The Swashbuckling Captain John Smith — Part II

John Smith didn’t even make it to the shores of North America on the 1607 Virginia Company expedition to found an English colony in the New World before he got himself in trouble. The tough, skilled European soldier — who had survived battle, personal duels and Ottoman captivity — knew leadership, and he knew that the gentleman adventurers in charge of the expedition that would found the Jamestown Colony didn’t have it. Smith couldn’t stand men who stood on unearned authority derived from  aristocratic privilege. And he was not shy about saying so.

Historian Bernard Bailyn writes:

Before the initial voyage to Virginia was half over, in the cramped quarters of the Susan Constant, [Smith] had come to despise the refinement and presumptions of the shipboard aristocrats like [George] Percy and [Edward] Wingfield, whom he knew to be incompetent, and to dispute the authority of the fleet commander, [Captain Christopher] Newport. Fearful that his abrasive and insubordinate ways would lead to serious trouble — he might “usurpe the government, murder the Councell, and make himself Kinge” — the expedition’s leaders arrested him for mutiny and restrained him “as a prisoner.”

Smith was not sentenced to death, but that penalty hung over his head as the expedition made landfall on the shores of America.

The problem for the Company aristocrats was that they just couldn’t do without Smith’s skillset and leadership. Bailyn:

They released him on landing, despite their belief that he was, as Percy wrote, “an ambitious, unworthy and vayneglorious fellowe, attempteing to take all mens authoreties from them … and ingrosse all authoretey into his owne hands.” But it would be he, in the few months of his ascendency in Jamestown, who saved the colony from utter collapse…

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The “New World” that the Virginia Company entered in the late spring of 1607 was a world in turmoil. The Algonquin peoples who lived in what would become Tidewater Virginia were in the midst of  imperial consolidation. The chieftain Powhatan (more properly Wahunsenacawh) had kingly ambitions, and he was rapidly expanding his territories, absorbing some tribes, enforcing tribute on others. He would use diplomatic means — including strategic marriage — when practicable, and resorted to force when he met resistance. He could wield a very heavy hand.

Smith would write of him:

He is of parsonage a tall well proportioned man . . . his head somwhat gray. . . . His age neare 60; of a very able and hardy body to endure any labour. What he commandeth they dare not disobey in the least thing. It is strange to see with what great feare and adoration all these people doe obay this Powhatan. For at his feet, they present whatsoever he commandeth, and at the least frowne of his browe, their greatest spirits will tremble with feare: and no marvell, for he is very terrible and tyrannous in punishing such as offend him.

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In the fall of 1607, looking to better understand the land the Virginia Company had planted themselves in — and to determine the prospects for the Company’s chartered mission to find a route to the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean) and to locate gold and silver deposits — Smith led a handful of men on an exploration west up the James River, then making a great circuit north and then back down to Jamestown. This exploration demonstrated that there was no apparent passage to the South Sea, and that there was no sign of the kind of gold and silver deposits that had made the Spanish Empire rich and powerful. The land itself, however, as Smith noted, was fertile and the river network marked the potential for transport of agricultural products.

Smith tried to tamp down gold fever in Jamestown Colony, but to no avail:

“There was no talk, no hope, no work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold — such a bruit of GOLD that one mad fellow desired to be buried in the sands, lest they should by their art make gold of his bones!”

The Jamestown Colony could not feed itself, and men did spend more effort on looking for gold than providing for their own survival, but the common belief that the Gentleman Adventurers were lazy and disdained work is something of a misconception. This is ably addressed by the The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Museums, using Smith’s own writings:

Relations with the Powhatan people were fraught — not at all like the mutually beneficial relationship established in the Plymouth Colony a couple of decades later. There were violent encounters and semi-cordial trading encounters by turn. The Powhatans made harassing attacks on Jamestown several times. Colonists caught in the woods could meet a gruesome fate. Bailyn describes the horrific fate of one of Smith’s working men:

At a leisurely pace, his extremities were cut off with mussel shells, and tossed into the fire before him; he was flayed — the skin was torn from his face and head — then disemboweled while still alive; and finally burned to ashes.

Curiously, though, at this stage, neither the colonists nor the Powhatans wanted to extirpate the other. Powhatan had bigger concerns with other native peoples he was trying to subdue and bring under his imperium, and English trade goods were useful, especially if they could get some firearms. Better to subdue the English, subordinate them and bring them, too, under the lordship of Powhatan. As for the English, well, they needed Powhatan corn, and they needed furs and produce, something that they could send back to England as evidence that the colony was at least potentially productive.

Smith ventured out to seek corn from Powhatan villages. Sometimes it was traded for, and sometimes Smith simply stole what he was after. Eventually, he resorted more and more to strong-arming the Powhatans.

On one of these corn-seeking expeditions, in December 1607, Smith was captured and brought before Powhatan himself. What occurred next is the foundation of the legend of Pocahontas and John Smith. In one account of the incident, Smith claimed that the 11-year-old daughter of Powhatan threw herself over Smith to save him from being clubbed to death. This is possible, though many historians believe this was all a ritual establishing Powhatan’s supremacy, giving life back to the Englishman.

Regardless, this was the beginning of a relationship between Smith and Powhatan that was sometimes cautiously cordial and at other times smoked with simmering hostility.

It was also the beginning of a fanciful romance narrative that has spanned four centuries. Once again, there was no romantic relationship between Smith and Pocahontas.

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In 1608, Smith set out again, this time to explore the vast and intricate Chesapeake Bay. From the National Park Service:

On two separate voyages, beginning in June and ending in September 1608, Captain Smith and several of his fellow colonists, traveling in an open barge about 30 feet long and 8 feet wide, explored 2,500 miles of the Chesapeake Bay and many of its tributaries such as the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. From these trips Smith created a very accurate map of the area replete with locations of various Indian villages and other vital information. This exploration and map of the Chesapeake Bay region were some of Captain Smith’s greatest accomplishments and enduring legacies.

Smith was named President of the Jamestown Colony late in 1608, and he set about disciplining the colonists, famously telling them that he who does not work does not eat. He got them organized militarily, and got them focused on producing their own foodstuffs. From the National Park Service:

Under Smith’s leadership the death toll dropped dramatically, the fort was repaired, crops planted, a well dug, trees cut into clapboards, and products such as pitch, tar, and soap ash were produced for shipment back to England. Even during times of food shortages, Smith sent colonists to live with the Powhatan Indians confident no harm would befall them as he believed Chief Powhatan and his people feared him and English weapons.

His leadership stabilized the colony — but that doesn’t mean it was popular. Jamestown’s history is rife with political intrigue, and many of the Gentleman Adventurers still resented Smith. They probably resented him even more than they did on the voyage over, as it became apparent that he was a far more effective leader than any of them. There was a constant effort to undermine him.

As fate would have it, Smith was forced to leave the colony in 1609, not by his rivals, but by a terrible injury. While he was sleeping in a boat on the James River, Smith’s gunpowder bag — commonly slung from a belt — blew up, tearing a big chunk out of his leg. Some accounts imply that there may have been something sinister afoot, but the most likely explanation is that the match from his matchlock musket or a coal from the firepot used to get the match going came in contact with the powder and set it off.

Smith had to return to England for medical treatment, and he never made it back to the Jamestown Colony.

He did, however, make it back to North America. In 1614, he voyaged along the coast of a region he would name New England. He plied that coast, trading for furs and fish. From the National Park Service:

Intending to establish an English colony there, Smith’s efforts were frustrated when he was captured by French pirates while sailing to New England in 1615. Escaping from the pirates, Smith returned to England where he wrote extensively about his life’s adventures. [In 1620, the Pilgrims nearly selected Captain Smith to be their military advisor but instead selected Miles Standish, however, they did use Smith’s map of New England.]

Returning to England, the warrior turned his hand to writing, leaving a legacy of remarkable accounts of the earlier English settlements in North America. He died in 1631, at the age of 51, leaving a legacy that places him in the first rank among Frontier Partisans.

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The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Museums YouTube Channel offers some excellent demonstrations of the arms of the early Jamestown colonists — arms that Captain John Smith mastered.