Smith now demanded a trial on the charges which had led to his imprisonment. In spite of objections from Wingfield a jury was granted, and Smith was acquitted of all the charges; so that on the 10th of June he was allowed to take his seat in the Council. On the 15th the fort was finished, and on the 22d Captain Newport sailed for England with a cargo of sassafras and fine wood for wainscoting. He took the direct route homeward, for need was now visibly pressing. He promised to be back in Virginia within twenty weeks, but all the food he could leave in the fort was reckoned to be scarcely enough for fifteen weeks, so that the company were put upon short rations. According to Studley, 105 persons were left at Jamestown, of whom besides the 6 councillors, the clergyman and the surgeon, there were mentioned by name 29 gentlemen, 6 carpenters, 1 mason, 2 bricklayers, 1 blacksmith, 1 sailor, 1 drummer, 1 tailor, 1 barber, 12 labourers, and 4 boys, with 38 whom he neither names or classifies but simply mentions as "divers others." The food left in store for this company was not appetizing. After the ship had gone, says Richard Potts, "there remained neither tavern, beer-house, nor place of relief but the common kettle; ... and that was half a pint of wheat and as much barley, boiled with water, for a man a day; and this, having fried some 26 weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many worms as grains.... "Our [only] drink was water.... Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for saints."[51] Chickens were raised, but not enough for so many mouths, and as there were no cattle or sheep a nourishing diet of meat and milk was out of the question. Nor do we find much mention of game, though there were some who warded off the pangs of starvation by catching crabs and sturgeon in the river. With such inadequate diet, with unfamiliar kinds of labour, and with the frightful heat of an American summer, the condition of the settlers soon came to be pitiable. Disease soon added to their sufferings. Fevers lurked in the air of Jamestown. Before the end of September more than fifty of the company were in their graves. The situation is graphically described by one of the survivors, the Hon. George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland: "There were neuer Englishmen left in a forreigne Countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new discouered Virginia. Wee watched euery three nights, lying on the bare ... ground, what weather soeuer came; [and] warded all the next day; which brought our men to bee most feeble wretches. Our food was but a small Can of Barlie sodden in water to fiue men a day. Our drink cold water taken out of the River; which was at a floud verie salt: at a low tide full of slime and filth; which was the destruction of many of our men. Thus we lived for the space of fiue months in this miserable distresse, not hauing fiue able men to man our Bulwarkes upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to haue put a terrour in the Sauages hearts, we had all perished by those vild and cruell Pagans, being in that weake estate as we were; our men night and day groaning in every corner of the Fort most pittiful to heare. If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to bleed to heare the pitifull murmurings and outcries of our sick men without reliefe, euery night and day for the space of sixe weekes: some departing out of the World, many times three or foure in a night; in the morning their bodies being trailed out of their Cabines like Dogges, to be buried. In this sort did I see the mortalitie of diuers of our people,"[52]
Quarrels.
Wingfield deposed; Ratcliffe chosen president, Sept., 1607.
In such a state of things our colonists would have been more than human had they shown very amiable tempers. From the early wanderings of the Spaniards in Darien down to the recent marches of Stanley in Africa, men struggling with the wilderness have fiercely quarrelled. The fever at Jamestown carried off Captain Gosnold in August, and after his death the feud between Smith's friends and Wingfield's flamed up with fresh virulence. Both gentlemen have left printed statements, and in our time the quarrel is between historians as to which to believe. Perhaps it is Smith's detractors who are just at this moment the more impetuous and implacable, appealing as they do to the churlish feeling that delights in seeing long-established reputations assailed. Such writers will tell you as positively as if there could be no doubt about it, that Smith was engaged in a plot with two other members of the Council to depose Wingfield from his presidency and establish a "triumvirate" over that tiny woodland company. Others will assert, with equal confidence, that Wingfield was a tyrant whose ruthless rule became insupportable. A perusal of his "Discourse of Virginia," written in 1608 in defence of his conduct, should make it clear, I think, that he was an honourable gentleman, but ill fitted for the trying situation in which he found himself. To control the rations of so many hungry men was no pleasant or easy matter. It was charged against Wingfield that he kept back sundry dainties, and especially some wine and spirits for himself and a few favoured friends; but his quite plausible defence is that he reserved two gallons of sack for the communion table and a few bottles of brandy for extreme emergencies, but the other members of the Council, whose flasks were all empty, "did long for to sup up that little remnant!"[53] At length a suspicion arose that he intended to take one of the small vessels that remained in the river and abandon the colony. Early in September the Council deposed him and elected John Ratcliffe in his place. A few days later Wingfield was condemned to pay heavy damages to Smith for defaming his character. "Then Master Recorder," says poor Wingfield, "did very learnedly comfort me that if I had wrong I might bring my writ of error in London; whereat I smiled.... I tould Master President I ... prayed they would be more sparing of law vntill wee had more witt or wealthe."[54]
Execution of a member of the Council.
