It is evident from Smith's letter that he anticipated trouble from the Indians. In The Powhatan's promise to count him forever as his own son he put little faith. His own view of the noble savage seems to have been much the same as that expressed about this time by Rev. Richard Hakluyt, in a letter of advice and warning to the London Company: "But for all their fair and cunning speeches, [these natives] are not overmuch to be trusted; for they be the greatest traitors of the world, as their manifold most crafty contrived and bloody treasons ... do evidently prove. They be also as unconstant as the weathercock, and most ready to take all occasions of advantages to do mischief. They are great liars and dissemblers; for which faults oftentimes they had their deserved payments.... To handle them gently, while gentle courses may be found to serve, ... will be without comparison the best; but if gentle polishing will not serve, [we] shall not want hammerers and rough masons enow—I mean our old soldiers trained up in the Netherlands—to square and prepare them to our Preacher's hands."[71]
What Smith dreaded.
How the red men's views of the situation were changed.
There is something delicious in the naïve promptness with which this worthy clergyman admits the probable need of prescribing military measures as a preparation for the cure of souls. The London Company may have stood in need of such advice; Smith did not. He looked upon Indians already with the eyes of a frontiersman, and the rough vicissitudes of his life had made him quick to interpret signs of mischief. It was not so much a direct assault that he feared as a contest arising from the Indians' refusal to sell their corn. During the past winter Pocahontas had made frequent and regular visits to Jamestown, bringing corn and occasionally venison, raccoons, and other game; and this aid had been so effective as to ward off famine for that season. But a change had come over her father and his councillors. As the English kept strengthening their fortifications and building houses, as the second and third shiploads of colonists arrived, the Indians must have begun to realize that it was their intention to stay in the country. On Smith's first visit to Werowocomoco, when The Powhatan said that he should henceforth regard him as a son, he showed himself extremely curious to know why the English had come to his part of the world. Smith did not think it safe to confess that they had come to stay; so he invented a story of their having been defeated by the Spaniards and driven ashore; then, he added, the pinnace being leaky, they were obliged to stay until their Father Newport should come back and get them and take them away. Since that conversation Father Newport had come twice, and each time he had brought many of his children and taken away but few. Instead of 38 men at Jamestown there were now 200. Every painted and feathered warrior knew that these pale children were not good farmers, and that their lives depended upon a supply of corn. By withholding this necessary of life, how easy it might be to rid the land of their presence!
A bold resolve.
Voyage to Werowocomoco.
As the snows began to come, toward Christmas of 1608, Smith's fears began to be realized. When the Indians were asked for corn they refused with a doggedness that withstood even the potent fascination of blue glass beads. Smith fully comprehended the seriousness of the situation. "No persuasion," he says, "could persuade him to starve." If the Indians would not trade of their own free will they must be made to trade. The Powhatan asked for some men who could aid him in building a house, and Smith sent to Werowocomoco fourteen men, including four of the newly arrived Germans. Smith followed with twenty-seven men in the pinnace and barge. In the party were George Percy and Francis West, brother of the Lord Delaware of whom we shall have soon to speak. At Warrasqueak Bay, where they stopped the first night, a chieftain told them to beware of treachery at Werowocomoco; The Powhatan, he said, had concocted a scheme for cutting their throats. Captain Smith thanked the redskin for his good counsel, assured him of his undying affection, and proceeded down the river to Hampton, where he was very hospitably entertained by the Kecoughtans, a small tribe numbering about twenty warriors. For about a week, from December 30, 1608, till January 6, 1609, a fierce blizzard of snow and sleet obliged the party to stay in the dry and well-warmed wigwams of the Kecoughtans, who regaled them with oysters, fish, venison, and wild fowl. As they passed around to the northern side of the peninsula and approached the York River, the Indians seemed less friendly. When they arrived at Werowocomoco the river was frozen for nearly half a mile from the shore, but Smith rammed and broke the ice with his barge until he had pushed up to a place where it was thick enough to walk safely; then sending the barge back to the pinnace the whole party were landed by instalments. They quartered themselves in the first house they came to, and sent to The Powhatan for food. He sent them venison, turkeys, and corn-bread.
Smith's parley with The Powhatan.
The next day, January 13, the wily barbarian came to see Smith and asked him bluntly how soon he was going away. He had not asked the English, he said, to come and visit him, and he was sure he had no corn for them, nevertheless he thought he knew where he could get forty baskets of it for one good English sword per basket. Hearing this speech, Captain Smith pointed to the new house already begun, and to the men whom he had sent to build it, and said, "Powhatan, I am surprised to hear you say that you have not invited us hither; you must have a short memory!" At this retort the old chieftain burst into fits of laughter, but when he had recovered gravity it appeared that his notions as to a bargain remained unchanged. He would sell his corn for swords and guns, but not for copper; he could eat corn, he could not eat copper. Then said Captain Smith, "Powhatan, ... to testify my love [for you] I sent you my men for your building, neglecting mine own. What your people had, you have engrossed, forbidding them our trade; and now you think by consuming the time we shall consume for want, not having [wherewith] to fulfill your strange demands. As for swords and guns, I told you long ago I had none to spare.... You must know [that the weapons] I have can keep me from want; yet steal or wrong you I will not, nor dissolve that friendship we have mutually promised, except you constrain me by ... bad usage." This covert threat was not lost upon the keen barbarian. He quickly replied that within two days the English should have all the corn he could spare, but said he, "I have some doubt, Captain Smith, [about] your coming hither, [which] makes me not so kindly seek to relieve you as I would. For many do inform me [that] your coming hither is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my country. [They] dare not come to bring you corn, seeing you thus armed with your men. To free us of this fear, leave your weapons aboard [the ship], for here they are needless, we being all friends, and forever Powhatans."
A game of bluff.