The name of Christopher.
Value of the Indian alliance.
The men of bygone days were quite as fond as ourselves of playing with names, and the name of Christopher, or "Christ-bearer," was a favourite subject for such pastime. The old Syrian saint and martyr was said to have forded a river carrying Christ on his back in the form of a child; and so when in the year 1500 Columbus's famous pilot, Juan de La Cosa, made his map of the new discoveries, and came to a place where he did not know how to draw his coast-line, he filled the space with a picture of the new Christopher wading in mid-ocean and bringing over Christ to the heathen. At the court of James I. it was fashionable to make similar mild jests upon the name of Captain Christopher Newport, whose ships were carrying year by year the gospel to the tawny natives of Virginia. Very little of the good tidings, however, had the poor heathen of Pamunkey and Werowocomoco as yet received. So much ado had the English colonists to keep their own souls from quitting their bodies that they had little leisure to bestow upon the spiritual welfare of the Indians. By the accident of Smith's capture and the intercession of Pocahontas, they had effected a kind of alliance with the most powerful tribe in that part of the country, and this alliance had proved extremely valuable throughout the year 1608; without it the little colony might have perished before the arrival of the Second Supply. Nevertheless the friendship of the red men was a very uncertain and precarious factor in the situation. The accounts of the Englishmen show confused ideas as to the relations between the tribes and chieftains of the region; and as for the Indians, their acquaintanceship with white men was so recent that there was no telling what unforeseen circumstance might at any time determine their actions. The utmost sagacity was needed to retain the slight influence already acquired over them, while to alienate them might easily prove fatal. The colony was far from able to support itself, and as things were going there seemed little hope of improvement. The difficulties involved in the founding of colonies were not well understood, and the attempts to cope with them were unintelligent.
Gentlemen as pioneers.
In the lists of these earliest parties of settlers one cannot fail to notice the preponderance of those who are styled gentlemen, an epithet which in those days was not lavishly and indiscriminately but charily and precisely applied. As a rule the persons designated as gentlemen were not accustomed to manual labour. To meet the requirements of these aristocratic members of the community, we find in one of the lists the name of a dealer in perfumes. A few score of farmers, with abundance of live-stock, would have been far more to the purpose. Yet let us do justice to the gentlemen. One of the first company of settlers, the sturdy soldier Anas Todkill, thus testifies to their good spirit and efficiency: "Thirty of us [President Smith] conducted 5 myles from the fort, to learn to ... cut down trees and make clapboard.... Amongst the rest he had chosen Gabriel Beadell and John Russell, the only two gallants of this last supply [he means October, 1608] and both proper gentlemen. Strange were these pleasures to their conditions; yet lodging, eating and drinking, working or playing, they [were] but doing as the President did himselfe. All these things were carried on so pleasantly as within a week they became masters; making it their delight to heare the trees thunder as they fell; but the axes so oft blistered their tender fingers that many times every third blow had a loud othe to drowne the eccho; for remedie of which sinne, the President devised how to have every man's othes numbred, and at night for every othe to have a cann of water powred downe his sleeue, with which every offender was so washed (himselfe and all) that a man should scarce hear an othe in a weeke.
For he who scorns and makes but jests of cursings and his othe,
He doth contemne, not man but God; nor God, nor man, but both.
By this let no man thinke that the President and these gentlemen spent their time as common woodhackers at felling of trees, or such other like labours; or that they were pressed to it as hirelings or common slaues; for what they did, after they were but once a little invred, it seemed and some conceited it only as a pleasure and recreation: ... 30 or 40 of such voluntary gentlemen would doe more in a day than 100 of the rest that must be prest to it by compulsion." Nevertheless, adds this ingenuous writer, "twentie good workmen had been better than them all."[66]
All is not gold that glitters.
Glass and soap.
Disappointment of the Company.