Читать книгу Savage Kingdom: Virginia and The Founding of English America - Benjamin Woolley - Страница 11

THE FRAGILE FLEET of three wooden ‘eggshells’ sailed past a cape on the southerly lip of the Chesapeake Bay, and dropped anchor on the south shore. To the north, a vast body of water stretched to the horizon. To the west, low-lying land receded as far as the eye could see. The English had found Virginia.¹

‘There we landed and discovered a little way,’ wrote Percy, who was a member of the first thirty-strong landing party to go ashore that warm spring day in late April 1607. ‘But we could find nothing worth the speaking of but fair meadows and goodly tall trees, with such fresh waters running through the woods as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof.’

They stayed all afternoon, using the remains of a long day to take in their new surroundings. As darkness fell, they made their way back to the beach. Then, ‘there came the savages creeping upon all fours from the hills like bears, with their bows in their mouths, [who] charged us very desperately’. The English let off volleys of musket fire, which to their surprise the Indians ‘little respected’, not withdrawing until they had used up all their arrows. Gabriel Archer was injured in both his hands, and Matthew Morton, a sailor, was shot ‘in two places of the body very dangerous’. The casualties were carried back on to the boats, and the English withdrew to their ships.²

Later that evening, there was a solemn gathering of all the leading members of the expedition aboard the Susan Constant. According to their orders from the Royal Council, within twenty-four hours of their arrival at Virginia, they were to ‘open and unseal’ the secret list nominating the settlement’s ruling council, ‘and Declare and publish unto all the Company the names therein Set down’.³

Newport announced the names chosen by the Royal Council in England. His own was listed first, followed by Wingfield’s and Gosnold’s. Another nomination was John Martin, the sickly son of Sir Richard, a prominent goldsmith and the Master of the Mint. Martin’s election was probably a foregone conclusion, given the wealth of his family and their generosity as patrons of this and other ventures.⁴

More surprising was the appearance of the mysterious George Kendall and John Ratcliffe on the list, together with Captain John Smith. The latter’s inclusion might have suggested his immediate release from the brig, but Newport decided to keep him there for the time being.

George Percy and Gabriel Archer were not nominated. Percy may have been excluded because of worries about the loyalty of his brother, the Earl of Northumberland. The reasons for excluding Archer, who had worked so hard with Gosnold to promote the venture in its early years, were more opaque, and he took the news badly.

The council’s first job was to nominate a president, who would supervise the taking of the oath of office. But rumbles of recrimination, puzzlement about the roles of Ratcliffe and Kendall, and the difficulty of deciding what to do about Smith discouraged such finalities.

The following day the mariners brought up from the hold the expedition’s collapsible three-ton barge or ‘shallop’, and started to assemble it. Meanwhile, a landing party continued reconnoitring the surrounding territory. Several miles inland, they spotted smoke. They walked towards it, and came upon a campfire, still alight with oysters roasting on a barbeque. There was no sign of the picnickers, so the English polished off the meal, observing as they licked their fingers that the oysters were ‘very large and delicate in taste’.⁵

The next day, 28 April, the shallop was launched, and Newport, together with a group selected from the ranks of the ‘gentlemen’, set off in search of a river or harbour suitable for settlement. The only map they had was one based on explorations made during the Roanoke expedition of 1585. This showed the south shore of the bay as interrupted by a series of inlets, one leading to the village of Chesapeake, the other to ‘Skicoac’. The shoreline ended at what appeared to be the mouth of a river, which flowed west. The river’s northern bank was a peninsula, which was marked with a dot, indicating an Indian settlement. To the north of the peninsula was another river, flowing north-west. Along the top of the map was what appeared to be the northern shore of the bay, populated by two villages, ‘Mashawatec’ and ‘Combec’.

What they might have imagined to be the inlet leading to Skicoac proved to be nothing but shoal water, barely suitable for their shallop, let alone a ship. As they coasted deeper into the bay, they apparently passed the first river mouth, and came to the peninsula. They disembarked on one of the beaches, and explored its perimeter. They found a huge canoe, 45 foot long, made from the hollowed-out trunk of a large tree. They also found beds of mussels and oysters ‘which lay on the ground as thick as stones’, some containing rough pearls.⁶

Exploring inland, they found the land became more fertile, ‘full of flowers of divers kinds and colours,’ remarked Percy, ‘and as goodly trees as I have seen, as cedar, cypress, and other kinds’. They also found a plot of ground ‘full of fine and beautiful strawberries four times bigger and better than ours in England’. Great columns of smoke could be seen rising from the interior, and they wondered anxiously whether the Indians were using fires to clear land for planting, or ‘to give signs to bring their forces together, and so to give us battle’.

Returning to the shallop, they sounded the surrounding waterways, but could find none deep enough for shipping. They returned both buoyed up and dragged down by the day’s discoveries. The land was so inviting, but worthless to them if they could not find a suitable river or safe harbour.

Later that evening, a group rowed out to examine further the river mouth they had passed earlier that day. They started to zigzag across the water, taking soundings as they went. Slowly, painstakingly, their measurements built up a profile of the river bed beneath, revealing a channel 6 to 12 fathoms deep, enough for heavy shipping. So great was their relief, that Archer named the neighbouring point of land ‘Cape Comfort’.

With this discovery, the decision was taken to commit the settlement’s fortunes to the Chesapeake. To mark the decision, a group rowed to the southern side of the mouth of the bay, and on the promontory they had passed when they arrived erected a large cross, facing out to the ocean. They named the land upon which they stood Cape Henry, in honour of Tyndall’s patron, James’s 13-year-old heir.

On 30 April 1607, the fleet nosed past Cape (later known as Point) Comfort and into the broad river that lay beyond. Five Indians appeared on the shore, running along the beach to keep up with the ships. Newport called to them from the deck of the Susan Constant. At first they did not respond. Newport then laid his hand upon his heart as a gesture of friendship. They laid down their bows and arrows, and waved to him to follow them. Newport, together with Percy and a few others, clambered into a boat, and rowed towards the shore. The Indians dived into a tributary and swam across with their bows and arrows in their mouths. The English followed, until they found themselves floating towards a group of warriors waiting for them on the bank. From there, they were escorted to a town, which the English understood to be called ‘Kecoughtan’.

