University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VI

JAMESTOWN FOUNDED

The landing took place on the following morning, and for
the protection of the settlers the erection of a palisade and a
fort was at once begun. The members of the council assembled
and elected Wingfield to the office of President, an unhappy
choice, as he was a man of feeble abilities and a querulous
temper. He was probably picked out by his colleagues for a
reason which was particularly powerful in that age—his social
position at home was more eminent than that of his associates.
Captain John Smith had no share in the deliberations of the
council, for he was, at this time, under arrest for what was
soon shown to have been the preposterous charge that, during
the voyage to Virginia, he had been engaged in a treasonable
conspiracy. He brought suit for the groundless accusation,
and was awarded an affirmative verdict with damages, having
previously been restored to his office of councillor.

The fatal experience with the Indians at Cape Henry had
taught the new authorities at Jamestown—as the settlement
was named in honor of the King—an important lesson for their
future guidance in their relations with the savages, for, when
the werowance of Paspaheigh, with one hundred armed warriors,
asked to be admitted behind the palisade, his request
was refused until he and his fellowers had dropped all their
weapons; nor were they permitted to remain during the night.

On May 31 (n. s.), Newport, accompanied by Captain John
Smith and others, left Jamestown—where the colonists were
now building and sowing the seed of wheat in new grounds—
to continue his voyage beyond the mouth of the Appomattox
River, which had been the furthest point reached by him in the

barge before the vessels had raised their anchors at Point
Comfort. He succeeded without obstruction in pushing his
prow up to the foot of a great fall in the stream at the site
of the modern city of Richmond. As the shallop made its way

Indian Werowance

against the current, Indians were seen running along the
banks, and every now and then stopping to offer the strangers
gifts of strawberries, mulberries, bread, and fish. But what
interested Captain Newport more than these acceptable presents
of food was a sketch in the sand made by one of the savages
when the Englishmen had come on shore to speak to them
in person. This sketch represented the Powhatan as flowing
down from a great chain of mountains, beyond which there
lay a mighty ocean of salt water, which Newport was convinced
was the South Sea. In reality, this common impression
among the Indians at the time of the foundation of Jamestown
had its origin in their vague information of the existence of
the Gulf of Mexico. The mountains that were pictured in the
sketch were the Blue Ridge chain and the Alleghanies, and on
their further side flowed the rivers that emptied their contents
into that Gulf. It was said by the Indians that Opechancanough,
a chief only second to Powhatan in power, had migrated
with many of his tribe to Virginia from the regions adjacent
to that vast arm of the Atlantic Ocean. It is possible too that
rumors of the Great Lakes had been carried across the Ohio
and Potomac in the fierce excursions of savage warriors from
the valley of the Mohawk, who then, as at a later day, swept
down through Piedmont Virginia to attack the tribes of the
far South.

At a feast which was spread out before Captain Newport
and his companions at Arrahatock, the werowance drank so
liberally of aqua vitæ that he become very drunk, which was
taken by his people as a proof that he had been bewitched;
and this not unnatural impression only passed away when he
had fully recovered his wits. He showed his faith in the
innocence of the liquor by earnestly asking for another dram.

As soon as Captain Newport found himself confronted by
an impassable cataract in the river—which must have caused
him acute chagrin, as he had expected to go straight on to the
mountains in the shallop—he landed and erected a cross on
one of the numerous islets that rose above the foaming waters
at the foot of the falls. A solemn prayer for King James was
offered up, and proclamation was made that the whole country
would thereafter be a province of the crown.

Stopping on the voyage down the river at the village of the
Queen of Appomattox, the Englishmen watched with curiosity
the swarthy divers as they brought up many mussel pearls

from the bottom of the stream. The first news which Newport
received on his arrival at Jamestown was that the fort had
been assaulted by a band of two hundred Indians; and that it
was only with the aid of broadsides from the cannon of the
ships, lying just off shore, that they could be driven off; and
then not so far away that they could be prevented from shooting
arrows into the tents that sheltered the colonists. By this
means, two of the latter were killed and several others
wounded. The fort, even with the assistance of Newport's
companions on his voyage to the falls, was not completed until
the last week in June. It was constructed in the shape of a
triangle, with its front on the river bank. The lines on the
sides ran back three hundred feet respectively; the base or
river line, north and south, four hundred and twenty. Heavy
guns were planted on each of the several bulwarks.

Captain Newport departed with the fleet for England when
the fort was nearly finished. The most curious portion of his
cargo was a small nugget of real gold, which had probably
been washed down to the cataract in the Powhatan from some
remote stream in the modern Buckingham or Fluvanna
County, where there are still many traces of veins of that
precious metal. In addition to this genuine specimen, there
was a large quantity of dirt, which had, in its composition, a
few outcroppings of what appeared to be valuable gilt, but
which, when analyzed, was shown to be worthless spangles.
Newport also carried back with him a map of the great river,
which was much more useful than the dirt.

