"Our order," says Smith, "was daily to have prayers, with a psalm, at which solemnity the poor savages wondered." When it was over the Susquesahanocks, in a fervent manner, held up their hands to the sun, and then embracing the Captain, adored him in like manner.With a furious manner and "a hellish voyce " they began an oration of their loves, covered him with their painted bear-skins, hung a chain of white beads about his neck, and hailed his creation as their governor and protector, promising aid and victuals if he would stay and help them fight the Massawomeks.Much they told him of the Atquanachuks, who live on the Ocean Sea, the Massawomeks and other people living on a great water beyond the mountain (which Smith understood to be some great lake or the river of Canada), and that they received their hatchets and other commodities from the French.They moumed greatly at Smith's departure.Of Powhatan they knew nothing but the name.
Strachey, who probably enlarges from Smith his account of the same people, whom he calls Sasquesahanougs, says they were well-proportioned giants, but of an honest and simple disposition.Their language well beseemed their proportions, "sounding from them as it were a great voice in a vault or cave, as an ecco." The picture of one of these chiefs is given in De Bry,and described by Strachey,"the calf of whose leg was three-quarters of a yard about, and all the rest of his limbs so answerable to the same proportions that he seemed the goodliest man they ever saw."It would not entertain the reader to follow Smith in all the small adventures of the exploration, during which he says he went about 3,000 miles (three thousand miles in three or four weeks in a row-boat is nothing in Smith's memory), "with such watery diet in these great waters and barbarous countries." Much hardship he endured, alternately skirmishing and feasting with the Indians; many were the tribes he struck an alliance with, and many valuable details he added to the geographical knowledge of the region.In all this exploration Smith showed himself skillful as he was vigorous and adventurous.
He returned to James River September 7th.Many had died, some were sick, Ratcliffe, the late President, was a prisoner for mutiny, Master Scrivener had diligently gathered the harvest, but much of the provisions had been spoiled by rain.Thus the summer was consumed, and nothing had been accomplished except Smith's discovery.
XI
SMITH'S PRESIDENCY AND PROWESS
On the 10th of September, by the election of the Council and the request of the company, Captain Smith received the letters-patent, and became President.He stopped the building of Ratcliffe's "palace," repaired the church and the storehouse, got ready the buildings for the supply expected from England, reduced the fort to a "five square form," set and trained the watch and exercised the company every Saturday on a plain called Smithfield, to the amazement of the on-looking Indians.
Captain Newport arrived with a new supply of seventy persons.Among them were Captain Francis West, brother to Lord Delaware, Captain Peter Winne, and Captain Peter Waldo, appointed on the Council, eight Dutchmen and Poles, and Mistress Forest and Anne Burrows her maid, the first white women in the colony.
Smith did not relish the arrival of Captain Newport nor the instructions under which he returned.He came back commanded to discover the country of Monacan (above the Falls) and to perform the ceremony of coronation on the Emperor Powhatan.
How Newport got this private commission when he had returned to England without a lump of gold, nor any certainty of the South Sea, or one of the lost company sent out by Raleigh; and why he brought a "fine peeced barge" which must be carried over unknown mountains before it reached the South Sea, he could not understand." As for the coronation of Powhatan and his presents of basin and ewer, bed, bedding, clothes, and such costly novelties, they had been much better well spared than so ill spent, for we had his favor and better for a plain piece of copper, till this stately kind of soliciting made him so much overvalue himself that he respected us as much as nothing at all." Smith evidently understood the situation much better than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him in his rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions.
There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need not turn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster.
To send out Poles and Dutchmen to make pitch, tar, and glass would have been well enough if the colony had been firmly established and supplied with necessaries; and they might have sent two hundred colonists instead of seventy, if they had ordered them to go to work collecting provisions of the Indians for the winter, instead of attempting this strange discovery of the South Sea, and wasting their time on a more strange coronation."Now was there no way," asks Smith, "to make us miserable," but by direction from England to perform this discovery and coronation, "to take that time, spend what victuals we had, tire and starve our men, having no means to carry victuals, ammunition, the hurt or the sick, but on their own backs?"Smith seems to have protested against all this nonsense, but though he was governor, the Council overruled him.Captain Newport decided to take one hundred and twenty men, fearing to go with a less number and journey to Werowocomoco to crown Powhatan.In order to save time Smith offered to take a message to Powhatan, and induce him to come to Jamestown and receive the honor and the presents.Accompanied by only four men he crossed by land to Werowocomoco, passed the Pamaunkee (York) River in a canoe, and sent for Powhatan, who was thirty miles off.Meantime Pocahontas, who by his own account was a mere child, and her women entertained Smith in the following manner: