by Owen J. Hurd
Unfortunately the ice floes and other deprivations made it impossible for the new captain, Charles Clerke, to get any farther than Cook had in the previous year, and they turned back toward England via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope.
LOOSE ENDS
ohn Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, sponsored many of Cook’s voyages as the first lord of the admiralty. The would-be namesake for the Sandwich Islands was later replaced in favor of a derivation of the native name for the Hawaiian Islands. His moniker is more famously attached to the less dignified but ubiquitous luncheon staple, the sandwich.
First mate William Bligh would get his first chance to command his own naval exploration on the Bounty. Cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean by Fletcher Christian and his band of mutineers, Bligh miraculously steered the small lifeboat nearly four thousand miles in forty-seven days, landing at Timor with all hands but one alive and well. He was later named governor of New South Wales in Australia, where he once again displayed his “unfortunate capacity for breeding rebellion,” leading to yet another mutiny, this one land based. Bligh was imprisoned in Sydney for more than a year. After his release he returned to England where he died in 1817.
An American sailor who accompanied Cook on his last Pacific voyage was John Ledyard. While living in Paris in 1786, the peripatetic Yank made the acquaintance of America’s ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, with whom he shared a scheme for traversing the American frontier. With Jefferson’s support, Ledyard received funding to explore lands from Moscow to the Bering Strait, through Alaska and finally all the way to the eastern American seaboard—a reverse Louis and Clark journey and then some. However, Ledyard was arrested and deported from Russia and the rest of the trip was put on hold. Preparing for an overland journey to the interior of Africa, Ledyard died in 1789 at the age of thirty-seven. But the idea for the Corps of Discovery lived on in Jefferson’s imagination, until taken up fifteen years later by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
One of the natives who greeted Cook’s ships and later drove the British from the island, Kamehameha, would later become the first king of the unified islands of Hawaii in 1819.
CHAPTER TWO
EARLY SETTLERS AND PILGRIMS
THE Age of Discovery was of course followed by a wave of settlement throughout the New World. The first long-term European settlements ended in disaster, including the French at St. Augustine, Florida (wiped out by the Spanish), and the Lost Colony of Roanoke (succumbed to unknown forces—maybe starvation, maybe marauding Indians).
The English fared better the next few times around, with Jamestown in Virginia and Plymouth in New England. Here we take a look at what happened after three of the most influential events in America’s early settlement history: Captain John’s salvation from death courtesy of Pocahontas, the first Thanksgiving, and the Salem witch trials. The aftermaths show that not all interactions between the settlers and the Native Americans were violent. On the other hand, one of our nation’s most celebrated occasions of good faith and cooperation turned out to be a short-lived co-alignment of self-interests.
John Smith, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe
On December 30, 1607, the story goes, Captain John Smith, a British colonist living in Virginia’s Jamestown settlement, was sentenced to death by Chief Powhatan, a powerful tribal leader whose kingdom covered much of the Chesapeake Bay region. Smith was forced to his knees, head positioned on a large stone. Several warriors closed in, clubs aloft, ready to “beat out his brains.” Just then Powhatan’s youngest and favorite daughter, Matoaka, sprung to Smith’s side, placing her own head upon Smith’s. Touched by this humanitarian gesture, Powhatan spared the life of the Englishman. Of course, most people know Matoaka by her nickname, Pocahontas, which means “playful, mischievous one.”
Scholars have argued for years about how much truth there is to the story. After all, the only eyewitness to write about the event was Smith himself—and his account came seventeen years later.
Whether Smith was truly the object of Pocahontas’s benevolence or not, we do know he was captured by local Indians. Whenever the outspoken Smith became a nuisance to the other members of the Jamestown leadership, it seems, they would send him on a lengthy excursion into unknown lands, ostensibly to map the region and trade with the Indians, but they may have also hoped that hostile natives would dispatch the gadfly captain. It was during one such excursion that Smith was captured by members of the Pamunkey tribe, led by Powhatan’s younger brother Opechancanough. Three others in his scouting party were killed in the raid, but Smith’s quick-thinking Indian guide told the ambushers that Smith was a werowance, or chief. Following custom, they were obliged to spare Smith’s life. They took him prisoner and eventually let him go after Pocahontas’s act of benevolence.
Having escaped one attack and one execution at the hands of the American Indians, Smith returned to the fort at Jamestown, where he was once again sentenced to death, this time by his English compatriots. Upon his return, a newly elected council promptly had put Smith on trial for the deaths of the men he lost on the trading expedition. Found guilty, the punishment was death by hanging. But last-minute fortune smiled on Smith yet again, as an English supply ship appeared on the horizon, bringing with it a Captain Christopher Newport who immediately assumed control over the colony and commuted Smith’s sentence.
This was not only the second time Smith faced the executioner in one week, but the third time altogether since arriving on American shores. On the journey over, Smith was imprisoned for some vaguely mutinous activity. An execution was planned, then delayed. When the ships arrived in Virginia and the official charter was unsealed, the colonists learned to their surprise that the Virginia Company had designated Captain John Smith as one of seven inaugural council members. It certainly wouldn’t do to dispose of a fellow councilman, so Smith got his first reprieve.