There were now about one hundred persons crowded behind
the palisades of Jamestown. The hot weather of summer fell
in July. The colonists, accustomed only to the temperate climate
of England, and forced to drink water which tended to
purge them, owing to the presence of salt, began to languish
with the tropical sicknesses, malaria and dysentery, and before
the end of September over one half of the unhappy company
had died. The black list included the names of Bartholomew
Gosnold, who had successfully defied the perils of the sea, and

John Studley, the custodian of all the supplies brought in by
the ships, and of the commodities that were to be sent back to
England. The town had been founded by men who had no real
desire to pass the rest of their lives in that remote wilderness.
The large majority, indeed, had come over on the impulse of
adventure or of personal gain alone, and there were no women
among them to produce that sense of domestic permanence,
which, afterwards, was the most powerful influence that confirmed
the American pioneers in their resolution to hew down
the primæval wilderness. Depression of spirit sprang up
among this company of men just so soon as the novelty of the
situation had worn off. The persistent attacks by the Indians
must have quickened the growing feeling of dismay. It was in
just such a state of mind and heart as this that sickness, communicated
by the evil taint of the atmosphere and water, would
find a perfect hotbed for its growth.

Now was to be clearly discerned the folly of establishing the
settlement on the site of Jamestown instead of at a point
nearer to the falls in the river, or even in close proximity to
that spot. We have already described, on the testimony of the
early explorers themselves, the extraordinary fertility of the
primæval soil along the banks of the Powhatan, the abundance
of the aboriginal crops which it produced, and the profusion
which marked the platters of every Indian wigwam. The
river was full of fish, and the woods on the island itself teemed
with game. And yet, in the midst of this paradise of natural
plenty, the gaunt spectre of famine rose to view. There were
at this moment not five men in that whole company in possession
of sufficient strength to work the guns planted on the
bulwarks. All would have perished had not the Indians, with
strange fickleness, brought roasting-ears of corn, fish, and
venison, to appease, to some degree, the gnawing pangs of
hunger. "If there were any conscience in men," says Percy,
who survived, "it would make their hearts bleed to hear the
pitiful murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without relief
night or day for the space of six weeks; some departing out of

[Enlarged from a cut in the Scheeps-Tegt van Anthony Chester Na Virginia, gedaan in het jaar 1620. Printed at Leyden by Peter Vander, 1707. A pamphlet. 12mo.]

the world—many times three or four in a night; in the morning,
their bodies trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be
buried."

In this condition, which was attributable in a degree to the
incompetence of the council—for many, if not all, of its evils
could have been avoided by a wiser selection of a site for the
town—it was only to be expected that its surviving members
would be turning on each other with bitter recriminations.
Wingfield seems to have aroused only an emotion of exasperated
contempt. The most discerning and decisive of the councillors,
Captain John Smith, was, for some time after his
arrival at Jamestown, without any share in the deliberations
of his colleagues, and was probably at first without any influence
with them, owing to the charges against him, though soon
shown to be false. John Kendall was dropped from the body
and thrown into irons. The rest appeared to have fallen into
a state of bewilderment.

Whilst all this misery and dissension were prevailing at
Jamestown, Newport had arrived in England and submitted
his report. In the light of the existing famine among the
colonists, the details of that report sound like the expression
of a cruel irony. "We have fallen on a land," he wrote, "that
promises more than the land of promise. Instead of milk, we
find pearl, and gold instead of bronze." But the bubble which
he blew exploded for the moment at least when his gilded dirt
was subjected to the tests of expert assayers and was found to
be without even a speck of the precious metals. Still the council
in London were only temporarily disheartened in their
thirst for the discovery of these metals. Fortunately for the
enterprise, there was a solid ground for encouragement in the
wealth which the new country was said by Newport to possess
in all those commodities which the English merchants had
been importing from foreign lands. He was soon despatched
again to Virginia with a quantity of supplies for the colonists,
and also with a pinnace that could be carried around the falls
of the Powhatan for the exploration of the upper reaches of

the stream in the expectation of finding the gold and silver
rumored to lie under the surface of that region. In the meanwhile,
the Spanish ambassador in London was looking on with
a suspicious eye. "Your Majesty," he wrote in a letter to his
King, "should consider that such a bad project should be
uprooted now while it can be done easily."

