The day before Captain Smith sailed, Captain Davis arrived in a small pinnace with sixteen men.These, with a company from the fort under Captain Ratcliffe, were sent down to Point Comfort.Captain West and Captain Martin, having lost their boats and half their men among the savages at the Falls, returned to Jamestown.The colony now lived upon what Smith had provided, "and now they had presidents with all their appurtenances.President Percy was so sick he could neither go nor stand.Provisions getting short, West and Ratcliffe went abroad to trade, and Ratcliffe and twenty-eight of his men were slain by an ambush of Powhatan's, as before related in the narrative of Henry Spelman.Powhatan cut off their boats, and refused to trade, so that Captain West set sail for England.What ensued cannot be more vividly told than in the "General Historie":
"Now we all found the losse of Capt.Smith, yea his greatest maligners could now curse his losse; as for corne provision and contribution from the salvages, we had nothing but mortall wounds, with clubs and arrowes; as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheep, horse, or what lived, our commanders, officers and salvages daily consumed them, some small proportions sometimes we tasted, till all was devoured; then swords, arms, pieces or anything was traded with the salvages, whose cruell fingers were so oft imbrued in our blouds, that what by their crueltie, our Governor's indiscretion, and the losse of our ships, of five hundred within six months after Capt.
Smith's departure, there remained not past sixty men, women and children, most miserable and poore creatures; and those were preserved for the most part, by roots, herbes, acorns, walnuts, berries, now and then a little fish; they that had starch in these extremities made no small use of it, yea, even the very skinnes of our horses.Nay, so great was our famine, that a salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him, and so did divers one another boyled, and stewed with roots and herbs.And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, poudered her and had eaten part of her before it was knowne, for which he was executed, as he well deserved; now whether she was better roasted, boyled, or carbonaded, I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.
This was that time, which still to this day we called the starving time; it were too vile to say and scarce to be believed what we endured; but the occasion was our owne, for want of providence, industrie and government, and not the barreness and defect of the country as is generally supposed."This playful allusion to powdered wife, and speculation as to how she was best cooked, is the first instance we have been able to find of what is called "American humor," and Captain Smith has the honor of being the first of the "American humorists" who have handled subjects of this kind with such pleasing gayety.
It is to be noticed that this horrible story of cannibalism and wife-eating appears in Smith's "General Historie" of 1624, without a word of contradiction or explanation, although the company as early as 1610 had taken pains to get at the facts, and Smith must have seen their "Declaration," which supposes the story was started by enemies of the colony.Some reported they saw it, some that Captain Smith said so, and some that one Beadle, the lieutenant of Captain Davis, did relate it.In "A True Declaration of the State of the Colonie in Virginia," published by the advice and direction of the Council of Virginia, London, 1610, we read:
"But to clear all doubt, Sir Thomas Yates thus relateth the tragedie:
"There was one of the company who mortally hated his wife, and therefore secretly killed her, then cut her in pieces and hid her in divers parts of his house: when the woman was missing, the man suspected, his house searched, and parts of her mangled body were discovered, to excuse himself he said that his wife died, that he hid her to satisfie his hunger, and that he fed daily upon her.Upon this his house was again searched, when they found a good quantitie of meale, oatmeale, beanes and pease.Hee therefore was arraigned, confessed the murder, and was burned for his horrible villainy."This same "True Declaration," which singularly enough does not mention the name of Captain Smith, who was so prominent an actor in Virginia during the period to which it relates, confirms all that Smith said as to the character of the colonists, especially the new supply which landed in the eight vessels with Ratcliffe and Archer.