The researches of the late Buckingham Smith in the Spanish archives not only brought to light many [pg 852] points tending to fix the position of Axacan, but were also rewarded by finding two letters written at this point by these early apostles of Virginia. The father provincial wrote to the king; his associate, Father Quiros, addressed his letters to Melendez, and Father Segura added a few words, urging prompt relief. These last have fortunately thus reached us. Father Quiros wrote: “Seeing, then, the good-will which this people displayed—although, on the other hand, as I said, they are so famished that all expected to perish of hunger and cold this winter, as many did in preceding winters, because it is very hard for them to find the roots on which they usually sustain themselves—the great snows which fall in this land preventing their search—seeing also the great hope there is of the conversion of this people and the service of our Lord and his Majesty, and a way to the mountains and China, etc., it seemed to the Provincial Father Segura that we should venture to remain with so few ship-stores and provisions, though we ate on the way two of the four barrels of biscuit and the little flour they gave us for the voyage.”
They resolved to stay, seeing no danger except that of famine; for they urged speedy relief. “It is very necessary that you should endeavor, if possible, to supply us with all despatch; and if it be impossible to do so in winter, at least it is necessary that in March, or, at the furthest, early in April, a good supply be sent, so as to give all these people wherewith to plant.”
The pilot of the vessel, short of provisions from the time lost on reaching Axacan, put the missionaries hastily ashore on the 11th of September, and the next day sailed, “leaving us in this depopulated land with the discomforts already described,” say the missionaries.
It was arranged between the missionaries and this pilot that, about the time of his expected return, they would have Indians on the lookout, apparently at the mouth of the river, who were to build signal-fires to attract attention. On seeing these beacons he was to give them a letter for the missionaries.
The little band of Christians beheld the vessel hoist her sail and glide down the river. They stood alone in a wild land, far from aid and sympathy. Two priests, three religious, Don Luis, and four other Indian converts, formed the little Christendom. But their destination was not yet reached. Guided by Don Luis, they took up their march for the river six miles off, Indians bearing some of their scanty supplies, the missionaries themselves carrying their chapel service, books, and other necessaries. After this portage they embarked on the river—which they might have ascended, and which seems evidently the Rappahannock—and thus penetrated some two leagues or more further into the country to the villages of the tribe.
Yet, even before they left the banks of the Potomac they were called upon to commence their ministry. “The cacique, brother of Don Luis, having,” says Father Quiros, “a son three years old very sick, who was seven or eight leagues from here, as it seemed to him to be on the point of death, he was instant that we should go to baptize it; wherefore it occurred to the vice-principal to send one of us by night to baptize it, as it was very near death.”
The Indians on the Rappahannock did not dwell in palisaded towns, like the Conestogas on the [pg 853] Susquehanna, and their kindred, the Five Nations, in New York. From the Spanish accounts they dwelt in scattered bands, each forming a little hamlet of a few cabins, each house in the midst of its rude garden; for they cultivated little ground, depending on the spontaneous productions of the earth: acorns, nuts, berries, and roots. Such were they when Smith described them thirty years later, when Powhatan, residing on the James, ruled over the scattered bands as far as the Rappahannock. It was evidently among that tribe, so well known to us by Smith's descriptions, that Father Segura and his companions began their labors, and Powhatan may well have been a son of the cacique, brother of Don Luis.
The accounts of the subsequent proceedings of the little mission colony are derived from Alphonsus, one of the Indian boys, and are somewhat obscure. They make the journey to the hamlets of the tribe a weary one through wood and desert and marsh, loaded with their baggage, and living on roots, and not the short journey which Father Quiros anticipated. His letter stated that the Indian canoes were all broken; it was probably found impossible to attempt to repair them, and the whole party trudged on by the riverside to their destination.
The hamlet first reached was a wretched one, tenanted only by gaunt and naked savages, who bore the famine imprinted on their whole forms. Here amid the tent-like lodges of the Indians, made of poles bound together and covered with mats and bark, Father Segura and his companions erected a rude house of logs, the first white habitation in that part of America—first church of the living God, first dwelling-place of civilized men; for one end was devoted to their chapel, while the other was their simple dwelling. Here doubtless, before the close of September, 1570, the little community recited their Office together, and, under the tuition of Don Luis, began to study the language. Here, at this modest altar, the Holy Sacrifice was for the first time offered by the two priests. Nowhere on the continent to the northward were the sacred rites then heard, unless, indeed, at Brest, in Canada. Greenland, with its bishop and clergy and convents, was a thing of the past; Cartier's colony, on the St. Lawrence, had been abandoned. The Chapel of the Mother of God, at Jacan, was the church of the frontier, the outpost of the faith.
As Father Segura had foreseen that he must winter there, and might not receive any supplies before March or April, he doubtless began, like his Indian neighbors, to lay up a store of provisions for the long winter. Acorns, walnuts, chestnuts, and chinquapins were regularly gathered by the natives, as well as persimmons and a root like a potato, growing in the swampy lands. Game must have been scarce on that narrow peninsula between two rivers, and they had no means of hunting. Though the rivers of Virginia teemed with fish, we find no indication that the missionaries were supplied with means of deriving any food from that source.