuspected, and (what seems a little
strange, after these events) one of their own num
ber, Edward Brynton by name, to kill birds for
Powhatan.

The conduct of Captain Smith in attempting to
seize the person of Powhatan cannot be justified,
and no one can feel sorry that he did not suc
ceed. The principle of gratitude should alone
have prevented him from dealing so treacher
ously with a man who had spared his life, when
he had him in his power. His only excuse is to
be found in the strong necessity of the case, of
the extent of which, however, we have no means

134 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

of forming a conception. The opinions of the
age, in all that relates to the rights of men and
nations, were characterized, not even by a nice
sense of honor, much less by a feeling of Chris
tian brotherhood. The manner in which his con
spiracy was betrayed to Powhatan, enforces the
lesson taught by all the great plots and intrigues
of the world, that he who aims at treacherous
designs is never sure of his instruments. When
a man has once consented to become a spy and
act a borrowed part, it is easy for him to go a
step further and betray his employer by a double
treachery. He, who has once deserted the path
of moral rectitude, has never a firm footing, and
is continually liable to slide into deeper and more
inextricable guilt.

CHAPTER X.

T-

Captain Smith's Adventures with Opechanca-
nougli, Chief of Pamurikey. — Hie Return to
Jamestown.

No sooner had the English set sail, than Pow
hatan sent two of the Germans to Jamestown.
These imposed upon Captain Wynne with a

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 135

plausible story, that every thing was going on well,
and that Captain Smith had need of some weap
ons, ammunition, and clothing, all of which were
unsuspectingly delivered to them. While they
were there, by their artful speeches and by work
ing upon the hopes of the selfish and the fears of
the timid, they prevailed upon six or seven to
leave the colony and join them with Powhatan.

These apostates, among their other accomplish
ments, had a peculiar dexterity in stealing, which
they exerted so successfully, that they filched from
the colonists a great number of swords, pike-heads,
and muskets, with large quantities of powder and
shot. There were always Indians prowling around
in the neighborhood to carry them off. By these
means, and by the labors of one of the Germans,
who had remained behind and who seems to have
been a blacksmith, the armory of Powhatan was
very materially increased.

Captain Smith and his party in the mean while
had arrived at Pamunkey, the seat of Opechan-
canough, the brother of Powhatan, who received
them kindly and entertained them many days in
his most hospitable style. A day was appointed
for traffic, upon which Captain Smith with fifteen
others went up to the village where the chief
resided, about a quarter of a mile from the river.
They found no human being there, except a
lame man and a boy, and the houses were abaa-

136 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

doned and stripped of every thing. Soon, how
ever, the chief arrived with many warriors, armed
with bows and arrows ; but their commodities were
so trifling and offered at so exorbitant a price,
that Captain Smith remonstrated with him in
the following manner: " Opechancanough, you
profess, with your words, great love to me, but
your actions are inconsistent with your profes
sions. Last year, you kindly freighted our ship,
but now you have invited us here that you might
see us starve with hunger. You know my wants
and I know your plenty, of which I will, by some
means, have a share. Remember that it becomes
kings to keep their promises. I offer you my
goods; you may*take your choice, and the rest I
will apportion justly among your people." The
chieftain accepted his offer seemingly with a
good grace, persuaded, probably, more by the
muskets, than by the intrinsic force of the sug
gestions themselves. He sold them what they
wanted, at their own prices, promising the next
day to meet them with more people and more
commodities.

On the next day, Captain Smith and his party
marched up to his house, where they found four
or five Indians newly arrived, each furnished with
a great basket. The chief himself soon after ar
rived, and with a " strained cheerfulness " magni
fied the pains he had been at in keeping his prom-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 137

ise. While they were discoursing, Mr. Russell,
one of the party, came suddenly in and with a
face of alarm, told Captain Smith that they were
all lost, for seven hundred armed men had en
vironed the house and were swarming round
about in the fields.

Captain Smith, seeing dismay painted in the
countenances of his followers at these tidings, ad
dressed to them a few words of encouragement.
He told them that he felt far less concern at the
number of the enemy than for the malicious mis
representations, which the council would make in
England, of his readiness to break the peace and
expose their lives; that they had nothing to fear,
for that he alone had been once assaulted by three
hundred, and but for an accident, would have made
good his way through them; that they were six
teen in number, and the Indians not more than
seven hundred, and that the very smoke of their
pieces would be enough to disperse them. At any
rate, he exhorted them to fight like men, and not
tamely die like sheep ; and if they would resolute
ly follow his example, he doubted not that he
should be able, with the blessing of God, to extri
cate them from their present perilous situation.

They all resolutely promised to second him in
whatever he attempted, though it should cost them
their lives. Whereupon he addressed Opechanca-
nough to the following effect: "I see that you

138 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

have entered into a plot to murder me, but I have
no fears as to the result. Let us decide the mat
ter by single combat. The island in the river is
a fit place, and you may have any weapons you
please. Let your men bring each a ba^et of
corn and I will stake their value in copper, and
the conqueror shall have all and be ruler over
all our men."

This proposal was declined by the chief, who
had no chivalrous notions of honor, and could not
conceive of any one's voluntarily giving up any
advantage, which he could gain by treachery or
other means over an enemy. He artfully en
deavored to quiet Smith's suspicions, and invited
him outside of the door to receive a present,
where he had stationed two hundred men, with
their arrows on the string, ready to shoot at him
the moment he appeared. Captain Smith, who
had discovered, or at least strongly suspected his
perfidious purpose, no longer restrained his indig
nation, but seizing him by his long lock of hair,
and clapping his pistol to his breast, led him out
trembling into the midst of his people. They
were petrified with horror, that any one should
dare to lay violent hands on the sacred person
of their ch'of, and were amazingly frightened be
sides. He readily gave up his vambrace,* bow,

*Vambrace, armor for the arm. Avant-bras, Fr.
— Bailey.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 139

and arrows in token of submission, and his sub
jects followed his example.

Captain Smith, still retaining his grasp upon
him, addressed his subjects as follows : " I per
ceive, ye Pamunkeys, the desire you have to kill
me, and that my long suffering has brought you
to this pitch of insolence. The reason I have for
borne to punish you is the promise which I for
merly made to you, that I would be your friend
till you gave me just cause to be your enemy.
If I keep this vow, my God will help me and
you cannot hurt me; but if I break it, he will de
stroy me. But if you now shoot one arrow to
shed a drop of blood, or steal any of these beads,
or of this copper, I will take such a revenge, as
that you shall not hear the last of me while there
is a Pamunkey alive who will not deny the name.
I am not now half-drowned in the mire of a
swamp, as I was when you took me prisoner. If
I be the mark you aim at, shoot, if you dare. You
promised to load my vessel with corn, and if you
do not, I will load her with your carcasses. But,
if you will trade with me like friends, I once more
promise that I will not trouble you, unless you
provoke me, and your chief shall be my friend,
and go free; for I did not come to hurt him or
any of you."

This speech had an effect like magic. The
savages threw down their bows and arrows, and

140 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

thronged round Captain Smith with their com
modities, in such numbers, for the space of two
or three hours, that he became absolutely weary of
receiving tHem. He accordingly retired, and, over
come with his toils and excitements, fell asleep.
The Indians seeing him in this condition, and
his guard rather carelessly dispersed, went into
the house in great numbers armed with clubs or
English swords, and with intentions by no means
friendly. The noise they made aroused him from
his slumbers, which we may suppose were not
very deep; and, though surprised and confused at
seeing so many grim forms around him, he seized
his sword and target, and, being seconded by some
of his countrymen, drove out the intruders more
rapidly than they came in. Opechancanough made
a long speech to excuse the rude conduct of his
subjects. The rest of the day was spent in kind
ness and good-will, the Indians renewing their
presents and feasting the English with their best
provisions.

Captain Smith here received the news of a
most melancholy accident which took place at
Jamestown during his absence. Mr. Scrivener
had received some letters from England, which
gave him extravagant notions of his own impor
tance, and made him feel very coldly towards
Captain Smitk who still regarded him with the
affection of a brother. He took it into his head

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 141

to visit an island in the vicinity of Jamestown,
called Hog Island, on a very cold and stormy
day, when it seemed little short of madness to
tempt the angry elements. Notwithstanding the
most earnest remonstrances he persisted in going,
and persuaded Captain Waldo with nine others
to accompany him. The skiff would have hard
ly floated with so large a freight, in calm weather;
but, as it was, she sunk immediately, and all who
were in her were drowned. Their dead bodies
were found by the Indians, which encouraged
them in their projected enterprises against the
colony.

No one, for some time, would undertake to in
form Captain Smith of this heavy news, till finally
Mr. Richard Wiffin volunteered. His journey was
full of dangers and difficulties. He at first went
to Werowocomoco, where he found that all were
engaged in warlike preparations, which boded no
good to his countrymen. He seems to have nar
rowly escaped with his life here; for we are told,
that "Pocahontas hid him for a time, and sent
them who pursued him the clean contrary way
to seek him." He finally reached Captain Smith
after travelling three days, and communicated his
sa<J message to him; who charged him to keep
it a secret from his followers, and, dissembling
his grief as much as he could, at nightfall he
went on board the boat, leaving Opechancanough

142 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

at liberty and unmolested according to his prom
ise.

Captain Smith cherished a hope, that he might
be able, on his return, to entrap Powhatan, an
intention which he had never abandoned. Pow
hatan, on his part, had commanded his subjects,
on pain of death, to kill Captain Smith by some
means or other. The consequence was, that on
their second meeting, as at their first, both parties
were on their guard; and, though many strata
gems were practised on both sides, nothing deci
sive took place. Such a terror was Captain.
Smith to the Indians, that not even the com
mands of Powhatan could induce them to attack
him in battle, notwithstanding their immense su
periority in numbers; and they were ready to
propitiate him by loads of provision, if they had
any reasons to suspect hostile intentions on his
part towards them. We are told, however, that
they attempted to take his life by poison, a mode
more characteristic of civilized malice, than of
savage hatred. The particulars are not related;
it is said that Captain Smith, Mr. West, and
others were taken sick, and thus threw off from
the stomach some poisonous substance which
would have been fatal, had it been left to its nat
ural operation. It was probably not prepared
with great skill by these untutored chemists. No
other notice was taken of the outrage, except that

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 143

the Indian who brought the poisoned articles was
soundly beaten by Captain Smith's own hand,
which, we have every reason to believe, was a
very heavy one. He finally returned to James
town after an enterprise full of perils and diffi
culty, bringing with him two hundred pounds of
deer suet, and four hundred and seventy -nine
bushels of corn.

CHAPTER XL

Troubles with the Indians. — Scarcity of Pro
visions. — Mutinous and Treacherous Dis
position of Some of the Colonists. — Arrival
of Captain Argall.

CAPTAIN SMITH, on his arrival, found as usual
that nothing had been done during his absence.
Their provisions had been much injured by the
rain, and many of their tools and weapons had
been stolen by or secretly conveyed to the Ind
ians. The stock of food which remained, in
creased by that which had been procured from
the Indians, was, however, found on computa
tion to be sufficient to last them a year; and
consequently their apprehensions of starving were

144 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

for the present laid aside. They were divided
into companies of ten or fifteen, as occasion re
quired, and six hours of each day were spent in
labor and the rest in amusement and exhilarating-
exercises.

The majority of them, unaccustomed to dis
cipline or regular employment, showed symptoms
of stubborn resistance to his authority, which
provoked him to reprove them in sharp terms.
He told them, that their recent sufferings ought
to have worked a change in their conduct, and
that they must not think that either his labors
or the purses of the adventurers would for ever
maintain them in idleness. He did not mean
that his reproaches should apply to all, for many
deserved more honor and reward than they
could ever receive; but the majority of them
must be more industrious or starve. That it
was not reasonable that the labors of thirty or
forty honest and industrious men should be de
voted to the support of a hundred and fifty idle
loiterers, and that, therefore, whoever would not
work must not eat. That they had often been
screened in their disobedience to his commands
by the authority of the council; but that now
the power, in effect, rested wholly in him. That
they were mistaken in their opinion, that his
authority was but a shadow, and that he could
not touch the lives of any without peril of his

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 145

own. That the letters patent would show them
the contrary, which he would have read to them
every week, and that they might be assured that
every one, who deserved punishment, should re
ceive it.

