As he continued to work his way toward the river, Smith was watching his adversaries, not his own path. He stepped backward into a marshy “quagmire” and tumbled in; his guide fell in the ooze with him. Both men struggled, and failed, to free themselves and get back on their feet.
Finding himself out of luck, Smith threw his pistol aside in surrender and “resolved to trie their mercies.” Several of the warriors pulled him out and presented him to the leader of the attack: a Powhatan chief named Opechancanough, one of three younger brothers of Powhatan himself. Estimated to be around sixty years old at this time, Opechancanough is remembered as “a man of large stature, noble presence, and extraordinary parts.” 14 He was third in line of succession to Chief Powhatan; in the meantime, the chief of chiefs had installed him as weroance of the Pamunkeys. Now it was up to him to decide what to do with this captive who had confronted an army without flinching.
Smith knew that natives shared his own countrymen’s awe of rank and status. If he wanted to live, he would have to convince the chief that he was indeed a person of importance. The question was how. Thinking fast, he produced his compass dial. He had observed that the natives (and not only the natives) tended to regard anything they could not understand as supernatural.15 So he invited Opechancanough to have a look at the moving needles, which the chief could see, but could not touch through the glass. As Smith turned the compass, the needles kept pointing in the same direction. Opechancanough was intrigued.
To build on the imposing impression he had created, or possibly just as a stalling tactic, Smith then followed with a disquisition on the roundnesse of the Earth, and skies, the spheare of the sunne, moone, and starres, and how the sunne did chase the night round the world continually; the greatnesse of the land and sea, the diversitie of nations, varietie of complexions, and how we were to them antipodes [on opposite sides of the Earth], and many other such like matters.16
How much, if at all, Smith was able to communicate these grand sentiments within the limits of his workaday Algonquian language skills is unknown. The chief listened with apparent interest. Nonetheless, Smith soon found himself tied to a tree, and surrounded by warriors prepared to shoot in case he managed to work himself free. He was headed, it seemed, for the same fate as Cassen. Then Opechancanough abruptly ordered the warriors to put down their weapons, and raised the compass over Smith’s head. Smith was untied, and escorted by the chief to a hunting camp some miles away. “Great [large] salvages” held him by each arm, and another dozen men accompanied them, arrows nocked in their bows.
The on-again, off-again execution makes Opechancanough’s thought processes sound illogical, if not utterly random. Looking at the circumstances from his point of view, however, one can surmise what was going through his mind. Doubtless he was initially inclined to torture Smith for information on the puzzling English presence before killing him. If Smith truly was an English leader, there was much he could usefully reveal: Where had the other ships gone? Would they be coming back? Why did the English live without women? How long did the men intend to stay? And above all, why were they there in the first place?
In light of events of later years, it is obvious that Opechancanough was far more skeptical of English intentions, and more eager to be rid of these foreigners, than was his older brother. He held a more coldly realistic view of the long-term threat from the English—much as Don Pedro de Zúñiga saw the future of English America more clearly than King Philip III. The right intelligence extracted from this short, bearded man would help Opechancanough make his case.
But even as the prisoner was fastened to the stake, Opechancanough began to have doubts. He was not the chief of chiefs yet. An ordinary captive like Cassen could be tortured and dispatched on the spot; if Smith was an English commander of some kind, that was a different matter. What was he? The round device crafted of ivory was impressive. His long speech made sense only here and there—but he delivered it like a commander. If Opechancanough had him killed, and Powhatan found the results inconvenient, the personal consequences to Opechancanough could be very unpleasant. Like many a corporate vice president in later years, Opechancanough finally deemed it prudent to bring the question to the man in charge.
Once Smith, Opechancanough, and the Pamunkey soldiers reached the tentlike hunting lodges, the soldiers gathered into a ring and performed a dance similar to the one that the Kecoughtans had performed for the English that spring, “dauncing in such severall postures, and singing and yelling such hellish notes and screeches.” The men were painted scarlet on their heads and shoulders (“exceeding handsome,” Smith thought), with fox or otter skin on their arms, and birds’ wings tied to their hair.
Afterward, a captain brought Smith to a lodge where he was given a supper of venison and bread, and then Smith was shown to the lodge where he would stay for the next several days. In the mornings, three women carried additional platters of bread and venison to him— enough for ten men, Smith recalled. He was pleased at being treated so kindly; at the same time, he half suspected he was being fattened up to be eaten. (The English already understood that their neighbors, the Paspahegh, were “no canyballs,” 17 but the Pamunkeys’ dietary preferences in that regard were still an open question. In fact, none of the Virginia tribes were cannibals.)
Opechancanough visited Smith to converse about “the manner of our ships, and sayling the seas, the earth and skies and of our God.” The chief likely paid particular attention to any scraps of information about Newport’s fleet, whose intimidating cannon had proven to be the colonists’ best security. From these conversations, Smith came to believe that Opechancanough was plotting an attack; to forestall it, Smith fed him misinformation about Jamestown’s defenses, telling of nonexistent cannon and explosive mines in the fields around the fort. For his part, Opechancanough gave Smith tantalizing news of a place called Ocanahonan, a distant settlement of men who wore English clothing—a possible clue to the destiny of Walter Ralegh’s lost colony at Roanoke.
At some point, Smith asked Opechancanough for a messenger to carry a letter to the colony. Smith claimed he merely wanted to assure the English “that I was well, least they should revenge my death.” The chief consented to this, and so Smith composed a letter in his notebook telling the colonists of his suspicion of an imminent attack. He instructed the colonists to give the messenger a frightening display of cannon fire, and to send back some items he had promised the Pamunkeys. He also passed along word of Ocanahonan, though the investigation of the lost colony was a low priority by then; Jamestown was all too close to becoming a lost colony itself.
Three messengers went out in the bitter cold with Smith’s letter. The colonists did as Smith had told them, scaring the messengers out of their wits with the cannons, then loading the men with the items Smith requested. On their return, the natives were disturbed and fascinated— disturbed by the news of the cannon, and fascinated that the colonists had sent back exactly what Smith said they would. The natives had no written language. Somehow, they concluded, the English could make paper speak.
Next came Smith’s turn to face the cold. For a week, the Pamunkeys marched him through the countryside to one village after another. The chiefs at each village received him cordially. At one stop, the villagers wanted to see whether he was the same man as a foreigner who had come previously, murdering their chief and taking away some locals. But the wanted man was tall, and Smith did not fit the description, so they treated him well.
At a village called Menapacute, another brother of Powhatan, named Kekataugh, invited Smith to feast at his house. Kekataugh was not long in revealing his agenda, as he asked Smith to shoot his pistol at a target. Forty bowmen looked on to guard against Smith’s escaping. It seemed like an innocuous request, on its face, until Smith noticed the target’s distance. He judged it to be 120 feet or so away, roughly the accurate range of the natives’ bows and arrows. That was the game: Kekataugh wanted to know whether the Englishmen’s guns could shoot as far and as well
as their own weapons. Smith knew that the answer was negative; the target was too far away for him to hit reliably. He covertly broke the cock of his expensive French-built firearm, and reported in regretful tones that it wasn’t working.18 The limitations of the colonists’ guns, as he saw it, had to be kept from the natives at all costs.
By now, Smith had spent Christmas 1607 in captivity. Finally he was brought to the capital of the Pamunkeys, where he would be the subject of a conjuring ceremony. Early in the morning, his guards left him seated in a longhouse with a fire burning in the middle of the floor. “Presently came skipping in a great grim fellow, all painted over with coale, mingled with oyle; and many snakes and weasels stuffed with mosse, and all their tayles tyed together, so as they met on the crown of his head in a tassell.” 19 The man began an invocation, and six more like him came in.
