When Captain Smith reached England he was twenty-five years old, of singular strength and beauty, a learned and most rarely accomplished soldier, a man of saintly life with a boy’s heart. I doubt if in the long annals of our people, there is one hero who left so sweet a memory.
Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement in Virginia had been wiped out by the red Indians, so the second expedition to that country had an adventurous flavor that appealed to Captain Smith. He gave all that he had to the venture, but being somewhat masterful, was put in irons during the voyage to America, and landed in deep disgrace, when every man was needed to work in the founding of the colony. Had all the officers of the expedition been drowned, and most of the members left behind, the enterprise would have had some chance of success, for it was mainly an expedition of wasters led by idiots. The few real workers followed Captain Smith in the digging and the building, the hunting and trading; while the idlers gave advice, and the leaders obstructed the proceedings. The summer was one of varied interest, attacks by the Indians, pestilence, famine and squabbles, so that the colony would have come to a miserable end but that Captain Smith contrived to make friends with the tribes, and induced them to sell him a supply of maize. He was up-country in December when the savages managed to scalp his followers and to take him prisoner. When they tried to kill him he seemed only amused, whereas they were terrified by feats of magic that made him seem a god. He was taken to the king—Powhatan—who received the prisoner in state, gave him a dinner, then ordered his head to be laid on a block and his brains dashed out. But before the first club crashed down a little Indian maid ran forward, pushed the executioners aside, taking his head in her arms, and holding on so tightly that she could not be pulled away. So Pocahontas, the king’s daughter, pleaded for the Englishman and saved him.
King Powhatan, with an eye to business, would now give the prisoner his liberty, provided that he might send two messengers with Smith for a brace of the demi-culverins with which the white men had defended the bastions of their fort. So the captain returned in triumph to his own people, and gladly presented the demi-culverins. At this the king’s messengers were embarrassed, because the pair of guns weighed four and a half tons. Moreover, when the weapons were fired to show their good condition, the Indians were quite cured of any wish for culverins, and departed with glass toys for the king and his family. In return came Pocahontas with her attendants laden with provisions for the starving garrison.
The English leaders were so grateful for succor that they charged Captain Smith with the first thing that entered their heads, condemned him on general principles, and would have hanged him, but that he asked what they would do for food when he was gone, then cheered the whole community by putting the prominent men in irons and taking sole command. Every five days came the Indian princess and her followers with a load of provisions for Captain Smith. The people called her the Blessed Pocahontas, for she saved them all from dying of starvation.
During the five weeks of his captivity, Smith had told the Indians fairy tales about Captain Newport, whose ship was expected soon with supplies for the colony. Newport was the great Merowames, king of the sea.
Captain John Smith
When Newport arrived he was fearfully pleased at being the great Merowames, but shared the disgust of the officials at Captain Smith’s importance. When he went to trade with the tribes he traveled in state, with Smith for interpreter, and began by presenting to Powhatan a red suit, a hat, and a white dog—gifts from the king of England. Then to show his own importance he heaped up all his trading goods, and offered them for such maize as Powhatan cared to sell, expecting tons and getting exactly four bushels. Smith, seeing that the colony would starve, produced some bright blue beads, “very precious jewels,” he told Powhatan, “composed of a most rare substance, and of the color of the skies, of a sort, indeed, only to be worn by the greatest kings of the world.”
After hard bargaining Powhatan managed to get a very few beads for a hundred bushels of grain.
The Virginia Company sent out more idlers from England, and some industrious Dutchmen who stole most of their weapons from the English to arm the Indian tribes; James I had Powhatan treated as a brother sovereign, and crowned with all solemnity, so that he got a swollen head and tried to starve the settlement. The colonists swaggered, squabbled and loafed, instead of storing granaries; but all parties were united in one ambition—planning unpleasant surprises for Captain Smith.