Before Newport, in command of one ship—his consort, the
Phœnix, under Captain Francis Nelson, having been blown
off her course—arrived at Jamestown, which occurred towards
the end of 1607, the flocks of wild fowl had returned to the
waters of the Powhatan, and these, with the fish, which were
caught in large quantities, served to relieve the pangs of
extreme hunger that had caused so much suffering and so many
deaths in the colony. The cool breezes of October and November
had begun to produce a more robust atmosphere; and this
too had proved beneficial to the unfortunate settlers who survived.
And they were not now relying on rotten tents to
shelter their bodies from inclement weather. Captain John
Smith had succeeded Studley in the office of cape merchant,
and he had not only quickly made provision for the erection
of cabins, but had superintended in person the distribution of
the remaining supplies; and when these began to sink to the
last bushel, he, at the head of a small band of soldiers, visited
Kecoughtan, Paspaheigh, and Chickahominy, in turn, for the
purpose of buying corn from the Indians. From Chickahominy,
he procured seven hogsheads of maize, and from Mamamahunt,
four hundred bushels.

Instead of these cargoes of food creating a renewed feeling
of encouragement among the men left at Jamestown, it only
seemed to fan their discontent, until in one case at least a
mutiny began to be hatched. The purpose of the conspirators
was to seize the pinnace and make off in the night in that frail
bark for England. Ratcliffe had taken the place of the deposed
Wingfield as President, and he so far forgot the dignity of his
office as to strike Reed, the blacksmith. Reed saved his neck
from the gallows by disclosing a treasonable plot on the part

Pocahontas

of Kendall, who was summarily tried and shot. Then arose a
discussion in the council whether the pinnace should not be
dispatched to Newfoundland for supplies or even to England.
But no decision was reached because those of the settlers who
were to be left behind at Jamestown violently opposed the
project, in their apprehension lest they should meet with the
fate of Raleigh's lost colonists, after the last ship had disappeared
down the river.

Captain John Smith as cape merchant felt little confidence
in the success of the plan of sending out the pinnace to remote
distances for food. He thought that the Indian markets near
at hand offered a better chance of supplying the public needs.
In December, he, with a little band of nine persons, took boat
for the mouth of the Chickahominy River, for the purpose
primarily of trading with the villages for corn, but, secondarily,
of finding, through that river, if possible, a route to the
South Sea. He pushed his way in a barge as far up she
swampy stream as the depth of the water allowed, and then
with two Englishmen and two Indian guides—the remainder
of his crew being left behind in the barge—he paddled in a
canoe up the shallow and winding channel. While walking
through the woods with one of the guides, he was suddenly
confronted by a large body of Indian hunters. He fired his
pistol into their midst, wounding one fatally, and then endeavored
to retreat, but, in slowly stepping backward, he fell into
a morass and was captured, and was then dragged off to his
canoe, where he saw the corpse of one of his men who had been
slain. The other men had disappeared.

The Indians then led him to Opechancanough's hunting
village in the forest, and from thence, he was taken in succession
to Pamunkey, Mattapony, and Rappahannock, and lastly
to Werowocomico, the principal seat of Powhatan. Here he
was forced to lay his head on a stone to be crushed by the
clubs of swarthy executioners, but was rescued from death by
the encircling arms of the Princess Pocahontas, the daughter
of the Indian emperor. In saving the prisoner she was acting,

not only in sympathy with her own compassionate and loving
disposition, exhibited on so many other occasions, but also in
harmony with one of the popular customs of all the aboriginal
tribes. That custom had been observed by the Spanish explorers
in Florida; and it was observed a second time in Virginia
when Spelman was snatched from death by the same favorite
child of the old woodland monarch. As Smith killed one of
the Indians when he was captured, the inexorable law of this
primitive race required that his life should be forfeited, and
only some interceding agency like that of Pocahontas can
offer a satisfactory explanation of his return to Jamestown
without the smallest harm having been done to his person.[1]
Before his arrival, the survivors of the Chickahominy excursion
had got back to the town in the barge and reported the
fate of those members of the party who had perished.

When Captain John Smith entered the gate, he was immediately
arrested by order of the majority of the councillors.
Among them, his relentless enemy, Gabriel Archer—who had
been elected in Smith's absence—was now included. Smith
was put on trial for his life, as responsible for the death of his
men, upon the strength of a law incorporated in the Book of
Leviticus, a rather musty code for so late an age, and in fact
used as an authority now as the only means of indicting Smith
with some show of legitimate action. Preposterous as the
charge was, and still more ridiculous the justification, the
target of the councillors' ungenerous and vindictive spite was
condemned to be shot, and the most competent man in all that
heterogeneous assemblage would undoubtedly have suffered
this ignominious fate had not Captain Newport's ship
appeared on the southern horizon of the river and diverted
attention from the proposed victim of official malevolence.