University of Virginia Library

INTRODUCTION

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Whereas the True Relation (1608) suffered from injudicious editing even
before it was printed, Smith's 1612 publication has been subjected only to
modern criticism, often in the form of myopic inspection. It is therefore wise
that a fresh start be made here.

The original long title, pruned and modernized here for readier understanding,
outlines the contents of both parts:

[I]

• A Map of Virginia, With
  a Description of the Country, by
  Captain Smith: and

[II]

• The Proceedings of Those Colonies,
  Taken Out of the Writings of Doctor
  Russell and others, by W[illiam]
  S[ymonds].

  Printed at Oxford by Joseph Barnes
  [manager of the press for the university,
  1586-1617].

The first part, ordinarily though loosely referred to by the title Map of
Virginia, consists of an engraved map and a descriptive text with information
on the location of Virginia, and its geography, resources, and inhabitants.
A quarto volume of only thirty-nine pages, it is virtually the fountainhead of
what is known today of the Indians who inhabited the Chesapeake Bay area
at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Edward Arber was the first to point out that the printing of Smith's
"book of travels" at the Oxford University Press was a "most singular fact,"
since that press usually "produced sermons, theological and learned Works,
etc."

Eleven years later Falconer Madan added that Smith's book and
Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1621) were two of "the most
important works produced at Oxford between 1585 and 1640." Although
in Burton's case the place of publication is not surprising since he lived and
died in Oxford, Smith had no ties there and may never have visited the city
(unless it was to revise proofs at Joseph Barnes's printing house). Yet when
the course of events is taken into consideration, Arber's "singular fact" may
not be so out of the way as it seemed to him. Although the evidence is purely
circumstantial, it seems worth presenting.

Smith, disabled by a severe burn, returned to England late in 1609
without yet knowing that the Virginia Company had shown considerable
appreciation of his work in Jamestown, and without having yet seen a copy
of the new charter, signed only some six months before. He arrived in London,
however, at a most inauspicious juncture. The reorganized company,
now privately operated by royal license, had suffered a grave mishap at its
very inception. For the same ships that took Smith home brought the news
that the new governor, Sir Thomas Gates, the admiral, Sir George Somers,
and the vice-admiral, Capt. Christopher Newport, were lost at sea on their
way to take up their posts in Virginia, with all their letters of authority and
other documents. Fortunately, the Council for Virginia had already planned
to put a "lord governor and captain-general" over Gates, and thus a relief
expedition could be organized with extraordinary speed. Sir Thomas West,
third (or twelfth) Baron De La Warr, was appointed to take command, and
on April 1, 1610, another fleet was on its way to Virginia.

Clearly, the councillors in London were too busy, and too troubled, to
pay much attention to Capt. John Smith. He may have been put off politely,
or he may have been merely brushed aside. The result was the same. The
months dragged along, and by September 1610, London learned that the
colony had been saved; Gates and De La Warr had joined forces in Jamestown,
and Gates himself conveyed the tidings. An old friend or two of
Smith's came back with Gates, and about the same time Smith found a new
"best friend" in the elderly earl of Hertford, Sir Edward Seymour. Finding
a "harbour" in his lordship's favor, and encouragement from his Virginia
friends, Smith gathered together his notes, sketches, and keepsakes and set
about writing a book.

A year passed. With a basic sketch map already in hand, Smith himself
pulled together the text for the description of Virginia to go with the map,
and with the aid of Richard Pots, clerk of the council in Virginia when Smith
was president, he assembled various narratives from which the Proceedings
was to be formed. Probably through Rawley Crashaw, a companion who
had remained in Virginia, Smith got hold of the Reverend William Crashaw
-- for what immediate, specific purpose is not clear -- and the Reverend
William Whitaker. One or both of these put Smith in touch with a third
preacher, William Symonds, an Oxford man then often to be found in the
pulpit at St. Saviour's in Southwark, just across London Bridge from the
Royal Exchange and other centers for news gathering. The rough copy for
the Proceedings needed editorial advice, and Symonds gladly lent a hand. In
this way, Smith's work came to be published in Oxford, and in two parts.

The map was engraved by William Hole, a well-known artist whom
Smith apparently engaged sometime in 1611. Since Hole was not a cartographer,
Smith supplied him with his own basic sketch map dating back to
late 1608 and probably also with "regional" sketch maps of the rivers and
other geographical details. In terms of the Latin then current, it can possibly
best be said that Smith collegit (brought together, assembled) cards or
sketches for Hole to use. To these he apparently added the Indians' verbal
or manual descriptions (e.g., drawn with a stick in the sand) of unvisited or
insufficiently explored regions. How much, or how little, of this Smith himself
drafted is of small importance, especially since he seems never to have
laid claim to any special ability in that field. What is significant is that he
had the vision to get the map prepared and engraved.