Smith had long been an outspoken critic of the colony’s leadership, composed mostly of what he considered genteel loafers. A lowborn son of modest ancestry, Smith had little patience for the leisure class, especially when the survival of the group would require the sweat of every individual. Droughts, spoilage, and unfamiliar hunting grounds made for scarce food supplies, and Smith did not hide his disgust with those who lived off the efforts of others.
For the next couple of years, the Jamestown settlement existed on the edge of survival, a survival that relied greatly on food provided by the Indians as well as on provisions shipped from England. Smith did what he could to help the settlement become more self-sufficient. Not only did he keep the inhabitants of the fort safe from attack but he was also a shrewd negotiator, striking bargains with the natives that none of his contemporaries could match. His new bond with Powhatan and his increasing fluency in the Algonquin language helped. Yet, his efforts were routinely frustrated by a revolving door of foolish and mendacious council presidents.
Ultimately, Smith would get his chance to lead the colony starting in September 1608. Under his direction, the colony flourished. Smith supervised infrastructural improvements, including a new freshwater well and the construction of wooden houses. Smith’s egalitarian rule was guided by the fundamental principle, “He that will not work shall not eat.”
Pocahontas remained Smith’s friend throughout his remaining days in Virginia. She often visited Jamestown, sometimes to bring food to the English or to check on how they were doing. She once even warned Smith of an ambush her father had planned, saving Smith’s life a second time. Pocahontas showed obvious kindness to the English, and Smith spoke of her in restrained but affectionate terms, calling her the “nonpareil” of her people. But the two most likely never shared anything close to a romantic relationship. In 1609 Smith was severely injured in an explosives accident and shipped back to his homeland. The remaining Jamestown settlers told Pocahontas that he was dead.
With Smith out of the picture, relations between the English and Chesapeake natives deteriorated, and the settlement fel
l on hard times, thanks also to a drought that resulted in what the settlers referred to as the Starving Time. Jamestown settlers resorted to eating their horses and dogs, even rats. When those sources of nutrition ran out they turned to pieces of leather, starched collars—and worse.
So great was our famine that a Savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and [ate] him…. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, [salted] her, and had eaten part of her before it was known; for which he was executed, as he well deserved.
During this time of profound suffering, the previously charitable Pocahontas was nowhere to be found. The next time the English encountered Pocahontas, in the spring of 1613, they kidnapped her, holding her hostage for the return of several English prisoners. Powhatan called their bluff, refusing to negotiate his daughter’s release. The spurned Indian princess eventually decided to live among the English. A recently arrived gentleman named John Rolfe fell in love with Pocahontas; they married in April 1614, and had a baby, Thomas, in 1615. The following year the Rolfe family traveled to England on a sort of public relations junket promoting the English colony in America.
Pocahontas, now going by her Christian name, Rebecca Rolfe, was a big hit in London, gaining introductions to King James and Queen Anne, and “was publicly treated as a prince’s daughter; she was carried to many plays, balls, and other public entertainments, and very respectfully received by all the ladies about the Court.” She was even reunited with Captain John Smith, an awkward meeting in which the Pamunkey princess admonished the captain for not coming to see her sooner. He had recently returned from an exploration of New England, he explained, and was busily making arrangements for another.
Pocahontas was greatly impressed with London. The metropolis with a quarter million inhabitants dwarfed the villages she was accustomed to, and architectural wonders like London Bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral obviously would have inspired awe in the Indian princess. If Pocahontas had her way, the Rolfes would have stayed in England, but her husband was keen to revolutionize the tobacco farming industry back in Virginia. Pocahontas relented but would never return to her homeland. As they made preparations to return to America, Pocahontas became ill. She died in March 1617 at Gravesend on the Thames. Rolfe left his son with relatives and returned to Virginia.
Smith spent the rest of his life writing about his adventures and trying to drum up support for further explorations of the region. He never did make it back. On his last attempt, the ship he was commanding was twice attacked by pirates. They fought off the first attackers, and Smith negotiated his way out of the second attack. But while on board the enemy ship, his crew decided against following Smith to America. They ditched him and sailed back to England.
Imprisoned on the French ship Don de Dieu for four months, Smith wrote the bulk of his book A Description of New England (thereby coining the term still used to describe the region). During a particularly bad storm, Smith saw his chance to make an escape. As the crew scrambled for cover, Smith slipped off in a lifeboat. Battered by waves, wind, and rain, he eventually made it to shore, along with his manuscript. The Don de Dieu was not so lucky; it sank in the storm, taking its crew of sixteen to their deaths.
Smith’s published works brought him notoriety, but little else. A copy of his Description of New England wound up in the hands of a group of Puritans, who would eventually make their way to Plymouth. (They declined Smith’s offer to come along as a guide.) A lifelong bachelor, Smith died poor and alone in London on June 21, 1631.
LOOSE ENDS
John Rolfe would never see his son, Thomas, again. He returned to Virginia, where his innovations in growing a sweeter strain of tobacco resulted in skyrocketing tobacco exports to the Old World. The twice-widowed Rolfe remarried Jane Pierce in Virginia. They had a daughter who died before reaching adulthood. John Rolfe died in 1622.
