All hands now fell to work, the council planning a fort, the rest clearing ground for pitching tents, preparing clapboard for freighting the vessels, laying off gardens, and making fishing-nets. The Indians frequently visited them in a friendly way. The president's overweening jealousy would allow no military exercise or fortification, save the boughs of trees thrown together in a semicircle by the energy of Captain Kendall.
On the fourth of June, Newport, Smith, and twenty others were dispatched to discover the head of the river on which they were seated, called by the Indians, Powhatan, and by the English, the James. The natives everywhere received them kindly, dancing, and feasting them with bread, fish, strawberries, and mulberries, for which Newport requited them with bells, pins, needles, and looking-glasses, which so pleased them that they followed the strangers from place to place. In six days they reached a town called Powhatan, one of the seats of the great chief of that name, whom they found there. It consisted of twelve wigwams, pleasantly situated on a bold range of hills overlooking the river, with three islets in front, and many corn-fields around. This picturesque spot lies on the north bank of the river, about a mile below the falls, and still retains the same name.
On the day of their arrival, the tenth of June, the party visited the falls, and again on the day following, Whitsunday, when they erected a cross there to indicate the farthest point of discovery. Newport, in return for Powhatan's hospitality, presented him with a gown and a hatchet. Upon their return, the Indians first gave occasion for distrust at Weyanoke, within twenty miles of Jamestown. Arriving there on the next day, June the twentieth, they found that a boy had been killed, and seventeen men, including the greater part of the council, had been wounded by the savages; that during the assault a cross-bar shot from one of the vessels had struck down a bough of a tree among them and made them retire, but for which all the settlers there would probably have been massacred, as they were at the time of the attack planting corn in security, and without arms. Wingfield now consented that the fort should be palisaded, cannon mounted, and the men armed and exercised. The attacks and ambuscades of the natives were frequent, and the English, by their careless straggling, were often wounded, while the fleet-footed savages easily escaped.
Thus the colonists endured continual hardships, guarding the workmen by day and keeping watch by night. Six weeks being passed in this way, Newport was now about to return to England. Ever since their departure from the Canaries, save for a while in the West Indies, Smith had been in a sort of duress upon the false and scandalous charges of some of the principal men in the expedition, who, envying his superiority, gave out that he intended to usurp the command, murder the council, and make himself king; that his confederates were distributed in the three vessels; and that divers of them, who had revealed it, would confirm it. Upon these accusations Smith had been arrested, and had now lain for several months under the cloud of these suspicions. Upon the eve of Newport's departure, Smith's accusers affecting through pity to refer his case to the council in England, rather than overwhelm him on the spot by an exposure of his criminal designs, he defied their malice, defeated their base machinations, and so bore himself throughout the whole affair, that all saw his innocence and the malignity of his enemies. The very witnesses suborned to accuse him charged his enemies with subornation of perjury. Kendall, the ringleader of them, was adjudged to pay him two hundred pounds in damages, which Smith contributed to the common stock of the colony. During these disputes Hunt, the chaplain, used his exertions to reconcile the parties, and at his instance Smith was admitted into the council on the twentieth day of June, and on the next day they all received the communion. The Indians now sued for peace, and two days after Newport weighed anchor, leaving at Jamestown one hundred settlers, with provisions sufficient, as was supposed, for more than three months.[43:A]
Not long after his departure a fatal sickness began to prevail at Jamestown, engendered by the insalubrity of the place, the exposure of the settlers, and the scarcity and bad quality of their food. Hitherto they had procured provisions from the vessels, but now, for some time, the daily allowance of each man was a pint of damaged wheat or barley. "Our drink was water, and our lodgings castles in the air." By September fifty of them, being one-half of the colony, died; the rest made out to subsist upon sturgeon and crabs. Among the victims of disease was Bartholomew Gosnold, the projector of the expedition, whose name is well worthy to be ranked with Smith and Raleigh. The sick, during this calamitous season, received the faithful attentions of Thomas Wotton, surgeon-general.
Wingfield, the president, after engrossing, as it was alleged, the public store of provisions to his own use, attempted to escape from the colony in the pinnace, and return to England. This baseness roused the indignation even of the emaciated survivors, and they deposed him, and appointed Captain John Ratcliffe in his place, and displaced Kendall, a confederate of Wingfield, from the council.
In a manuscript journal of these early incidents, written by Wingfield himself, and preserved in the Lambeth Library, he undertakes to exculpate himself from the charge of engrossing the common store in the following terms: "As I understand, by report, I am much charged with starving the colony; I did always give every man his allowance faithfully, both of corn, oil, aquavitæ, etc., as was by the council proportioned; neither was it bettered after my time, until toward the end of March a biscuit was allowed to every workingman for his breakfast, by means of the provision brought us by Captain Newport, as will appear hereafter. It is further said I did much banquet and riot; I never had but one squirrel roasted, whereof I gave a part to Mr. Ratcliffe, then sick; yet was that squirrel given me. I did never heat a flesh-pot but when the common-pot was so used likewise; yet how often Mr. Presidents and the councillors have, night and day, been endangered to break their backs, so laden with swans, geese, ducks, etc. How many times their flesh-pots have swelled, many hungry eyes did behold, to their great longing; and what great thieves and thieving there hath been in common store since my time, I doubt not but is already made known to his majesty's council for Virginia."
At length their stores were almost exhausted, the small quantity of wine remaining being reserved for the communion-table; the sturgeon gone, all further effort abandoned in despair, and an attack from the savages each moment expected. At this hopeless conjuncture, a benignant Providence put it into the hearts of the Indians to supply the famished sufferers with an abundance of fruits and provision. Mankind, in trying scenes, render an involuntary homage to superior genius. Ratcliffe, the new president, and Martin, finding themselves incompetent and unpopular, intrusted the helm of affairs to Smith, who, acting as cape-merchant, set the colonists to work, some to mow, others to build houses and thatch them, he himself always performing the heaviest task. In a short time habitations were provided for the greater part of the survivors, and a church was built. Smith next embarked in a shallop to go in quest of supplies. Ignorance of the Indian language, the want of sails for the boat, and of clothing for the men and their small force, were discouraging impediments, but they did not dishearten him. With a crew of six or seven he went down the river to Kecoughtan, a town of eighteen cabins. Here he replied to a scornful defiance, by a volley of musketry and capturing their okee—an idol stuffed with moss, and painted and adorned with copper chains—so terrified them, that they quickly brought him a supply of venison, wild-fowl, and bread. Having procured a supply of corn, on his return he discovered the town and county of Warrasqueake, where he procured a further supply. After this, in several journeys, he explored the borders of the Chickahominy River. During his absence, Wingfield and Kendall, leaguing with the sailors and others, seized the pinnace in order to escape to England; but Smith, returning unexpectedly, opened so hot a fire upon them as compelled them to stay or sink. For this offence Kendall was tried by a jury, convicted, and shot.[45:A] Not long after, Ratcliffe and Captain Gabriel Archer made a similar attempt, and it was foiled by Smith's vigilance and resolution.
At the approach of winter the rivers of Virginia abounded with wild-fowl, and the English now were well supplied with bread, peas, persimmons, fish, and game. But this plenty did not last long; for what Smith carefully provided the colonists carelessly wasted. The idlers at Jamestown, including some of the council, now began to mutter complaints against Smith for not having discovered the source of the Chickahominy, it being supposed that the South Sea or Pacific Ocean lay not far distant, and that a communication with it would be found by some river running from the northwest. The Chickahominy flowed in that direction, and hence the solicitude of these Jamestown cosmographers to trace that river to its head. To allay this dissatisfaction of the council, Smith made another voyage up that river, and proceeded until it became necessary, in order to pass, to cut away a large tree which had fallen across the stream. When at last the barge could advance no farther, he returned eight miles and moored her in a wide bay out of danger, and leaving orders to his men not to venture on shore until his return, accompanied by two of his men and two Indian guides, and leaving seven men in the barge, he went still higher up in a canoe to the distance of twenty miles. In a short time after he had parted from the barge the men left in her went ashore, and one of them, George Cassen, was surprised and killed. Smith, in the mean while, not suspecting this disaster, reached the marshy ground toward the head of the river, "the slashes," and went out with his gun to provide food for the party, and took with him one of the Indians. During his excursion his two men, Robinson and Emry, were slain; and he himself was attacked by a numerous party of Indians, two of whom he killed with a pistol. He protected himself from their arrows by making a shield of his guide, binding him fast by the arm with one of his garters. Many arrows pierced his clothes, and some slightly wounded him. Endeavoring to reach the canoe, and walking backward with his eye still fixed on his pursuers, he sunk to his waist in an oozy creek, and his savage with him. Nevertheless the Indians were afraid to approach, until, being now half-dead with cold, he threw away his arms, when they drew him forth, and led him to the fire where his two companions were lying dead. Here the Indians chafed his benumbed limbs, and having restored the vital heat, Smith inquired for their chief, and they pointed him to Opechancanough, the great chief of Pamunkey. Smith presented him a mariner's compass; the vibrations of the mysterious needle astonished the untutored sons of the forest. In a short time they bound the prisoner to a tree, and were about to shoot him to death, when Opechancanough holding up the compass, they all laid down their bows and arrows. Then marching in Indian file they led the captive guarded, by fifteen men, about six miles, to Orapakes, a hunting town in the upper part of the Chickahominy swamp, and about twelve miles northeast from the falls of James River (Richmond.) At this town, consisting of thirty or forty houses, built like arbors and covered with mats, the women and children came forth to meet them, staring in amazement at Smith. Opechancanough and his followers performed their military exercises, and joined in the war-dance. Smith was confined in a long house under a guard, and an enormous quantity of bread and venison was set before him, as if to fatten him for sacrifice, or because they supposed that a superior being required a proportionately larger supply of food. An Indian who had received some toys from Smith at Jamestown, now, in return, brought him a warm garment of fur—a pleasing instance of gratitude, a sentiment often found even in the breast of a savage. Another Indian, whose son had been mortally wounded by Smith, made an attempt to kill him in revenge, and was only prevented by the interposition of his guards.
Opechancanough meditating an assault upon Jamestown, undertook to entice Smith to join him by offers of life, liberty, land, and women. Being allowed to send a message to Jamestown, he wrote a note on a leaf of a book, giving information of the intended assault, and directing what means should be employed to strike terror into the messengers, and what presents should be sent back by them. Three men dispatched with the note returned with an answer and the presents, in three days, notwithstanding the rigor of the season; it being the midst of the winter of 1607, remarkable for its extraordinary severity, and the ground being covered with snow. Opechancanough and his people looked upon their captive as some supernatural being, and were filled with new wonder on seeing how the "paper could speak." Abandoning the design of attacking Jamestown, they conducted Smith through the country of the Youghtanunds, Mattapanients, Payanketanks, Nantaughtacunds, and Onawmanients, on the banks of the Rappahannock, and Potomac. Thence he was taken to Pamaunkee, at the junction of the Matapony and Pamunkey—the residence of Opechancanough. Here, for three days, they engaged in their horrid orgies and incantations, with a view to divine their prisoner's secret designs whether friendly or hostile. They also showed him a bag of gunpowder, which they were reserving till the next spring, when they intended to sow it in the ground, as they were desirous of propagating so useful an article.