Kecoughtan comprised a cluster of twenty or so dwellings built ‘like garden arbours’, interspersed among the trees. The walls of each house were made of saplings, the roof by the branches bent over to create a vault. The entire construction was covered with reed mats and in some cases with bark, a free-hanging mat acting as the door. The English were intrigued by the elegant simplicity of the buildings, and the lack of permanent structures or even of locked doors.⁷

The Indians who emerged from the houses presented a sight not altogether unfamiliar to some of the English, as they wore clothes and followed customs similar to those at Roanoke, whose appearance had been carefully recorded by the painter John White. The most distinctive feature was the hair. The men shaved the right side of their heads, and let the left side grow to the length of an ‘ell’ (3 foot 9 inches), which they tied in an ‘artificial knot’ and decorated with feathers. In the intensifying heat of the Virginian late spring, they dressed sparingly, covering their ‘privities’ with an animal hide decorated with teeth and small bones, but were otherwise naked. To welcome the English, some had painted their bodies black, others red, ‘very beautiful and pleasing to the eye’, and wore turkey claws as earrings.⁸ Gabriel Archer, standing among the exhausted, louse-ridden, poorly-nourished English could only admire the strength and agility of the ‘lusty, straight men’ whom they now encountered.⁹

As soon as the English entered the village, the men greeted them with a ‘doleful noise’, and approached ‘laying their faces to the ground, scratching the earth with their nails.’ Percy, a man of insecure religious convictions, was alarmed, fearing that the Indians were practising their ‘idolatry’ upon him.

Once the welcome was over, the Indians brought mats from their houses and lay them on the ground. The elders sat in a line, and were served with corn bread, which they invited the English to share, but only if they sat down. The English crouched awkwardly on the mats ‘right against them’, and accepted the offer. The elders then produced a large clay pipe, with a bowl made of copper, and filled it with tobacco. It was lit, and they offered it to their guests, who puffed it appreciatively.

To complete the ceremonies, the Indians put on a frantic dance, ‘shouting, howling, and stamping against the ground, with many antic tricks and faces, making noise like so many wolves or devils’. The display lasted half an hour, during which Percy, drawing on a knowledge of courtly dance acquired as a child, noticed that they all kept to a common tempo with their feet, but moved to an individual rhythm with the rest of their bodies.

When the dance ended, Newport presented the elders with beads and ‘other trifling jewels’. The English then returned to the fleet, content that, as instructed by the Royal Council, they had not only taken ‘Great Care not to Offend the naturals’, but laid the basis of a fruitful trading relationship.

Over the following few days the fleet carefully felt its way up the broad river, which even 20 or so miles upstream was wider than any in England, the channel deep enough for large ships. Tyndall carefully mapped the route of the channel, naming a large and treacherous sandbank about 30 miles upstream ‘Tyndall’s Shoals’. Just beyond, the river turned sharply, forming a loop similar to that of the Thames around the Isle of Dogs, which was later named the ‘Isle of Hogs’ (now home to a wildlife reserve, and a nuclear power plant). Opposite it, Gabriel Archer spotted an island which looked ideal as a location for their settlement. He had a fondness for puns, so he dubbed it ‘Archer’s Hope’, a ‘hope’ also being a stretch of land cut off from its surroundings by marsh or fenland.

Continuing slowly upstream a further 20 miles, they reached a point where the river forked. They anchored the fleet in the broad waters of the confluence, and a landing party was sent to reconnoitre. They came to a town called Paspahegh, on the northern shore of the wider tributary, where they were entertained by an ‘old savage’ who made ‘a long oration, making a foul noise, uttering his speech with a vehement action, but we knew little what they meant’. While witnessing this unimpressive spectacle, they were approached by the chief or weroance of the tribe on the southern bank of the river, who had paddled over in a canoe to remonstrate with them for favouring the Paspahegh over his own people. Gratified by this competition for their attention, and dismissive of the Paspahegh’s efforts, the English said they would visit him the next day.

The following dawn was heralded by the arrival of a canoe alongside the Susan Constant, paddled by a messenger, who signified that he had come from the chiefdom on the opposite bank of the river. He beckoned the English to follow him. They duly manned their shallop, and pursued the canoe to the southern shore, which some had begun to call the ‘Salisbury Side’, in honour of Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury. As the English drew up by the river bank, Percy beheld the chief and his warrior escort waiting for them, ‘as goodly men as any I have seen of savages or Christians’.

The chief, called Chaopock, presented a particularly impressive spectacle, his body and visage a map of promising commodities. His torso was painted crimson, which was perhaps how he got his name, the local word chapacor being the name of a root used to produce red dye. His face was painted blue, ‘besprinkled with silver ore as we thought’, probably a paste made of antimony, which was mined further north. He wore ‘a crown of deer’s hair coloured red in fashion of a rose fastened about his knot of hair’, and on the shaven side of his head, a ‘great plate of copper’. He played a reed flute as the English clambered ashore, and then invited them to sit down with him upon a mat, which was spread out for them on the bank. There, sitting ‘with a great majesty’, he offered them tobacco, his company standing around him as they watched the English puff on the pipe. He then invited them to come to his town, which the English understood to be called Rappahannock (but which they later learned was called Quiyoughcohannock). He led them ‘through the woods in fine paths, having most pleasant springs’, past ‘the goodliest cornfields that ever was seen in any country’, up a steep hill to his ‘palace’, where they were entertained ‘in good humanity’.¹⁰

The next day, Newport left the fleet riding at anchor before Paspahegh and continued in the shallop up the wider branch of the river, stopping at a point where it once again divided. There he encountered another tribe, the ‘most warlike’ Appamattuck, who came to the banks of the river and confronted the English, their leader crouched before them ‘cross-legged, with his arrow ready in his bow in one hand and taking a pipe of tobacco in the other’ uttering a ‘bold speech’. After an exchange of peaceful gestures, the English were allowed ashore, giving them an opportunity to admire the swords the Appamattuck carried on their backs, a unique weapon with a blade of wood edged with sharp stones and pieces of iron, sharp enough ‘to cleave a man in sunder’.

Having established that there was no suitable location for the settlement upstream, the shallop returned to the fleet. On 12 May, Wingfield and other members of the council took the pinnace back downriver to Archer’s Hope, to assess its viability as the best site for their settlement. A landing party found that ‘the soil was good and fruitful with excellent good timber’. They found vines as thick as a man’s thigh running up to the tops of the trees, turkey nests full of eggs, hares and squirrels in the undergrowth, birds of every hue – crimson, pale blue, yellow, green and mulberry purple – fluttering through the forest canopy. Returning to the ship, the council assembled to consider whether this should be the site for their settlement. Gosnold and Archer, perhaps with Percy’s support, argued strongly for its merits: the abundance of natural resources around, its defensible location, ‘which was sufficient with a little labour to defend ourselves against any enemy’. But Wingfield was worried about the sandbanks, which prevented shipping coming close enough to the shoreline to allow cargo and people to transfer directly on to land, a handicap that many considered the reason the Roanoke settlement had proved unsustainable. The other worry was the position of the Kecoughtans. Hakluyt had advised that the settlers should ‘in no case suffer any of the natural people of the Country to inhabit between you and the sea’.

After a heated debate, they sailed around the Isle of Hogs to look at an alternative site. It had been brought to the settlers’ attention by the Paspahegh, who claimed it to be part of their territory. It was a promontory sticking into the river, creating a constriction that forced the deep-water channel right up to the shore. In a daring test of its suitability, one of the ships was sailed up to the river bank, close enough to be tethered to the trees.

The settlers disembarked and investigated the area. They were standing on a peninsula which dangled like a piece of fruit from the mainland, its stalk a thin causeway across an otherwise impassable swamp. They also noted that the shoreline used to moor the pinnace was shielded by woods from enemy vessels coming upstream. It had once been inhabited by Indians, and some evidence may have survived of their presence, but they were long gone.

The site presented difficulties. The river and surrounding creeks and streams were brackish, so a well would have to be dug, or fresh water supplies brought in by ship. The site was also covered with large trees and thick vines which would take considerable effort to clear. There was also the issue of the Kecoughtans controlling land access to the bay.

After further arguments, during which Gosnold repeated some of his objections, the fateful decision was taken to make this the site of their settlement. As tools and supplies were unloaded from the ships, the council now gathered to constitute itself. More arguments erupted over whether Smith and even Archer should be co-opted, but in the end it was decided they should be excluded. Each council member then took the oath of allegiance, and elected Wingfield their president.

‘Now falleth every man to work,’ as Smith later put it, labourers to clearing the ‘thick grove of trees’ covering the western end of the site, soldiers to scouting the mainland, farmworkers to tilling soil and planting seeds, and President Wingfield to tending the breeding flock of thirty-seven chickens he had brought from London.

Conditions were tough. Most of the settlers slept under trees. Those who could afford to bring one enjoyed the comforts of a tent. The elderly Wingfield benefited from this and other indulgences, including the ‘divers fruit, conserves, and preserves’ he had packed into his trunk, though he later claimed that some had been pilfered.¹¹

For spiritual sustenance, the settlers erected a makeshift chapel out of an ‘awning (which is an old sail)’ hung between the trunks of ‘three or four trees to shadow us from the Sun’. ‘Our walls were rails of wood, our seats unhewed trees, till we cut planks, our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees,’ Smith recalled, and ‘in foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better.’¹² In honour of their King, the council dutifully called this ramshackle collection of tents pitched on a sweaty island in the middle of a teeming forest ‘Jamestown’.

The activity on the island attracted the attention of the Paspahegh people, who visited the site on several occasions to see what was going on. To prevent causing offence, Wingfield banned the building of any permanent defensive structures and the performance of military exercises. This was in line with Hakluyt’s instructions, which urged the settlers to develop trading relations with the Indians ‘before they perceive you mean to plant among them’. Smith, however, had different ideas.

It is unclear whether Smith had yet been released from his shackles, but he was still excluded from the council’s deliberations, and he railed at Wingfield’s decision, claiming it was motivated by ‘jealousy’, his possessiveness of power. According to the Charter, the King had accepted the patentees’ request to settle Virginia principally so that they ‘may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to humane civility and to a settled and quiet government’. This for Smith was royal absolution for a great civilizing mission, which should begin as it was supposed to proceed.¹³

For the time being, Wingfield’s low-key policy prevailed, though Kendall, who it now transpired had some experience of military engineering in the Low Countries, managed to erect one bulwark, ingeniously constructed out of ‘the boughs of trees cast together’, possibly towards the isthmus joining the island to the mainland.

On 18 May, the Paspahegh chief himself paid a regal visit to the island with a hundred of his warriors, who ‘guarded him in a very warlike manner with bows and arrows’. The chief asked the English to lay down their arms, which they refused to do. ‘He, seeing he could not have convenient time to work his will, at length made signs that he would give us as much land as we would desire to take,’ Percy claimed. Whether or not it had been properly understood, the chief’s gesture relieved the tension, and the English put away their weapons. Then a fracas erupted between one of the English soldiers and an Indian, apparently over a stolen hatchet. One struck the other, and soon bystanders were joining in, provoking the nervous English to ‘take to our arms’. In response, the chief left ‘in great anger’, followed by his retinue.

Two days later, forty of the Paspahegh arrived with a deer carcass, apparently a peace offering. At the invitation of one of the English soldiers, they also put on an impressive demonstration of their shooting skills. The soldier propped a ‘target’ or shield ‘which he trusted in’ up against a tree, and gestured to the Indian to take a shot at it with his bow and arrow. To the soldiers’ astonishment, the arrow penetrated the shield ‘a foot through or better, which was strange, being that a pistol could not pierce it’.

By this stage, life for the settlers was settling into a routine, and some were beginning to feel a little at home. A group surveying the surrounding land found ‘the ground all flowing over with fair flowers of sundry colours and kinds as though it had been in any garden or orchard in England’.¹⁴

Many of the settlers were by now anxious that Newport should head back home at the earliest opportunity to fetch more supplies. The mission plan had been drawn up on the basis of a return by May of that year 1607, and provisioned accordingly. But on Thursday 21 May, Newport declared that, rather than embark for England, he would lead the ‘discovery’ of the river commissioned by the Royal Council. From his perspective, his own future, as well as that of the mission, rested upon the discovery of precious metals, or navigating a new route to the South Seas. He could not afford to go home empty-handed.

He chose to accompany him George Percy, Robert Tyndall, Gabriel Archer – who was to keep a journal – and Thomas Wotton, the surgeon. He also decided to release Smith from custody and take him too, perhaps to keep him out of Wingfield’s way, or to offer him an opportunity to redeem himself. The rest of the company was made up mostly of the crew of his ship, the Susan Constant. The Royal Council had also called for Gosnold to ‘cross over the lands’ with twenty men, ‘carrying half a dozen pickaxes to try if they can find any mineral’. No such expedition was mounted.

As the time approached for Newport’s departure, he called his men before him, and pledged that none would return until they had found ‘the head of this river, the lake mentioned by others heretofore, the sea again, the mountains Apalatsi, or some issue’, by which he meant the legendary saltwater lake somewhere in the American interior, which might provide navigable access to the ‘South Sea’ or Pacific, and the Appalachian mountain range, from which was said to run the ‘stream of gold or copper’.¹⁵

At noon, they climbed aboard the shallop, hoisted its sails, and, beneath a hot, early summer sun, began their slow progress upstream.