He also made a register, in which he recorded
their merits and demerits, "to encourage the
good, and with shame to spur on the rest to
amendment;" a simple device, one would think,
for those who had long left school, but which,
owing probably to the President's great personal
influence, proved of considerable efficacy. They
missed from time to time powder, shot, arms,
and tools, without knowing what had become of
them, but found afterwards that they were se
cretly conveyed to the Germans, who were with
Powhatan, by their countrymen and confederates
at Jamestown. Four or five of these latter, ac
cording to a previous agreement, had deserted
from Jamestown, a short time before, to join the
former; but, meeting in the woods some of Cap
tain Smith's party on their return, to avoid sus
picion they came back. Their countrymen sent
one of their number, disguised as an Indian, to
learn the reason of their delay. He came as far
as the glass-house, which was about a mile from
Jamestown, and was the scene of all their plots
and machinations, and their common place of
rendezvous.

iv.— 10

146 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

At the same time and near the same place,
forty Indians were lying in ambush for Captain
Smith. He was immediately informed of the
German's arrival (how or by whom we are not
told), and, taking twenty men, marched to the
glass-house to apprehend him; but he had gone
away before they came. He despatched his fol
lowers to intercept him, and returned alone to
Jamestown, armed only with a sword, not sus
pecting any danger. In the woods he met the
chief of the Pashiphays, a neighboring tribe of
Indians, a tall and strong man, who at first at
tempted by artful persuasion to bring Captain
Smith within reach of the ambuscade. Failing,
however, in this, he attempted to shoot him with
his bow, which Smith prevented by suddenly
grappling with him. Neither was able to make
use of his weapons, but the Indian drew his ad
versary by main strength into the river, in the
hope of drowning him. There they struggled for
a long time, till Captain Smith seized his antago
nist's throat with such a grasp as nearly strangled
him. This momentary advantage enabled him to
draw his sword, at which his foe no longer re
sisted, but begged his life with piteous entreaties.
Captain Smith led him prisoner to Jamestown
and put him in chains.

The German meanwhile had been taken; and,
though he attempted to account for his conduct,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 147

his treachery was suspected and finally confirmed
oy the confession of the captive chief, who was
kept in custody, and offered to Powhatan in
exchange for the faithless Germans whom he
had with him. Many messengers were sent,
but the Germans would not come of their own
accord, neither would Powhatan force them.
While these negotiations were going on, the chief
himself escaped through the negligence of his
guards, though he was in irons. An attempt
was made to retake him, but without effect.
Captain Smith made prisoners of two Indians, by
name Kemps and Tussore, who are described as
being " the two most exact villains in all the
country." He himself went with an expedition
to punish the tribe of Pashiphays for their past
injuries and deter them from any future ones,
in which he slew several of them, burned their
houses, took their canoes and fishing-weirs, and
fixed some of the latter at Jamestown.

As he was proceeding to Chickahominy, he
was assaulted by some of their tribe ; but, as
soon as they saw who he was, they threw down
their arms and sued for peace, a young man,
named Okaning, thus addressing him ; " Captain
Smith, the chief, my master, is here among us,
and he attacked you, mistaking you for Captain
Wynne, who has pursued us in war. If he has
offended you in escaping imprisonment, rernemnc*

148 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

that fishes swim, the birds fly, and the very beasts
strive to escape the snare and the line ; blame not
him, therefore, who is a man. He would ask you
to recollect what pains he took, when you were
a prisoner, to save your life. If he has injured
you since, you have taken ample vengeance and
greatly to our cost. We know that your purpose
is to destroy us ; but we are here to desire your
friendship, and to ask you to permit us to enjoy
our houses and plant our fields. You shall share
in their fruit ; but if you drive us off, you will be
the greatest losers by our absence. For we can
plant anywhere, though it may cost us more
labor ; but we know you cannot live, unless you
have our harvests to supply your wants. If you
will promise us peace, we will trust you ; if not,
we will abandon the country."

This " worthy discourse," as it is justly called
by the writer of the narrative, had its desired
effect. Captain Smith made peace with them
on condition that they would supply him with
provisions. This good understanding continued
so long as Captain Smith remained in the coun
try.

When Smith returned to Jamestown, complaint
was made to him, that the people of Chicka-
hominy, who had always seemed honest and
friendly, had been guilty of frequent thefts. A
pistol, among other things, had been recently

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 149

stolen and the thief escaped ; but his two broth
ers, who were known to be his confederates, were
apprehended. According to the President's usual
summary mode of proceeding in such cases, one
of these was sent home with a message, that if
the pistol were not forthcoming in twelve hours,
the other (who meanwhile was imprisoned) should
be hung. The messenger came back before mid
night with the pistol, but a sad spectacle awaited
him. Captain Smith, pitying the poor naked
Indian who was shivering in his dark, cold dun
geon, had sent him some food and charcoal to
make a fire with. The simple savage, knowing
nothing of the mysteries of carbonic acid gas,*
soon fainted away under its deleterious influence,
and was brought out to all appearance dead. His
brother, seeing his confident hopes so cruelly dis
appointed, broke out into the most passionate
lamentations, and Captain Smith, to pacify him,
told him that he would restore him to life. By
the application of brandy and vinegar, he was
restored to consciousness ; but his faculties re
mained in such a state of confusion and disorder,
as alarmed his brother hardly less than his seem
ing death. But a night's sound sleep restored
him to his senses, and they were both presented

* The English writer was not much wiser ; he says
the Indian was smothered with the smoke.

150 AMEK1CAN BIOGRAPHY.

with a piece of copper and sent home. From
this circumstance, a report was spread far and
wide, among the Indians, that Captain Smith was
able to restore the dead to life.

Another incident took place about this time,
which increased the awe in which the English
were held. An " ingenuous savage " at Wero-
wocomoco had by some means obtained posses
sion of a bag of gunpowder and of the back-
piece of a suit of armor. Wishing to display his
superior accomplishments to his countrymen, he
proceeded to dry the powder over the fire, upon
the armor, as he had seen the soldiers do at
Jamestown. Many thronged around him and
peeped over his shoulders, to watch the process,
when suddenly the powder exploded, killed the
unfortunate operator and one or two others, and
wounded several more, which gave the whole na
tion a great distaste to gunpowder. " These and
many other such pretty accidents," as we are
told, so amazed and alarmed Powhatan and his
whole people, that they desired peace from all
parts, bringing in presents and restoring stolen
articles, which had long been given up in despair.
After this, if any Indian was detected in steal
ing, he was apprehended and sent to Jamestown
to be punished, and the whole country became
as free and safe to the English as to the Indians
themselves.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 151

The English, thus unmolested from without,
were enabled to devote their undivided energies
to the internal affairs of the colony. They set
themselves to labor with industry and success.
In the space of three months, they had made
a considerable quantity of tar, pitch, and potash ;
produced a sample of glass ; dug a well of sweet
water in the fort, an article which they had not
had in abundance before ; built twenty new hous
es ; new covered the church ; provided nets and
weirs for fishing ; and built a block-house on the
isthmus of Jamestown, in which a garrison was
stationed to trade with the Indians, and which no
one was allowed to pass without an order from the
President. Thirty or forty acres of ground were
also dug and planted. A block-house was like
wise erected on Hog Island, and a garrison station
ed there to give notice of any vessels that might
arrive. At leisure times they exercised them
selves in cutting down trees and making clap
boards and wainscoting. About this time Captain
Wynne died, so that Captain Smith was left with
the whole and absolute power, being both Presi
dent and council.

Their prosperous and contented industry receiv
ed a sudden interruption. On examining their
store of corn, they found that half of it had rot
ted and the rest was nearly all consumed by the
rats which had been left bv the ship, and in-

152 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHT.

creased in great numbers. This put a stop to all
their enterprises and obliged them to turn their
whole attention to the procuring of food.

The Indians were very friendly to them, bring
ing in deer and wildfowl in abundance, and Pow-
hatan spared them nearly half his stock of corn.
The river also supplied them with sturgeon and
oysters ; so there was no danger of their starving
to death. But then food could not be procured
without considerable toil and trouble ; and many of
them were so intolerably lazy, that, as the narra
tive says, " had they not been forced nolens vo-
lens perforce to gather and prepare their victual,
they would all have starved or have eaten one
another." These men were very clamorous that
he should sell their tools and iron, their swords
and muskets, and even their houses and ordinance,
to the Indians for corn, so that they might enjoy
the luxury of idleness.

They endeavored also by all means in theii
power to induce him to leave the country. Ne
cessity obliged Captain Smith to overlook for
a time their mutinous and disorderly proceed
ings ; but, having detected and severely pun
ished the principal ringleader, he addressed the
remainder in the following terms. " Fellow sol
diers, I did not think that any one was so false
as to report, or that you were so simple as to
believe, either that I intended to starve you, or

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.

that Powhatan had, at this time, any com for
himself, much less for you, or that I would not
procure corn, if I knew where it was to be had.
Neither did I think that any were so malicious,
as I find many are ; but I will not so yield to in
dignation as to prevent me from doing what I can
for the good of my most inveterate enemy. But
dream no longer of any further assistance from
Powhatan, and do not imagine that I shall not
compel the indolent to work, as well as punish
the refractory. If I find any one attempting to
escape to Newfoundland in the pinnace, let him
be assured that the gallows shall be his portion.
You cannot deny that I have often saved your
lives at the risk of my own, and provided you
food when otherwise you might have starved.
But I protest, by the God that made me, that
since necessity has no power to compel you to
gather for yourselves the fruits which the earth
yields, I will oblige you to gather them, not only
for yourselves, but also for the sick. You know
that I have fared like the meanest of you, and
that my extra allowance I have always distrib
uted among the sick. The sick shall not starve,
but shall fare like the rest of us ; therefore, who
ever does not gather as much every day as I do,
the next day he shall be put over the river and
be banished from the fort, until he either alters
his conduct or starves.'

154 AMERICAN BIOGRAPH1

These orders were murmured against as being
extremely cruel and tyrannical ; but no one dared
to disobey them. All exerted themselves dili
gently to procure food, so that they not only did
not suffer from want, but grew strong and healthy.
Many were billeted among the Indians, a fact
which showed how much confidence there was
on one side, and how much respect, or at least
fear, on the other. These last were so well
treated by their kind entertainers, that many de
serted from Jamestown and took up their abode
with them ; but the Indians, who knew that they
had acted contrary to Captain Smith's orders,
received them with great coldness, and finally
brought them back to him. He inflicted on
them such exemplary punishment, that no one
ventured to follow their example. The good
conduct of the Indians at this crisis extorts from
the writer of the narrative the remark, that there
was more hope to make good Christians and
good subjects of them, than of one half of those
who pretended to be both.

At this period, Mr. Sicklemore returned from
his expedition, but without gaining any satisfac
tory account of Sir Walter Raleigh's lost com
pany or of the silk-grass. Captain Smith, who
thought it proper not to abandon a point so
strongly urged by the council in England, sent
upon the same errand two of his company to the

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 155

Mangoags ; a tribe of Indians, not subject to Povv-
hdtan, who dwelt somewhere on the borders of
North Carolina and Virginia. They were fur
nished with guides by the chief of the Quiyough-
nohanocs, a small tribe dwelling on the southern
banks of the James River, about ten miles from
Jamestown. " This honest, proper, promise-
keeping king," as he is styled, was ever friendly
to the English; and, though he zealously wor
shipped his own false gods, he was ready to ac
knowledge that their God exceeded his, as much
as guns did bows and arrows. He would often
send presents to the President, in a time of
drought, begging him to pray to his God for
rain, lest his corn should spoil, because his own
gods were angry with him. The result of this
expedition was, like that of the former one,
entirely unsuccessful.

The Germans, who were with Powhatan, gave
them constant trouble. One Volday, a Swiss,
was employed to solicit them to return to the
colony ; but, instead of that, he basely and treach
erously entered into a conspiracy with them to cut
off the English, and diligently exerted himself to
bring it to a successful issue. Seeing that these
were obliged to wander about in search of provis
ions and leave the fort but feebly defended, they
endeavored to prevail upon Powhatan to lend
them his forces, promising to burn the town, to

156

AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

seize the bark, and make the greater part of the
colonists his subjects and slaves.

Tliis plot was communicated to some of the
malecontents at Jamestown ; and two of them,
" whose Christian hearts relented at such an un
christian act," revealed it to the President. When
it became generally known in the colony, the sen
timent of indignation was so lively, that several
volunteered to go and slay the Germans, though
in the very presence of Powhatan. Two were
accordingly sent on this errand ; but, on their ar
rival, the Germans made such plausible excuses,
and accused Volday so warmly, that they were
unaccountably suffered to go unpunished. Pow
hatan seems to have observed a strict neutrality
in this business. He sent a message to Captain
Smith, informing him that he would neither at
tempt to detain the Germans, nor to hinder his
men from executing his commands. One of these
Germans, we are told, afterwards returned to his
duty, on promise of full pardon for the past ; the
other remained with Powhatan.

The writer of this portion of the History of
Virginia, after relating these incidents, and stating
that their great security against the treacherous
machinations of these foreigners, and their unprin
cipled coadjutors at Jamestown, was the love and
respect in which Captain Smith was held, by all
the neighboring Indians, goes on to remar^ upon

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

157

his merits in a strain of honest admiration ; " By
this you may see, for all those crosses, treacheries,
and dissensions, how he wrestled and overcame
(without bloodshed) all that happened ; also what
good was done ; how few died ; what food the
country naturally affordeth ; what small cause
there is men should starve or be murdered by
the savages, that have discretion to manage them
with courage and industry. The two first years,
though by his adventures he had often brought
the savages to a tractable trade, yet you see how
the envious authority ever crossed him, and frus
trated his best endeavors. But it wrought in him
that experience and estimation amongst the sava
ges, as otherwise it had been impossible he had
ever effected that he did. Notwithstanding the
many miserable, yet generous and worthy adven
tures he had oft and long endured in the wide
world, yet in this case he was again to learn his
lecture by experience ; which with much ado
having obtained, it was his ill chance to end, when
he had but only learned how to begin."

In the spring of the year 1609, Captain Sam
uel Argall, afterwards a governor of the colony,
arrived at Jamestown. He came to trade with
the colony and to fish for sturgeon, in a ship sup
plied with wine and provisions. This, says Stith,
was a prohibited trade, but it was connived at,
because Argall was a relation of Sir Thomas

158 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Smith. The necessity of the colony obliged them
to take his provisions, by which the object of his
voyage was defeated ; but as soon as they receiv
ed supplies from England, they revictualled him
home, with letters giving a full account of the
state of their affairs. By him Captain Smith re
ceived letters, blaming him for his cruel usage of
the Indians, and for not sending back the former
ships freighted. By him they also heard of the
great preparations in England for sending out an
expedition, under the command of Lord Delaware,
and of the entire change projected in the govern
ment of the colony.

CHAPTER XIL

New Charter granted to the Virginia Compa
ny. — Expedition despatched to Jamestown. —
Confusion which ensues on its Arrival — —
Captain Smith returns to England.

THE administration of Captain Smith, and the
general course of events from the first, at James
town, had been far from satisfactory to the com
pany in England. They had founded the colony
solely from selfish motives, in the hope of acquir

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 159

ing great and sudden fortunes by the opening of a
passage to the South Sea, or by the discovery of
abundant mines of gold and silver. The splendid
success of the Spaniards in South America had
filled the imaginations of all Europe with golden
dreams ; and the company were disappointed and
irritated, because there had not been found in
Virginia the mineral treasures of Peru and Mex
ico. They chose to visit their displeasure upon
the innocent head of Captain Smith, as if he had
either been the cause of their extravagant hopes,
or had, by some potent magic, banished the pre
cious metals from the soil of Virginia.

Their prejudice against him was increased, un
doubtedly, by their extreme ignorance of every
thing relating to the history and situation of the
colony, which disqualified them from judging of
the propriety of his measures. Their minds too
had been poisoned by the misrepresentations of
Newport, who possessed their entire confidence,
and who hated Captain Smith with that untiring
and dogged hatred, with which an inferior being
contemplates an enemy, who is too much above
him to allow the most distant hope of rivalship.
They were dissatisfied, among other things, with
his treatment of the Indians, thinking it too harsh
and peremptory, and that a milder and more
conciliatory one would have induced them to dis
cover the hidden treasures, which they were per
suaded existed somewhere in the country.

160 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Captain Smith, as the reader must have ob
served, considered himself bound from the first
to provide for the protection and support of tho
oolony, rather than the pecuniary interests of the
council at home. He endeavored to give it a
permanent footing in the country, an object about
which they cared very little, as is shown by their
shameful neglect in supplying it with provisions,
as well as by the character of the adventurers
whom they sent out.

He perceived at once the futility of any ex
pectations of raising a revenue from Virginia, and
dwelt upon it in all his communications to Eng
land. He saw that a handful of Englishmen
were surrounded by numerous and formidable
tribes of Indians, and that there could never be
any security to life or property, unless they were
promptly overawed by firm and spirited conduct.
With great propriety he considered himself far
better able to judge of the measures which ought
to be adopted for the colony, than a company
of gentlemen, three thousand miles distant, who
derived their information from imperfect or in
terested sources. His administration, as we have
seen, was vigorous and decided, aiming rather to
benefit the colony, than to please the council
at home. He was too independent and proud
a man to stoop to conciliate those whose favor
was not to be won by a steady adherence to

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 161

duty. He had not a drop of the courtiers blood
in his whole body. His intercourse with his
superiors in station was marked with dignity and
self-respect. His letter to the council, which
he sent by Newport, and of which we have
given an account, is certainly unmarked by del
icate official deference, and little calculated to
win or regain favor. All these things had com
bined to render him and his administration un
popular ; and he, whose services to the colo
ny had been incalculable, was made the victim
of their capricious displeasure, and dismissed
from an office which he had filled so honora
bly, so successfully, and with such constant self-
sacrifice.

The Virginia company, having induced many-
persons of rank and wealth to join with them,
in order to increase at once their dignity and
their funds, applied to King James for a new
charter, which was granted, and which bears
date, May 23d, 1609. It gave the most ample
powers to the council in England and showed the
most wanton disregard of the rights and privileges
of the colonists who had emigrated on the faith
of the first charter, and who had toiled, suffered,
and accomplished so much. By virtue of these
powers, the new council appointed Lord Dela
ware, a nobleman of high rank and distinguished
character, captain-general of the colony ; Sir

IV.— 11

162 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Thomas Gates, lieutenant-general ; Sir George
Somers, admiral ; Captain Newport (the only one
who had ever been in Virginia), vice-admiral ;
Sir Thomas Dale, high marshal ; Sir Ferdinando
Wainman, master of the horse. The counte
nance of so many honorable and distinguished
persons made the enterprise fashionable and pop
ular, so that they were able to equip nine ships,
in which five hundred persons consisting of men,
women, and children, embarked.

The expedition set sail from England in May,
1609, under the command of Sir George Somers,
Sir Thomas Gates, and Captain Newport, each
of whom had a commission authorizing him, who
first arrived, to supersede the existing adminis
tration, and to govern the colony by the terms
and provisions of the new charter, until the arri
val of Lord Delaware with the remainder of the
recruits and supplies. By a most extraordinary
oversight, no precedence in rank was assigned
to either of these gentlemen, and they were
unable to settle the point among themselves, nei
ther being willing to resign his chance of being
the temporary head.

To obviate this difficulty, they adopted a most
injudicious and unfortunate expedient ; they all
determined to embark in the same vessel, their
weak and childish ambition inducing them to
take a step which defeated the very object of

Ci*rTAIN JOHN SMITH. 163

tfts* jriumvirate division of authority. In their
ship were contained also the bills of lading, the
new commission, instructions and directions of
the most ample nature, and the greater part of
their provisions. This vecsel, on the 25th of
July, parted from the rest of the squadron in a
violent storm, and was wrecked on one of the
Bermuda Islands ; another small vessel foundered
at sea ; the seven others arrived safely at James
town. The President, who was informed of their
arrival by his scouts, and who had no expecta
tion of so large a fleet, supposed them to be
Spaniards coming to attack the colony, and with
his usual promptness put it in a posture of de
fence. The Indians at this crisis gave the strong
est proof of their good-will, by coming forward
with the greatest alacrity, and offering to fight
side by side with the English against their en
emies.

These unfounded apprehensions were soon dis
sipated, but only to be replaced by substantial
evils. With the seven ships came three indi
viduals, of whom the reader has before heard,
Ratcliffe (whose real name, as has been stated,
was Sicklemore), Archer, and Martin, all of
whom were enemies to Captain Smith, and had
so prejudiced the minds of their companions
against him, that they were prepared to dislike
without ever having seen him. Their ships hac

164 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

been greatly shattered in their stormy passage,
their provisions were running low, many of them
were sick, and they arrived at the season of the
year most trying to the constitution. The great
er part of the company, moreover, consisted of
persons " much fitter," as Stith says, " to spoil
or ruin a commonwealth than to help to raise
or maintain one." They consisted of dissipated
young men, exiled by their friends to escape a
worse destiny at home ; bankrupt tradesmen ;
needy adventurers ; gentlemen, lazy, poor, and
proud ; profligate hangers-on of great men, and
the like.

A scene of wild confusion took place immedi
ately upon their landing. They had brought
no commission with them which could supersede
the old one, and no one could, with legal pro
priety, supplant Captain Smith. The new com
ers, however, disdained to submit to his author
ity, prejudiced as they were against him, and
looking with contempt upon the little band of
colonists, whom they were sent to cast into the
shade.

He, at first, allowed them to have every thing
in their own way, and in consequence there was
an entire end of all government, discipline, and
subordination. The new comers, though having
neither the authority nor the capacity, under
took to remodel the government. They con

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 165

ferred the chief power first on one and then on
another ; to-day, they administered the govern
ment according to the old commission ; to-morrow,
according to the new ; and the next day, after a
new fashion of their own. There was no con
sistency, no responsibility, and in fact no govern
ment ; but instead of it a wild anarchy and mis
rule, to which nothing but chaos could furnish a
parallel.

The sensible and judicious part of the com
munity, both of the new comers and of the old
settlers, perceived that this state of things, if
long continued, would bring the colony to utter
ruin, and, justly appreciating the distinguished
merit of Captain Smith, entreated him to re
sume his abandoned authority, and save them
from destruction, before it was too late. He
was himself so disgusted with the new comers
and their proceedings, that, had he consulted his
own wishes alone, he would have abandoned the
country and gone to England. But there was
no alloy of selfishness in his nature. He fe t
for the colony, of which he was the soul and
life-blood, the pride and affection which a par
ent feels for a favorite child. To its prosperity
he was ever ready to sacrifice his private feelings,
and he saw plainly, that the present system would
end in its ruin.

166 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

He felt emboldened too by the conviction of
the fact, that he was and had been its legal head,
and that no one had any official authority for
superseding him. He did not hesitate, therefore,
to resume the station, which he had for a short
time tacitly resigned, though in doing so he ex
posed himself to infinite vexations and no little
actual danger from the secret and open opposi
tion of his enemies. The most obstinate and
refractory of them he cast into prison for safe
keeping, until there was leisure for a fair and
legal trial. It was thought expedient to divide
their numbers, and accordingly Captain Martin
was sent with a hundred and twenty men to
Nansemond, and Captain West with the like num
ber to the Falls of James River, each receiv
ing a due proportion of provisions from the com
mon stock.

Before these settlements were planted, Cap
tain Smith, having established a regular govern
ment, and being near the end of the year of his
presidency, resigned it in favor of Martin, who
was the only person that could be chosen to the
office. He had the good sense to perceive, that
he was not qualified for so arduous a station, and,
restoring it to Captain Smith in less than three
hours, proceeded with his company to Nanse
mond. His experiment proved a total failure.
The Indians were kindly disposed towards him,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 167

rill his injudicious conduct converted them into
determined enemies. They made a successful
attack upon him, killing many of his men, and
carrying off* a thousand bushels of his corn. He
made a feeble resistance, and did not attempt to
recover what he had lost, but sent to Jamestown
for thirty soldiers to aid him. These were
promptly despatched, but he made no use of
them ; and they soon returned of their own ac
cord, disgusted with his cowardice and imbecility.
Martin himself shortly followed them, leaving his
company to take care of themselves.

