THE POCAHONTAS-JOHN SMITH STORY

The Pocahontas-John Smith Story

By

Pocahontas Wight Edmunds

James H. Bailey, Ph.D., Editor

THE DIETZ PRESS, INC.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright © 1956, by

POCAHONTAS WIGHT EDMUNDS

Quotes from Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg. Copyright, 1918, by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Copyright, 1946, by Carl Sandburg. By permission of the publishers.

Quotes from Western Star by Stephen Vincent Benet. Copyright, 1943, by Rosemary Carr Benet. Published by Rinehart & Company.

FROM THE PRESSES OF THE DIETZ PRINTING COMPANY

Introduction

When I was five our family visited the Croatan settlement near Red Springs, North Carolina, and my father imprudently revealed the Indian names of his wife and daughter. Mother blushed and I bawled as the drunken crowd of Sunday afternoon clasped us to their bosoms so tenaciously that Father could scarcely extricate us from their clutches. Later in the week, Chief Locklear came calling in a golden, yellow surry with yellow fringe, bearing tribute of native scuppernong grapes. They were offered red and sweet, for red, sweet Pocahontas's sake rather than ours.

I was usually given the Indian role in school plays. In 1923 I was asked to take the Pocahontas role in the mammoth Virginia pageant in Richmond. In 1925 the Fox News-Reel introduced me: "Descendant of Chief Powhatan Opens the Biggest Book in the World." This volume was Dr. Matthew Page Andrews's Story of the South, which had stood ten feet tall on the stage of the Strand Theater when I had played "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" on my violin in front of the illustration of my ancestress.

Lecturers and notables have singled me out of the mob for the name's sake only. The sonorous American poet Vachel Lindsay bent low as he halted a campus receiving line: "My dear, I must kiss your hand!" When Father told Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, who is also a descendant, of his wife's and daughter's names, she told him: "Now, I want to shake both of your hands."

A tobacco company sent an agent to ask if Mother and I, as descendants of John Rolfe, the first tobacconist, would endorse their product. I have received a letter while abroad addressed: "Mademoiselle, la Princesse des Peaux Rouges." That is less surprising when it is noted that a tavern called: "La Belle Sauvage" still stood in England two and a half centuries after her visit. I was told, even before the daily newspaper controversy in 1950 about her burial place that every English school-child knows the story of Pocahontas. The English were delighted when my three children and I signed the register book at the Pocahontas Memorial Chapel of Unity on July 3, 1955.

The vestry book at St. George's Church at Gravesend, England declares that Pocahontas is buried under the chancel there. However, in 1907 a Mr. Tucker of Dover Road, Norfleet claimed to have exhumed the very skeleton and relics one mile from the church. In 1923 the Associated Press reported from Gravesend that excavations had been started to locate the bones in the presence of the recorder of the church and representatives of the English-Speaking Union and of the British Museum. Thirty skeletons were secretly dug up, but not identified. On the last day of May of that year, it was reported that citizens, who resented having their ancestors exhumed, had told the offending archaeologists, one of whom was a descendant of Pocahontas, that they would be punished by visiting evil spirits. They peered furiously through the gates as one hundred skeletons were dug up.

In 1914 the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia had placed two stained glass windows in the church, one depicting Ruth among the alien corn, and the other Rebecca—that being the baptismal name of the converted savage. The deserted church became the concern of Rev. Daughton-Fear. He solicited funds to preserve it as a "Chapel of Unity" for all faiths as a memorial to Pocahontas. Many Americans urged that her bones be brought home. A Glass Company offered a reward for their return, and gallant volunteers such as the Playwright Paul Green were heard from until the project was dismissed as impractical.

I

His tenant-farmer father, George Smith, had relished the life, whether he was sitting as juror solemnly, or playing at bowls or horses right jollily. He died early, leaving his family comfortable feather beds and goodly pewter plates and candlesticks. His widow married too hastily to suit her sensitive son John, who now tucked away his memory of her, and deserted home, having already bolted his desk. Now that he was a free young man, his place as an apprentice did not detain him, for the call of salt and hemp in the port of Lynn had already lured him.

At this reckless point Lord Willoughby, his father's protector, stood him in good stead. The noble was touched by lowly George Smith's bequest of a two-year old mare. George could not have done better indirectly by his son John. It was as if he mounted him on a dashing steed, champing to be off for heroic travel. Willoughby lifted the fatherless young John Smith into a knightly sphere which was rare for a lad of his station. Besides being gratified by his friend's affection, he was mindful of John's resourceful and entertaining companionship for his own two gentler lads.

He invited him to "Grimothorpe," a rugged castle with a stone tower and twelve chimneys. Willoughby had fought with Sir Phillip Sydney and he, like Sydney, had ballads written about himself. John enjoyed his hospitality before setting out with the boys' tutors, servants and horses on a Continental journey. They went from northwestern to southeastern France, stopping at Orleans and at Turenne. After six weeks with the party, John continued on his own to Paris, Holland and Edinburgh.

Returning to his home-town John, feeling "glutted with too much company" took to the woods, where he studied the art of combat. After incredible exploits, he returned to London as a seasoned hero of twenty-four years, and was listed as "gent."

He was not ready to settle down yet by any manner of means and he pricked up his ears at the clarion call of the West. Agriculture and industry were bogging down and limiting commerce in England, and many wanted a new livelihood.

The old world's clutch on western shores had failed. The Roanoke Colony had filed valorously into oblivion to the South after Sir Walter Raleigh had tried three times to establish a permanent settlement. Attempts in the North at Elizabeth's Island and at St. George's Fort had been equally unsuccessful. It was recalled now that Hakluyt had advised Raleigh in 1586 that the present Virginian coast would be the most favorable point for colonization. But Raleigh himself was now a prisoner in the Tower of London, pacing back and forth on the narrow battlement which was assigned to him for exercise. Queen Elizabeth I herself, as a young prisoner there, had had but little more range—but she had reigned long, and had been dead for three years, and the colony which Raleigh had named Virginia for the Virgin Queen had disappeared.

