In the morning the savage had recovered his perfect senses, his wounds were dressed, and the brothers with presents of copper were sent away well contented.This was spread among the savages for a miracle, that Smith could make a man alive that was dead.He narrates a second incident which served to give the Indians a wholesome fear of the whites: "Another ingenious savage of Powhatan having gotten a great bag of powder and the back of an armour at Werowocomoco, amongst a many of his companions, to show his extraordinary skill, he did dry it on the back as he had seen the soldiers at Jamestown.But he dried it so long, they peeping over it to see his skill, it took fire, and blew him to death, and one or two more, and the rest so scorched they had little pleasure any more to meddle with gunpowder.""These and many other such pretty incidents," says Smith, "so amazed and affrighted Powhatan and his people that from all parts they desired peace;" stolen articles were returned, thieves sent to Jamestown for punishment, and the whole country became as free for the whites as for the Indians.
And now ensued, in the spring of 1609, a prosperous period of three months, the longest season of quiet the colony had enjoyed, but only a respite from greater disasters.The friendship of the Indians and the temporary subordination of the settlers we must attribute to Smith's vigor, shrewdness, and spirit of industry.It was much easier to manage the Indian's than the idle and vicious men that composed the majority of the settlement.
In these three months they manufactured three or four lasts (fourteen barrels in a last) of tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, produced some specimens of glass, dug a well of excellent sweet water in the fort, which they had wanted for two years, built twenty houses, repaired the church, planted thirty or forty acres of ground, and erected a block-house on the neck of the island, where a garrison was stationed to trade with the savages and permit neither whites nor Indians to pass except on the President's order.Even the domestic animals partook the industrious spirit: "of three sowes in eighteen months increased 60 and od Pigs; and neare 500 chickings brought up themselves without having any meat given them." The hogs were transferred to Hog Isle, where another block house was built and garrisoned, and the garrison were permitted to take "exercise" in cutting down trees and making clapboards and wainscot.They were building a fort on high ground, intended for an easily defended retreat, when a woful discovery put an end to their thriving plans.
Upon examination of the corn stored in casks, it was found half-rotten, and the rest consumed by rats, which had bred in thousands from the few which came over in the ships.The colony was now at its wits end, for there was nothing to eat except the wild products of the country.In this prospect of famine, the two Indians, Kemps and Tussore, who had been kept fettered while showing the whites how to plant the fields, were turned loose; but they were unwilling to depart from such congenial company.The savages in the neighborhood showed their love by bringing to camp, for sixteen days, each day at least a hundred squirrels, turkeys, deer, and other wild beasts.But without corn, the work of fortifying and building had to be abandoned, and the settlers dispersed to provide victuals.A party of sixty or eighty men under Ensign Laxon were sent down the river to live on oysters; some twenty went with Lieutenant Percy to try fishing at Point Comfort, where for six weeks not a net was cast, owing to the sickness of Percy, who had been burnt with gunpowder;and another party, going to the Falls with Master West, found nothing to eat but a few acorns.
Up to this time the whole colony was fed by the labors of thirty or forty men: there was more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog and man; it was dried, pounded, and mixed with caviare, sorrel, and other herbs, to make bread; bread was also made of the "Tockwhogh" root, and with the fish and these wild fruits they lived very well.But there were one hundred and fifty of the colony who would rather starve or eat each other than help gather food.These "distracted, gluttonous loiterers" would have sold anything they had--tools, arms, and their houses--for anything the savages would bring them to eat.
Hearing that there was a basket of corn at Powhatan's, fifty miles away, they would have exchanged all their property for it.To satisfy their factious humors, Smith succeeded in getting half of it:
"they would have sold their souls," he says, for the other half, though not sufficient to last them a week.
The clamors became so loud that Smith punished the ringleader, one Dyer, a crafty fellow, and his ancient maligner, and then made one of his conciliatory addresses.Having shown them how impossible it was to get corn, and reminded them of his own exertions, and that he had always shared with them anything he had, he told them that he should stand their nonsense no longer; he should force the idle to work, and punish them if they railed; if any attempted to escape to Newfoundland in the pinnace they would arrive at the gallows; the sick should not starve; every man able must work, and every man who did not gather as much in a day as he did should be put out of the fort as a drone.