By the first night they had managed 18 miles, reaching a ‘low meadow point’ on the south side of the river. There they met the Weyanock people, who claimed to be hostile towards the Paspahegh. The following morning, they set off early, managing 16 miles before breakfast. Stopping at an islet created by a large loop in the river, they found ‘many turkeys and great store of young birds like blackbirds, whereof we took divers which we break our fast withal’.

A canoe carrying eight Indians appeared on the river, and the English hailed them with one of the first words they had learned: ‘wingapoh’, which they understood to mean ‘good fellow’. The Indians approached, and ‘in conference by signs’, the English asked them for guidance on the river’s course. One of the Indians, apparently the leader of the group, stepped forward and offered to help. Archer was unable to discover his name, so dubbed him the ‘Kind Consort’.

Using his toe, the Kind Consort started to draw a map in the sand of the river bank. Archer stopped him, offering him a pen and paper, and showing how he could use it. Immediately understanding what he had to do, the Kind Consort began to draw, laying out for the delighted English ‘the whole river from the [Chesapeake] Bay to the end of it, so far as passage was for boats’. He indicated that, upstream of ‘Turkey Isle’, as Archer had dubbed their current location, lay another islet, and beyond that, a series of waterfalls, marking the end of the navigable river. A day’s march beyond the falls, the river divided in two, both branches coming from the mountains. This was the land of two other ‘kingdoms’. ‘Then, a great distance off,’ stood the mountains of ‘Quirank’, which, he whispered, had rocks containing veins of caquassan, understood to be the Indian word for red earth, which might signify the presence of copper or even gold. Furthermore, the Kind Consort confirmed that just beyond these mountains lay ‘that which we expected’, as Archer coyly put it in his journal, referring to the saltwater lake.

Anxious to proceed, Newport declined offers of hospitality from the Kind Consort, and sailed on. However, the Indian ‘with two women and another fellow of his own consort’ was anxious to track the English, and continued to follow them in the canoe, proffering dried oysters from a basket as they went. Eventually, the English found they could no longer resist, and, rendezvousing at a ‘point’ on the river bank, ‘bartered with them for most of their victuals’.

Two miles further up lay the first signs of the rockier world ahead, the shore being ‘full of great cobblestones and higher land’. Once again, the Kind Consort appeared, this time offering ‘sweet nuts like acorns (a very good fruit), wheat, beans, and mulberries sod [soaked] together’. Newport bought what he could, after which the Indian disappeared.

The following day, a further 5 miles on, the English landed, and ‘found our kind comrades [the Indians] again’, who escorted them to a town on the north bank of the river called Arrohateck. There they received their most opulent welcome yet. A feeling spread among the English that, as they proceeded west, they were closing in on the centre of Indian power.

‘King Arrohateck’, as Archer named the town’s weroance, honoured Newport by laying a reed mat across his shoulders and placing a crown of ‘deer’s hair dyed red’ upon his head. He offered the visitors ‘mulberries, sod wheat and beans, and he caused his women to make cakes for us’. He also volunteered some of his men as guides for the journey into the interior.

It was from King Arrohateck that the English first discovered that there was a ‘great king’, a supreme ruler or mamanatowick to whom all the chiefs around the river paid homage and tribute. His name was Powhatan. ‘Now as we sat merry banqueting with them, seeing their dances and taking tobacco,’ the chief’s warriors suddenly got to their feet, and formed a guard of honour for another guest, whom they welcomed with a ‘long shout’. This, the English thought, must be the mamanatowick Powhatan himself. It was in fact his son Parahunt, known as ‘Tanxpowhatan’ or ‘Little Powhatan’, the confusion arising because the town he ruled was also called Powhatan, perhaps because it was the mamanatowick’s birthplace.¹⁶

Noting that King Arrohateck had remained seated, the English guests did likewise, ‘our captain in the middest’. However, acknowledging the status of the new arrival, Newport offered ‘gifts of divers sorts, as penny knives, shears, bells, beads, glass toys, etc., more amply than before’. In gratitude for the generosity, ‘King Powhatan’ offered provisions and guides to escort the English to his town, further upriver. ‘Thus parting from “Arrohateck’s joy”,’ wrote Archer, brimming with optimism, ‘we found the people on either side the river stand in clusters all along, still proffering us victuals.’

A further 10 miles upstream, the river narrowed. On the northern bank rose the most striking landmark they had yet seen: a tall mound in the midst of fields full of wheat, beans, tobacco and other crops, intermingled. On top of the mound there was a collection of houses, which for the English had the appearance of the Indian capital. Archer called it ‘Powhatan’s Tower’.

They landed, and walked up to the town, where they found the Powhatan and Arrohateck chiefs waiting for them. The English noticed that they now sat apart from their own people. The only other person with them was a man who appeared to be a counsellor, who sat beside Parahunt. Once again, food was offered, ‘but our best entertainment was [the] friendly welcome’. There followed a discussion by ‘words and signs’ during which King Powhatan explained that all the ‘kingdoms’ on the north bank of the rivers were cheisc, which the English understood to mean ‘all one with him’ or ‘under him’. But the Chesapeake people, who lived on the southerly shore of the bay, were the enemy ‘generally to all these kingdoms’. Archer showed the chief the scars on his hands, barely healed, which had been inflicted by these Indians when the English first landed, and ‘for which we vowed revenge, after their manner pointing to the sun’.

Parahunt now placed his own gown upon Newport’s shoulders, which the English understood to mean he was offering a ‘league of friendship’. Putting his hand on his heart, he said to Newport, ‘Wingapoh chemuze,’ Archer taking this to be the kindest of all salutations in the Indian language.

It was now late, and the English said they needed to return to their ship. They were sent on their way with six of Parahunt’s men, and the English left behind one of their own as a gesture of trust. Rather than return directly to the shallop, they rowed 3 miles up the river, where they found what the Indians had warned them of: a great cataract that was clearly impassable. Even this far inland, the river was still tidal, rising 4 foot between high and low tide, and suitable for vessels with a draft less than 6 foot. But beyond, the only way forward was on foot.

‘Having viewed this place between content and grief,’ Archer concluded, ‘we left it for this night, determining the next day to fit ourselves for a march by land.’

The guides who were with them were sent home, except one, called Navirans, who asked if he could sleep on board the shallop with the English. Newport agreed, a gesture of faith rewarded with the safe return of the Englishman left at Powhatan’s Tower, ‘who coming told us of his entertainment, how they had prepared mats for him to lie on, gave him store of victuals, and made as much [of] him as could be’. A close relationship developed between Navirans and the English, particularly with Archer. The Indian ‘had learned me so much of the language,’ Archer wrote, ‘and was so excellently ingenious in signing out his meaning, that I could make him understand me, and perceive him also well-nigh in anything’.

