University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER X

ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE PERCY

The first act of the framers of all these accusations, Martin,
Ratcliffe and Archer, was to elect George Percy to a seat in
the council, and their second, to choose him President of that
body. There were, perhaps, two reasons for this course on their
part: first, Percy was the brother of a great English nobleman;
and second, he was a man, though of good intentions,
of a weak character, which not only unfitted him to rule, but
also made him very ductile to the wishes of his designing
associates. What was the history of the Colony under his
feeble administration, which succeeded the vigorous, if dictatorial,
administration of Captain John Smith? The community,
in a short time, reached the lowest point of decay ever
recorded in its annals. For this unhappy condition, five men
were responsible,—Percy, West, Martin, Ratcliffe, and Archer.

When the vessel which brought over Ratcliffe and Archer
arrived at Jamestown, the following was the general condition
of the Colony: there were three ships and seven boats in use,
and there was also a large quantity of merchandise for
exchange with the savages; the harvest was newly gathered;
and provisions sufficient to last for a period of ten weeks had
been put away in storage. The population numbered four
hundred and ninety persons. There were twenty-four pieces
of ordnance and three hundred muskets and other guns, and
shot, powder, and match in proportion; one hundred trained
soldiers; nets for fishing, tools of all sorts, and clothes; six
mares and a stallion, several hundred hogs, a few goats and
sheep, and numerous poultry. Above all, the settlers were in
a state of complete peace with the surrounding tribes. The

Richard Martin

first vessels of the fleet to come in after the great tempest
added about two hundred persons to the circle of the inhabitants.
It was due to the augmentation of the population and
to the inroads on the supplies which resulted that led Smith
to send several companies under West and Martin respectively
to places where the necessary food for their support
could be more easily purchased from the Indians.

Percy, having succeeded Captain Smith in the Presidency,
dispatched Ratcliffe to Point Comfort, with instructions to
build a new fort there, which he did, and to this fort the name
Algernon was given. He was also ordered to keep an unremitting
outlook for any strange sail which might appear off
the coast. Fish were very plentiful in these waters. Martin,
leaving Nansemond, returned to Jamestown to avoid the stroke
of the tomahawk, for he had, by his conduct, been successful
in arousing the hostility of the Indians. He left Lieutenant
Sicklemore in command. Sicklemore's men soon fell into a
mutiny, and seventeen of them, seizing one of the boats, set
out for Kecoughtan, but, owing probably to a capsize through
a sudden tempest, were never heard of afterwards. Sicklemore
and many of his remaining company were in a brief
while slain by the treacherous savages, who took a derisive
glee in thrusting pieces of bread into the mouths of the
corpses.

Captain West lost many of his men before he abandoned
the fort at the Falls; and eleven more were killed at Arrahattock
in the voyage down the river. He found at Jamestown
barely sufficient provisions to sustain the population for a
period of three months. This fact caused Percy to send
Ratcliffe from Point Comfort to Werowocomico to procure
corn from Powhatan. Ratcliffe, after arriving there, was so
foolish as to permit the son and daughter of that wily old fox
to leave his vessel instead of holding them, at least temporarily,
as hostages. Going on shore with a company of men,
he took no measures to prevent them from straggling among
the scattered wigwams in parties of twos and threes. Suddenly

the Indians rose upon them and killed the entire number
before they could escape to their boats. Ratcliffe himself was
seized, and having been tied naked to a large tree, he was
given over to the tortures of the squaws, who scraped the
flesh from his bones with the sharp edges of mussel shells,
until he gave up the ghost in an exquisite agony.

Undeterred by the horrible fate of Ratcliffe, Percy ordered
Captain West and a company of thirty-six soldiers to make a
voyage to the Potomac in a pinnace to obtain a cargo of maize,
and this mission was successfully accomplished only after the
destruction of numerous Indian towns. When West reached
Fort Algernon on his return, he was informed by Captain
Davis, who was then in command there, that Jamestown had
sunk again into a condition of famine and despair. Instead
of pushing rapidly on up the river, he either voluntarily,—
which is most probable,—or under the constraint of his men,
hoisted the sails of his little ship and made off between the
Capes to the open ocean on his way to England, "leaving us,"
as Percy records in his account of this cowardly and disgraceful
episode, "in extreme misery and want."

The history of the days at Jamestown which followed is
revolting in its hideous details of famine and crime. Some
of the starving wretches robbed the general store and were
executed. The few horses and cattle now living were butchered
and devoured, and the ravenous people took to eating
dogs, cats, rats, and even the leather of their shoes. The
woods were feverishly explored and roots dug up and consumed,
however unpalatable. Many of the searchers were
scalped by the Indians in ambush. Soon this resource failed,
and the graves instead were robbed of the corpses to serve as
food. One man cut the throat of his wife, ripped the child
from her womb, and then dividing up her body, salted down
the pieces for consumption, as if they were the parts of a pig or
ox. It was afterwards said that the success of Captain Tucker
in building a large boat with his own hands and using it in
catching fish, alone prevented the famished people from flying

at each other in the spirit of South Sea cannibals. In spite of
the fear of the Indians, many persons ran away through the
dark woods to the aboriginal villages, to be either burnt at
the stake or adopted permanently into the tribes, andd never
again to be seen in Jamestown.

It is one of the most striking evidences of Percy's incapacity
that, although surrounded by all this misery and violence,
it does not seem to have occurred to him, until too late, that
supplies were still to be obtained in considerable quantities
from Kecoughtan. When he visited that fertile spot down
the river, he found the settlers there in the enjoyment of such
plenty that they were able to feed their hogs on crabs, which,
had they been sent to Jamestown, would have altered the
famished condition of the unhappy people to one of camparative
abundance. He acknowledged, in noting this fact, that
the entire company in that town could have been fully accommodated
with food and shelter at Kecoughtan had its inhabitants
been transported by boat to that fortunate spot in time.
Why was not an investigation made at an earlier date, and
why was not the population of Jamestown preserved from
destruction by so simple and obvious a course of action?
During the interval between October 14th, 1609, and June
20th, 1610, about one hundred and fifty of the colonists had
died, either from direct starvation or from the diseases that
follow a famine.

While Jamestown was in the shadow of this terrible affliction,
although it was situated in one of the most fertile valleys
of the world, the shipwrecked company in Bermuda were
constructing their cedar vessels. By the eleventh of May,
1610, one pinnace of eighty tons and another of thirty had
been launched, and nine days afterwards their commanders
ventured boldly out into the wide ocean. Eleven days more
and they had anchored at Point Comfort. Here they took on
board the astonished Percy, and at the end of forty-eight
hours they arrived at Jamestown. The town had sunk into a
repulsive condition of dilapidation, whilst its population had

been reduced to fifty persons, so lean and meager in flesh that
they resembled skeletons more than human beings. "We are
starved, we are starved," was their first pitiful cry of greeting.
Several died from a paroxysm of pure joy. One man,
whose wits had become disordered as the result of destitution,
rushed disheveled into the market place. "There is no God,"
he shrieked, "for if there was a God, he would not suffer his
creatures to experience such miseries." And he then vanished
into the woods, where he was soon devoured by the
wolves.[1]

Gates, whose firmness of character had been probably
shaken by the shipwreck off Bermuda, was so much shocked by
the appalling scenes which now confronted him at every corner
of the unhappy town that he determined on his own responsibility
to tear up the Colony by the roots and sail away with the
survivors to England,—a decision which, however natural, has
discredited his name in history. Had he reached Virginia
along with his main fleet, without having endured the harrowing
experiences which really befell him, he would have found it
in a condition, under the administration of Smith, that would
have inspired him with hope instead of filling him with despair,
as now, when he looked around and saw so many signs of
failure stamped upon the face of every thing, in consequence
of the incompetence of Percy and his council. Four pinnaces
were soon made ready for the voyage homeward. One of these
was dispatched ahead to Point Comfort to take off Captain
Davis and the garrison there; and at noon, on the seventeenth
of June, all the people left in the town were ordered to go on
board the remaining three vessels. There was great anxiety
among them to set fire to the houses before they should depart,
but Gates prevented this by being the last man to mount the
deck of his small ship. It is to be inferred from such watchfulness
on his part that he expected that the Colony would be
re-established; but his desertion of the spot was not encouraging

for its future restoration. A salute to the abandoned
fort, as the sails were set free, was like an act of mournful
irony.

On the following day, as the three pinnaces were passing
Mulberry Island, their consort, which had been sent ahead to
Point Comfort, was seen returning up stream. Captain Brewster
was observed to be on board, and so soon as his vessel had
come up close enough to allow him to ascend to the deck of
Gates's little flagship, he delivered to that commander letters
from Lord Delaware, who had halted his fleet at the mouth of
the river. This fleet had brought over one hundred and fifty
men, besides a large quantity of ammunition and stores of
all kinds. Delaware, it will be remembered, when appointed
Captain-General of Virginia, had not accompanied the first
expedition, which sailed under Gates's command. When news
of the disasters to that expedition reached England, a feeling
of discouragement fell upon the members of the Company, and
many of them refused to subscribe any additional sums. But
on Delaware announcing his purpose to set out for Virginia in
person, a large band of supporters started up eager to offer
him their purses, credit, and active assistance, in procuring
the supplies of all sorts which he would need for his projected
voyage. There left England with him a considerable number
of men of high social position; and there were also numerous
artisans, besides several expert assayers and vignaroons, on
board.

It has often been said that, had Gates returned to England
with the entire English population of Virginia, its settlement
would, perhaps, have gone no further; but it is quite certain
that Delaware considered it to be a point of personal honor
with himself to carry the Colony to a permanent stage of
prosperity; and this feeling on his part would have been far
more stimulated by Gates's arrival, had the latter gone
straight home with his passengers, than it had, in reality, been
by those reports of declining fortune which had been brought
to England by the vessels of the original fleet, which had

already returned. The latter news was sufficient to arouse
Delaware to take immediate steps to rescue the Colony; and
Gates's desertion of it would have been an even greater spur
to restore it. There was no substantial danger that Virginia
would ever have been permanently abandoned after the success
that was achieved by Smith's administration.[2]