Disasters also followed the settlement at the
Falls. It was originally made in a place exposed
to the inundations of the river and to other great
inconveniences ; and Captain West returned to
Jamestown to obtain advice and assistance in the
removal ©f it. Captain Smith immediately pur
chased of Powhatan the place called by his name,
which was a short distance lower down the river,
and went up to the Falls himself, to superin
tend their establishment in their new abode. Bu
the mutinous and disorderly company, seeing him
attended with only five men, refused to obey his
orders, and, on his attempting to use force, resir led
him and obliged him to take refuge on board his
vessel, having narrowly escaped with his life.

He remained here nine days, in the hope that
they would listen to reason and consult their own

168 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

interest in putting themselves under his guid
ince. But they obstinately refused to the last.
The Indians, meanwhile, flocked around him
with bitter complaints of the treatment they had
received from the settlers, saying, that they had
robbed their gardens, stolen their corn, beaten
them, broken into their houses, and carried off
some of their people and detained them prison
ers. They offered to assist him in bringing them
to subjection by the strong arm of power, and
told him, that they had borne these insults and
injuries from his countrymen out of respect to
him ; but that he must forgive them if hereafter
they defended themselves to the utmost of thek
ability, and repelled unprovoked aggressions by
force.

Finding his efforts to be unavailing, Captain
Smith departed ; but his vessel grounded, after
she had proceeded about half a league, a very
fortunate circumstance, as the result showed.
For no sooner was his back turned, than some
Indians, not more than twelve in number it is
stated, burning for revenge, assaulted the settlers,
and, killing several stragglers whom they found in
the woods, struck such a panic into the rest, that
they sent down in great alarm to Captain Smith,
offering to accede to any terms that he would
propose, if he would come and assist them. He
returned, and, after punishing six or seven of the

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 169

chief offenders, removed the rest to Powhatan, a
place every way adapted to their purposes, as it
had been brought under cultivation by the In
dians, who had also erected a strong fort there.

As soon as they were settled in their new
habitation, Captain West returned and began to
undo all that had been done. Captain Smith,
unwilling to contend with him, opposed him in
nothing, but left him to manage every thing in his
own way. By his influence they were induced to
return to their former situation, for what reason
it is not stated.

Captain Smith met with a most unhappy acci
dent as he was returning to Jamestown. While
he was sleeping in the boat, a bag of powder lying
near him exploded, and tore and burned his flesh
in the most shocking manner. His clothes being
on fire, he leaped overboard to quench the flames,
and was with difficulty rescued from drowning.
In this sad condition he arrived at Jamestown,
where things were in such a state as to require
all his faculties of mind and body. The time
set for the trial of RatclifFe, Archer, and the
others who had been imprisoned, drew near, and
their guilty consciences made them shrink from
an inquiry, about the result of which they could
entertain no doubt. Seeing too the helpless state
of the President, they entered into a plot to
murder him in his bed ; but the heart of the base

170 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

wretch, who was chosen to be the instrument of
their wickedness, failed him at the last moment,
and he had not the courage to fire his murderous
pistol. Having failed in this, they endeavored
to usurp the government and thereby escape pun
ishment. Fevered and tormented by his wounds,
Captain Smith became weary of this perpetual
struggle against the violence and malice of his
enemies, and of supporting his rightful authority
by force and severity ; and he now determined to
return to England, though his old friends, indig
nant at the treatment he had received, offered and
indeed entreated to be allowed to bring him the
heads of his foes. But he would not permit the
colony to be embroiled in a civil war on his ac
count. His wounds also grew very dangerous,
from the want of surgical aid ; and he believed
that he could never recover, unless he went home
as soon as possible to be cured there. He there
fore, in the early part of the autumn of 1609,
departed from Virginia never to return to it again.
He left behind him four hundred and ninety
colonists, one hundred of whom were trained and
expert soldiers, three ships, seven boats, twenty-
four pieces of ordnance, three hundred muskets
and other arms, abundance of ammunition and
tools, wearing ipparel sufficient for all their wants,
and an ample stock of domestic animals and pro
visions

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 171

CHAPTER XIII.

Remarks on Captain Smith's Administration
in Virginia.

CAPTAIN SMUTH resided a little more than two
years in Virginia; during one of which he was
President of the colony. The reader, who has
gone thus far with me, will be enabled to form
a conception of what he accomplished, and the
disadvantages against which he contended. It is
difficult for those who have been reared on the lap
of civilization, and had wants created by the facil
ities of gratifying them, to have a full sense of the
labors and sufferings of the first settlers of a new
country. Familiar with the luxuries of artificial
life, they are thrown into a situation where ani
mal existence can hardly be supported. Severe
and unremitted toil wears down the frame and
depresses the mind. Famine often lays siege to
them, and new and strange diseases prostrate their
strength. A vague sense of apprehension ever
darkens their lot, and not a leaf stirs, but makes
them start with the expectation of encountering
some great and unknown danger.

The bright hopes, with which they began their
enterprise, are apt to languish and die ; and their
hearts faint under the influence of that homesick-

172 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

ness, for which there is no medicine but a draught
of the air of one's native land. To be the suc
cessful leader of a band of new settlers under
the most favorable circumstances, requires an
extraordinary combination of powers. He must
be able to use his hands as well as his head, to
act as well as to command, to show how things are
to be done as well as to give directions to do
them. He must be able to awe the refractory, to
encourage the distrustful, and to cheer up the
drooping. He must have courage, fortitude, self-
command, and perseverance ; he must be just
yet not stern, dignified, yet affable and easy of
approach.

The Virginia colony, and its head in particular,
had trials and perils of a peculiar nature to en
counter, in addition to those which they might
naturally have expected. In the first place, they
were surrounded by numerous and powerful tribes
of Indians, whose occupation was war, and who
were organized into a powerful confederacy under
a ruler of extraordinary resources, the idol of his
people, full of courage and enterprise, rivalling
in dissimulation the most accomplished European
diplomatist ; and, if not the implacable enemy of
the whites, he has been represented as being still
very far from their friend, and, with a prophetic
spirk, apparently realizing from the first, that
their permanent residence and increase would in
volve the ruin of his own people.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 173

As we have seen, too, Captain Smith had
much to contend against in the characters of many
of the settlers themselves, whom the old world
seems to have shaken off, as being too worth
less and desperate to be any longer tolerated at
home. They were continually irritating him by
their surly opposition, and infecting the well-
disposed by their ill example ; for labors and
hardships are much lightened when they are
shared by all. Instead of receiving aid from the
council at home, they wrere to him a source of
unmixed vexation and disappointment.

Chagrined by the failure of their visionary
hopes, with a truly consistent selfishness they
abandoned to unwarrantable neglect the settlers,
whom they had sent into a howling wilderness,
taking no pains to provide for their wants, and,
by their absurd exactions, making the expeditions
they sent out to them a tax and a burden.
Captain Smith they honored with peculiar dislike,
because he preferred the interests of the colony
to their own ; believing all that his enemies could
say of him, giving him reproof where honor was
due, and finally depriving him of his command,
at the very moment, when by his extraordinary
exertions, he had established the colony upon a
firm basis, and could look confidently forward to
its steady increase and continued prosperity.

174 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

It is hardly possible for Captain Smith's ser
vices to the colony to be exaggerated. Nothing
but the force of his character could have con
ducted it through so many difficulties and dan
gers. Upon his single life its existence hung,
and without him the enterprise would have been
relinquished again and again, as in the case of
the settlements on the coast of North Carolina,
and the establishment of a permanent colony in
America would have been delayed to an inde
finite period, since every unsuccessful attempt
would have been a fresh discouragement to such
an undertaking. It is easy to be seen that he
embraced the interests of the colony with the
whole force of his fervid and enthusiastic char
acter. He was its right eye and its right arm.
In its service he displayed a perseverance, which
no obstacles could dishearten, a courage, which
bordered upon rashness, and a fertility of resour
ces, which never left him at a loss for remedies
against every disaster, and for the means of extri
cating himself from every difficulty and embar
rassment.

It is curious to observe that he seemed rot
only to superintend, but to do every thing. His
official dignity never encumbered him when any
thing was to be done. We find him, at one time,
cutting down trees with his own hands ; at another,
heading an exploring expedition, venturing, with a

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 175

few timid followers in an open bark, into unknown
regions densely peopled with savage tribes ; and
at another, marching with a few soldiers to pro-
cure provisions, and sleeping on the bare ground
in the depth of winter. He had the advantage
of possessing an iron frame and a constitution
which was proof against sickness and exposure ;
so that, while others were faint, drooping, and
weary, he was vigorous, unexhausted, ready to
grapple with danger, and contemplating every
enterprise with cheerful confidence in the result.

In the government of his colony he was rigid
ly impartial, just, and, as might be expected from
one who had so long been a soldier, strict even
to severity. This was indeed one of the objec
tions made to his administration by the council in
England, and it without doubt created him many
enemies in Jamestown. But the intelligent rea
der, will find for him a sufficient apology in the
desperate character of many of the settlers, and
in the absolute necessity of implicit subordination,
which their situation required.

The whole power was centred in his own
person, and a refusal to obey him was a refusal
to obey the laws, upon which their safety and
even existence depended. His severity arose
from a sense of duty, and no one ever accused
him of being wantonly cruel or revengeful. No
man was more ready to forgive offences, aimed

176 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY

at himself personally : a striking proof of which
is, that we hear of no punishments being inflicted
on the dastardly wretches who attempted to as
sassinate him, as he was lying helpless from his
wounds, during the last days of his administration.

His conduct to the Indians, though not always
dictated by a spirit of Christian justice or brother
hood, will be found very honorable to him, if
tried by the standard of the opinions of his day.
Here, too, his apology must be found in the pecu
liar circumstances in which he was placed. He
was not the head of a powerful body, meeting
and trading with the Indians on terms of equal
ity, but of a feeble band, whom they, if they
had known their own strength, might have crush
ed in a moment. The passion of fear is the
parent of cruelty and of treachery. It was nec
essary (or at least it was deemed so) to overawe
the Indians, to strike terror into them ; and, if the
means resorted to for accomplishing these ends
were not strictly justifiable, there was at least an
excuse for them.

The English were also more than once threat
ened with famine, while their Indian neighbors
were generally well supplied with provisions ; and
reason and experience tell us that starving men
will not be very nice in their expedients to obtain
food, or coolly examine into the right and wrong
of measures, when a fierce animal instinct is goad-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 177

uag them on. Captain Smith, by his prudence
and firmness, established a most harmonious feei
ng between the two races.

The respect of the Indians for him hardly
stopped short of idolatry. His great qualities
were evident to these untutored children of na
ture, and their reverence was the instinctive hom
age which was paid to innate superiority. This is
alone sufficient to prove that he never treated the
Indians, even as they thought, with injustice, cru
elty, or caprice ; had it been so, he never would
have been so admired and honored by a race of
men who are proverbial for never forgetting an
injury.

The genuine merits of Captain Smith, as a pre
siding officer, can only be fairly estimated by com
paring him with others. We have seen that when
ever he departs from Jamestown every thing is
thrown into confusion, and that, as soon as he re
turns, order is restored and the jarring notes of dis
cord cease to be heard. As none but himself could
bend the bow of Ulysses, so no one was capable
of sustaining the office of President for a single
day but Captain Smith. We have seen in what
difficulties and embarassments Captain Martin at
Nansemond and Captain West at the Falls sever
ally involved themselves ; and from this specimen
we may draw " ominous conjecture " of what
would have been the fate of the whole color y,
bad either of these gentlemen been at its head.

IV. — 12

178 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

Compare also the results of his brilliant expe
dition to explore the Chesapeake with Newport's
pompous inarch into the country of the Monacans,
in which his failure was as wretched as his means
of success were ample. The miserable adven
tures of the colony, too, after he, its ruling and
moving spirit, had departed, are in themselves a
splendid encomium upon his energetic and suc
cessful administration.

The reader may have some curiosity to know
what became of the Germans, whose treachery
and misconduct we have so often been obliged to
record. One of them, by name Samuel, never
returned to the English from the time he first left
them, but spent his days in Powhatan's service.
Another, named Adam, returned, upon promise
of pardon, at the time of Volday's conspiracy.
During the troubles in the colony after the ar
rival of the last expedition, he, with another of
his countrymen, named Francis, taking advan
tage of the general confusion, fled again to Pow-
hatan, promising that they would do wonders for
him at the arrival of Lord Delaware. But the
savage monarch, with that sagacity and eleva
tion of character which were peculiar to him,
told them that the men, who were ready to be
tray Captain Smith to him, would certainly be
tray him to Lord Delaware, if they could gain
any thing thereby, and immediately ordered their
brains to be beaten out.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 179

As to Volday himself, he contrived to go to
England, where he imposed upon many merchants
with stories of the rich mines he had discovered
and of how much he could enrich them so that
he was sent out with Lord Delaware ; out, his
real character being discovered and his falsehoods
detected, he died in misery and disgrace.

CHAPTER XIV.

Captain Smith's First Voyage to New England.

F.ROM the time of Captain Smith's departure
from Virginia, till the year 1614, there is a
chasm in his biography. So active a mind as
nis could not have been idle during that time,
but. unfortunately, no records are preserved of
what he attempted or accomplished. We have
every reason to suppose that his favorite subject
of settling the American continent occupied a
large portion of his time and thoughts. Hi;s
distinguished reputation, and his great knowledge
and experience upon that head, would naturally
point him out as the most proper person in Eng
land to be consulted by those who had any
projects of the kind in contemplation, and as

180 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

the best qualified to take a part in them him
self.

In 1614, probably by his advice and at his
suggestion, an expedition was fitted out by some
London merchants, in the expense of which he
also shared, for the purposes of trade and dis
covery in New England, or, as it was then
called, North Virginia. An attempt had been
made to establish a colony on the coast of Maine,
by the Plymouth company as early as 1607,
and forty-five individuals passed the winter there.
As the winter of 1607 - 8 was remarkably se
vere all over the world, we can easily imagine
their sufferings ; and shall not be surprised to
earn, that they abandoned the enterprise, and
returned to England in the first vessel which
was sent out to them. They gave a most un
favorable account of the country, describing it as
cold, barren, and rocky in the extreme. Dis
heartened, it would seem, by these representa
tions, the company for some years confined their
efforts to one or two voyages, the objects of
which were, to catch fish and traffic with the
Indians, till, as we have stated, they associated
with themselves the enterprising genius of Cap
tain Smith.

In March, 1614, he set sail from London with
two ships, one commanded by himself, and the
other by Captain Thomas Hunt. They arrived,

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 181

April 30th, at the island of Manhegin on the
coast of Maine, where they built seven boats.
The purposes, for which they were sent, were to
capture whales and to search for mines of gol^
or copper, which were said to be there, and, if
these failed, to make up a cargo of fish and
furs.

Of mines they found no indications, and they
found whale-fishing a " costly conclusion " ; for,
although they saw many, and chased them too,
they succeeded in taking none. They thus lost
the best part of the fishing season ; but, after
giving up their gigantic game, they diligently
employed the months of July and August in
taking and curing cod-fish, an humble, but more
certain prey. While the crew were thus em
ployed, Captain Smith, with eight men in a
small boat, surveyed and examined the whole
coast, from Penobscot to Cape Cod, trafficking
with the Indians for furs, and twice fighting with
them, and taking such observations of the prom
inent points, as enabled him to construct a map
of the country. He then sailed for England,
where he arrived in August, within six months
after his departure.

He left Captain Hunt behind him, with orders
to dispose of his cargo of fish in Spain. Un
fortunately, Hunt was a sordid and unprincipled
miscreant, who resolved to make his country-

182 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

men odious to the Indians, and thus prevent the
establishment of a permanent colony, which would
diminish the large gains he and a few others de
rived by monopolizing a lucrative traffic. For
this purpose, having decoyed twenty-four of the
natives on board his ship, he carried them off and
sold them as slaves in the port of Malaga.

History, fruitful as it is in narratives of injustice,
oppression, and crimes, has recorded few acts so
infamous as this. He was indignantly dismissed
from his office by his employers, when they heard
of his guilt ; but this could not undo the mischief
which had been done, nor prevent its evil conse
quences. The outrage sunk deep into the hearts
of the Indians, and, with the indiscriminating ven
geance of savage natures, they visited their wrongs
in after times upon innocent heads, because they
belonged to that hated race with whom their ear
ly associations were so tragical.

Captain Smith, upon his return, presented his
map of the country between Penobscot and Cape
Cod to Prince Charles (afterwards Charles the
First), with a request that he would substitute
others, instead of the " barbarous names " which
had been given to particular places. Smith him
self gave to the country the name of New England,
as he expressly states, and not Prince Charles, as
is commonly supposed. With his request Prince
Charles graciously corr plied, and made many al-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 183

terations in the nomenclature, which were geu
erally marked by good taste. The name which
Smith had given to Cape Ann, was Cape Traga-
bigzanda, in honor of his Turkish mistress, whom
I hope my readers have not forgotten. Those,
who have occasion to pronounce the name fre
quently, will congratulate themselves on the
change. Cape Cod, the name given by Gos-
nold, was altered by the Prince to Cape James,
in honor of his father ; but posterity has per
tinaciously adhered to the old, homely title, in
spite of the double claims of the new one, as
being the name of a king and bestowed by a
prince. With his characteristic modesty, Smith
had given his own name only to a small cluster
of islands, which the Prince did not alter ; but,
by some strange caprice, they are now called the
Isles of Shoals, a change which has neither jus
tice nor taste to recommend it.

The first port, into which Captain Smith put
on his return to England, was Plymouth. There
he related his adventures to some of his friends,
" who," he says, " as I supposed, were interested
in the dead patent of this unregarded country."
The Plymouth company of adventurers to North
Virginia, by flattering hopes and large promises
induced him to engage his services to them. Up
on his arrival in London, overtures were made
to him by his old employers, the South Virginia

184 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

company, who had probably, by experience of
others, learned to form a more just estimate of
his merits and abilities ; but these, on account
of his previous engagement, he was constrained
to decline. His refusal seems to have given some
offence to those whose good opinion he valued ;
for he takes pains to state, that it proceeded
from no disinclination to them or their cause,
but he considered himself in honor bound to the
Plymouth company.

CHAPTER XV.

Captain Smith sails a Second Time for New
England. — Is taken by a French Squadron
and carried to France. — Makes his Escape.
— Arrives in England. — Publishes his De
scription of New England.

WHEN Captain Smith left Plymouth for Lon
don, it was with the understanding that he should
return to the former place at Christmas and
take charge of an expedition of four ships, which
the company were to furnish him. The London
company made him an offer of the same nature,
which, as we have seated, he was obliged to de-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 185

cline. He endeavored to induce the two com
panies to fit out an expedition in common, for
which there were many inducements.

The Londoners had the most capital, but the
men of Plymouth were better acquainted with
the art of taking and curing fish, and could more
easily fit out vessels for that object ; so that it was
desirable that funds should be raised in London
in behalf of an expedition which should sail from
Plymouth. Besides, as Captain Smith says, " it
is near as much trouble, but much more danger,
to sail from London to Plymouth, than from Ply
mouth to New England, so that half the voyage
would be thus saved." This project, though re
commended by reason and expediency, could nev
er be realized on account of the absurd jealousy
which the two companies entertained towards each
other, and the unwillingness of either to give pre
cedence to the other.

Early in January, 1615, Captain Smith, with
two hundred pounds in his pocket, and attended
by six of his friends, left London for Plymouth,
expecting to find the four ships waiting for him.
But his sanguine expectations were destined to
be disappointed. The ill success of the expe
dition, which sailed the June previous from the
Isle of Wight, under the command of Harley and
Holson, occasioned by the flame of excitement
which the outrage of Hunt had kindled in the In-

186 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

dians had chilled the zeal of the Plymouth com
pany.* But by the indefatigable exertions of
Captain Smith, and the liberal assistance of Sii
Ferdinando Gorges, Dr. Sutliffe, Dean of Exeter,
and others, two ships were prepared and equipped,
one of two hundred tons, and tbe other of fifty,
in which, besides seamen, there were sixteen meo
destined to remain as settlers.

They set sail in March ; but, after they had
gone about a hundred and twenty leagues, they
encountered a violent storm, which separated the
two vessels, dismasted Captain Smith's, and oblig
ed him to return under a jury-mast to Plymouth.
His consort, commanded by Thomas Dermer,
meanwhile proceeded on her voyage, and return
ed with a profitable cargo in August ; but the
object of the enterprise, which was to effect a
permanent settlement, was frustrated.

Captain Smith's vessel was probably found to
be so much shattered as to render it inexpe
dient to repair her ; for we find that he set sail
a second time from Plymouth, on the 24th of
June, in a small bark of sixty tons, manned by
thirty men, and carrying with him the same six
teen settlers, he had taken before. But an evil
destiny seemed to hang over this enterprise, and

* See Prince's Chronological History of New Eng
land, p. 133, ed. 1826. Belknap's Life of Gorges, in hia
•American Biography, Vol. 1. p. 358.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 187

to make the voyage a succession of disasters and
disappointments. Soon after his departure he
was chased by an English pirate, to whom his
crew importuned him to surrender without resis
tance; which however he disdained to do, though
he had only four guns and the pirate thirty-six.
The apprehensions of all parties were soon agree
ably and singularly dispersed ; for Captain Smith,
on speaking with her, found that her commander
and some of his crew had been fellow-soldiers
with him (probably in his Turkish campaigns),
and had recently run away with the ship from
Tunis.

They were in want of provisions and in a mu
finous state, and offered to Captain Smith, either
to put themselves under his command, or to carry
him wherever he desired; but these offers were
declined. Near Fayal, he met with two French
pirates, one of two hundred tons and the other of
thirty. His crew were again panic-stricken, and
would have surrendered without firing a gun ; but
Captain Smith, whose impetuous valor made him
disregard the greatest odds against him, told them
that he would rather blow up the ship, than yield
while he had any powder left. After a running
fight he contrived to make his escape.

Near Flores, he was chased and overtaken
oy four French men-of-war, who had orders from
their sovereign to make war upon the Spaniards

188 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

and Portuguese and to seize pirates of all nations
At the command of the admiral, Captain Smith
went on board his ship, and showed him his com
mission under the great seal, to prove that he
was no pirate. The Frenchman (as it was his
interest to prevent any settlement of English in
New England, who might compete with his own
countrymen at Acadia, in their profitable trade
with the natives), in open defiance of the laws of
nations, detained him prisoner, plundered his
vessel, manned her with Frenchmen, and dis
persed her crew among the several ships of the
fleet. But, after a few days, they gave them back
their vessel and the greater part of their provis
ions, and Captain Smith made preparations for con
tinuing h\j voyage, though a great many of the
3rew were desirous of going back to Plymouth.
But before they parted from the French fleet
the admiral on some pretence sent for Captain
Smith to come on board his ship, wrhich he did ac
cordingly, alone. While he was there, the French
ship, seeing a strange sail, gave chase, detaining
him on board ; and during the next night the dis
affected part of his own crew entered into a plot
to turn their ship's head homeward, which
they accordingly did, the sixteen landsmen, who
were going out as settlers, knowing nothing of it,
till they found themselves safe at Plymouth again.
The abduction of Captain Smith by the French

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 189

man was undoubtedly intentional, being caused,
as Smith himself says, by the calumnies cf some
of his own crew, who were anxious to be rid of
him and return home.

Captain Smith soon found that those who cap
tured him were no better than pirates. The ad
miral's ship was separated from the rest of the
fleet by a storm and followed her fortunes alone.
Her cruise was very eventful and lucrative.
Captain Smith had the misfortune to see more
than one English ship plundered, without any
means of preventing it. Whenever they fell in
with one of these, they confined him in the cab
in ; but whenever they had engagements with
Spanish ships, they insisted upon his fighting with
them. Having spent the summer in this way,
they carried him to Rochelle, where, notwith
standing their promises to remunerate him for all
his losses by giving him a share of their prizes,
they detained him a prisoner on board a vessel in
the harbor.

They accused him of having burnt the French
settlements at Port Royal in 1613 (which was
the act of Captain Argall),* and endeavored to
compel him to give them a discharge in full for
all demands before the Judge of the Admiralty,
threatening him with imprisonment in case he
refused. While he was deliberating upon this

* See Holmes's American Annals, for the year 1613.