Yet the men who now induced her successor, King James, to incorporate two Virginia companies had been associated with Raleigh. That John Smith should be included in their councils indicated how far he had gotten. Since he was a veteran traveller, his betters had deigned to include him in their enterprise, and he was to sail with the group sent by the company for South Virginia.

Three ships were being loaded. Smith would be on the Susan Constant, of one hundred tons, under Christopher Newport, which carried seventy-one passengers, and which flew the red cross of England at her masthead. The Godspeed, of forty tons was under Captain Gosnold, a veteran colonist, and the Discovery, of twenty tons, under Captain John Ratcliffe. All three ships were rigged alike, having three masts, with square sails on the fore and mainmasts. The weather detained them until February, although they got off to a false start just before Christmas when they were clamped in the Downs until New Year's Day.

A third of the passengers were gentlemen, and therefore overbearing. They resented Smith's assurance and soon had him in chains, accusing him of exciting mutiny and trying to make himself king of Virginia. The trip was as stormy without as within, and six weeks of each other's discordant company seemed too, too much.

At long last, at dawn on the twenty-sixth day of April, they spied land.

Some of them ventured ashore to the envy of Smith, who was still in chains. All day long they found the calm as deceptive as it was enticing, for as they returned to the ship in the late afternoon, savages crept toward them on all fours like bears with their bows in their mouths. Gabriel Archer got wounded in both hands and a sailor more seriously.

The colonists crowded on the Susan Constant that night, and opened the secret box which named the seven leaders. While each hoped to have his name among the elect, none was so confident as Smith, although he was not allowed to take his appointed place when his name was read out. He would bide his time, knowing that he would soon be free to make their maps with his feet as well as with his hands.

On the twenty-seventh of April they put together the shallop, which had been brought from England in pieces, so that Newport and a group could explore further. Their findings were delightful. Oysters covered the ground as thick as stones and large and tender to the taste. Soon they pounced upon strawberries too.

"Taste these strawberries! They are four times bigger and better than ours back home."

"Still the Devonshire cream and sugar dishes are missing, as well as the Devonshire cream and sugar."

"And the lass with the strawberry and cream complexion!"

"Those savages we saw yesterday certainly had no strawberry and cream complexions."

They shuddered as they remembered their first glimpse of people painted black or red, as if nature had not darkened them enough. As they penetrated the savage forests, in the next few weeks, they learned to expect any adornment, or none. Anything might dangle for earrings: a bird's claw, or a chicken leg. A naÏvely happy warrior even had a live yellow and green snake which was attached to his ear, and coiled loosely about his neck so that the snake would spring forward and kiss the warrior's lips when he chose.

This particular day they encountered no Indians, but a fire-screen kept them anxious.

"Who says that there are no cooks over here?" The odor of burning grass had alerted them. "Sniff these oysters, sizzling yet on somebody's fires."

On the twenty-ninth they set up a cross and called their first finding "Cape Henry" for their prince. They spread a sailcloth no longer to the wind, but blessedly to the beaming sun, and thanked God for bringing them so far, thus far. Fortunately, another cape would be named for Prince Charles.

On the thirtieth they found a good channel up the river which they named "Point Comfort."

Here they saw five Indians. When Newport landed and laid his hand on his heart, they discarded their bows and arrows and invited him to their town, Kecoughtan. Here they tasted their first cornbread, and smoked tobacco. Besides, they were entranced by a native dance which was wild with shouting, stamping, and such antics as would have been expected of wolves and devils.

On the thirteenth of May, having probed thirty miles up the river which Indians called the "Powhatan," but which they would name the "James," they stopped at a place six fathoms deep where they tied their ships to trees—as trustingly as if they had been country nags hitched to churchyard posts. They landed the next day.

That first night many slept in the open, being too tired to fear any rustling, whether of Indians or serpents, outside the rim of their campfire. A few stood watch day and night. The brave explored the forests to fell trees, but the cautious cleared a spot for tents that was nearer the boat. Boughs of trees made up a half-moon fortification. Clapboards were loaded on the ship to return to England where lumber was not plentiful and free. They were not an industrious crowd by nature, but necessity now pressed every mother's son of them to work whether his mother had reared him to do tough chores or not. There were eleven laborers, four carpenters, a blacksmith, a bricklayer, a sailor, a mason, a tailor and a chirurgien.

The colonists had been warned against marshy land, and forbidden to settle near a low or moist place, and that was just what Jamestown Island was, although it looked enticingly green along the tawny river. Half of its fifteen hundred acres were swampy, but the settlers counted on making the cleared land produce crops in another year, and a quick wheat crop just now. They were tired of seeking a haven, and this spot had a subtle charm, for secret pools and creeks meandered from marsh to forests, and wide weed-ridden marshes were slashed through the forests like alleys. At Black Point they would soon see lilies and mallows blanching the sable ground.

Smith was allowed to go with Captain Newport on an exploring trip to the falls of the river in search of gold. On their way they made friends with a savage chief who was the son of the great Powhatan. Their "firewater" overwhelmed him for a day, but on the next day he was ready for more.

While they were gone, the unprotected colony was attacked by Indians. Fortunately, in Smith's absence, someone else had an idea, and a thundering broadside from the boat dispersed the enemy who had victory in their grasp if they had only known it. Smith had been suspecting that mischief was brewing back behind the screens of fire which the Indians maintained. Had he not told them that they needed a palisade?