An awful dignity hedged about the sacred person of the president of that little colony of fifty men. One day President Ratcliffe beat James Reed, the blacksmith, who so far forgot himself as to strike back, and for that heinous offence was condemned to be hanged; but when already upon the fatal ladder, and, so to speak in extremis, like Reynard the Fox, the resourceful blacksmith made his peace with the law by revealing a horrid scheme of mutiny conceived by George Kendall, a member of the Council. Of the details of the affair nothing is known save that Kendall was found guilty, and instead of a plebeian hanging there was an aristocratic shooting. In telling the story Wingfield observes that if such goings-on were to be heard of in England, "I fear it would drive many well-affected myndes from this honourable action of Virginia."
Smith is captured by Opekankano,
Wingfield's pamphlet freely admits that Smith's activity in trading with the Indians for corn was of great service to the suffering colony. With the coming of autumn so many wild fowl were shot that the diet was much improved. On the 10th of December Smith started on an exploring expedition up the Chickahominy River. Having gone as far as his shallop would take him, he left seven men to guard it while he went on in a canoe with only two white men and two Indian guides. This little party had arrived at White Oak Swamp, or somewhere in that neighbourhood, when they were suddenly attacked by 200 Indians led by Opekankano, a brother of The Powhatan. Smith's two comrades were killed, and he was captured after a sturdy resistance, but not until he had slain two Indians with his pistol. It was quite like the quick-witted man to take out his ivory pocket compass, and to entertain the childish minds of the barbarians with its quivering needle which they could plainly see through the glass, but, strange to say, could not feel when they tried to touch it. Very like him it was to improve the occasion with a brief discourse on star craft, eked out no doubt with abundant gesticulation, which may have led his hearers to regard him as a wizard. There seems to have been a difference of opinion among them. They tied Smith to a tree, and the fate of Saint Sebastian seemed in store for him, when Opekankano held up the compass; then the captive was untied, and they marched away through the forest, taking him with them.
who takes him to Werowocomoco, Jan., 1608.
It is not at all clear why the red men should have made this attack. Hitherto the Powhatans had seemed friendly to the white men and desirous of an alliance with them. There is a vague traditional impression that Opekankano was one of a party opposed to such a policy; so that his attitude might remind us of the attitude of Montezuma's brother Cuitlahuatzin toward the army of Cortes approaching Mexico. Such a view is not improbable. Wingfield, moreover, tells us that two or three years before the arrival of the English at Jamestown some white men had ascended a river to the northward, probably the Pamunkey or the Rappahannock, and had forcibly kidnapped some Indians. If there is truth in this, the kidnappers may have belonged to the ill-fated expedition of Bartholomew Gilbert. Wingfield says that Opekankano carried Smith about the country to several villages to see if anybody could identify him with the leader of that kidnapping party. Smith's narrative confirms this statement, and adds that it was agreed that the captain in question was a much taller man than he. His story is full of observations on the country. Opekankano's village consisted of four or five communal houses, each about a hundred feet in length, and from the sandy hill in which it stood some scores of such houses could be seen scattered about the plain. At length Smith was brought to Werowocomoco and into the presence of The Powhatan, who received him in just such a long wigwam. The elderly chieftain sat before the fireplace, on a kind of bench, and was covered with a robe of raccoon skins, all with the tails on and hanging like ornamental tassels. Beside him sat his young squaws, a row of women with their faces and bare shoulders painted bright red and chains of white shell beads about their necks stood around by the walls, and in front of them stood the grim warriors.