Be that as it may, one chronological detail is important here. On
March 12, 1611, Spain's ambassador to James I, Don Alonso de Velasco,
sent a large manuscript map of northeast North America to Spain, which,
as in the case of the Smith/Zúñiga map, no doubt is that stored in the
Archivo General de Simancas, Valladolid, Spain, today. Careful inspection
of the Velasco map points to a basic sketch of the Chesapeake Bay area, now
lost, from which both the Velasco map and the more detailed one engraved
by Hole were derived. Whether or not Smith did any or all of the drafting
is not at issue here. Nor are the discrepant details an important matter, since
there are valid explanations for these, such as the greatly reduced scale of
the Velasco map as against Hole's. The important point is that the Velasco
map establishes that the source of the Hole engraving was in existence early
in 1611.

Smith's textual "Description of the Country," as distinct from the map,
appears to have been inspired basically by Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations,
Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, which had been
completed in 1600 with the publication of Volume III, dealing with America.
Hakluyt himself was one of the four patentees for the "Jamestown voyages,"
as the enterprise may succinctly be termed. His surrogate, the Reverend
Robert Hunt, accompanied the original colonists as spiritual adviser. Most
important of all, one or more copies of Hakluyt's book were taken along, too.
Smith can hardly have failed to have had one handy.

Thomas Harriot, however, who was "specially imploied" by Ralegh,
was even more directly useful to Smith. His book A briefe and true report of the
new found land of Virginia (London, 1588) had been available to Smith in

Virginia as reprinted by Hakluyt. On his return, yet another reprint of the
same work proved of great worth: that of the Flemish engraver and publisher
Theodore de Bry, illustrated with de Bry's engravings based on John White's
original drawings from life (Frankfurt am Main, 1590). Under Smith's
guidance, both Hole and, later, Robert Vaughan vicariously portrayed the
Indians Smith saw around Chesapeake Bay in the likeness of the Indians
White saw off Pamlico Sound. But it was Harriot's trained mind that
accounted for de Bry, and de Bry inspired Smith's engravers.

As for the general organization of Smith's text, there is some slight
reason to believe that he may have read José de Acosta's Naturall and Morall
Historie of the East and West Indies (Seville, 1590), which had been translated
by Edward Grimston (or Grimestone) and published in London in 1604. At
least Smith's plan is broadly similar to Acosta's, even if there seems to be no
evidence of direct borrowing, and it may be that the Reverend Samuel
Purchas, when he got interested in Smith, made his copy available. Hakluyt's
Principal Navigations, as we have noted, also gave Smith ideas. But for the rest,
it was Smith's Map of Virginia that gave ideas to others.

William Strachey, the ex-secretary of the Jamestown colony, who returned
to London late in 1611, was the first to follow in Smith's wake.
Although it is remotely possible that Strachey had access to a manuscript
copy of the Map of Virginia while in the colony early in that same year, it is
certain that he had one soon after he got back home. Careful study of his
The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania shows that he incorporated about
four-fifths of Smith's work bodily into his own. To this he added about twice
as much more that he had collected himself during his fifteen to sixteen
months' stay, beginning the year after Smith left Virginia. Strachey's complementary
reinforcement of the Map of Virginia should be neither depreciated
nor overlooked.

Meanwhile, Samuel Purchas, B.D., vicar of Eastwood, near Southendon-Sea
at the mouth of the Thames, surrounded as he was by seafaring folk,
had begun work on a large volume to be called Purchas his Pilgrimage, in
which he planned to combine his religious calling with firsthand tales of
foreign lands: "Relations," as he put it, "of the world and the religions
observed in all ages and places discovered from the creation unto this
present."

The Virginia colony, consequently, could not but interest Purchas,
and through his colleagues in divinity in London, such as Crashaw
and his associates, he must have heard about Smith and his book, full of the
"devilish" procedures of the American "savages" (from the French word
sauvages, usually translated in those days as "wild-men"). If, then, Purchas
had not already got in touch with Smith, he certainly did when Strachey
came back with his harrowing tales.

So it was that about the time Strachey returned, Purchas and Smith
became or had become friends, and the former was able to publish a few
extracts from the latter's manuscripts in the Pilgrimage, in 1613, including a
fragment or two never printed by Smith himself.

The following year,
Purchas noted in the second edition of the Pilgrimage (1614) that Smith's
manuscript had been "since printed at Oxford" (p. 760), and this same
notation was repeated in the third edition (1617), and in the 1626 reprint of
the last mentioned.

Meanwhile, between 1617 and 1621, Purchas had started work on a
new project, the enormous four-volume folio Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas
His Pilgrimes, which appeared in 1625 (with an engraved title page dated
1624 in at least one copy). In this magnum opus Purchas found room to
reprint the entire text of Smith's Map of Virginia as published in Oxford, with
a few minor changes. But before the Pilgrimes appeared on the market, Smith
himself had published the Generall Historie of Virginia (1624). In that work he
included a reprint of the Map of Virginia as Book II, with minor changes of
his own, but he almost rewrote the Proceedings for Book III. In short, inspired
by Harriot but working according to his own understanding of what ought
to be done, Smith produced a description of Virginia and its inhabitants that
has been utilized ever since, with only the most trivial alterations, and to
which Strachey's slightly later observations serve as a confirmation and
handy complement.

In conclusion, it is worth noting here that the chance survival of a handwritten
bill or invoice dated March 30, 1623, shows the importance that the
Virginia Company then attached to Smith's work. Among the 115 titles of
books sold to the company "at severall times" were:

• one copy of "Hackluites Voyadges,"
• three of "Smithes [Description of] New England [1616],"
• two of "Captaine Smithes book [Map of Virginia],"
• one "Heriotts booke of Virginia."
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The student of Smith's writings may find helpful the following table of broad
correspondences between the Map of Virginia, Strachey's Historie, Smith's
Generall Historie, and Purchas's Pilgrimes, vol. IV; and between the Map and
the various editions of Purchas's Pilgrimage.

               

Map of Va.	Strachey	Gen. Hist.	Pilgrimes
1-10	31-53	21-25	1691-1694
10-15}		{25-28	1694-1696
15-18}	117-133	{28-29	1696-1697
18-19}		{29	1697
19-29	70-87, 104-111	29-34	1697-1701
29-34	88-103	34-37	1701-1702
34-39		37-39	1703-1704

           

Map of Va.		Pilgrimage
	(1613)	(1614)	(1617)	(1626)
1-2	634	760		834-835
9	640-641	767	953-954	842-844
2-19	635	761		836
29-34	639-640	768-769	950-956	839-841

Chronology of Events in Virginia, 1608-1612

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1608

     

June 2.	Smith sent his True Relation to England, and with it probably the Smith/Zúñiga map.
Sept. 10.	Smith elected president of the Virginia Council, after virtually completing his geographical and ethnological investigations. Shortly thereafter Captain Newport returned to Virginia with the second supply of colonists and brought a letter from the London Council that berated the colonists for their factiousness and "idle conceits."
c. Dec. 1.	Newport left on a return voyage to England, taking along Smith's "rude answer" to the London Council, as well as a "Mappe of the Bay and Rivers, with an annexed Relation of the Countries and Nations that inhabit them."

1609

 
 
                       

Jan. 16.	Sometime before this date Newport reached England.
Feb. 18.	Robert Johnson's Nova Britannia, a promotional pamphlet inspired by King James's grant of a new charter, was entered for publication.
May 5.	Capt. Samuel Argall sent out to test a shorter route to Virginia, under a company commission.
May 23.	Second charter signed; Sir Thomas Smythe appointed treasurer. Also in May, the new council issued instructions to Sir Thomas Gates, as governor of Virginia, naming Sir George Somers admiral of Virginia, Capt. John Smith and others to the local council, and assigning Smith to the command of a fort to be built at Cape Comfort.
June 8.	Gates's fleet got out to sea from Falmouth.
July 13.	Argall arrived in Jamestown, after 69 days at sea (the 1606 voyage had taken 128 days).
July 24.	Gates and Somers's flagship caught by a hurricane and driven on the Bermuda reefs.
Aug. 11-18.	The surviving ships reached Jamestown. Archer, Ratcliffe, and other old enemies of Smith's stirred up trouble over the new charter (though nobody had a copy of it) but let Smith finish his term as president. Not long after, Smith was incapacitated by a severe burn, and the rebellious clique gained the upper hand. George Percy, youngest brother of the earl of Northumberland, reluctantly agreed to serve as president, apparently even before Sept. 10.
Aug. 18.	Henry Hudson, a friend of Smith's, explored Delaware Bay, after picking up from where Smith's explorations had left off (approximately 37° 30' N lat.). From there he sailed N to explore the river now named after him.
Oct. 4.	Captain Ratcliffe wrote to Lord Salisbury that Smith "is sent home."
Nov. 9.	Sometime before this date, Argall arrived back in England. Meanwhile, in Virginia the "starving time" had set in.
Nov. 27.	In Bermuda, Gates and Somers determined to build boats to transport themselves to Virginia.
Nov. 30.	Sometime before this date, Smith arrived in England.
Dec. 14.	Lord De La Warr, Sir Thomas Smythe, and others entered for publication A True and Sincere Declaration of the Purpose of the Plantation Begun in Virginia to calm investors concerned over the loss of the flagship and to announce the immediate departure of a relief fleet commanded by De La Warr, now named lord governor and captain general for Virginia.

