The Founding of Jamestown
The Beginnings of America
Richard B. Morris and James Leslie Woodress
1961
Mackerel Cove (ca. 1877) by William Trost Richards.
The first permanent English settlement in America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in May, 1607. The colonists who went ashore that spring morning more than three and one-half centuries ago discovered no cultivated countryside.
Instead of the trim, green farms one sees along the James River today, they found a howling wilderness full of hostile Indians and wild beasts. Neither the colonists nor their merchant-sponsors in England were prepared for the troubles that Jamestown faced. The settlers died of disease, starvation, and Indian attacks, and they quarreled endlessly among themselves. The stockholders in the Virginia Company never made any money on their investment in the colony.
The Jamestown settlers sailed from England in three ships on December 19, 1606. Captain Christopher Newport was in charge of getting the colonists to Virginia. The ships stopped in the Canary Islands and the West Indies before reaching their destination. It was a long, exhausting voyage. Several weeks after landing at Jamestown, Captain Newport returned to England. The settlers then were on their own.
William Simmonds Describes the Settlers’ Problems
The following account of the early days at Jamestown was compiled in London by William Simmonds. It is based on the writings, freely adapted, of several of the colonists who were his friends. As you can see, Simmonds’ friends had no use for Edward Wingfield, the first president of the colony. They were supporters of Captain John Smith, whose own writings begin after this narrative.
Being thus left to our fortunes, within ten days, scarce ten amongst us could either go or well stand, such extreme weakness and sickness oppressed us. And thereat none need marvel, if they consider the cause and reason, which was this: whilst the ships stayed, our allowance of food was somewhat bettered by a daily portion of biscuit which the sailors would pilfer [steal] to sell, give, or exchange with us, for money, sassafras, [or] furs.... But when they departed, there remained neither tavern, beer house, nor place of relief but the common kettle.
Had we been as free from all sins as we were free from gluttony and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for saints. But our president would never have been admitted, for he kept for his private use oatmeal, sack [wine], oil, aqua vitae [brandy], beef, eggs, or what not. [President Wingfield hotly denied this charge.] The [contents of the common] kettle indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint of wheat and as much barley boiled with water for a man a day. This [grain] having fried some 26 weeks in the ship’s hold contained as many worms as grains, so that we might truly call it rather so much bran than corn.
Our drink was water, our lodging, castles in the air. With this lodging and diet our extreme toil in bearing and planting palisades strained and bruised us. Our continual labor in the extremity of the heat had so weakened us as were cause sufficient to have made us miserable in our native country, or any other place in the world. From May to September those that escaped dying lived upon sturgeon and sea crabs. Fifty in this time we buried. [The original colony numbered 104.]
Then seeing the President’s projects (who all this time had neither felt want nor sickness) to escape these miseries by flight in our pinnace [small sailing boat] so moved our dead spirits that we deposed [removed] him and established [John] Ratcliffe in his place.... But now was all our provision spent, the sturgeon gone, all helps abandoned, each hour expecting the fury of the savages, when God, the patron of all good endeavors, in that desperate extremity, so changed the hearts of the savages that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provision that no man wanted.
And now where some affirmed it was ill done of the Council to send forth men so badly provided, this incontradictable reason will show them plainly they are too ill-advised to nourish such ideas. First, the fault of our going was our own. What could be thought fitting or necessary we had; but what we should find, what we should want, where we should be, we were all ignorant. And supposing to make our passage in two months with victual [food] to live and the advantage of spring to work, we were at sea five months where we spent both our victual and lost the opportunity of the time and season to plant.
Such actions have ever since the world’s beginning been subject to such accidents. Everything of worth is found full of difficulties, but nothing [is] so difficult as to establish a commonwealth so far remote from men and means and where men’s minds are so untoward [unlucky] as neither [to] do well themselves nor to suffer others [to do well]. But to proceed.
The new president, being little beloved, of weak judgment in dangers and less industry in peace, committed the managing of all things abroad to Captain Smith, who, by his own example, good words, and fair promises set some to mow, others to bind thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himself always bearing the greatest task for his own share. In short time he provided most of them lodgings, neglecting any for himself.
This done, seeing the savages’ superfluity [large numbers] begin to decrease, [he] with some of his workmen shipped himself in the shallop [small boat] to search the country for trade.... He went down the river to Kecoughtan [an Indian village] where at first they scorned him as a starved man, yet he so dealt with them that the next day they loaded his boat with corn. And in his return he discovered and kindly traded with the Warascoyks....