II

Every man was doled out three ounces of bread, and a skimpy helping of bran and water. Typhoid and malaria took their toll. Weakened by both diet and disease, they staggered as they toted logs to the fort, and they made a pitiful spectacle for any Indians or spying Spaniards who may have seen them. While wheat grew as high as a man's head within seven weeks of the planting, there was not enough to satisfy the hungry.

By mid-June the fort was built on a low and level half-acre, which was shaped like a triangle. There were streets of occupied houses—each of which had about thirty feet clearance of the palisade. Mud or thatched-reed clamped heavy roofs on the early huts, making them suffocatingly hot. Added to this misery, the eating of molded corn and drinking of brackish water downed nearly all, and killed half of the colonists before the summer had passed. Once only five men were up and about. "Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony and drunkenness we might have been canonized," observed Smith.

Unwilling to be among the downed, he cured himself somehow and learned to subsist on crabmeat and sturgeon, going foraging, trading and exploring up and down the rivers with a few hardy survivors. He heard a great deal about the great Powhatan whose realm included all of the country from the Roanoke River in the south to the head of the Chesapeake in the north. His chief seat was upon the north side of the York River at Werowocomoco.

As Smith crept up the James River in his shallop, guileless Indian swimmers beckoned him on. Taken in by Smith's friendly greetings, they opened the doors of their bark-covered wigwams, where Smith, a natural and welcome democrat, sat down and ate as one of them. He noted that their canoes were often carved out of single trees, that their oval-shaped wigwams were made of bark upon a framework of saplings, and that their gardens produced cymblings, beans and corn as well as tobacco.

Soon he was paying return visits to the same places in order to trade for corn, but hospitality soon gave out, if corn did not. They even scorned the beads with which he tried to bargain. Counting on relegating them to their timid places, he fired some muskets, putting the dickering savages to flight. These white devils were surely "sons of thunder" they decided, with their "fire-sticks" and their "thunder tubes."

Now, with cool weather, things seemed better. Smith assured the forlorn colonists that this was a sportsmen's paradise with sturgeon in the sea, squirrel and deer on the land and quail in the air.

All was not peaceful within the palisade, however. Edward Maria Wingfield was unpopular as President, and all resented his hauteur and the luxuries which he allowed himself while others had short rations. Smith went along with John Martin and Captain Ratcliffe to bear grudges. What about the bad corn which he had allotted to them? He would not let Ratcliffe have so much as a penny whittle, a chicken or a spoonful of beer. Besides, he had called him, Smith, a liar! They won out and Wingfield was deposed, Ratcliffe being elected in his place.

Smith himself, when he came in and out of Jamestown, was busy preventing efforts of both Ratcliffe and Wingfield to abandon the country. He was not yet even the nominal leader of these people but there was a bold streak in him that darted ahead of the herd. Nothing stumped him—not even a huge tree sprawled in the Chickahominy River which halted his boat. Leaving seven of his men in that, he needled his way recklessly ahead in a canoe with two companions and Indian guides, sailing rashly right into a trap. Two hundred warriors were hunting deer with crafty Opechancanough, brother and heir to the chief. They had counted on trapping a dozen of the timid creatures within a rim of fire, where their arrows would settle matters briefly; but when they trapped the cockiest of all palefaces instead, they were exultant. They had not expected this, although they scorned the English efforts to hunt—noisy, boasting men that they were. Indians let only their arrows clip the quiet air, tipping silently, natural Nimrods of these woods, where no white man was at home, nor welcome.

They had first captured a hapless Englishman who had strayed from the barge against Smith's orders, and who did not help matters by tattling that Smith was at large. They scraped off his skin with mussel shells, and roasted him alive and when they found Smith and his friends, they did away with all but the leader with similar unscrupulousness. Resting on their laurels, they now took their time with him as much for their own amusement as his torment. They were amazed at the nerve with which he defended himself to the end. First, he thrust his Indian guide in front of him as a shield, attaching him to his right arm with a garter, then he felled several Indians before he sank waist deep in the morass like a fly in glue, flapping his wings hopefully until grounded.

"Your men and your canoe have gone. Hand over your arms if you prefer to survive them," taunted the chief. They tied him to a tree, shooting twenty arrows his way, none of which did him much harm. In the nick of time, Smith now pulled a trick from his sleeve. When he held up a compass in an ivory case, the naÏve onlookers blinked at the tiny magic arrow under a transparent crust of glass. Wonderful how you could not feel that arrow with your fingers, yet it went on pointing its stubborn way just like its owner!

"This is a compass. It points North, and that is the way it told me to go until you stopped me. It shows me the way out of any dilemma anywhere in the world, and I have been to most places."

"Not this one, my clever Captain Smith," reminded Opechancanough, who knew he had him now. Except that he was entertaining his captors, he would not be dangling this mysterious toy. This moment was amusing to all around but Smith himself. Still a humorous glint in Smith's eye warned him not to be so sure about that. "And where is North?" wondered the chief, whose hungry mind got the better of his discretion.

"Did you not know of the four winds, North, South, East, West? I have followed them everywhere, and will keep doing it at your kind permission. I am an explorer. I seek the great salt sea just beyond. I have crossed one already, and many other waters. My companions flung me into the Mediterranean like poor Jonah of old. But the Lord looked out for me too."

"Who was Jonah?"

"Quite a fellow. He had a way with fish. You know we tried to catch some in frying-pans, yours are so bountiful. Then we decided fish first, fry afterwards."

"You know nothing of sport. You make too much noise in the woods and along the streams. If you have been around as much as you say, you should know better. You talk too much, but I would hear you out. Tell me some more about this God of yours. I have heard of Captain Smith's God!"

They had a wholesome respect for the Smith God, the Smith nerve, and the Smith tongue, which was no laggard in any language. All these attributes stood him in good stead now, but it would not be for long. Smith lapsed into a long harangue about the mysterious ways God moved, his wonders to perform, and the mysterious doings of the universe. "Know ye not that the earth is round, it doth move, and the sun also?" He made grand gestures describing the movements of the planets.

"What goes on in the world away?" Opechancanough just had to know. Curiosity killed a cat, but it was not going to kill him, for he was sparing Captain Smith long enough to empty his mind like a casket for his captor. What a captive he had bagged! He had none of his big brother Powhatan's tolerance of the invader. Powhatan was old, fat, and rich—not enough fight left in him. The people should see what manner of chief was heir to his dozen tribes, and what a white beast he had leashed. He sent couriers ahead so that no village between here and Werowocomoco should fail to note the parade he made of this captain with the bristling red beard, the flexing muscles, and the bragging airs. He arranged a square of twenty warriors around him—one with tomahawk to the left, another with tomahawk to the right of him, and a straggling, painted and feathered queue bringing up the rear.

John Smith, a swaggering Elizabethan on any stage, however humiliating his role, contrived to look as if he had matters quite in hand, even though his hands were tied. Although he had apprehensions about the medicine man's rites at night he did not bat an eye, later did not close one. Opechancanough had planned this ceremony to make sure that Smith was shorn of whatever magic still lurked in his being. He had already handed over his compass to the chief, of his own accord. Hungry as he was, Smith had little appetite for the quantity of food offered him, and he spurned it at first, until he had made sure that it was not poisoned.

"You'd make a nice meal yourself, paleface. Admit we are feeding you well. That is an old custom of ours. We fatten our captives for the slaughter."

"Cannibals?" insinuated Smith, insolently.

"Algonquins. You should know. You talk our language. Your head is full of too much if not your stomach. I'd like to scalp a bushy head like that."

"Then why don't you?" Smith wondered coolly.

"I'm just the chief's brother. He saves the best of everything for himself, including the privilege of doing away with you how and when he likes. He has a line of scalps drying between trees in his back yard every morning. Old as he is, he has the pick of young women about. You will see a young one on either side of him, and a row at the back of the discarded ones, about twenty. He hands them down to favorite warriors, in order as he thinks them most deserving. Mind you, don't cast a speculative eye on any of those. You are not a favorite warrior, nor even a favorite captive." He suspected that this brave man might have a way with women. "All the women you see, all the feasting will be to tantalize you, all to make you appreciate how excruciatingly sweet life can be, when your minutes are numbered."

Smith's bluff was being called. He was frightened over Powhatan's power over many tribes, but most just now over his own hide. He admitted to himself that he was intimidated by this emperor, as he was led into his long house, and in awe of his strange dignity. This savage chieftain reclining on a couch-like throne could show King James how majestic a monarch should look. His face wrinkled, round and ugly, seemed to be carved of granite, and it neither crinkled with mirth nor softened with mercy. He wore pearls about his neck and a raccoon mantle about his shoulders. He had two handmaidens bring to Smith, first, a basin in which to rinse his fingers, then feathers to dry them. The other women surrounding him, as his brother had described, were silent and motionless.

A certain little girl in their midst was more moved than any by Smith's brave appearance, and his fascinating self-defense. Earnest concern for him made her look more serious than usual, for all her names described her sunny nature—Pocahontas, they called her, meaning "Playful," "Bright Stream between Two Hills," "Quick Water," "Sunlight Running Through Darkness." She was as blithe and trusting of the stranger as her father and uncle were wary.

Opechancanough introduced him as the dangerous enemy of the red men, the toughest and craftiest of his tribe. He showed the compass, and told of how cleverly Smith had defended himself single-handed. If his brother wanted peace at any price, now was the time to annihilate this most dangerous of the invaders.

Powhatan listened without changing his expression. "Now what can you say for yourself, paleface?"

John Smith said as much as he could, and that was always a great deal. He boasted of the places to which he had been, miraculously guided by his compass. He had decapitated three Turks with his sword. If any did not believe it, they had only to observe his arms.

Powhatan inquired with superb scorn: "Why have you and your people come into my land without an invitation?"

Smith fibbed: "We had to land while struggling both with our old enemies, the Spaniards, and the weather."

"Then why did you come up so far in your boat?"

"We were seeking the back sea for salt water. Besides we wanted to avenge Newport's child who had been slain by the Monacans." He invented this one, knowing that the Monacans were Powhatan's enemies.

Powhatan could not swallow so many answers whole. Nothing Smith had said seemed to have made a dent on his equanimity after several conferences, and Smith, who read faces, began to foresee his doom. "Lay the death stones beside the fire," commanded Powhatan of two warriors. As soon as that was done, he motioned to several others to pick him up and lay him thereon.

Facing first Powhatan's granite countenance, and now the stones, Smith knew that he had struck real barriers. He was numb with despair as tomahawks were raised to brain him. His usual imagination could not make him hopeful.

Pocahontas, as fleet of foot as of heart, darted in the way of the tomahawks. Smith, barely conscious and having committed his soul to Divine Mercy alone, broke into a cold sweat, as her soft dark cheek was pressed against his blanched one. "Save him Father to make toys for me and hatchets for you if you like."

Powhatan did not like it, but he paused to ponder, as the tomahawks hung heavily over John Smith's head.

The surly crowd, thirsting for blood, snarled "Pocahontas!" as this child meddled with grim manly business, Opechancanough's temper leading the fury. Was that fool brother of his going to let a child keep him from annihilating this captive? He ought to be on the throne instead of this weak indulger of children's whims, for no pampered daughter should challenge his will.

Powhatan had looked obdurate, but with the wilful whimsy of kings, he suddenly changed his mind, motioning to the warriors to stay their tomahawks.

"Certainly my daughter can have her wish, if the life of this queer captive appeals to her. I am the Chief, and she is my playful one, my Pocahontas."