1610

                 

Feb. 21.	The Reverend William Crashaw, a Puritan, preached a farewell sermon before De La Warr, and on Apr. 1 the latter's fleet sailed from the Solent (Isle of Wight).
May 10.	Gates set sail from Bermuda for Virginia in two pinnaces built on the island. At about the same time, George Percy undertook for the first time to sail from Jamestown down to Old Point Comfort to see if the colonists there were still alive.
May 21.	Gates arrived with his men just in time to meet Percy, who was at Old Point Comfort, and two days later they were all reunited in Jamestown.
June 7.	Finding "not past sixtie" colonists alive, out of 500, Gates abandoned Jamestown and put the survivors and his own men aboard three pinnaces. A few miles downstream, however, they met De La Warr, who had entered the bay the day before, and in short order all went back to Jamestown.
June 10.	Sunday afternoon. De La Warr came ashore to take formal charge of the colony. Two days later he nominated his council, with William Strachey secretary and recorder.
c. Sept. 1.	De La Warr's ships returned to England, bearing Gates, Newport, and others, along with Strachey's account of the Bermuda misadventure, "A True Reportory of the Wracke, and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates." Important for John Smith was the highly probable return then of Richard Pots, an old Virginia colonist who had apparently acted as clerk of the council when Smith was president, and who was to take an important part in Smith's immediate plans, for the news of the colony's survival could not but give Smith a new purpose in life.
Nov. 8.	Sir Thomas Smythe, Richard Martin, secretary of the Virginia Company, and others entered for publication A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia, a vindication based largely on Strachey's "Reportory." It is probable that the publication of this pamphlet was an immediate cause in Smith's completing plans for his own work, since Richard Pots, a knowledgeable acquaintance from Virginia now in England, and probably others, could help.
Nov. 9.	Sir George Somers died in Bermuda.
Dec. 14.	Richard Martin, secretary of the Virginia Company, apparently assailed by misgivings about Virginia, wrote privately to Strachey asking for an honest report of the colony.

1611

         

Mar. 12.	Don Alonso de Velasco, Spanish ambassador to James I, sent to Philip III a manuscript map of NE North America (hereafter called the "Velasco map"), which was evidently based on various available maps, "plots," or sketches.
Mar. 26.	Smith appears to have employed the engraver William Hole shortly after this date.
Mar. 28.	De La Warr left Virginia, ill. Sir Thomas Dale had already sailed for Virginia with three ships bearing men, cattle, and supplies.
Nov. 1.	The earliest recorded performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest, in which he surely drew on William Strachey's "Reportory."
c. Dec. 18.	Shortly before this date Newport returned from Virginia with word of Gates's safe arrival there. Gates thereafter was employed by the East India Company. Argall seems to have replaced Newport in the Virginia service, and John Smith may have regarded this development as a favorable sign for himself. But by then William Hole presumably was at work on Smith's map, and William Crashaw and William Symonds may well have started to help Smith find a printer.

1612

     

Mar. 12.	The third charter, an amplification of the 1609 charter inspired by the knowledge that Bermuda was accessible and habitable and by the fear that Spain might now occupy it, was signed.
May 1.	Robert Johnson's The New Life of Virginia was entered for publication. Containing no map, no sound information about the Indians, and no historical details, this appears to have been the type of promotional literature considered most appropriate by Smythe's clique.
Aug. 7.	Purchas's Pilgrimage was entered for publication. In it he stated that the Smith/Hole map was in print, but implied that the accompanying text was not.

1613

 

Mar. 24.

Smith's Map of Virginia and Proceedings must have been in print by this date, since the legal year 1612 ended then. This is corroborated in the second edition of Purchas's Pilgrimage, which states in a marginal note that Smith's manuscript was "since printed at Oxford."