The following day, Whitsunday, 24 May, Newport decided to return some of the hospitality the English had received. His men built a fire on the shore, and they boiled two pieces of pork and some peas, the best that could be offered from their dwindling supplies. Newport invited the two chiefs to join him. Parahunt accepted, but Arrohateck excused himself on the grounds that he needed to return to his village.

As Arrohateck was about to leave, the convivial mood abruptly changed. An English mariner reported that two ‘bullet bags’ containing ‘shot and divers trucking toys’ had gone missing.

The chiefs acted quickly and decisively, ordering the immediate return of all stolen property. The speed with which the items reappeared was impressive evidence of the chiefs’ authority. Everything that had gone was now laid at Newport’s feet, including a knife the English had not even realized was missing. ‘So Captain Newport gave thanks to the kings and rewarded the thieves with the same toys they had stolen, but kept the bullets.’ Newport also warned that the custom in England was to punish theft with death.

Good relations apparently restored, the Powhatan weroance sat down to the feast, ‘and we fed familiarly’, Archer reported, ‘without sitting in his state as before’. The relaxed atmosphere was helped by quantities of beer, aqua vitae (spirits) and sack (Spanish white wine). Alcoholic drinks were not part of the local diet, and this first exposure to some potent European brews had an unusually strong effect on Newport’s guest. This might explain why the chief fell into such an uninhibited mood, talking about the copper, iron and other rich and rare commodities to be found in the mountains beyond the waterfalls.

As the merrymaking was drawing to a close, Newport said he wanted to embark on a three-day expedition further inland to see if he could find these commodities. The chief, perhaps prompted by a sobering word whispered in his ear, suddenly fell silent. He got up to leave, promising only that he would rendezvous with the English later that day at the foot of the falls.

In the afternoon, the English rowed upriver. They found the Powhatan chief sitting on a bank next to the lower reaches of the cascading water.

At this point, the nameless Kind Consort who had appeared to the English at Weyanock approached in a canoe, continuing his mysterious knack of reappearing at significant moments of the English exploration. He told Newport’s men to ‘make a shout’. They were unsure why, but they did as they were asked and cried out. They assumed it was to welcome King Powhatan, though it may have been to acknowledge some other power that inhabited the falls, or paquacowng, as the Indians apparently called them.¹⁷

Newport led a group across the rocks to talk to Parahunt. The expansiveness had evaporated. The chief ‘sought by all means to dissuade our captain from going any further’. It would be tedious travel, he claimed. Ahead lay the Monacan people, who were enemies, and liable to attack Powhatan guides if not the whole party, and even if they got past them, the Quirank mountains that lay beyond were difficult and dangerous, devoid of the food supplies they would need for a proper exploration. The Monacans ‘came down at the fall of the leaf’, he told Newport, and attacked his people’s villages. Newport offered five hundred English troops to fight alongside the Powhatan people upon the Monacans’ return, ‘which pleased the king much’.

To Archer’s surprise, Newport agreed not to proceed any further, ‘holding it much better to please the king, with whom and all of his command he had made so fair way, than to prosecute his own fancy or satisfy our requests’.

The weroance now departed, followed by all his men except Navirans, who accompanied the English to an ‘islet’ in the middle river, which stood before the falls. There, Newport announced that the river would henceforth be known as the James, and ordered the soldiers to erect a large cross, as they had done at Cape Henry. It bore the Latin inscription ‘Jacobus Rex. 1607’: King James 1607. As the cross rose into the sky, Navirans gave out a great cry. Newport was reassuring, explaining ‘that the two arms of the cross signified King Powhatan and himself, the fastening of it in the middest was their united league’. This explanation apparently ‘cheered Navirans not a little’.

The English prepared for their journey back down the river they had renamed the James, and Newport sent Navirans to invite ‘King Powhatan’ for a farewell meeting. The chief duly appeared with Navirans and his retinue on the river bank, and Newport rowed alone from the shallop to the shore, to present a gown and a hatchet as farewell gifts.

The mood had changed. The chief seemed angered by the appearance of the cross, casting its long evening shadow across the river’s sacred waters. Percy noted that the ‘savages’ now ‘murmured at our planting in the country’. Newport prompted Navirans to pass on the explanation that the cross symbolized peace. Parahunt appeared to be reassured, and, according to Navirans’s translation, rebuked his people: ‘Why should you be offended with them as long as they hurt you not, nor take anything away by force? They take but a little waste ground which doth you nor any of us any good.’¹⁸

With feelings of reassurance mixed with uncertainty, the English left and headed back for Jamestown. As night fell, they stopped at Arrohateck. The chief was ill, complaining that the ‘hot drinks’ the English had given him had made him sick. Newport confidently predicted that he would feel better in the morning, which was duly the case, and to celebrate his recovery, the chief ordered venison to be roasted for the visitors.

While they were there, some of the Arrohateck people offered to show the guests their homes and gardens. Passing among the houses, scattered around groves of tall trees, the English entered a world hidden from them by the diplomatic formalities experienced so far. This was the domain of women. While the men ‘fish, hunt, fowl, go to the wars’, the women kept the home and hearth, and tended the fields. They also raised and educated the children, shaved the men, foraged for fuel, chopped wood, spun flax, ground corn, baked bread, butchered meat, gathered medicinal herbs, healed the sick and mourned the dead, ‘which’, Smith observed, ‘is the cause that the women be very painful [i.e. burdened] and the men often idle’.

Being allowed to mingle with them provided the curious Englishmen with their first proper exposure to female company since leaving London. The effect was powerful. The women appeared natural and unaffected. They had ‘handsome limbs, slender arms, and pretty hands; and when they sing they have a delightful and pleasant tang in their voices’. They wore make-up to enhance their features rather than disguise their blemishes, and shared cosmetic tips and recipes freely, unlike the ‘great ladies’ of English society, who kept secret from one another ‘their oil of talcum or other painting white and red’. The Indian women wore clothes not to hide their age, but, as Captain Smith put it, to be ‘agreeable to their years’. Their bodies were not trussed, bustled and costumed, but flaunted. Their arms, thighs and breasts could be openly admired, being elaborately advertised with ‘cunningly embroidered’ tattoos. They were ‘voluptuous’, fully developed sexual beings, scantily dressed and approachable, yet retaining that feminine virtue most vaunted by European men, ‘modesty’. It was a combination that aroused the Englishmen’s imaginations and starved libidos.

Mothers breast-fed their babies, a practice that English women of all but the poorest classes avoided, favouring the use of wet-nurses. They also loved their children ‘very dearly’, but were tough as well as tender, making them ‘hardy’ by washing them in the river even on the coldest mornings, and ‘tanning’ their skins with ointment until ‘no weather will hurt them’. Their houses, Smith observed, were as ‘warm as stoves, but very smoky’, due to the fire in the centre of the floor, which vented through a simple hole in the roof. It being summertime, the mats covering the walls may have been rolled up to let in the air, but the women continued to tend the fire, as, ‘if at any time it goes out, they take it for an evil sign’.