John Smith scrambled to his feet. "At your service, sire. Hatchets for you too, as she says."

"I will indeed find need of such stern weapons instead of toys. I should like some of your swords and fire-tubes too."

"You flatter me. As if I could produce those at will!"

"I think so. You can do anything you say. I hear there is no lack of them in your men's hands. Give me a few days to ponder our future relations. Meanwhile, amuse the child. You owe her that at least."

Pocahontas was enchanted. She sat first at John Smith's feet, then climbed up on his knee, where she listened spellbound to his tales of Londontown, especially of the Tower where the little princes with corn silk hair had pined away and been murdered by their wicked old uncle. "Must be like Uncle Opechancanough," she shuddered.

"Poor things, they didn't have a Pocahontas to save them."

"Who is left yet in the tower?"

"There is a noble knight named Raleigh who started us coming over on this side. He flung down his velvet cloak across a mud puddle for Queen Bess to tread on. I would do the same for you, little Princess, only I have no velvet cloak. I am a poor man."

"Very poor?" she wondered solicitously.

"So poor, that once I went begging. They hold that against me down in Jamestown."

"As if you could help it! Do you go hungry now?"

"Ravenously. We eat parched and molded corn."

"Ugh. I shall bring you rich dishes from Powhatan's table, and corn for your men, if they do what you tell them."

"This is exactly what they will not do. They had me in chains until the secret orders were revealed saying: 'You must put Smith on the council!'"

"Secret!" She clapped her hands. Then somebody did appreciate her wonderful Captain. "Then we are your people. I shall call you Father for I love you just as much as I do Powhatan. Now you must tell me all about yourself before you become one of us. Tell about the fine Turkish lady, Tragabigzanda who looked out for you after the cruel Turks, too, put you in chains. She had dark eyes you say?" Then he liked them with dark eyes, and she liked that, but she did not like the idea of the lady, Tragabigzanda. "Was she very beautiful?"

"Oh, my yes."

"What were you to her?"

"A roving adventurer."

"Was she sad when you went away from her?"

"How should I know?"

"I will be sad if you go away from me. You will stay, won't you, a long time? Powhatan says you can live right by us."

Smith preferred to get himself home to Jamestown, for he felt surfeited with savage patronage. He was less pleased than he appeared by Powhatan's invitation.

"So soon? Have we not treated you like an honored guest instead of a helpless captive?"

"Indeed yes. But I am a man of affairs like yourself. I need to get back and get busy."

"My affair at the moment is to create peace between our peoples. I am an old man, and seek no fighting. Tell your friends to come and abide at the mouth of the Pamunkey. We will live as brothers, each in his own way, but combine against our common enemy."

Smith promised this or any suggestion now, just to get away.

"Well you may go then, and I will send my trusted Rawhide and other warriors to escort you. I only stipulate that each shall bring back one of your guns."

"Indeed they shall."

He thought of a way out of this on the two-day tramp through the woods home. Just out of Jamestown he breathed easier, but he made sure that they did not.

"See those big guns by the gates, friends? I want you to take them home to Father Powhatan."

"You know well enough that they are too big for us to lift. They would break our backs."

"You have not even tried. First let's see if they work as well as they were doing when I left. I want to give Powhatan our best."

He mischievously signalled to the gate-keeper to fire one, and it instantly shook a nearby tree into a spasm. Encrusted with ice as it was, every brittle twig scattered as far as it could go. So did one little, two little, three little, four little Indians.

Smith strode into the fort to tell his astounding tale on January 8, but kept mum about that hair-raising, but thanks to Providence and Pocahontas, not scalp-raising experience. Better not tell that one, lest he scare off colonists here, or in England.

His hearers were envious of his account of the food and furs at Powhatan's long house, but did not praise his prowess in felling several Indians single-handed. If he was as clever as all this, why did he not look out for his companions? Three white men were missing, notice.

They unreasonably tried Smith for that, as if he could have helped it. He threw up his hands in despair for the lot of them.

III

Newport was welcome to all because he brought in the first relief supply as well as new settlers to back them up in their weak situation. Careless newcomers were blamed, however, for the disastrous fire which broke out a few days after their landing, and which licked up shacks, tents and pitiful personal possessions.

Those who groaned over their plight, were rebuked by the meekness of the Reverend Robert Hunt, who had lost his library—which might have been the nucleus of culture in the colony. They remembered how he had not complained before when he was more ill than any of them had been on the ship coming over. Contritely they built a church for him even though the palisade was not immediately replaced. A store and storehouse went up too.

Fifty new houses improved on the former ones. These had cool roofs of bark, instead of thatch, a page out of the Indian book. Besides they had "country chimneys" where a man might warm himself in winter at ease, provided he had a gun handy. Bright Indian mats decorated the huts. A bell in the church signified when work should begin and when it should stop. Since there was but one skilled carpenter, the rebuilding of the settlement after the fire seemed remarkable. The colonists were not industrious enough to suit Smith, however, who planned a letter to the Company telling them to send lumber from England next time. That would be cheaper than paying these lazy aristocrats.

Newport went with Smith to trade with Powhatan, letting Smith talk out a day first before he appeared.

"What about those guns my men were to bring back, but did not?" the great chief asked.

"I told Rawhide and another to tote home the two best we had."

"Big ones! You knew very well that they could not lift them. If you had given them small ones, we would have been quite satisfied."

"I did not want your gracious highness to think me more stingy than yourself." Smith kept a straight face if not a straight record. "They didn't even try to lift them."

"No wonder. You scared them with that thunder at your gates, and they ran home."

"You should have brave warriors. Mine too are sometimes cowards, and weak with hunger besides. We want corn."

"What shall you pay—guns?"

Smith diverted him with presents, but the Indian kept his disdainful manner.

"Captain Newport, it is not agreeable with my greatness in this paltry manner to trade for trifles and I esteem you a great chief. Therefore, lay down all your commodities together, and what I like I will take."

Smith artfully toyed with a string of blue beads. Their gleam would draw a brighter one in the eyes of Powhatan's young favorite.

The indulgent old man sighed "How much?"

"These? Why these are not for sale, your Highness. Blue beads are very rare. You can dye red and brown ones with berries, but these are imported, and their value high as the blue sky whence descends their radiance."

"How much?" plugged Powhatan. "I foolishly indulged one girl with your life. Now probably another must have your foolish bauble."

"I'll let you know tomorrow. I had not thought of parting with them."

By morning, Smith was having Indians load his boat with two hundred bushels of corn.

Newport was ever for conciliating the chief, and when Powhatan sent him twenty turkeys saying to send twenty swords back by bearers, he complied. Not so John Smith, when Newport was gone. This time the turkeys were kept, but the swords also—in English scabbards.

Powhatan was so riled when the swords were not forthcoming, that he told his men to get them by hook or crook. When Smith caught them pilfering he flogged them and imprisoned them. Powhatan now tried diplomacy, knowing how indebted Smith would feel to "Pocahontas, his dearest daughter." He sent her down to Jamestown to persuade him to release the prisoners. He asked Smith "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 forever." Smith delivered them to Pocahontas, "for whose sake only he feigned to have saved their lives and gave them their liberty."

Pocahontas, with her gay capers, amused all Jamestown enormously. If this had been a clown's act upon a London stage, or a traveling circus in the English countryside, it could not have put the discouraged colony into such a gale.

When Newport returned he brought back an idea of King James, of which Smith thought little. If they softened Powhatan up with civilized luxuries, they could handle him more easily. Therefore he should be crowned at Jamestown. Grudgingly, Smith went to see the hardy old monarch about it. He found him not "at home." Like a haughty host, perhaps, thought Smith. But when he saw what an elaborate entertainment Pocahontas had gotten up for him, he decided that no slight was intended.

She, a child raised in a heathen sensual court, arranged a show for him and his four men at which Smith was astonished. Powhatan's warriors, she knew, would have been enchanted by the dance number put on by older girls to amuse the strangers. Pocahontas had heard her people wonder how it was that the English came without women, stayed a long time and yet got on without them. Their pale women must have been too timid to come along, and they must be lonesome and bored without feminine allure around. Thirty girls wearing nothing but green leafy aprons pranced out of the woods, their bodies painted in various colors. Some wore antler's horns on their heads, and all were brandishing crude weapons that were less frightening than their wild contortions and fiendish yells. At first the men grabbed their own weapons in alert defense. The Englishmen were embarrassed by the brazen savage scene, and more so when the dancers ran to the woods to change to regular garb, for they now wound their arms about blushing necks, murmuring torridly "Lovest thou me? Lovest thou me?" "These nymphs the more tormented him than ever with crowding and pressing, hanging upon him, most tediously crying 'love you me,'" it was reported.

Pocahontas herself would have liked to ask John Smith that, for she knew that the welling adoration she had for him was growing faster than herself, and was something she would not put aside with childish fancies. She was sorry he was not pleased with today's entertainment, even when great platters of food were set before his men, and they were led to their rest by torches. He had business on his mind and looked relieved when Powhatan showed up in the morning.

"Your highness, our king across the seas lives in such grandeur as you can scarcely imagine. Newport tells me he was so troubled to find out that you did not have the sort of luxuries that befit a great werowance like yourself, that he sent back fine gifts for you."

"What then should a king have that I have not?"

"He wears a crown. A king is quite a fellow."

"Indeed. You speak the truth there. That is quite so."

"Come down to Jamestown and be crowned. We will be friends, and fight our common enemies the Monacans."

Powhatan looked him down cooly. "If your king has sent me presents, I also am a king and this is my land. Eight days will I stay here 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 bait. As for the Monacans, I can revenge my own injuries."

There was no course left for Newport and Smith but to trudge twelve miles over land, while they sent the cumbersome presents by water. First they proffered the red suit and cloak which Powhatan tried on grudgingly. He knew that he could strut, even in incongruous rigging. His row of women admired him, putting him in an amiable mood.

"What is this ewer and basin for?"

"Ablutions, Majesty."

His hands were quite clean, but he rinsed them to show that he could use such fixings. If a European peddler had been opening his bag, the chief could not have looked more dubious about purchases.

At last they approached with the crown.

"Please kneel, sire."

Indeed he would not an inch, not so much as a notch on a stick. Stiff as a stalk he stood, but every inch a ruler, defiant in the passing wind. Smith had already observed that he had never seen such majesty in any creature.

"It is customary for our monarchs to kneel. They are in a great church. A man of God anoints them."

"Your O'Kee?"

"His minister. It is not at all humiliating."

"Captain Smith's God?"

"Not mine alone. All believers, sire."

"I am not a believer."

"Will you kneel, sire?"

"A king kneels to none."

They must grin and bear it, so did both. As Smith described it: "At last by leaning hard on his shoulders he a little stooped, and Newport put the crown on his head."

It was awry, and more so as a pistol shot succeeded by a volley from the ship, made Powhatan spring up in an unkingly panic. "What is that?"

"A salute of honor to a king just crowned or born."

"I don't like it. I was born before any of you, if not crowned," he muttered grumpily, settling back on his throne. As a last disdainful thrust, he handed over his discarded cloak and moccasins. "Perhaps your king might like these." His eyes added: "To show how we dress up over here." Smith caught it.

On April tenth, 1608 Newport took away the mighty fallen Wingfield and the rebuked Archer. Ten days later Captain Nelson arrived with one hundred and two colonists and sufficient provisions for those on hand as well as for his own passengers. On his return trip he took off John Martin, a veteran colonist, who had cooled lately to Smith's blustering personality.

Smith got his punishment from nature as well as from people. In June he was bitten by a stingray fish while he was spearing it. He was so beside himself with pain that he jumped into the water to cool his agony. His companions were pessimistically preparing his grave without reckoning on his vitality. In a short while he had recovered not only his nerve but even his appetite, and by supper time he was eating that very fish and chuckling about it.

Usually, it was the others who were down, and he who had the situation entirely in hand. He made sure that the Indians always supposed that all was well whether it was or not. When the others on the boat were prostrate with illness, he covered them with a tarpaulin. Then, for the wily deception of the red enemy along the shores, he contrived a clever ruse. He stuck his mens' hats up on sticks like scarecrows, and he fastened the oars along the boat so that the intimidated Indians kept at a cautious and unobservant distance.

When he got back, he found that his own prestige in Jamestown was increasing inversely as that of Ratcliffe tottered. Ratcliffe's position as President had so gone to his head that he was having a palace built for himself. Smith stopped it in mid-air when he came back and heard other colonists hoot at their leader's silly pretensions.

When he returned on September seventh he found Jamestown the worse for his absence as well as for wear. At long last he was made President, on the tenth. He resented the London Company's complaints of the sorely tried colonists. The Company had threatened that if Newport did not bring back sufficient cargo this fall to pay his two thousand pounds of expenses that it would abandon the colony. In hot haste, Smith dispatched a scathing reply, and this fortified his gathering and overdue popularity. He stood in with the Indians better than others did, and he believed in friendly and adroit relations with them when possible. Leadership brought out his prime qualities: his zest for adventure, his hardihood for physical trials, and his bravery to the arrow's point. He believed in discipline and hard work, and calling to mind the strict habits of his school days, he made the sloven and surly bachelors walk-a-chalk. If they swore, water was dashed down their sleeves. They must brush their clothes, wash their hands, sing psalms daily—and like it! He thought this discordant group needed harmony as well as guidance every rousing morning. Mindful of God, the church was repaired; mindful of Mammon, too, the storehouse was covered. Early Virginia was more Puritan than it pretended. Smith also had the fort increased by three acres and had a pentagon made of it. He had men getting cedar, walnut and clapboard for buildings.

Newport brought in the second supply in October 1608, and with it many changes. Two women were among the passengers—Mrs. Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras. When the latter became the bride of John Laydon, colonists saw their first recorded marriage on this side of the world.

That October the harvest had not been plentiful so they were cheered by the prospect of a new business venture. They had sent word that they had the proper ingredients on hand with which to start a new glass works: tar, pitch and soap-ashes. Accordingly eight Dutchmen and Poles, who were skilled in the craft, were among the passengers. The Glass House soon took its bright stand, like a jewel in the wilderness, about a mile down the forest from James Fort. Within two months glass was shipped back, although not very profitably.

Another bright and futile dream bedazzled the lazier colonists—gold. Smith, having given up the search, was disgusted with men who would do nothing but "dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold," and he scolded them soundly for sending the gilded dirt to England in April where it was properly dismissed as mica. "For the country was to them a misery, a ruin, a death, a hell, and their own reports here, and their own actions according."

Smith and Newport were told by their credulous patrons to hunt up the lost colonists of Roanoke, for lost brothers, like lost sheep, should be reclaimed. Powhatan had told Smith of white men who were attired like himself and who were now abiding in Ocanahawan, so Smith had already recorded that on his map. Captain Newport now made an expedition to Panawick, a village beyond Roanoke Island, but his Indian guide led him astray. In December of 1608 Smith led another expedition and sent Master Sicklemore and two guides to seek the lost colonists, but Indians merely showed them some crosses and letters on the bark of trees.

While Newport and Ratcliffe returned to England at the end of December, Smith enjoyed a Christmas holiday with the Indians near Kecoughtan without envy of English Yule Logs, plum puddings and traditional celebrations. He entered into the native merriment heartily. Here was shining snow, frost and cedar, as well as delicious oysters, fish, flesh and wild fowl. He declared that he "never had better fires in England than in the dry, smoky houses of Kecoughtan." Smith knew however that Powhatan was becoming envious of the English way of life if he was not, so he was on his way with fourteen men to build a house for the Emperor.

Powhatan had wanted to gird himself with more and more English trappings, and he requested a cock, a hen and a grindstone. How about a coach-and-four, such as he heard their king had? Most of all he had wanted an English house, for nothing less than sheltering walls could keep off the threat of guns, of which he was so afraid.

Smith already had some German house builders on hand. Instead of having them build a house for himself, he, the great white father, turned them over to the great red father. It was not such a sacrifice, for Smith knew himself to be a born wanderer on the face of the earth. He could do without his own roof, as without his own woman, more easily than could most men. Tragabigzanda, his Turkish angel who had left him in her brother's keeping for a while, had been wasting her pains. Likewise, if young Pocahontas here had designs upon him, she must give them up before hero-worship developed into something too mature and possessive. He was his own man and that of no woman alive.

Smith was embarrassed not so much by indebtedness to the Indian maid as by apprehension of her adoration. His best gratitude to her who had saved his life would be to leave her hers without involving it. What irony that she, like most women, appreciated him too much, while men, who would do better than women to follow him, appreciated him too little! The time was coming when he should move on to new worlds to conquer, for he and his men here could never see eye to eye.

Much less could he and Powhatan. Powhatan, he admitted, had talked to him with simple eloquence: "Think you I am simple not to know it is better to eat good meat, lie well and sleep quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with you, have copper, hatchets, or what I want, be your friend; than be forced to fly from all, to lie cold in the woods, feed upon acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted by you that I can neither rest, eat, nor sleep, but my tired man must watch and if a twig but break every one cry: 'There comes Captain Smith.' Then must I fly I know not whither, and thus with miserable fear end my miserable life?"... "What no guns, no swords? The copper hatchets you made are of no use to me and my people. We can eat our corn, but not your copper."

Smith reminded him that he had sent the Germans to build a house. Powhatan said, "If you are such friends of ours, why do you not lay down your arms in our presence? That is our custom."

Smith stuck to his guns. Then he changed the subject. How would Powhatan like a kettle which spewed steam out of its snout? Powhatan did bite at such bait after all.

Not having secured as much corn from Powhatan as he had hoped, Smith now decided to tackle Opechancanough. He challenged the Indian to individual combat, being well aware that the old chief had been impressed with the three Turk's heads on his shield. Cringingly he offered to heap up all the corn demanded. Smith now snatched him by his long lock, and then appropriated bow and arrow. "You promised to freight my ship ere I departed, and so you shall; or I mean to load her with your dead carcasses." Before he left there, he held his pistol at the chief's breast, and led him meekly among his own forces, making him fill his bark with twenty tons of corn.

Still, it was not by parrying words with Powhatan, nor weapons with his brother, that he secured essential food, but by the loving mercy of Pocahontas. That frail and loyal bond between them saved the colonists. She had seemed like the goddess of the maize, bearing corn to them.

With braver mercy still, she stole through the woods at night to tell Smith of the plot which her father was contriving with the aid of the treacherous foreigners whom he had sent to build a house for Powhatan. Powhatan was about to have a gala feast spread for Smith and his men, but in the morning when they slept stupidly after too much food and drink, Powhatan's men would descend upon them and kill.

Smith, now prepared, made the bearers of Powhatan's treacherous bounty taste every dish before he did, and again he escaped, guarding his appetite and his life.

Between February and May of 1609 a well was dug, forty acres were cleared and planted in corn, the church was covered, and twenty new cabins were erected. A blockhouse was built at the isthmus, and a new fort was reared opposite Jamestown. Food was still scarce, however, and rats consumed most of the corn crop. Believing that it was best to keep in with the Indians, Smith induced some Englishmen to live with the natives. Desperately he sent others to the oyster banks to prevent starvation, but the queer diet was unhealthy, and made the skin peel from their bodies.

News of these dire conditions got to London and alienated the Company to Smith, whose enemies had talked effectively against him. The stockholders were already displeased with the lack of profit from Virginia, so they decided to appoint their treasurer, Sir Thomas Smith, as absentee President. Little did London care if the bitter colonists saucily wished him astride the mare which they had boiling in a stew, and if they saluted their fancy with impudent glee: "Sir Thomas!" The Company decided to dispatch Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, followed by Lord Delaware who would get everything under control in Jamestown.

When Captain Samuel Argall, the privateer, turned up in July with letters from the Company criticizing Smith and telling of the third supply to be brought by Lord Delaware, Smith was embittered. A month later four ships of the supply came in early bearing—of all people—Smith's former enemies: Ratcliffe, Archer and Martin, all captains now. The Sea Venture and other ships had not been heard from, but Smith had had enough and he was hurt by lack of confidence in his command. He was thinking of returning to England anyhow before his enemies sped him on his way. An accident made up his mind for him.

While he was napping in the afternoon a keg of gunpowder exploded and set him on fire. Distracted with agony he jumped into the water to cool the burns. Much of his flesh was torn from his body and thighs. A hundred miles stretched between him and Jamestown, and thousands more to London, but there only he could get proper doctoring. Fortunately a ship was just leaving Jamestown which could and would take him on. Percy was the only one who could be persuaded to take his place, for even his enemies did not want it at this dubious stage.

Smith claimed that the colony now had three ships and seven boats, and many desirable commodities. There were provisions for ten weeks for the four hundred and ninety people, besides twenty-four pieces of ordnances, three hundred muskets, firelocks, shot, powder and match and swords. One hundred soldiers could speak the Indian language. There were six mares, horses, five hundred swine, hams, chickens, goats and sheep. He had done his best, and it was no poor best. His friends agreed eloquently: "He made justice his first guide and experience his second, ever hating baseness, sloth, pride and indignity more than any dangers, that never allowed more for himself than for his soldiers with him, that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himself, that never see us want what he had or either could by any means get us, that would rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay, that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death, whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss our deaths."

So Smith was out of sight, and for most out of mind. Such word of him as got to the Indians was that he was dead. Powhatan, who had feared and hated him when he was around, now defended him. "My daughter, you see how treacherous the white men are. The foolish palefaces have killed the best man whom they had."

Without Smith, the remaining whites fared worse with the Indians. Ratcliffe and others were slaughtered, and Archer died. The "Starving Time" which had set in during Smith's office was worse than at any period. An oatmeal thief had a bodkin thrust through his tongue. The most cruel man of all had chopped up his wife and salted the parts, consuming some, before he was caught and executed. Only sixty of five hundred people survived.

There was no way for them to know that the chief relief ship the Sea Venture had been tossed about at sea, and wrecked on the Bermuda shores, by a terrible storm. Shakespeare, on hearing of it, wrote his play the Tempest, moved by the drama of the storm, and the strange lull afterward on the balmy isles.

IV

THE Sea Venture which had left England with one hundred and fifty passengers on June 2, 1609, had not only Sir Thomas Gates aboard, but an ordinary Englishman named John Rolfe and his wife. The lull after the storm which wrecked the ship off the Bermuda Isles was such a relief that they named their baby born there "Bermuda" after the island. She was baptized by the Reverend Richard Buck, who was to stand by John Rolfe on many occasions in the future. The burial of the baby was the next of these. Their sojourn on the healthy islands was a blessing to most of the refugees, although they were supposed dead by the Jamestown colonists, few of whom were surviving themselves during their "Starving Time" that winter and early spring.