And now the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpkins, and persimmons, fish, fowl, and diverse sorts of wild beasts, ... so that none of our Tuftaffaty [silk-dressed] humorists desired to go for England.
John Smith 1580-1631
Captain John Smith already had lived an exciting life by the time he joined the Virginia-bound colonists at the age of 26. He had left England at 16 to become a soldier of fortune on the continent of Europe. He fought with the Austrians against the Turks, and once in single combat he cut off the heads of three Turkish champions. A Transylvanian prince rewarded him with a coat of arms for his deeds. Later he was captured and given as a present to the wife of a Turkish pasha, but he escaped and made his way back to England.
Smith’s adventures are so fantastic that many historians have called him a liar and refused to believe him. Yet recent historical research shows that Smith’s stories are reasonably accurate. He may have exaggerated his adventures to make a good story a little better, but it is probably true that Smith saved the Jamestown colony by his resourceful foraging among the Indians and by his bold leadership. Certainly he was an energetic and able man. For a fascinating account of Smith’s career, as verified by an expert in Hungarian history, see Marshall Fishwick, “Was John Smith a Liar?” American Heritage, IX, 29-33, 110 (October, 1958).
Smith returned to England in 1609 and never again saw Virginia, but he wrote much about the colony. One of his most interesting works is a pamphlet called A Map of Virginia. In it he put together a vivid eyewitness account of the animals, the plants, and the Indians. Smith’s booklet was designed to satisfy the great curiosity in England about the New World and to urge new settlers to go there. He does not mention the hardships.
THE INDIANS
The people differ very much in stature, ... some being very great, ... others very little, ... but generally tall and straight, of a comely [pretty] proportion and of a color brown, when they are of any age, but they are borne white. Their hair is generally black, but few have any beards. The men wear half their heads shaven, the other half long. For barbers they use their women, who with two shells will grate the hair, of any fashion they please....
They are very strong, of an able body and full of agility, able to endure, to lie in the woods under a tree by the fire in the worst of winter or in the weeds and grass in ambush in the summer. They are inconstant [changeable] in everything but what fear constrains them to keep.... Some are of disposition fearful, some bold, most cautelous [deceitful], all savage. Generally [they are] covetous of copper, beads, and such like trash. They are soon moved to anger and so malicious that they seldom forget an injury....
For their apparel they are sometimes covered with skins of wild beasts, which in winter are dressed with the hair but in summer without. The better sort use large mantles of deerskin, ... some embroidered with white beads, some with copper, others painted after their manner. But the common sort have scarce to cover their nakedness but with grass, the leaves of trees, or such like. We have seen some use mantles made of turkey feathers so prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be discerned [seen] but the feathers, that was exceedingly warm and very handsome. But the women are always covered about their middles with a skin and very shamefast to be seen bare....
Their women some have their legs, hands, breasts, and face cunningly embroidered with diverse works, as beasts, serpents, artificially wrought into their flesh with black spots. In each ear commonly they have three great holes, whereat they hang chains, bracelets, or copper. Some of their men wear in those holes a small green and yellow colored snake, near half a yard in length, which crawling and lapping herself about his neck often times familiarly would kiss his lips. Others wear a dead rat tied by the tail. Some on their heads wear the wing of a bird or some large feather with a rattle.... Their heads and shoulders are painted red with the root pocone powdered and mixed with oil; this they hold in summer to preserve them from the heat and in winter from the cold. Many other forms of paintings they use, but he is the most gallant that is the most monstrous to behold....
Men, women, and children have their several names according to the several humors of their parents. Their women (they say) are easily delivered of child, yet do they love children very dearly. To make them hardy, in the coldest mornings they wash them in the rivers and by painting and ointments so tan their skins that after a year or two no weather will hurt them.
The men bestow their time in fishing, hunting, wars, and such man-like exercises, ... which is the cause that the women be very painful [busy] and the men often idle. The women and children do the rest of the work. They make mats, baskets, pots, pound their corn, make their bread, prepare their victuals, plant their corn, gather their corn, bear all kinds of burdens, and such like.
Their fire they kindle presently by chafing a dry pointed stick in a hole of a little square piece of wood, that firing itself will so fire moss, leaves, or any such like dry thing that will quickly burn.
THEIR RELIGION
There is yet in Virginia no place discovered to be so savage in which the savages have not a religion, deer, and bow and arrows. All things that were able to do them hurt beyond their prevention they adore with their kind of divine worship, as the fire, water, lightning, thunder, our ordnance [guns], horses, etc. But their chief god they worship is the devil. Him they call Oke and serve him more of fear than love. They say they have conference with him and fashion themselves as near to his shape as they can imagine. In their temples, they have his image evil favoredly carved and then painted and adorned with chains, copper, and beads, and covered with a skin....
By him is commonly the sepulchre [tomb] of their kings. Their bodies are first bowelled [that is, disembowelled or the internal organs removed], then dried upon hurdles [racks] till they be very dry, and so about the most of their joints and neck they hang bracelets or chains of copper, pearl, and such like, as they used to wear. Their inwards they stuff with copper beads and cover with a skin, hatchets, and such trash. Then they lappe [wrap] them very carefully in white skins and so roll them in mats for their winding sheets. And in the tomb, which is an arch made of mats, they lay them orderly. What remaineth of this kind of wealth their kings have, they set at their feet in baskets. These temples and bodies are kept by their priests.
For their ordinary burials they dig a deep hole in the earth with sharp stakes, and the corpses being lapped in skins and mats with their jewels, they lay them upon sticks in the ground and so cover them with earth. The burial ended, the women being painted all their faces with black coal and oil do sit 24 hours in the houses mourning and lamenting by turns with such yelling and howling as may express their great passions.
John Smith’s most famous story is the account of his rescue by Pocahontas, but many historians have doubted the tale. Smith is the only person who says it happened. The facts are these: During the first hard winter, 1607-1608, when Smith was scouting for provisions, he was captured by the Indians and taken to the chief, Powhatan, father of Pocahontas. After three weeks the chief sent him back to Jamestown. When Smith first wrote about his experiences a few months later, he never mentioned Pocahontas.
Years later, in England, Smith wrote a history of Virginia and, for the first time, told the story of Pocahontas. Between the time Smith was captured and the time he wrote his history, Pocahontas had married an Englishman. Her husband had brought her to England, where she had been a sensation. One cannot help feeling that Smith “remembered” more than actually happened in order to exploit public interest in the Indian princess. His account, however, is a good story, even if it happened only in his mind. Pocahontas was a real person who visited Jamestown often and brought food to the starving settlers during their worst times. Many Americans like to think the episode is true, and the tale has become part of our folklore, like the legendary deeds of Davy Crockett. Here is Smith’s story:
At last they brought him [note that here Smith writes of himself in the third person] to Meronocomoco where was Powhatan, their emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had been a monster.... Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead he sat covered with a great robe made of raccoon skins and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side [of] the 8house two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red. Many of their heads [were] bedecked with the white down of birds; but everyone with something, and a great chain of white beads about their necks.
At his entrance before the king, all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers instead of a towel to dry them. Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was [that] two great stones were brought before Powhatan. Then as many as could, laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs to beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the king’s dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death; whereat the emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper; for they thought him as well [capable] of all occupations as themselves. For the king himself will make his own robes, shoes, bows, arrows, pots; plant, hunt, or do anything so well as the rest....
Two days after, Powhatan having disguised himself in the most fearfullest manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth to a great house in the woods, and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after from behind a mat that divided the house was made the most dolefullest noise he ever heard. Then Powhatan, more like a devil than a man, with some two hundred more as black as himself, came unto him and told him now they were friends and presently he should go to Jamestown.... So to Jamestown with 12 guides Powhatan sent him.
In another place in the history, Smith prints a letter he wrote to the Queen of England at the time Pocahontas visited London. In this letter he tells more about the Indian girl and describes her as a sort of guardian angel for the colony:
[Pocahontas] so prevailed with her father that I was safely conducted to Jamestown, where I found about eight and thirty miserable poor and sick creatures to keep possession of all those large 9territories of Virginia; such was the weakness of this poor commonwealth. Had the savages not fed us, we directly had starved. And this relief, most gracious Queen, was commonly brought us by this Lady Pocahontas.
Notwithstanding all these passages, when inconstant fortune turned our peace to war, this tender virgin would still not spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jars [distresses] have been oft appeased and our wants still supplied. Were it the policy of her father thus to employ her or the ordinance of God thus to make her His instrument, or her extraordinary affection to our nation, I know not, but of this I am sure; when her father with the utmost of his policy and power sought to surprise me, having but 18 with me, the dark night could not affright her from coming through the irksome woods; and with watered eyes [she] gave me intelligence with her best advice to escape his fury, which had he known he had surely slain her.
Jamestown with her wild train she as freely frequented as her father’s habitation, and during the time of two or three years she next under God was still the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion.