Love and Hate in Jamestown

by David A. Price

  “Take heart”: Brooke (1622), p. 291.

  “Vacant places”: Purchas (1625), vol. 19, p. 222. “These barbarians”: Ibid., p. 224. “Seems distempered”: Ibid., p. 229. “Amazed”: Smith (1624), p. 285. “Labyrinth of melancholy”: Ibid., p. 305. Nathaniel Powell: Ibid., p. 295; Hatch (1957), p. 70; Waterhouse, A Declaration (1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 569; McCartney (2000), vol. 1, p. 46. “If you please”: Smith (1624), pp. 305–306.

  “Except it be a little corne”: Smith (1624), p. 307. Forty-two barrels: Powell (1958), p. 48. Gifts from King James and private donor: Warrant to the Lord Treasurer (Sept. 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 676; Powell (1958), p. 49. The one thousand light muskets were divided between seven hundred calivers and three hundred harquebuses. Halberds description: Peterson (1956), pp. 93–95. Brigandines description: Ibid., pp. 140, 146. Except for the bows and arrows: Minutes of Va. Co. meeting of Aug. 14, 1622, reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 2, p. 100. Plantations to be abandoned: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (April 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 612; Smith (1624), pp. 302–330 and n. 4. against the Rappahannocks: Powell (1958), p. 53; Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (Jan. 20, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 9. “Make warr”: Commission to Sir George Yeardley (Sept. 10, 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, pp. 678–79. “We have to our extreame grief”: Letter of Va. Co. of London to Governor and Council in Virginia (Aug. 1, 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 666.

  “Perpetual warre”: Letter of Va. Co. of London to Governor and Council in Virginia (Aug. 1, 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 672. “We conceave it”: Letter of Va. Co. of London to Governor and Council in Virginia (Oct. 7, 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 683.

  “Wee have much anticipated”: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (Jan. 20, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 9–10.

  “Whereas in the begininge”: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (Jan. 20, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 10.

  Raids, mortality, and causes: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (April 1622), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, pp. 613–14; Letter of George Sandys to Sir Miles Sandys (Mar. 30, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 70–71; Letter of Richard Frethorne to Mr. Bateman (Mar. 5, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 41; Va. Co. Recs., vol. 3, p. 537. Sharpe, Capps, and Hill letters: Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 76, 233–34. “Instead of a plantation”: Nathaniel Butler, The Unmasked Face of Our Colony in Virginia as it was in the Winter of the Yeare 1622, reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 2, p. 376. African population figures: Thorndale (1995), p. 168; Quisenberry (1899–1900), p. 364. Promises of ready wealth: Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 232. “Loveing and kind father and mother”: Letter from Richard Frethorne to his father and mother (Mar. 20, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 58–59.

  Opechancanough sent a messenger, English reaction: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (April 4, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 98–99. “Trie if wee can”: Letter of George Sandys to Sir Miles Sandys (Mar. 30, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 71. On May 22, 1623: Letter from Robert Bennett to Edward Bennett (June 9, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 221–22; Commission to Captain William Tucker (May 12, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 190; Rountree (1990), p. 77. Released prisoners: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (after April 4, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 102.

  March 22 holiday: Wyatt, Order to Keep the 22d of March Holy (Mar. 4, 1623), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 40; Council and Assembly, Laws and Orders (Mar. 5, 1624), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 581; Gleach (1997), p. 163. “Before the end of two moons”: Smith (1624), p. 308. By the end of 1624: Quisenberry (1899–1900), p. 366. Population in 1629, 1632, 1634: Morgan (1975), p. 404. “The colonye hath worne”: Letter from Council in Virginia to Va. Co. of London (Dec. 2, 1624), reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, p. 508. Investigation and dissolution of the Virginia Company: Craven (1964), pp. 266–67, 295; Craven (1957), p. 57; Davis (1955), p. 159; McCartney (2000), vol. 1, p. 65. £200,000: Rabb (1967), pp. 58–59; Woodnoth (1651), p. 2; Smith (1631), pp. 270, 283.

  Summer of 1624 saw a battle: Va. Co. Recs., vol. 4, pp. 507–508. War continued: Powell (1958), pp. 70–74. 1632 Peace treaty: Ibid., p. 75; Rountree (1990), p. 81. Still observing the date: Gleach (1997), p. 169. Now around eight thousand: Morgan (1975), p. 404. Along all the rivers: Axtell (1995), p. 39. April 18, 1644: Beverly (1705), pp. 60–61; Gleach (1997), pp. 174–75; Rountree (1990), p. 84. Capture and killing of Opechancanough: Beverly (1705), p. 62. “So routed”: McCary (1957), p. 80. “The Indians of Virginia”: Beverly (1705), p. 232. Numbers dwindled: Rountree (1990), pp. 144, 158–66.

  15: SMITH’S VISION FOR AMERICA

  Attempted voyage of 1617: Smith (1622), p. 427; Smith (1624), p. 440. Living frugally: In his letter to Bacon, he apologized for the “povertie of the author.” Smith (1986), p. 382. Letter to Bacon: Reprinted in Smith (1986), pp. 377–83. “And though I can promise”: Ibid., pp. 382–83.

  King James’s dislike: Willson (1956), p. 209. Ban Sabbath day sports: Ibid., pp. 400–401; Besant (1903), pp. 14–15. King James Bible: Daiches (1941), pp. 64, 152, 163. Separatists in Amsterdam and Leiden: Bradford (1952), pp. 11–17. Obtained a patent: Ibid., p. 39 n. 6, p. 60 n. 6. Smith and the Separatists: Smith (1624), p. 221; Smith (1630), p. 221. Take Smith’s books and maps: Bradford (1952), pp. 68 n. 7, 82. Fundamental incompatibility: Smith (1631), pp. 285–86; Barbour (1964a), pp. 343–44.

  New Englands Trials background: Smith (1986), pp. 387–89, 411; O’Brien (1960), p. 154; Barbour (1964a), p. 477, n. 5. “For want of experience”: Smith (1622), p. 429. Digression on that event: 22: Ibid., pp. 431–32. Virginia Company had considered: Minutes of Va. Co. meeting of April 12, 1621, reprinted in Va. Co. Recs., vol. 1, pp. 451–52. Fully outlined: Smith (1986), vol. 2, p. 6. Commendatory verses: Smith (1624), pp. 51, 228–30. Commissioners posed: Smith (1624), pp. 327–32; Craven (1964), pp. 267, 295. “To rectifie a common-wealth”: Smith (1624), p. 330.

  In the “Generall Historie” genre, another example is Louis de Mayerne Turquet’s Generall Historie of Spaine, translated into English by Edward Grimeston and published in London in 1612.

  Anas Todkill: Hayes (1991b), pp. 136–37. John Russell: Smith (1624), p. 198. Pocahontas and Tomocomo: Ibid., pp. 258–61. Sir Samuel Saltonstall: Smith (1630), pp. 142, 230. “Men of good credit”: Smith (1631), p. 270. “So doating”: Smith (1631), p. 272. “Onely spending my time”: Smith (1631), p. 271.

  “Now they take not that course”: Smith (1631), p. 270. Easy promises of gold: Smith (1631), p. 285. “Here every man”: Smith (1616), p. 332. “Who can desire”: Smith (1616), p. 343.

  One of the benefits: Johnson, The New Life of Virginea (1612), p. 18, reprinted in Force (1836), vol. 1. “And who is he”: Smith (1616), p. 349. “No man will go”: Smith (1622), p. 440. “The benefit of libertie”: Smith (1624), p. 247 (marginal note). “Glad was he”: Smith (1624), p. 247. “Therefore let all men”: Smith (1631), p. 287.

  Somewhat along the lines of his case for private planting and the freedom to pursue a trade, Smith also argued against heavy customs duties for the colony’s shipping. “Therefore use all commers with that respect, courtesie, and libertie is fitting, which in a short time will much increase your trade and shipping . . . now there is nothing more inricheth a common-wealth than much trade, nor no meanes better to increase than small custome [customs duty] . . .” Smith (1631), p. 298.

  “No silvered idle golden Pharises”: Smith (1616), p. 360. “Was it vertue”: Smith (1616), p. 361. See also Smith’s dedication of the Map of Virginia: “Though riches now, be the chief greatnes of the great: when great and little are born, and dye, there is no difference: Vertue onely makes men more than men: Vice, wor
se than brutes.” Smith (1612), p. 133.

  A half dozen or so: Smith (1631), p. 285 and n. 5. “The Sea Marke”: Smith (1631), p. 265.

  Stricken ill: Barbour (1964a), pp. 393–94. Home of Sir Samuel Saltonstall: Will of John Smith, reprinted in Barbour (1968), p. 627; Rowse (1959), p. 113. Signing of will, death: Barbour (1968), p. 626. Abigail: Smith (1624), pp. 98–99 (map); Barbour (1964a), pp. xi, 485.

  Lifelong bachelorhood was unusual in Smith’s day, though not an extreme rarity. During this time, an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent of men in the English upper classes who lived to the age of fifty never married. Stone (1977), pp. 40–41. I have not encountered statistics for Smith’s own stratum.

  “Here the rewards”: Crèvecoeur (1782), pp. 44–45. Thomas Jefferson: Sowerby (1952), vol. 1, p. 210; Jefferson (1787), p. 177. Jeremy Belknap: Belknap (1794), pp. 42, 241, 272, 299–300.

  See also William Stith’s 1747 History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia,which credited Smith’s “vigor, industry, and undaunted spirit and resolution” for the survival of Jamestown. Stith (1747), p. 108.

  John Marshall: Marshall (1804), vol. 1, pp. 41, 44, 46. Bancroft’s highly successful History: Bancroft (1834), vol. 1, pp. 96, 98–99, 105, 124. Noah Webster: Webster (1791), pp. 8, 12. Life itself is the one carrying out the interrogation: The thought is Viktor Frankl’s. Frankl (1959), p. 85.

  MARGINALIA

  The papers referenced in the commentary are Brown and Hopkins (1956) and Richards (2002).

  Modern scholars: See, e.g., Kupperman (2000), p. 114; Gleach (1997), p. 117. “some sort of flank”: Adams (1982), vol. 1, p. 287. “No man rejoiced”: Belknap (1794), p. 314. John Randolph: Adams (1982), vol. 1, pp. 280, 281 n. 5, 287.

  “It is true”: Smith (1622), p. 432. Purchas: Purchas (1625), vol. 18, p. 472. 1685 biography: Wharton (1685), p. 72. Strachey recommended: Strachey (1612), p. 41. as did William Crashaw: Crashaw, Epistle Dedicatory [preface] to Alexander Whitaker’s Good News from Virginia (1613), reprinted in Narratives, p. 712. John Stow’s Annales: Gookin (1949), p. 406. 1662 comical biography: Fuller (1662), pp. 75–76. Confirmed obscure details: Barbour (1964a), p. 41; Striker and Smith (1962).

  A modern skeptic with regard to the rescue story has downplayed the significance of Purchas’s publication, on the ground that Purchas merely quoted Smith “verbatim without comment.” Rountree (1990), p. 38. In fact, Purchas inserted a marginal note next to the story in Purchas His Pilgrimes, reading “Pocahuntas saveth his life.” Purchas did not editorialize further about the rescue, but he repeatedly made positive comments about Smith as an explorer and chronicler.

  Some researchers: E.g., Gleach (1997), pp. 118–21; Kupperman (2000), pp. 114, 174. In general, these books are replete with valuable insights into Powhatan culture. Adoption procedure comparable: Rountree (1990), p. 39. “The classic pattern of rites of passage”: Gleach (1997), p. 120.

  Ceremony: Relation of William White, reprinted in J.V., vol. 1, pp. 147–49.

  Smith later witnessed: For Smith’s observations of the black boys ceremony, see Smith (1612), pp. 171–72, or Smith (1624), pp. 124–25.

  Powhatan had referred: See, e.g., Smith (1608), p. 65.

  Article in Science: Stahle (1998). Stormy weather, rain, and snow: Smith (1608), pp. 35, 67; Symonds (1612), p. 255; Smith (1624), pp. 191, 194. “Some times”: Smith (1612), p. 144. Native planting cycle: Smith (1612), pp. 156–59. Gabriel Archer: Archer, Description of the River and Country (1607), reprinted in J.V., vol. 1, p. 100.

  Hancock has argued: See, e.g., Alan Flanders, “Theory Suggests Jamestown Settlers Were Murdered,” Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), Aug. 5, 2001, p. 3. The theory figured prominently in the British Broadcasting Corp.–Public Broadcasting Service documentary produced in 2000, Secrets of the Dead: Death at Jamestown. Told Zúñiga: J.V., vol. 2, pp. 255, 269.

  Junta de Guerra: N.A.W., p. 151. Wyatt would write: Wyatt (1926), p. 117.

  Bibliography

  I have tried to stake out a middle ground in cataloguing primary materials. For brevity’s sake, I have generally omitted primary documents from the bibliography if they are available in a published compilation. When citing one of these materials, I have identified it in the chapter notes with a recognizable short form, together with a page reference to a collection in which it can be found.

  Adams, Henry. The Letters of Henry Adams. Edited by J. C. Levenson et al. 6 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982–1988.

  Andrews, K. R. “Christopher Newport of Limehouse, Mariner.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 11, no. 1 (Jan. 1954): 28–41.

  Axtell, James. The Rise and Fall of the Powhatan Empire in Virginia. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1995.

  Bancroft, George. History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continentto the Declaration of Independence. 7 vols. 1834. Reprint, Boston: Elibron Classics, 2001.

  Barbour, Philip L. The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964a.

  ———. “A French Account of Captain John Smith’s Adventures in the Azores, 1615.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 72, no. 3 (July 1964b): 293–303.

  ———. “A Note on the Discovery of the Original Will of Captain John Smith: With a Verbatim Transcription.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 25, no. 4 (Oct. 1968): 625–28.

  ———, ed. The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter: 1606–1609. 2 vols. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

  Bass, George F., ed. Ships and Shipwrecks of the Americas: A History Based on Underwater Archeology. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988.

  Belknap, Jeremy. American Biography. 2 vols. Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews, 1794.

  Bell, Hesketh. Report on the Caribs of Dominica. London: HMSO, 1902 (Colonial Reports—Misc. No. 21).

  Bemiss, Samuel M., ed. The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1957.

  Benzoni, Girolamo. History of the New World. 1565. Translated by W. H. Smyth, 1857. Reprint, Boston: Elibron Classics, 2001.

  Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

  Besant, Walter. London in the Time of the Stuarts. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1903.

  Beverly, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia. 1705. Reprint, edited by Louis B. Wright. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947.

  Bevington, David, and Peter Holbrook. The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

  Billings, Warren M. The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary Historyof Virginia, 1606–1689. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.

  Boucher, Philip P. Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492–1763. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

  Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952.

  Brain, Jeffrey P. The Popham Colony: An Historical and Archeological Brief. Salem, Mass.: Peabody Essex Museum, 2002.

  Bridenbaugh, Carl. Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590–1642. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

  Brooke, Christopher. “A Poem on the Late Massacre in Virginia.” 1622. Reprint, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 72, no. 3 (July 1964): 259–92.

  Brown, E. H. Phelps, and Sheila Hopkins. “Seven Centuries of the Prices of Consumables, Compared with Builders’ Wage-rates.” Economica (Nov. 1956): 296–314.

  Carlton, Dudley. Dudley Carlton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624: Jacobean Letters. Edited by Maurice Lee, Jr. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972.

  Chamberlain, John. The Chamberlain Letters. Edited by Elizabeth Thomson. New York: Putnam, 1965.

  Coldham, Peter Wilson. English Adventurers and Emigrants, 1609–1660: Abstracts of Examinations in the High Court of Admiralty with Reference
to Colonial America. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1984.

  Copland, Patrick. Virginia’s God Be Thanked, or A Sermon of Thanksgiving for the Happie Successe of the A fayres in Virginia This Last Yeare. London: I.D., 1622.

  Craven, Wesley Frank. The Virginia Company of London: 1606–1624. 1957. Reprint, Baltimore: Clearfield, 1993.

  ———. Dissolution of the Virginia Company: The Failure of a Colonial Experiment. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964.

  Crèvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Letters from an American Farmer. 1782. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  Cuffe, Henry. The Di ferences of the Ages of Mans Life: Together with the Originall Causes, Progresse, and End thereof. London: Martin Clearke, 1607.

  Daiches, David. The King James Version of the English Bible: An Account of the Developmentand Sources of the English Bible of 1611 with Special Reference to the Hebrew Tradition.1941. Reprint, n.p.: Archon, 1968.

  Davis, Richard Beale. George Sandys, Poet-Adventurer. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.

  Earle, Carville V. “Environment, Disease and Mortality in Early Virginia.” In The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society. Edited by Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.

  Evans, Cerinda W. Some Notes on Shipbuilding and Shipping in Colonial Virginia. Newport News, Va.: Mariners Museum, 1957.

  Ezell, John. “The Lottery in Colonial America.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 5, no. 2 (April 1948): 185–200.

  Fausz, John Frederick. “The Powhatan Uprising of 1622: A Historical Study of Ethnocentrism and Cultural Conflict.” Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1977.

  ———. “Opechancanough: Indian Resistance Leader.” In Struggle and Survival in Colonial America. Edited by David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.