A set of simple bedsteads was the only recognizable domestic furniture to be found inside an Indian house. They were made of short posts stuck into the ground, with ‘hurdles’ or frames made with sticks and reeds placed on top to act as the mattress. There was a bed for each member of the family, upon which they would sleep ‘heads and points’, head to feet, in a circle around the fire. Mats acted as bedlinen, and, while they slept, the perpetual smoke, which darkened their skins but did not sting their eyes, kept away mosquitoes and fumigated clothes.¹⁹

While he was being shown around one of the huts, an Indian woman took Archer’s hand and pressed the leaves of a herb into his wounded palm. The plant was wisakon, he was told (the word was in fact a general term for medicinal herb). It looked to him like liverwort or bloodwort, two well-known medicinal herbs used in England. He was also shown a root which contained the poison that had laced the arrowheads.

The visitors watched the women bake rolls and cakes, and a demonstration of ‘the growing of their corn and the manner of setting it’. The fields, just a few hundred foot square, were more like gardens, cleared by burning sections of the surrounding woodland. The soil was neither cultivated (the Indians had no draft animals or tilling equipment) nor manured, producing, in the opinion of Smith the farmer’s son, ‘so small a benefit of their land’. He was sure the most basic English agricultural techniques would multiply the yields.²⁰

Finally, the chief took the English into what Archer dubbed the ‘Mulberry Shade’, a hunting lodge set apart from the village, where King Arrohateck laid on a meal of ‘land turtle’ while his men went into the surrounding woods to see if they could catch a deer. The chief also asked for a demonstration of English firearms. Newport duly ordered ‘a gentleman discharge his piece soldier-like before [King Arrohateck], at which noise he started, stop’d his ears, and express’d much fear, so likewise all about him’.

There was also an incident, confusingly documented, which enabled the two nations to compare their methods of summary discipline. Navirans drew attention to one of Arrohateck’s people who, as Archer put it, ‘press’d into our boat too violently upon a man of ours’. Newport, ‘misconstruing the matter, sent for his own man, bound him to a tree before King Arrohateck, and with a cudgel soundly beat him’. The chief intervened, saying one of his men was responsible for the ‘injury’. He went over to the culprit, who tried to run away. The chief set off in pursuit, running ‘so swiftly as I assure myself he might give any of our company 6 score in 12’ (i.e. beat them ten times over). The offender was brought back, and the rest of the king’s retinue brandished cudgels and sticks ‘as if they had beaten him extremely’. Archer does not mention if the punishment was actually executed, or only threatened.

These violent proceedings did not dampen the convivial mood, but seemed to draw the two leaders, Newport and King Arrohateck, closer together. As the day drew to an end, Newport presented the chief with a red waistcoat as a farewell gift, ‘which highly pleased him’. The English boarded their shallop and cast off, the Arrohateck men saluting them with two hearty shouts as they pulled away from the shore.

That night, they anchored near Appamattuck, home of those ‘most warlike’ people Newport had visited while reconnoitring the site of the English settlement. The following day, they went ashore and were led by Navirans through fields newly planted with corn to a ‘bower’ of mulberry trees. They sat down to await the Appamattuck chief, but were instead surprised by the regal approach of a ‘fat, lusty, manly woman’ clothed in deerskin, covered in copper jewellery, including a crown, and attended by a retinue of women ‘adorned much like herself, save they wanted the copper’. This, the English decided, must be a queen, as she was treated with the same reverence as the Powhatan and Arrohateck chiefs, ‘yea, rather with more majesty’. Her name, though they did not yet know it, was Opussoquonuske.²¹

The English, struggling to readjust their assumption that Indian royalty must be exclusively male, were anxious to discover her role. She explained that she was a chief under the authority of Powhatan, ‘as the rest are’, but the visitors noted that ‘within herself’ she was ‘as great authority as any of her neighbour weroances’, if not greater. For two hours the English gazed upon this Indian Elizabeth, while feasting on the ‘accustomed cakes, tobacco, and welcome’. They offered to demonstrate their weapons, and Archer noted that, when a musket was fired, ‘she showed not near the like fear as Arrohateck’. Newport then decided they should leave for the final leg of their expedition.

Navirans led them 5 miles downstream, and persuaded them to put in for one final meeting. The location, he said, was ‘one of King Pamunkey’s houses’, a structure that may have been a hunting lodge, or even specially constructed for the occasion, as the Pamunkey homeland lay 20 miles away, along the banks of a river neighbouring the James. The English seemed unaware that such encounters were now being carefully orchestrated, nor did they realize the importance of the man they were about to meet. He was Opechancanough, whose name meant ‘man of a white (immaculate) soul’. Later described as possessing a ‘large stature, noble presence, and extraordinary parts’, he was said by some to be Powhatan’s brother, but by others to have come from ‘a great way from the south-west … from the Spanish Indians, somewhere near Mexico’. In his forties at the time of this first encounter, he acted as the military chief of Tsenacomoco, the Indian name for the Powhatan empire. He had come to meet the English to assess their intentions and strength.²²

After the magnificent Queen Appamattuck, Archer found ‘King Pamunkey’ a ridiculous figure, ‘so set [upon] striving to be stately as to our seeming he became a fool’. He claimed to come from a ‘rich land of copper and pearl’, and showed off a pearl necklace and a sample of copper ‘the thickness of a shilling’ which Archer managed to bend round his finger ‘as if it had been lead’. Affecting nonchalance at this information, the English asked what other commodities his land offered. The king obligingly boasted it was also ‘full of deer’ though added that ‘so also is most of all the kingdoms’.

Archer called the venue for the encounter with Opechancanough ‘Pamunkey’s Palace’, mocking the king’s extravagant claims, and ignoring Navirans’s hints that the name was inappropriate.

Continuing their journey home, they spent the night at the ‘low meadow point’ where they had anchored the first night of the expedition, 18 miles away from the settlement. The following morning, they went ashore with Navirans. They encountered a hunting party of ten or twelve Indians who were camping on the shore, and Navirans arranged for them to go fishing for the English. ‘They brought us in a short space a good store,’ Archer noted, who accounted them ‘good friends’.

Then, without warning or explanation, Navirans ‘took some conceit’ of the English, and refused to go any further with them. ‘This grieved our captain very deeply,’ Archer observed, ‘for the loving kindness of this fellow was such as he trusted himself with us out of his own country.’ By now, Newport imagined that he had managed to establish a rapport with the Indians, that his diplomacy had been embraced, his honourable intentions accepted, the superiority of his weaponry acknowledged and admired. Navirans’s sudden change of heart punctured this presumption. Newport ordered the shallop’s immediate return to Jamestown, ‘fearing some disastrous hap at our fort’.

They arrived back on 27 May, to find the settlement in chaos. It transpired that the day before, two hundred Indian warriors had mounted a sustained attack. Following his meeting with Newport, Opechancanough had evidently decided the English presence must be eliminated, before it became permanent.

At the time of the attack, the settlers had been planting corn in the newly cleared fields. Most of their weapons were still packed in ‘dryfats’, waterproof storage casks, so they only had a few pistols and swords to defend themselves. As the ranks of Indian warriors descended upon them, they had been forced to run for cover, to few finding shelter behind the island’s single defensive bulwark. Led by President Wingfield, all five council members apparently put up a fight with hand weapons, but were forced to retreat. In the ensuing skirmish, which ‘endured hot about an hour’, one boy was slain and as many as seventeen labourers wounded. Every single member of the council sustained injuries, except Wingfield, who had a miraculous escape from an arrow which passed through his beard. According to later reports, the entire company would have been slain, had not the sailors loaded one of the ships’ cannons with a ‘crossbar’ (round shot with a spike embedded in it), and fired it towards the Indian position. The projectile had hit a tree, bringing down one of its branches, which apparently fell among the attacking Indians and ‘caused them to retire’.²³

‘Hereupon the president was contented the fort should be palisaded,’ Smith noted dryly.

George Kendall was put in charge of designing the defences, Archer of laying out the street plan for the town. The best-known work in English on military architecture at the time was a translation of a French work by William de Bellay called The Practice of Fortification. It was sufficiently influential for Christopher Marlowe to lift a section verbatim for his popular first play, Tamburlaine the Great, and for Percy’s brother the Earl of Northumberland to hold a copy in his library. Rule one for Bellay was: ‘the figure triangular is not to be used at all’ in the ‘delineation’ of a fort, because it resulted in long, penetrable walls and vulnerable bulwarks or ramparts at each corner. Similar advice had been offered to the Roanoke settlers, who had been told to build their fort in the shape of a pentangle. Despite these warnings, Kendall chose a triangular shape. This was possibly because the river acted as a natural defence, and de Bellay had also advised that ‘if any part [of the fort’s proposed location] may be better assured of the situation than the rest’, that was the side to have any sharper angles or longer walls. Kendall proposed putting the fort’s longest side, which measured 140 yards, along the waterfront, with two shorter sides, 100 yards each, jutting into the island, enclosing an area totalling just over an acre.²⁴

Meanwhile, Archer had been working in the pinnace, drawing up plans for the town that would lie within the defensive walls. Wingfield had gone to inspect them. He rejected Archer’s work, and a confrontation ensued, defeating the president’s efforts to give Gosnold’s restless, rebellious friend a useful role. Alternative plans were drawn up, which, from archaeological remains, appear to have allowed for a row of barracks next to the southern palisade, officers’ dwellings on the western side, a storehouse to the east, and a church in the middle.

The labourers worked around the clock, with the reluctant help of the ships’ crews, and within days Kendall’s design was taking shape. The curtain wall was made of rows of split logs, sunk into a ditch that was backfilled to keep them upright. At each corner, large crescent-shaped bulwarks were built using the same method, upon which the company’s carpenters constructed stout platforms to carry lookouts and artillery. Winches and cranes were erected to lift some of the ‘four and twenty pieces of ordnance’ brought from England, and soon the bulwarks bristled with culverins, enormous cannons with barrels 11 foot long, capable of shooting 18-pound shot over a distance of nearly 2,000 foot.²⁵

While excavating around the neck of land connecting the island to the mainland, workers found a stream flowing down a small bank. In the glint of the trickling water they saw what looked like yellow crystals. Captain John Martin was immediately summoned to inspect what they had found. Samples were taken and, using apparatus brought from London, he performed an assay or test to see if any metal could be drawn off. The news that he had managed to extract a small amount of what appeared to be gold ‘stirred up in them an unseasonable and inordinate desire after riches’. A barrel was filled with soil taken from the surrounding area, for testing back in England.²⁶

Meanwhile, the Indians kept up their attacks. As the fortifications rose, their tactics changed from full-frontal assaults to harassment. On Friday 29 May, they managed to shoot forty or so arrows ‘into and about the fort’ from the cover of the surrounding woodland, before being repulsed by a volley of musket fire. ‘They hurt not any of us,’ Archer wrote, ‘but finding one of our dogs, they killed him.’ The following Sunday, while feverish construction continued, ‘they came lurking in the thickets and long grass’. Eustace Clovill, a hapless offspring of Norfolk gentry, was found ‘straggling without the fort’, and was shot six times. His brief moment in history came when he staggered back to the fort with the arrows still stuck in his body, and shouted, ‘Arm! Arm!’ before collapsing. He died eight days later.

On Thursday 4 June, as dawn was breaking, one of the settlers left the fort ‘to do natural necessity’ in the latrine just beyond the palisade. As he squatted on the ground, he was shot with three arrows by Indians who had ‘most adventurously’ crept under the bulwark blocking access to the island.

The relentless assaults soon took their toll on English morale, and the acrimony that had been stewing since the ships were stuck on the Downs erupted with new vigour. The council began to disintegrate. ‘The cause of our factions was bred in England,’ Smith later observed, but ‘grew to that maturity among themselves that spoiled all’.

Religion remained a point of contention. On arrival, the settlement chaplain Robert Hunt had implemented a puritanical regime of daily common prayer, and lengthy sermons on Sunday mornings. Wingfield made his dislike of such pious earnestness known, and on several occasions found opportunities to miss, and even to cancel, the sermons.

In fact, according to their accusers, Wingfield and Newport had no interest in the venture’s spiritual mission, even though it featured prominently in the Royal Charter. They were merely ‘making Religion their colour, when all their aim was nothing but present profit’.

The most forceful critic was Captain Smith. Having kept uncharacteristically quiet during the James river expedition, he was driven by an overwhelming sense of vindication to confront Wingfield and the council. He demanded that the president take manful possession of this virgin land. The Indians had not cultivated it, so it no more belonged to them than to the wildlife in the undergrowth or the birds in the trees. In any case, these vast expanses contained ‘more land than all the people in Christendom can manure, and yet more to spare than all the natives of those Countries can use’.²⁷

This land was waiting to be fashioned ‘by labour’ into a new ‘commonwealth’, a new England. What could command more honour for a man, Smith later wrote, ‘with only his own merit to advance his fortunes … than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God’s blessing and his own industry without prejudice to any?’ He continued:

What can he do less hurtful to any, or more agreeable to God, than to seek to convert those poor Savages to know Christ and humanity, whose labours with discretion will triple requite thy charge and pain? What so truly suits with honour and honesty, as the discovering things unknown, erecting Towns, peopling Countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native mother country?²⁸

Several of the gentlemen excluded from the council could identify with these sentiments, and began to agitate for a more active, aggressive policy. Archer started ‘spewing out … venomous libels and infamous chronicles’ about Wingfield’s government. Wingfield had ‘affected a kingdom,’ he claimed. Archer was trying to summon a parliament, Wingfield retorted. On 6 June, Archer led a group, including several soldiers who had left their positions, who ‘put up a petition to the council for reformation’.²⁹

The content of the petition was not recorded, but its consequence was that four days later, Smith was finally absolved of all charges and made a member of the council. According to Smith’s later testimony, Wingfield was also required to pay him compensation to the value of £200, an enormous sum, which Smith claimed he magnanimously donated ‘to the store for the general use of the colony’.³⁰ The following day, ‘articles and orders for gentlemen and soldiers were upon the court of guard and content was in the quarter’, meaning that peace had been restored among the unsettled ranks.

On Saturday 13 June, to reinforce a new but still fragile mood of accord, Newport presented the soldiers and labourers with a sturgeon 7 foot long, which had been caught by the crew of his ship. The next day, the settlement was approached by two unarmed envoys. Archer recognized one of them to be the ‘Kind Consort’ who had followed them in the early days of the James river expedition. The reappearance of this mysterious individual comforted the settlers, and he was invited into the fort, which was in its final stages of construction. The envoy endeavoured to explain what had been going on, reassuring the embattled, bewildered Englishmen around him that the chiefs of the Pamunkey and Arrohateck were still their friends, as were those of two tribes the English had not yet encountered, the Mattapanient and Youghtanan, who lived on western tributaries of the Pamunkey, the river north of the James. However, several other tribes were their ‘contracted enemies’, including the Quiyoughcohannock, the Weyanock and the Paspahegh, upon whose land the English had now settled. ‘He counselled us to cut down the long weeds round about our fort and to proceed in our sawing,’ Archer reported. ‘Thus making signs to be with us shortly again, they parted.’

The day after this encounter, the fort was pronounced complete. It was crudely made and far from impregnable, but probably sufficient to frustrate a full-scale attack. Inside, however, conditions for the settlers were not much better than when they had arrived, possibly worse. Having failed to extract any trade or tribute from the Indians, their food was little more than bran. ‘Our drink was water, our lodgings castles in the air,’ as Smith put it. There were no permanent buildings, except perhaps for a store to keep provisions and armaments.³¹

Newport decided the time had come for him to leave. The ships were now fully laden with clapboard timber, the barrel of soil to test for metals, and upwards of two tons of sassafras, the highly profitable commodity brought back by Gosnold on his 1602 voyage.

The council assembled to draft a progress report for the Royal Council in London. It was brief and began on an optimistic note:

Within less than seven weeks, we are fortified well against the Indians; we have sown good store of wheat; we have sent you a taste of clapboard; we have built some houses; we have spared some hands to a discovery; and still as God shall enable us with strength we will better and better our proceedings.

There followed a complaint about the sailors, ‘waged men’ who fed off their supplies, and gathered valuable commodities such as sassafras for their own private gain, losing or damaging many tools in the process. However, mindful that these same sailors might be recruited for future relief missions, the council asked that they be ‘reasonably dealt withal, so as all the loss neither fall on us nor them’.

‘The land would flow with milk and honey if so seconded by your careful wisdoms and bountiful hands,’ the report continued. ‘We do not persuade to shoot one arrow to seek another, but to find them both. And we doubt not but to send them home with golden heads. At least our desires, labours, and lives shall to that engage themselves.’

They then listed the bountiful glories of their new home, the mountains, the rivers, the fish, the fruit, the miraculous medicinal herbs, before ending on a note of desperation:

We entreat your succours for our seconds with all expedition lest that all-devouring Spaniard lay his ravenous hands upon these goldshowing mountains, which, if it be so enabled, he shall never dare to think on.

This note doth make known where our necessities do most strike us. We beseech your present relief accordingly. Otherwise, to our greatest and last griefs, we shall against our wills not will that which we most willingly would.

The report was dated ‘James town in Virginia, this 22th of June’ and signed ‘your poor friends’ followed by a list of council names. Smith’s name appeared after President Wingfield’s.

As the council handed their report to Newport, another was pushed into his hand by one of the settlers, William Brewster. Brewster may have been related to the Pilgrim Father of the same name who set sail for America aboard the Mayflower 13 years later. He had been secretly commissioned by Cecil to write a private report on the expedition and in particular the conduct of the council.³²

Like the council, Brewster began with an optimistic assessment of the settlement’s prospects, and added an equally desperate plea for a supply mission to ensure their fulfilment:

Now is the King’s Majesty offered the most stately, rich kingdom in the world, never possess’d by any Christian prince. Be you one means among many to further our seconding to conquer this land as well as you were a means to further the discovery of it.

This was just the garnish for what followed: a report on the conduct of the council, describing the faction fighting that had nearly destroyed it. Unfortunately, although the beginning of the letter is still to be found among Cecil’s papers, the confidential part was torn off, and has never been recovered.

On Sunday 22 June, Hunt led the company in Holy Communion, the first to be held since their arrival. In the evening, Newport invited some of the gentlemen aboard his ship for a last supper. Final preparations were made on the Susan Constant and Discovery, while the Godspeed, which was to remain in Virginia, was decommissioned, her sails removed to the fort to prevent her being taken by renegades or attackers.

Newport set sail the following morning, promising to return within twenty weeks.³³ The settlers lined the shore and watched the fleet cast off and make its way down the majestic James. The ships disappeared within minutes behind the thick canopy of trees covering the eastern end of the island.

Anxiety, if not dread, gripped those left behind, as they walked back into their makeshift accommodation. Living conditions were still rough. Their ‘houses’ were for the most part fragile tents, devoid of home comforts. The weather, Indians and supplies were erratic, preventing all attempts to find a settled or familiar routine. Worse yet, the councillors in whose hands their fate now rested seemed to be infected with the scheming and plots, petty rules and brutal punishments they had hoped to leave behind in England.

‘You shall live freely there [in Virginia], without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers,’ a character in Eastward Hoe had promised. The hollow laughter aroused by those scurrilous words at the Blackfriars Theatre each night echoed all the way across the Atlantic.