190 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

proposal, Providence held out to him the means
of making his escape, without any violence tj
his sense of justice, or any degradation to his
pride. A violent storm arose, whose " pitiless
pelting " drove all the people below ; and, as soai
as it was dark, Captain Smith pushed off from
the ship in a boat, with a half-pike for an oar,
hoping to reach the shore. But he fell upon a
strong current which carried him out to sea, where
he was exposed to great danger, in a small, crazy
boat, when the storm was so violent as to strew
the coast with wrecks. Twelve hours he passed
in this fearful state, expecting every moment to be
swallowed up by the waves ; till by the returning
tide he was thrown upon a marshy island, where
he was found by some fowlers, nearly drowned
and totally exhausted with cold, fatigue, and hun
ger. By pawning his boat, he found the means
of conveyance to Rochelle, where he learned
that the ship which had captured him, with one
of her prizes had been driven ashore, and the
captain and one half the crew drowned.

On landing at Rochelle, he lodged a complaint
with the Judge of the Admiralty, and supported
his claims by the evidence of some of the sailors,
who had escaped from the wreck of the French
ship. We are not infonned what was the final
result of this process ; but he received from the
hands of the Jud^e a certificate of the truth of

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 191

his statement, which he presented to the English
ambassador at Bordeaux. Both at this place
and Rochelle he found much sympathy, and
received many friendly offices ; among others, he
says, " the good lady Madam Chanoyes bounti
fully assisted me." He returned to England, we
are not told at what time, but probably in the lat
ter part of the year 1615, and, proceeding to
Plymouth, took measures to punish the ringleaders
of the mutiny among his crew.

While he had been detained on board the
French pirate, in order, as he says, " to keep my
perplexed thoughts from too much meditation of
my miserable estate," he employed himself in
writing a narrative of his two voyages to New
England, and an account of the country. This
was published in a quarto form, in June, 1616.
It contained his map of the country, and the de
positions of some of the men, who were on board
his ship, when he was detained and carried off by
the French, inserted, as he says, " lest my own
relations of those hard events might by some con
structors be made doubtful, envy still seeking to
scandalize my endeavors, and seeing no power
but death can stop the chat of ill tongues." As
a proof of his indefatigable zeal in the promotion
of his favorite object, he spent the whole summer
in journeying about in the West of England, dis-
tiibuting copies of this book (seven thousand in

192 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

number, according to his own account,) among all
persons of any note, and endeavoring to awaken
an interest in the subject of settling America.
But, he says, " all availed no more than to hew
rocks with oyster-shells," so desponding were
the minds of men on account of the ill-success
which had attended so many enterprises of that
nature. He reaped, however, an abundant har
vest of promises, and the Plymouth company, in
token of their respect for his services, formally
conferred upon him the title of Admiral of New
England.

Captain Smith's work on New England was
the first to recommend that country as a place of
settlement, and to disabuse the public mind of the
erroneous impressions which had arisen from the
dismal accounts of the settlers, who had returned
after the failure of Popham's expedition, and who
had represented the whole country as a cold,
rocky, and barren waste. It is evidently written
in the spirit of an advocate, and not of a judge,
and is tinged throughout with the sanguine tem
perament of its author. Still it is never visionary
or wild ; it is full of good sense, accurate observa
tion, and a sagacity that sometimes almost assumes
the shape of prophecy. No one can read it with
out admiration of this extraordinary man, in whom
the powers of action, reflection, and observation
were so harmoniously blended.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 193

CHAPTER XVI.

Pint of Pocahontas to England. — Captatn
Smith9 s Interview with her. — Deat' ofPoca*
hontat.

THE order of events in the life of Captain
Smith again associates him with Pocahontas. Af
ter his departure from Virginia she continued to be
the firm friend of the settlers, as before. In 1610,
when Ratcliffe and thirty men were cut off by
Powhatan, a boy named Henry Spilman was
saved by her means, and lived many years among
the Potomacs. We next hear of her in 1612,
when Captain Argall, who had gone on a trading
voyage to the country of the Potomacs, learnt
from Japazaws, their chief, that she was living in
seclusion near him, having forsaken her father's
dominions and protection.

We are not informed of the reasons which in
duced her to take this step. It has been conjec
tured that her well-known affection for the Eng
lish had given displeasure to her father, or that
her sensibility was pained at witnessing the
bloody wars which he waged against them, with
out her having the power of alleviating their
horrors. When Captain Argall heard of this, he
perceived how advantageous to the settlers it

iv.— is

194 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

would be to obtain possession of hei person, and
that so valuable a prize would enable them to
dictate their own terms to Powhatan. He pre
vailed upon Japazaws to lend him his assistance
in this project, by that most irresistible bribe in an
Indian's eyes, a copper kettle ; assuring him at the
same time that she should not be harmed, and
that they would detain her only till they had con
cluded a peace with her father. The next thing
was to induce her to go on board Argall's ship,
and the artifice by which this was brought about,
is curious and characteristic of the Indian race.
Japazaws ordered his wife to affect, in the pres
ence of Pocahontas, a great desire to visit the
English ship ; which she accordingly did, and
acted her part so well, that when he refused to
gratify her and threatened to beat her for her im
portunity, she cried from apparent vexation and
disappointment. Wearied at last by her exces
sive entreaties, he told her that he would go with
her if Pocahontas would consent to accompany
them, to which proposal she with unsuspecting
good-nature signified her assent. They were re
ceived on board by the captain and hospitably
entertained in the cabin, "Japazaws treading oft
on the captain's foot, to remember he had done
his part." When Pocahontas was informed that
she was a prisoner, and must go to Jamestown and
be detained till a peace could be concluded with

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 195

her father, she wept bitterly, and the old hypo
crite Japazaws and his wife set up a most dismal
cry, as if this were the first intimation they had
ever had of the plot. Pocahontas, however, soon
recovered her composure, either from the sweet
equanimity of her character, or because she felt
that her reception and treatment by the English
could not be any thing but kind and friendly.
The old couple were sent home, happy in the
possession of their kettle and various toys.

As soon as Pocahontas arrived at Jamestown, a
messenger was despatched to Powhatan informing
him of the fact, and that she would be restored to
him only on condition that he should give up all
his English captives, swords, muskets, and the
like. This was sad news to Powhatan ; but the
demands of the English were so exorbitant, that
he returned no answer to their proposals for the
space of three months. He then liberated and sent
home seven of his captives, each carrying a rusty,
worn-out musket, with a message, that if they
would give up his daughter, he would make satis
faction for all the injuries he had done, present
them with five hundred bushels of corn, and ever
be their friend. It was not thought expedient
to trust to his promises ; and an answer was
accordingly returned to him, that his daughter
snou.d be well treated, but that they should not
restore her till he sent back all the arms which he

196 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

had ever, by any means, obtained from them
This displeased Powhatan so much, that they
heard no more from him for a long time.

In the beginning of the year 1613, Sir Thomas
Dale, taking Pocahontas with him, marched with
a hundred and fifty men to Werowocomoco in
tending to compel Powhatan to ransom his daugh
ter on the proposed terms. The chief himself did
not appear ; but his people received the English
with scornful bravadoes, telling them, that if they
came to fight, they were welcome, and should be
treated as Captain Ratcliffe and his party had
been. These were not words to " turn away
wrath," and the boats were immediately manned,
and a party landed, who burned and laid waste
every thing they could find, not without resistance
on the part of the Indians. After this, much time
was spent in fruitless negotiation, and in mutual
reproaches and defiance. Two brothers of Poca
hontas came to see her, and were very happy to
find her well and contented. Two messengers,
Mr. John Rolfe and Mr. Sparks, were also de
spatched from the English to Powhatan. They
did not see the chief himself, but were kindly treat
ed by Opechancanough, who promised them to
use his influence with his brother to induce him to
comply with their wishes The English returned
to Jamestown to attend to their agricultural labors
without bringing matters to any definite result

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 197

The troubles between Powhatan and the Eng
lish were soon to be healed by the intervention
of a certain blind god, who, if tales be true, has
had a large share in the management of the great
est concerns of the world. A mutual attachmen
had long existed between Pocahontas and Mi
John Rolfe, who is said to have been an " hon
est gentleman and of good behavior." He had
confided his hopes and fears to Sir Thomas Dael,
who gave him warm encouragement ; and Pooa-
hontas had also " told her love " to one of her
brothers. Powhatan was duly informed of this,
and his consent requested for their marriage,
which he immediately and cheerfully gave, and
sent his brother and two of his sons to be present
at the ceremony and to act as his deputies.

The marriage took place in the beginning of
April, 1613, and was a most auspicious event to
the English. It laid the foundation of a peace
with Powhatan, which lasted as long as his life,
and secured the friendly alliance of the Chicka-
hominies, a brave and powerful race, who con
sented to call themselves subjects of King James,
to assist the colonists in war. and to pay an annual
tribute of Indian corn.

In the spring of 1616, Pocahontas and her hus
band accompanied Sir Thomas Dale to England.
She had learned to speak English during her resi
dence in Jamestown, had been instructed in the

198 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

doctrines of Christianity, and " was become very
formal and civil after the English manner." They
arrived in England on the 12th of June, 1616,
where her name and merits had preceded her,
and secured her the attentions and hospitalities
of many persons of rank and influence. As soon
as Captain Smith heard of her arrival, he address
ed the following letter to Queen Anne, the wife
of James the First.

" To the most high and virtuous Princess Queen

Anne of Great Britain.
" Most admired Queen,

" The love I bear my God, my king, and coun
try, hath so oft emboldened me in the worst of ex
treme dangers, that now honesty doth constrain
me to presume thus far beyond myself, to pre
sent your majesty this short discourse. If ingrati
tude be a deadly poison to all honest virtues, I
must be guilty of that crime, if I should omit any
means to be thankful. So it is, that some ten years
ago, being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the
power of Powhatan, their chief king, I received
from this great savage exceeding great courtesy,
especially from his son Nantequas, the most manli
est, comeliest, boldest spirit, I ever saw in a savage,
and his sister Pocahontas, the king's most dear
and well-beloved daughter, being but a child of
twelve or thirteen years of age, whose compas-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 199

sionate, pitiful heart, of desperate estate, gave me
much cause to respect her ; I being the first
Christian this proud king and his grim attendants
ever saw ; and thus enthralled in their barbarous
power, I cannot say I felt the least occasion of
want that was in the power of those my mortal
foes to prevent, notwithstanding all their threats.

" After some six weeks fatting amongst those
savage courtiers, at the minute of my execution,
she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to
save mine ; and not only that, but so prevailed
with her father, that I was safely conducted to
Jamestown, where I found about eight and thirty
miserable, poor, and sick creatures, to keep pos
session of all those large territories of Virginia ;
such was the weakness of this poor common
wealth, as, had the savages not fed us, we direct
ly had starved.

" And this relief, most gracious queen, was
commonly brought us by this lady, Pocahontas.
Notwithstanding all these passages wrhen incon
stant fortune turned our peace to war, this tender
virgin would still not spare to dare to visit us ; and
by her our jars have been oft appeased, and our
wants still supplied. Were it the policy of her
father thus to employ her, or the ordinance of
God thus to make her his instrument, or her ex
traordinary affection to our nation, I know not.
But of this I am sure ; when her father, with the

200 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

utmost of his policy and power, sought to surprise
me, having but eighteen with me, the dark night
could not affright her from coming through the
irksome woods, and with watered eyes gave me
intelligence, with her best advice to escape his
fury ; which had he known, he had surely slain
her. Jamestown, with her wild train, she as freely
frequented, as her father's habitation ; and, dur
ing the time of two or three years, she next under
God was still the instrument to preserve this
colony from death, famine, and utter confusion,
which if in those times had once been dissolved,
Virginia might have lain as it was at our first
arrival to this day.

" Since then, this business having been turned
and varied by many accidents from that I left it
at, it is most certain, after a long and troublesome
war after my departure betwixt her father and
our colony, all which time she was not heard
of, about two years after she herself was taken
prisoner ; being so detained near two years longer,
the colony by that means was relieved, peace
concluded, and at last rejecting her barbarous
condition, was married to an English gentleman,
with whom at present she is in England ; the
first Christian ever of that nation, the first Vir
ginian ever spake English, or had a child in mar
riage by an Englishman, a matter surely, if my
meaning be truly considered and well understood,
worthy a prince's understanding.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 201

" Thus, most gracious lady, I have related to
your majesty, what at your best leisure our ap
proved histories will account you at large, and
done in the time of your Majesty's life ; and
however this might be presented you from a more
worthy pen, it cannot come from a more honest
heart, as yet I never begged any thing of the
state or any ; and it is my want of ability and
her exceeding desert, your birth, means, and au
thority, her birth, virtue, want, and simplicity
doth make me thus bold, humbly to beseech your
majesty to take this knowledge of her, though
it be from one so unworthy to be the reporter as
myself, her husband's estate not being able to
make her fit to attend your majesty. The most
and least I can do, is to tell you this, because
none hath so oft tried it as myself; and the rather
being of so great a spirit, however her stature.
If she should not be well received, seeing this
kingdom may rightly have a kingdom by her
means, her present love to us and Christianity
might turn to such scorn and fury, as to divert
ail this good to the worst of evil ; where finding
so great a queen should do her some honor more
than she can imagine, for being so kind to your
servants and subjects, would so ravish her with
content, as endear her dearest blood to effect that,
your majesty and all the king's honest subjects
most earnestly desire. And so I humbly kiss
your gracious hands "

202 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHX.

Captain Smith gives us a few details of the
residence of Pocahontas in England, and an ac
count of his own interview with her, which the
reader will probably prefer to read without any
alteration. " Being about this time preparing to
set sail for New England," he says, " I could not
stay to do her that service I desired and she
well deserved ; but hearing she was at Branford
[Brentford] with divers of my friends, I went to
see her. After a modest salutation, without any
word, she turned about, obscured her face, as
not seeming well contented ; and in that humor,
her husbaed with divers others, we all left her
two or three hours, repenting myself to have writ
she could speak English. But not long after,
she began to talk, and remembered me well what
courtesies she had done ; saying, ' You did prom
ise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and
he the like to you ; you called him father being
in his land a stranger, and by the same reason
so must I do you ; ' which though I would have
excused, I durst not allow of that title, because
she was a king's daughter, with a well-set coun
tenance, she said, ' Were you not afraid to come
into my father's country, and caused fear in him
and all his people but me, and fear you here I
should call you father ? I tell you then I will,
and you shall call me child, and so I will be for
ever and ever your countryman. They did tell

CAPTAIN JOHM SMITH. 203

us always you were dead, and I knew no other
till I came to Plymouth ; yet Powhatan did com
mand Uttamatomakkin to seek you and know the
truth, because your countrymen will lie much.'

** This savage, one of Powhatan's council, be
ing amongst them held an understanding fellow,
the King purposely sent him, as they say, tc
number the people here, and inform him well
what we were and our state. Arriving at Ply
mouth, according to his directions, he got a long
stick, whereon by notches he did think to have
kept the number of all the men he could see,
but he was quickly weary of that task.* Com
ing to London, where by chance I met him,
having renewed our acquaintance, where many
were desirous to hear and see his behavior, he
told me Powhatan did bid him to find me out
to show him our God, the king, queen, and
prince, I sc much had told them of. Concerning
God, I told him the best I could ; the king, I
heard he had seen, and the rest he should see
when he would. He denied ever to have seen
the king, till by circumstances he was satisfied
he had. Then he replied very sadly, ' You

* When he returned to Virginia, it is stated, that
Powhatan asked him how many people there were in
England, and that he replied, " Count the stars in the sky,
the leaves on the trees, and the sand upon the sea-shore,
such is the number of people in England." — Stith, p. 144

204 AMERICAN BIOGRAPH5T.

gave Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan
fed as himself, but your king gave me nothing,,
and I am better than your white dog.'

" The small time I staid in London divers
courtiers and others, my acquaintances, have gone
with me to see her, that generally concluded they
did think God had a great hand in her conver
sion, and they have seen many English ladies
worse favored, proportioned, and behaviored ;
and, as since I have heard, it pleased both the
king's and queen's majesties honorably to esteem
her, accompanied with that honorable lady, the
Lady Delaware, and that honorable lord, her
husband, and divers other persons of good qual
ities, both publicly at the masks and otherwise,
to her great satisfaction and content, which doubt
less she would have deserved, had she lived to
arrive in Virginia."

Pocahontas, or the Lady Rebecca, as she
was now called,* was destined never to leave
the country, which had become her own by adop
tion, nor to gladden again the eyes of her
aged father, whose race of life was almost

* Perhaps it is not generally known that her true and
original name was Matoax or Matoaka, which the Tn
dmns carefully concealed from the English under the
assumed one of Pocahontas, having a superstitious no
tion, that, if they knew her real name, they would be
able to do her some mischief.— Stitk, p. J%.

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 205

run* Early in the year 1617, as she was pre
paring to return to Virginia, she was taken sick
at Gravesend and died, being then about twenty-
two years old. The firmness and resignation
with which she met her death bore testimony
to the sincerity of the religious principles, which
she had long professed.

It is difficult to speak of the character of
Pocahontas, without falling into extravagance.
Though our whole knowledge of her is confined
to a few brilliant and striking incidents, yet there
is in them so complete a consistency, that reason,
as well as imagination, permits us to construct
the whole character from these occasional mani
festations She seems to have possessed every
quality essential to the perfection of the female
character ; the most graceful modesty, the most
winning sensibility, strong affections, tenderness
and delicacy of feeling, dovelike gentleness, and
most entire disinterestedness. These beautiful
qualities were not in her nurtured and trained by
the influences of refined life, but were the native
and spontaneous growth of her heart and soul.

Her mind had not been formed and fed by
books, or the conversation of the gifted and culti
vated ; the nameless graces of polished life had
not surrounded her from her birth and created

* He died in the spring of 1618, probably between
seventy and eighty years of age.

206 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

that tact in manner and deportment, and becom
ing propriety in carriage and conversation, which
all well-bred people, however differing originally
in refinement and delicacy of perception, seem
to possess in about the same degree ; nor had the
coarse forms of actual life been, to her eyes, con
cealed by the elegant drapery which civilization
throws over them. From her earliest years
she had been familiar with rude ways of living,
uncouth habits, and lawless passions. Yet she
seems to have been, from the first, a being dis
tinct from and unlike her people, though in the
midst of them. She reminds one of a delicate
wild-flower, growing up in the cleft of a rock,
where the eye can discern no soil for its roots
to grasp, and sustain its slender stalk. We
behold her as she came from the hands of her
Maker, who seems to have created her in a
spirit of rebuke to the pride of civilization, giv
ing to an Indian girl, reared in the depths of a
Virginian forest, that symmetry of feminine love
liness, which we but seldom see, with all our
helps and appliances, and all that moral machin
ery with which we work upon the raw material
of character.

But in our admiration of what is lovely and
attractive in the character of Pocahontas, wt
muse not overlook the higher moral qualities,
which command respect almost to reverence

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 207

Moral courage, dignity, and independence are
among her most conspicuous traits. Before we
can do justice to them we must take into con
sideration the circumstances under which they
were displayed. At the time when the English
first appeared in Virginia, she was a child but
twelve or thirteen years old. These formida
ble strangers immediately awakened in the breasts
of her people the strongest passions of hatred
and fear, and Captain Smith, in particular, was
looked upon as a being whose powers of injuring
them were irresistible and superhuman. Whai
could have been more natural than that this
young girl should have had all these feeling?
exaggerated by the creative imagination of child
hood, that Captain Smith should have haunted
her dreams, and that she should not have had the
courage to look upon the man to whom her ex
cited fancy had given an outward appearance cor-
^esponding to his frightful attributes ?

But the very first act of her life, as known tc
us. puts her far above the notions and prejudices
of her people, and stamps at once a seal of mark
ed superiority upon her character. And from
this elevation she never descends. Her motives
are peculiar to herself, and take no tinge from the
passions and opinions around her. She thinks
and acts for herself, and does not hesitate, when
thereto constrained, to leave her father, and trust

208 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

for protection to that respect, which was awaken
ed alike by her high birth and high character
among the whole Indian race. It is certainly a
remarkable combination which we see in her, of
gentleness and sweetness with strength of mind,
decision, and firm consistency of purpose, and
would be so in any female, reared under the
most favorable influences.

The lot of Pocahontas may be considered a
happy one, notwithstanding the pang which her
affectionate nature must have felt, in being called
so early to part from her husband and child.
It was her good fortune to be the instrument, in
the hand of Providence, for bringing about a
league of peace and amity between her own
nation and the English, a consummation most
agreeable to her taste and feelings. The many
favors, which she bestowed upon the colonists,
were by them gratefully acknowledged, and ob
tained for her a rich harvest of attentions in
England. Her name and deeds have not been
suffered to pass out of the minds of men, nor are
they discerned only by the glimmering light ol
tradition. Captain Smith seems to have repaid
the vast debt of gratitude which he owed her, by
the immortality which his eloquent and feeling
pen has given her. Who has not heard the
beautiful story of her heroism, and who, that has
heard it, has not felt his heart throb quick with

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 209

generous admiration ? She has become one of
the darlings of history, and her name is as familiar
as a household word to the numerous and power
ful descendants of the " feeble folk," whom she
protected and befriended.

Her own blood flows in the veins of many
honorable families, who trace back with pride
their descent from this daughter of a despised
people. She has been a powerful, though silent
advocate in behalf of the race to which she be
longed. Her deeds have covered a multitude of
their sins. When disgusted with numerous reci
tals of their cruelty and treachery, and about to
pass an unfavorable judgment in our minds upon
the Indian character, at the thought of Pocahon-
tas our " rigor relents." With a softened heart
we are ready to admit that there must have been
fine elements in a people, from among whom such
a being could spring.*

*The child of Pocahontas was left behind in England
and did not accompany his father to Virginia, his tender
years rendering a sea-voyage dangerous and inexpe
dient, without a mother's watchful care. He was left in
charge of Sir Lewis Steukley, whose treacherous con
duct to Sir Walter Raleigh has given him an infamous
notoriety. Young Rolfe was afterwards transferred to
the care of his uncle, Henry Rolfe, in London. He came
to Virginia afterwards, and was a person of consequence
and consideration there. He left an only daughter, who
ivas married to Colonel Robert Boiling, by whom she

iv.— 14

210 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER XVII.

Captain Smith's Examination by the Commis
sioners for the Reformation of Virginia. —
His Death. — His Character.

CAPTAIN SMITH, in his account of his interview
with Pocahontas in the early part of 1617, speaks
of his being on the eve of sailing for New England.
This confident expectation was probably founded
on a promise of the Plymouth company to send
him out, in the spring of that year, with a fleet of
twenty ships. But this promise was never kept,
and Captain Smith, so far as is known to us, pass
ed the remainder of his life in England. But,
though his body was there, his spirit was in Amer
ica ; and he was unwearied in his endeavors to
encourage his countrymen to settle in that country.

had an only son. Major John Boiling, who was father to
Colonel John Boiling and several daughters. These
were married to Colonel Richard Randolph, Colonel
John Fleming, Dr. William Gay, Mr. Thomas Eldridge,
and Mr. James Murray.

The above is taken from Stith, who adds, " that this
remnant of the imperial family of Virginia, which long
ran in a single person, is now increased and branched out
into a very numerous progeny." Her descendants are nu
merous in Virginia at this day. Among them, as is well
known, was the late gifted and eccentric John Randolph
of Roanoke, who was not a little proud of the distinction

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 211

The 27th day of March, 16*22, was rendered
memorable by the dreadful massacre of the Eng
lish settlers at Jamestown, by the Indians under
the direction and by the instigation of Opechan-
canough, who had succeeded to Powhatan's pow
er and influence over his countrymen, and who
was compounded of treachery, cruelty, and dissim
ulation. The design had been for a long time
formed and matured with deliberate skill and fore
thought. The English were entirely unsuspicious
and defenceless, and three hundred and forty-seven
ol them were cruelly slain. The massacre was
conducted with unsparing and indiscriminate bar
barity. Six of the council were among the victims.

This disastrous event threw the whole colony
into mourning and gave to its progress and pros
perity a blow, from the effects of which it was
long in recovering. The news created a great
excitement in England, and Captain Smith, in
particular, was deeply affected by this misfor
tune, which happened to a colony, whose recent
nourishing condition hj had contemplated with so
much pride and satisfaction. He was desirous of
going over to Virginia in person, to avenge the
outrage. He made proposals to the company,
that if they would allow him one hundred soldiers
and thirty sailors, with necessary provisions and
equipments, he would range the country and keep
the savages under subjection and in check.

212 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHT.

Upon this proposal there was a division of
opinion in the council, some being warmly in
favor of it, while others were too avaricious and
short-sighted to lay out present money for fhture
and continge : good. The only answer which
Captain Smith could obtain from them was, that
their capital was too much exhausted to undertake
so expensive a plan, that they thought it was the
duty of the planters themselves to provide for their
own defence, and that they would give him per
mission to go on such an enterprise, provided he
would be content with one half of the pillage for
his share. This pitiful offer was rejected with the
contempt which it deserved. Captain Smith says
he would not give twenty pounds for all the pil
lage, which could be obtained from the savages in
twenty years.

The calamities of the colony in Virginia and
the dissensions of the company in England having
been represented to King James, a commission
was issued on the 9th of May, 1623, under the
great seal of England to certain of the Judges and
other persons of distinction, seven in number,
giving authority to them, or any four of them, to
examine the transactions of the company from its
first establishment, report to the Privy Council all
grievances and abuses, and suggest any plan by
which they might be remedied, and the affairs of
the colony be well managed in future. Seve-

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 213

ral questions were propounded by these com
missioners to Captain Smith, which, togethei
with his answers, he has himself preserved
These answers are marked by his usual good
sense, sagacity, and perfect knowledge of the
subject. He ascribes the misfortunes of the
colony to the rapid succession of governors, to the
numerous and costly offices with which they
were burdened, and to the fact that their affairs
in England were managed by an association far too
numerous to be efficient, the majority of whom
were bent upon nothing but their own gain.

As is well known, King James, in 1624,
dissolved the Virginia company, arrogated to
himself their powers, and issued a special com
mission, appointing a governor and twelve coun
sellors, to whom the whole government of the
colony was intrusted, and making no provision
for a house of representatives. His death tak
ing place soon after, King Charles immediate
ly upon his accession to the throne, published a
proclamation, in which he signified his entire as
sent to the changes introduced into the admin
istration of the colony by his father, and his
determination to make its government depend
entirely upon himself. He declared, that the
whole administration should be vested in a
council, nominated and directed by himself, and
responsible to him alane.

AMERICAN BlOGKAiMli.

The death of Captain Smith occurred in 1631
at London, in the fifty-second year of his age
We know nothing of the circumstances which
attended it, and we are equally ignorant of
his domestic and personal history ; with whom
he was related and connected, where he resid
ed, what was the amount of his fortune, what
were his habits, tastes, personal appearance, man
ners, and conversation, and, in general, of those
personal details which modest men commonly
do not record about themselves.

From the fact that he expended so much money
m behalf of the great objects of his life, and par
ticularly in the publication and distribution of
his pamphlets, we may infer that he was inde
pendent in his circumstances, if not wealthy.
For his labors and sacrifices he never received
any pecuniary recompense. In a statement ad
dressed to his Majesty's commissioners for the
reformation of Virginia, and written probably
about 1624, he says, that he has spent five years
and more than five hundred pounds, in the ser
vice of Virginia and New England ; yet, he adds,
4i in neither of those two countries, have I one foot
o land, nor the very house I builded, nor the
ground I digged with my own hands, nor ever any
content or satisfaction at all, and though I see
ordinarily those two countries shared before me
by them that neither have them, nor know them
but by my descriptions/'

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 215

A. very superficial acquaintance with the events
of Captain Smith's life will be sufficient to con
vince any one that he was a man cast in an un
common mould, and formed alike for the planning
and conducting of great enterprises. He had that
happy combination of qualities, which gave sym
metry to his character, and enabled him to assume
the most important duties and responsibilities.
His constitutional courage was tempered with cool
ness and self-command. The warmth and enthu
siasm of his temperament never perverted the
soundness of his judgment. His zeal was not a
transient flame, quenched by the first experience
of difficulty and danger, but a deep-seated, inde
structible principle, which gained strength from
opposition and vigor from defeat.

The perseverance with which he prosecuted
his enterprises equalled the ardor with which he
indertook them. His energy was so great and
overflowing, that he could not be confined to any
Hie sphere of duty. We see him at the same
»ime performing the offices of a provident gover
nor, a valiant soldier, and an industrious laborer,
capable alike of commanding and executing. He
dreaded nothing so much as repose, inactivity, and
ease. He seemed to court the dangers, toils, and
sufferings, which other men shrink from, or en
counter only from a sense of duty. His resources
increase in proportion to the extent of the demand

216 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

made upon them. As the storm darkens around
him his spirit grows more bright and serene, and
that, which appals and disheartens others, only
animates him. It was his good fortune to have a
vigorous mind seconded by an equally vigorous
body. He had a " soul of fire " enclosed in a
" frame of adamant," and was thus enabled to
endure and accomplish whatever his adventurous
spirit impelled him to.

If we were called upon to say what was his
ruling and characteristic trait, we should reply,
enthusiasm, using that word in its highest and
best sense, as the quality which leads a man to
devote himself to some great and good object with
courage, constancy, and self-abandonment, and to
exert in its advancement and behalf all the
energies of his nature, undaunted by natural ob
stacles, unruffled by opposition, and uninfluenced
by the insinuations of the malicious, the open vio
lence of enemies, and the lukewarmness of selfish
friends. For the first thirty years of his life, we
see him without any predominant object of inter
est or pursuit, obeying the impulses of a fiery
valor and a restless spirit of enterprise, " seeking
the bubble reputation" in desperate skirmishes in
an obscure corner of Europe, eagerly embracing
every opportunity of exposing himself to danger
and of winning glory, prodigal cf life and covetous
of honor VPT in all the scene of his checkered

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 217

career, he is animated by those high and romantic
motives, which must extort admiration from even
those, who look upon war as a crime and military
renown as a worthless bawble. There is nothing
selfish or mercenary in his conduct ; he does not
belong to the Dugald Dalgetty school of heartless
and ruffianly adventurers, making a trade of blood
and anxious only for pay and " provant." He
was a generous and highminded soldier, who
fought for the battle and not for the spoils, and
who gave to the cause he espoused, not only his
sword, but his entire soul and heart.

But, fortunately for himself and for the world,
in his early manhood he was induced to devote
himself to the settlement of America, an object
attractive enough to keep his imagination per
petually kindled, and vast enough to task all
his powers, the prosecution of which unfolded
in him high qualities of mind and character, that
the iron routine of the camp could never have
called forth, and which secured him a peaceful
glory, far more durable and valuable than the
laurels of a hundred victories. Henceforward
this great interest absorbed and monopolized him.
It supplied the place of friends, kindred, and do
mestic ties. He embraced it and labored for it
with a disinterestedness and a sense of duty, wor
thy both of himself and of the cause. He never
made it the means of securing pecuniary gain or

218 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

worldly advancement, being content to point out
to othei3 the way to wealth, while he remained
poor himself. He never coveted official dignity ;
and, when he obtained it, he made it no excuse
for indolence or self-indulgence, and did not re
gard it as of so delicate a texture as to render a
dignified and lofty seclusion necessary to preserve
it unimpaired. He was never actuated by the
motives or spirit of a hireling.

We have seen him in Virginia struggling against
a host of difficulties, contending, not only with
those natural obstacles which he might reason
ably have expected, but with mutiny, treachery,
and disaffection in the colony and base injustice
and persecution at home ; yet never abandoning
his post in disgust and despair, but, for the sake
of the settlement, doing every thing and suffering
every thing. And what was his conduct on his
return ? He showed no peevish resentment and
betrayed none of the irritation of disappointment
He never magnified his own wrongs nor the ill-
treatment of the company. He did not Wiite
pamphlets to beg of the public the consolation of
their sympathy, and to pour into the general ear
the tale of his great merits and great neglect. His
conduct was magnanimous, dignified, and noble.
Strong in the confidence of innocence, he made
no appeal and attempted no justification. He
continued, as before, the active and zealous friend

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 219

of the colony at Jamestown, and of all similar
projects.

He frequently volunteered his own personal
services, and twice sailed to the coast of New
England. By the writing and distribution of
pamphlets, and by personal exertions, he diffused
information among all classes upon the subject of
America ; enforcing eloquently its advantages as
a place either for trade or for permanent settle
ment, and appealing, in its behalf, to avarice, am
bition, enterprise, and that noble spirit of benevo
lent self-sacrifice, which dwelt in bosoms kindred
to his own. Never was a scheme for obtaining
wealth or personal aggrandizement pursued by
any individual with more fervor and singleness of
purpose, and never was one crowned with more
splendid success, though he himself " died before
the sight."

Captain Smith must have been something
more than mortal, had he possessed so many
brilliant and substantial good qualities without
any tincture of alloy. The frankness of his
character reveals to us his faults no less than his
virtues. He was evidently a man of an impa
tient and irritable temperament, expecting to find,
in every department of life, the prompt and un
hesitating character of military obedience. He
had keen sensibility and lively feelings, and was
apt to regard as studied neglect or intentional hos-

220 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY.

tillty, what was in fact only lukewarm indiffer
ence. His conviction of the importance of dis
cipline and subordination made him sometimes
imperious and tyrannical. The energy and de
cision of his character led him sometimes to adopt
questionable means to secure a desired result.
His high spirit and independence made him per
haps unnecessarily rough and haughty in his
communications to his superiors in station and
authority.

Nothing is more difficult, than, in our inter
course with those above us in rank, influence, or
consideration, to hit that exact medium of deport
ment, which is demanded alike by self-respect and
by respect to others, and which is equally removed
from slavish fawning and from the unbending stiff
ness generated by undue notions of self-importance.
We have Captain Smith's own authority that he
had a great many enemies. These were un
doubtedly made by his haughty bearing, his un
compromising freedom of speech, the warmth of
his temper, and the impatience of his blood.
His resentments were lively, his antipathies strong,
and prudence had never dictated to him to refrain
from the expression of them.

There is one circumstance which may serve
to palliate some of these weaknesses in Captain
Smith. His birth was nothing more than re
spectable in an age when the greates importance

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 221

jvas attached to nobility. It is easy to perceive
that this peculiarity in his fortunes may have pro
duced in him a soreness of feeling and jealousy
of temper ; may have made him suspicious and
fearful, lest he should not receive from others the
respect and consideration, which he knew were
due to his personal merit. This inequality be
tween one's lot and one's merits and wishes is
a severe trial of character, and, in men of high
spirit, is apt to beget a morbid sensitiveness and
pride, a surly independence of manner, and a
painful uneasiness lest their dignity should be
ruffled by too familiar contact. To this source is
undoubtedly to be ascribed much of that tart
ness of expression which we find frequently in his
writings, and of that haughtiness which we have
every reason to suppose was characteristic of his
deportment.

Those who have read this biography will, I
think, be ready to allow, that the debt of gratitude
which we of this country owe to Captain Smith
can hardly be exaggerated. With the excep
tion of Sir Walter Raleigh (and perhaps Richard
Hakluyt) no one did so much towards colonizing
and settling the coast of North America. The
State of Virginia is under peculiar obligations to
him as its virtual founder ; since, without his re
markable personal qualities and indefatigable ex
ertions, the colony at Jamestown could never have

222 AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY,

taken root. In reading the history of his ad
ministration, we are made to feel in regard tc
him, as we do in regard to Washington, when we
contemplate the events of the American Revolu
tion ; that he was a being specially appointed by
divine Providence to accomplish the work in
trusted to him. He was exactly fitted for the
place which he filled, and not one of his many
remarkable gifts could have been spared without
serious detriment.

His claims upon the gratitude of the people ot'
New England are hardly inferior. He was the
first to perceive the advantages held out by it as
a place of settlement, in spite of its bitter skies
and iron bound coast, and to correct the errone
ous, unfavorable impressions prevalent concerning
it. Though he himself had no direct share in
the settlement of Plymouth, yet without doubt
it was owing to the interest which had been
awakened by his writings and personal exertions,
that the ranks of the colonists were so soon
swelled by those accessions of men of character
and substance, which gave them encouragement
and insured them prosperity and success. It uas
the peculiar good fortune of Captain Smith to
stand in so interesting a relation to the two oldest
States in the Union, and through them to the
northern and southern sections of the country.
The debt of gratitude due him is national and

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 223

American, and so should his glory be. Wher
ever upon this continent the English language is
spoken, his deeds should be recounted, and his
memory hallowed. His services should not only
be not forgotten, but should be " freshly remem
bered." His name should not only be honored
by the silent canvass, and the cold marble, but
his praises should dwell living upon the lips of
men, and should be handed down by fathers to
their children. Poetry has imagined nothing more
stirring and romantic than his life and adventures,
and History, upon her ample page, has recorded
few more honorable and spotless names.

THE END