Smith understood the first man to be the chief priest. The seven natives painstakingly laid down kernels of corn in two concentric circles around the fire, and an inner circle of ground cornmeal. Between every few grains of corn, they put small sticks. The circle of meal, they explained to Smith, represented their country, the circles of corn represented the sea, and the sticks represented his country. Over the following three days, the priests alternated between conjuring with song and dance and feasting with the prisoner. From the ceremony, they explained, they would learn whether he and his countrymen meant the Powhatans good or ill.20
At the end of the three days, the priests kept their conclusions to themselves. From Smith’s point of view, though, the signs must have seemed hopeful: he was taken to feast at the home of Opitchapam, the oldest of Powhatan’s three brothers, and the first in line of succession. His most august host of all would be next.
No Englishman had yet laid eyes on Chief Powhatan, or even knew his whereabouts. On December 30, Smith was brought to the emperor’s capital town, Werowocomoco. It was on the north side of the present-day York River, downstream from the Pamunkey territory where Smith had been held. Smith waited outside Powhatan’s reed-and-thatch assembly lodge, where some two hundred courtiers looked on him as if he were a monster.21
As Smith was led in, and his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the windowless interior, he saw a figure seated on a low bed of ten or twelve mats in front of a fire. He was wearing a raccoon-skin robe, the tails still attached. Chains of pearl hung from his neck. Young women sat on either side of him. Ten men lined the walls to the left and right of the fire, and behind them ten more young women. All of them gave a thunderous shout in unison as Smith walked forward.
The emperor, Smith saw, was old and gray-haired, perhaps sixty, perhaps eighty, but with the physique of a younger man—tall, fit, broad-shouldered, and well proportioned. On his chin were a few strands of a thinning beard. Those attending the emperor held him in fearful awe; “at the least frown of his brow, their greatest will tremble.” His face, on this occasion, showed “a grave and majesticall countenance.”22
Also watching the events was a girl, between ten and twelve years of age, a daughter of the emperor by one of the hundred or so wives he had taken over the decades. She was pretty, and no doubt had fully earned the nickname Pocahontas—“little wanton”—with her feisty, mischievous nature. (She was more formally known as Matoaka or Amonute.) Smith later remembered her as “a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance, and proportion much exceedeth any of the rest of his [Powhatan’s] people, but for wit and spirit the only nonpareil of his country.” As her father’s favorite (his “delight and darling,” another colonist would observe), she was probably accustomed to bending the chief of chiefs to her whims.23
A high-ranking woman named Opossunoquonuske, the “fat, lusty, manly” sister of the weroance of the Appomattoc, now came forward with water, and motioned for Smith to wash his hands in it.24 Another brought him feathers with which to dry his hands. Then attendants brought Smith a meal, potentially his last.
Although Smith had been examined closely by Opechancanough and by the priests, Powhatan evidently intended to arrive at his own judgment regarding the prisoner and his fate. He inquired of Smith why the English had come. Smith realized it would be imprudent just then to explain their plans for a permanent settlement, so he concocted a story about their ships having been in a fight on the high seas with their enemies, the Spanish. The Spanish had overpowered them, Smith explained, so they had to beat a retreat, and then extreme weather sent them to the Chesapeake Bay. Now they had to stay to repair one of the ships, which was leaking, while they waited for Smith’s great father, Captain Newport, to return and spirit them away.
Under those circumstances, the emperor thought it peculiar that Smith and his party had been found so very far from their camp. What was Smith looking for with the boat, he asked?
Smith told him he was looking for a sea on the other side of the country (which was true). The reason, he explained, was that the people there had slain one of Newport’s men (another concoction). The English were a vengeful people, and they intended to exact justice for the man’s death. Powhatan surely got the message: if Smith failed to come back, a boatload of Englishmen with muskets would be looking for Powhatan next.
Powhatan consulted with his advisers. Nearby, awaiting Powhatan’s decision, were men with clubs in their hands. If the emperor so resolved, the clubs would be used to smash the prisoner’s brains—a charitably swift form of execution that the natives employed. Alternatively, if the emperor believed Smith to be a weroance, it would be against custom to put him to death; chiefs of enemy tribes, like women and children, were kept in servitude, not killed.
Yet the decision confronting Powhatan was one of strategy and practicality as much as custom. Could Smith, and perhaps all of the English, be won over as allies against Powhatan’s hostile neighbors over the horizon? The colonists’ novel firearms and cannon could give him a decisive edge against his native adversaries, with whom the Powhatans uneasily coexisted—the Massawomecks, an Iroquois tribe to the north, and the Monacans and the Mannahoacs, Siouan tribes to the west.25 On the other hand, were the English not the people who had been prophesied to emerge from the Chesapeake and bury his empire? The unknowns that Powhatan had before him were momentous.
After long deliberation, Powhatan made his choice. A pair of large stones were set in front of him, and Smith was brought forward to accept the inevitable.
What happened in the moments that followed is, in all probability, the most often told tale in American history, inspiring drama, novels, paintings, statuary, and films. The fourth chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, writing in 1804, narrated it as well as anyone:
There he was doomed to be put to death, by laying his head upon a stone, and beating out his brains with clubs. He was led to the place of execution, and his head bowed down for the purpose of death, when Pocahontas, the king’s darling daughter, then about thirteen years of age, whose entreaties for his life had been ineffectual, rushed between him and his executioner, and folding his head in her arms, and laying hers upon it, arrested the fatal blow. Her father was then prevailed on to spare his life.26
Pocahontas’s sudden intervention put Powhatan in an awkward spot. He was careful, always, to maintain imperial dignity. To remonstrate with his daughter in front of everyone in the packed hall would undermine his stateliness. He could order his attendants to carry her off—another undignified spectacle. Powhatan instead allowed himself to be won over by his daughter’s plea, and declared that he was content for Smith to live. The prisoner will make hatchets for him, he announced, and bells, beads, and copper objects for his daughter. (The latter was perhaps at Pocahontas’s whispered suggestion.)
Just why Pocahontas interceded is impossible to know for certain. Smith attributed it to her compassion for a man in distress. Others through the centuries have put a romantic gloss on the scene, holding that Pocahontas was infatuated with him. Still another possibility is that she had some pragmatic purpose in mind for him, as the requirement
of the bells, beads, and copper would suggest. Smith’s own view of her motives is presumably due some extra weight, since, after all, he was there.
Smith remained a prisoner, and he was still apprehensive of the natives’ seeming inconstancy, expecting “every houre to be put to one death or other.” After two days, Powhatan appeared (in the company of around two hundred painted men) and informed Smith that they were now friends. Smith, he explained, simply needed to go to Jamestown and send back two “great guns” and a grindstone. With that done, Powhatan would give Smith some land and esteem him as much as his own cherished son, Nantaquoud. Smith was only too happy to pretend to agree. Powhatan sent him home with twelve guides, who would also supply the muscle to bring back the guns and the grindstone that Powhatan thought he would be getting. 27
Smith now owed Pocahontas his life. Before long, he would owe her his life several times over.
6
GILDED DIRT
John Smith, newly liberated from captivity in Chief Powhatan’s capital, arrived at Jamestown within an hour of sunrise on Saturday, January 2, 1608. With him was a contingent of Powhatan’s men, led by the chief’s most trusted messenger, Rawhunt.
In the course of their journey, Smith found Rawhunt to be “of a subtill wit and crafty understanding”; nonetheless, Powhatan’s man was in for a surprise. To keep his part of the bargain—two large guns and a grindstone—Smith puckishly directed Rawhunt to a pair of demiculverins, which were cannons weighing over three thousand pounds apiece. (The men “found them somewhat too heavie,” Smith noted.) Then Smith had the cannons, which were loaded with stones, blast away at a tree that was weighed down with icicles. The messengers ran off in fright as the branches and ice came crashing to the ground. Smith beckoned them to come back; they returned after regaining their composure, and Smith gave them gifts to take back for themselves and for Powhatan—but no guns.1
Love and Hate in Jamestown Page 8