Thomas Rolfe moved back to Virginia in 1635, taking up the family business. He married Jane Poythress, with whom he had a daughter. Thomas Rolfe died in 1675.
Powhatan and his people lived in relative peace with the English from the time of Pocahontas’s marriage to John Rolfe in 1614 to the time of his death, about five years later. His younger brother Opechancanough, however, took a more confrontational approach to the growing English presence, engineering attacks on outlying settlements that killed five hundred colonists in 1622 and again a similar tally in 1644. Opechancanough was captured after this second battle and killed.
In 1607 the original Jamestown settlers traveled from England to Virginia aboard three ships, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. Little is known about the fates of the first two ships, but the Discovery would eventually be the same ship that Henry Hudson steered into Hudson Bay in 1610, and the same ship that was commandeered from him by mutineers.
After the First Thanksgiving
In the fall of 1621, the residents of what would eventually come to be known as Plymouth, Massachusetts, decided to celebrate their first successful harvest season. The crops were in, and an especially bountiful hunting expedition provided enough meat to feed the colony for weeks. Considering the hardships endured up until then—half of the one hundred colonists had died since their arrival the previous year—it would have been almost profane to let this newfound abundance go unacknowledged.
With preparations for a feast under way, ninety Pokanoket Indians arrived at the colony. Unexpected and uninvited, they were welcomed just the same. Indian hunters contributed five deer to supplement the stews of raccoon, bear, ducks, geese, and maybe turkeys.
The first Thanksgiving might not have included the now-traditional roast turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, but every year we still honor the essential principles of gratitude, goodwill, and friendship that were in such healthy supply that fall in 1621. However, those feelings wouldn’t last.
As the three-day feast came to an end, Tisquantum, the last remaining Patuxet Indian, could gaze over his former village, now occupied by the English Separatists commonly referred to today as the Pilgrims. A few years earlier, it was a thriving Native American settlement, part of the Pokanoket confederacy ruled by Massasoit. Between 1614 and 1619, approximately 90 percent of the Patuxet had been wiped out by European diseases introduced by previous visitors to the New England region. The few surviving Patuxet Indians abandoned the village, unable to keep up with the ever-increasing number of corpses.
How did Tisquantum, or Squanto, as he was also known, avoid this fate? Captured in 1614 by English sailors, he was sold into slavery in Spain. Making his escape, he found his way to England and later finagled passage on a ship bound for New England. He returned to find his village deserted and bereft of life.
Squanto played a major role in the success of the Pilgrim colony. Without his agricultural advice, the Pilgrims may not have been in any position to celebrate a Thanksgiving in the first place. (His fellow tribesmen had already done their part, dying off just in time to provide the Pilgrims with an uninhabited clearing to settle.) Fluent in English and Algonquin tongues, Squanto served as interpreter and diplomat between the Pokanokets and the Pilgrims. Plymouth governor William Bradford considered Squanto a loyal adviser, but neither Massasoit nor Miles Standish, Plymouth’s military specialist, ever trusted him entirely.
With good reason. Squanto apparently harbored profound misgivings about the fate of his tribe and the ascendancy of the English in his homeland. It wasn’t long before he was conspiring with other minor tribes in an attempt to foment ill will between the Pilgrims and Massasoit. The plot was uncovered, and Squanto died shortly thereafter of what appeared to be an infectious disease, but others suspected poisoning.
Then Massasoit himself fell gravely ill with symptoms resembling typhoid fever. Plymouth elder Edward Winslow was sent to nurse the Pokanoket chief back to health, which he did. Massasoit showed his gratitude by warning the English that a combined force of Narragansett and Massachusett Indians was poised to attack Plymouth. Miles Standish mounted a preemptive atta
ck, killing a half dozen prominent warriors in a surprise attack that not only derailed the planned offensive but threw their enemies into a profound disarray.
According to Winslow, the terrified Indians “forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof many are dead.”
A little terror, it seems, goes a long way. With these common enemies neutralized, the Pilgrims and Pokanokets lived peaceably alongside each other for many years.
The tradition of an annual Thanksgiving, however, did not take hold right away. In fact, it was another hundred and fifty years before the tradition became anything more than a regional celebration, observed occasionally.
General George Washington called for a thanksgiving of sorts in 1778, on the occasion of France’s alliance with the American rebels. Eleven years later, as president, Washington urged all Americans to observe Thursday, November 26, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer” to acknowledge “the many and signal favors of Almighty God.” But it remained an intermittent holiday, often celebrated differently depending on regional customs.
The virtues of the Thanksgiving holiday as observed in New England were promoted by a number of prominent women in the 1800s, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Margaret Fuller; and Lydia Maria Child.
The woman who raised the campaign to a cause célèbre, however, was New England editor and journalist, Sarah Josepha Hale, who contended, “Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be considered a national festival and observed by all our people.” She made this argument in published articles and editorials, as well as private letters to elected officials, including five presidents. Finally, Abraham Lincoln saw the value in the enterprise, especially during a time of civil war. He issued a proclamation on October 3, 1863, saying in part: