Love and Hate in Jamestown

by David A. Price

  Their enemies, the men explained, were the Paspahegh (who claimed the territory in which the English had built), the Weyanock (whom Newport’s party had been visiting on the last day of their journey), the Appomattoc, the Kiskiack, and the Quiyoughcohannock. Their friends—the Arrohattoc, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, and the Youghtanund—would try to intercede with them. It was an unsettling picture: the hostile tribes, by and large, were their neighbors; their professed friends were the tribes furthest away. The closer a weroance was to the English, the more likely he was to regard them as foes. To know the colonists was not necessarily to love them, contrary to their expectations.

  On their way out, the messengers pointed out to Newport and Wingfield that the English would be safer if they cut down the long grass around the fort. No doubt the natives were puzzled that the colony’s leadership had not already thought this through on its own, after a week of attacks in which the enemy always used the grass to achieve surprise. That Wingfield needed the suggestion in the first place was ample testimony that he was ill equipped to deal with the near-crisis situation.9

  Three or four days before Newport left, he asked Wingfield how he felt settled in his presidency. Wingfield answered that the only two men who could possibly stand in the way were his fellow councilor Bartholomew Gosnold and Gosnold’s friend Gabriel Archer. Wingfield was not concerned about Gosnold, who was an ally of his, but Archer was another matter. “For the one [Gosnold] was strong with friends and followers, and could if he would; and the other was troubled with an ambitious spirit, and would if he could.”

  The presidency had subjected Wingfield to great stresses as he found himself facing critics within the colony and enemies without. Confiding in Newport probably gave Wingfield a modest, but welcome, feeling of relief. It was natural for Wingfield to ventilate a little, and utterly harmless. After all, the only thing that could go wrong was that Newport might pass his comments along, and that was inconceivable.

  So matters became awkward when Newport, with all good intentions, promptly relayed Wingfield’s words to Gosnold and Archer, urging them to “be mindful of their duties to His Majestie and the colony.” Thanks to Newport, Archer knew Wingfield was afraid of him, and Wingfield knew he knew. 10

  With that, Newport and his sailors bid adieu on June 22. He carried with him a report from the council to the Virginia Company, with the optimistic news that “within lesse then seaven weekes, wee are fortified well against the Indians, we have sowen good store of wheate, we have sent yow a taste of clapboord, wee have built some houses, wee have spared some hands to a discoverie [exploration], and still, as god shall enable us with strength, wee will better and better our proceedinges.” The council also asked the company to compensate the colony for some tools that Newport’s men had lost or broken. (No mention was made of their labors building the fort.)

  Newport also brought letters from the colonists. These would have been censored by the council for any negativity, in accord with the company’s directions, but it is unlikely that much cutting was needed; the colonists had every interest in painting a hopeful picture so that the Virginia Company would keep the colony funded and the supplies coming. William Brewster, a gentleman, told the earl of Salisbury—as noted, a leader in the Virginia Company council in London—that he estimated Virginia “the most statlye, rich kingdome in the woorld.” With the earl’s continued support of the venture, Brewster said, “you, yet maye lyve to see Ingland, moore riche, & renowned, then any kingdome, in all Ewroopa.”

  Gabriel Archer sent home his relation of events, together with descriptions of the local land and people. “The mayne river aboundes with sturgeon very large and excellent good: having also in the mouth of every brook and in every creek both store and exceeding good of divers kindes.” The soil, he wrote, is “more fertill than can be wel exprest” and “altogether aromaticall.” Not only does it yield corn, nuts, and berries, but also drugs for which the “salvages” claim wondrous properties; in the margin, he remarked on a “Virginia bloud wort which heales poysoned woundes.”

  Archer found much to like in the natives. Of the men, he wrote, “They are proper lusty streight men very strong runn exceeding swiftly.” He termed their skills in battle “admirable” (though this presumably was a virtue only when turned against other tribes). With apparent approval, he noted that the women accomplish all the labor at home while the men “hunt and goe at their pleasure.” They wear their hair long, “save clipt somewhat short afore,” and, like the men, they dye themselves decoratively. The men may have multiple wives, “to whome as near as I could perceive they keep constant.”

  Archer did disapprove of the natives’ proclivity toward theft. “The people steale any thing comes neare them, yea are so practiced in this art that, lookeing in our face, they would with their foot betwene their toes convey a chizell, knife, percer or any indifferent light thing: which having once conveyed, they hold it an injury to take the same from them.” Overall, though, he judged them ready to be civilized and introduced to the Christian faith, “apt both to understand and speake our language.”

  As the Susan Constant and the Godspeed pushed away from their moorings at Jamestown peninsula, Newport was leaving behind a colony with a completed fort, but not much else. The council observed in its report that the men of Jamestown had built some houses; while this was true, as far as it went, it was also true that most of the men had not gotten around to building themselves shelter and were still living in tents. Part of the problem was Wingfield’s desire to show quick results by sending back clapboard right away, a distracting project that soaked up labor at a critical stage. Another obstacle was simple lack of motivation: springtime in the vicinity of Jamestown is deceptively mild, and so the men would have failed to anticipate the extremes of temperature that were coming their way. 11

  Still, the colony’s prospects seemed to be good. Fish and game really were there for the taking. And there was heartening news: Chief Powhatan sent a messenger from his home at Werowocomoco, about twenty miles distant, informing the English that he desired friendly relations, and that they could “sow and reap in peace.”

  But then something odd happened. When Newport left, taking with him much of the colony’s real labor force, rational men would have recognized it as a signal to step up their own efforts—building homes and gathering food, especially. Instead, it seems that the work all but stopped. No one knows why. George Percy, gentleman, complained that Newport’s departure had left the colony “verie bare and scantie of victualls”; what was their excuse for not doing something about it?

  True, half the colonists were not the sort to get their hands dirty, but even they must have understood that their bloodlines alone were not going to put food on the plate. If they thought someone else was doing the work, one look around would have dispelled that notion. The men apparently felt content to wait for Newport’s return with fresh supplies and more free labor, even though it could easily take him six months or more to make the round trip.

  Daily rations for each man were half a pint of barley boiled in water and half a pint of wheat, both teeming with worms. Their drink was water, the same as the natives’. “Had we been as free from all sinnes as gluttony, and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for saints,” Smith recalled.12

  Adding to their difficulties was the site they had chosen. Although the Virginia Company had urged them to not to settle in “a low or moist place,” they had done exactly that. Having been won over to the Jamestown site by its security, its presumed inoffensiveness to the natives, and its convenience—the river’s depth at that spot enabled them to moor large ships right alongside—they had overlooked the fact that large swathes of the peninsula were marshy. That, in turn, made the area especially humid during the spring and summer, and created an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.

  Even the drinking water was a problem. No one had dug a well, or looked for springwater on the mainland, so they took water from the river—which had been fre
sh water in the springtime, but became increasingly brackish from the salt water of the bay as the summer went on. At low tide, it was “full of slime and filth,” as George Percy recorded.

  Up to then, death had come to Jamestown only sporadically—one man here, another man there. Now that was about to change as disease and malnutrition collected their victims. Percy’s journal tells the story:

  The sixt of August there died John Asbie of the bloudie flixe [dysentery]. The ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling. The tenth day died William Bruster Gentleman [William Brewster, one of the optimistic letter writers], of a wound given by the savages, and was buried the eleventh day.

  The fourteenth day, Jerome Alikock Ancient, died of a wound, the same day Francis Midwinter, Edward Morris Corporall died suddenly.

  The fifteenth day, their died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthrope. The sixteenth day, their died Thomas Gower Gentleman. The seventeenth day, their died Thomas Mounslic. The eighteenth day, there died Robert Pennington, and John Martine Gentleman [the son of councilor John Martin]. The nineteenth day, died Drue Piggase Gentleman.13

  The dismal chronicle continued for several more weeks. “Our men were destroyed with cruell diseases such as swellings [probably salt poisoning from the brackish water], flixes [dysentery, probably from amoebic parasites], burning fevers [probably from typhoid infection], and by warres, but for the most part they died of meere famine.” Men groaned and cried out inside the walls of the fort until they were finally relieved by the blessing of death. The scant number who remained able-bodied—at times as few as five—took turns standing guard and dragging out the dead to be buried.

  John Smith became ill and weak during this time, as did councilor John Ratcliffe, but both men recovered. Through all of the misery, however, one man never got sick: Edward-Maria Wingfield. Smith thought he knew the secret of Wingfield’s miraculous health; shortly he would disclose it.

  Bartholomew Gosnold, the first European explorer of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, joined the ranks of the sick in early August. With Gosnold on his sickbed, Wingfield became truly worried for the first time about his political future. Gosnold was Wingfield’s highest-ranking supporter; the Gosnold and Wingfield families were neighbors back home and had intermarried extensively. “In his [Gosnold’s] sickness time, the president did easily foretell his own deposing from his command,” Wingfield wrote of himself, “so much differed the president and the other councillors on managing the government of the colony.”

  Gosnold passed away on August 22. As he was buried, the able-bodied colonists shot off cannon in his honor.

  As Wingfield feared, when the hourglass ran out on Gosnold’s life, it ran out on his own presidency. Smith accused Wingfield of keeping private stores for himself and his friends, with provisions infinitely better than the infested gruel he was rationing out to the colony at large— including beef, eggs, oatmeal, liquor, and white wine. Smith and two other councilors, John Martin and John Ratcliffe, made a compact among themselves to depose the president. They agreed they would vote Ratcliffe into the presidency once the incumbent was out of the way.

  Each of the three men had his own motives. Martin was in grief over his son’s death and blamed Wingfield for it. Ratcliffe would get power. Smith did not particularly admire Ratcliffe, but had come to believe anyone would be better than Wingfield. On the other hand, while Smith thought Martin “verie honest” and “wishing the best good” for the colony, Smith felt he was ineffectual on account of his weak constitution—Martin was sick and feeble throughout his time in the New World.

  Meanwhile, in late August, George Kendall was arrested for “heinous” conduct (the details of which are regrettably left to the modern imagination). Upon his arrest, he was stripped of his place on the council, apparently with the unanimous concurrence of the rest of the councilors. With Newport en route to England, Kendall in captivity, and Gosnold in the ground, the dissidents were now a controlling majority, with three votes against Wingfield’s two votes as president.

  By this time, nearly half of the colonists were dead. In their time of weakness, the colonists assumed the natives would come to finish them off, and so they waited, “each houre expecting the fury of the salvages.” To the colonists’ great surprise, however, the natives instead began bringing corn and other provisions from a recent harvest to trade— enough to get the survivors back on their feet.14

  The move reflected another failure of leadership, this time on the part of Chief Powhatan. The chief of chiefs was no doubt getting reconnaissance reports about the long series of burials at Jamestown. Yet he evidently failed to realize just how weak the foreigners were by this point, and how easily he could have put an end to them. What he apparently focused on instead were the beads, hatchets, and other English goods that his tribesmen could obtain through bargaining, and which they did indeed obtain. It was a small price for the colonists to pay for their lives.

  Wingfield had just barely avoided presiding over the extinction of the colony. On September 10, Martin, Ratcliffe, and Smith presented him with a signed order discharging him from the council and from his office. (The “instructions for government” of the colony, issued by King James in November of 1606, provided that “the major part” of the council could remove the president or a councilor “upon any just cause.”) Wingfield, who was not surprised, haughtily told them “that they had eased him of a great deale of care, and trouble.” He concluded, “I am at your pleasure, dispose of me as you will without further garboile [fuss, ballyhoo].” A sergeant then sent him to join Kendall in captivity on the Discovery, the small ship Newport had left behind.

  The next day, Wingfield was brought to an assembly at which Ratcliffe, the new president, gave a speech to the colonists about why Wingfield had been overthrown. Smith and Martin also spoke, as did Archer, who had been named the colony’s recorder, or secretary. The only account of the assembly is Wingfield’s, and its uncertain reliability is suggested by this description of Martin’s remarks:

  Master Martyn followed with, he reporteth that I doe slack the service in the collonye, and doe nothing but tend my pott, spitt, and oven, but he hath starved my sonne, and denyed him a spoonfull of beere; I have friends in England shalbe revenged on him, if ever he come in London. 15

  From Martin’s point of view, of course, Wingfield had deprived his son of much more than “a spoonfull of beere.”

  In any event, Wingfield denied any wrongdoing. He later told the Virginia Company that he had kept nothing for himself but some salad dressing: “2 glasses with sallet oyle which I brought with me out of England for my private stoare.” His nemesis, Archer, had instigated his overthrow, he said, and had given men bribes of “Indian cakes” to speak against him. But ultimately it was Wingfield who had brought himself down, having lost the colonists’ confidence and then some. Near the end of the proceeding, Wingfield recalled, a gentleman named Richard Crofts spoke up and said he wanted to “pull me out of my seate, and out of my skynne too.” An unnamed councilor urged Wingfield to take a bodyguard.

  Wingfield’s misfortunes were not quite over. King James, in his November order, had granted the council the power to hold trials in civil and criminal cases, the long arm of English law being otherwise absent from Virginia. With an action for slander, Smith took the opportunity to clear his name of the accusation of mutiny that Wingfield had leveled against him at the Canary Islands—for which Smith had spent thirteen weeks under restraint. Wingfield argued, on unknown grounds, that the suit was outside the council’s jurisdiction. President Ratcliffe overruled the objection and convened a jury. The twelve jurors awarded Smith £200; to satisfy the award, Wingfield was obliged to hand over to Smith his private food stocks and other possessions, which Smith in turn donated to the colony’s stores for general use.

  Looking back on the summer of 1607, Smith later commented,

  At this time our diet was for most part water and bran, and three ounces of little better stuffe in bread for five me
n a meale, and thus we lived neere three months: our lodgings under boughs of trees, the salvages being our enemies, whom we neither knew nor understood; occasion I thinke sufficient to make men sicke and die.16

  Notable was Smith’s emphasis on the dearth of practical knowledge of the natives. Survival would not come from drawing the natives to the allegedly superior ways of the English; it would come from the English gleaning much more about the natives—their factions, their methods of warfare, their language, their culture.

  Smith would presently have the chance to back up his criticisms with action. One of those who had died in August was Thomas Studley, the colony’s cape merchant, or supply officer. President Ratcliffe appointed Smith his replacement. In addition, Ratcliffe put Smith in charge of the building of houses and, more crucially, in charge of relations with the natives. They had stopped coming with gifts, and there was enough food in the stores for only around two and a half weeks.17 It would fall to Smith to make more of it somehow materialize.

  5

  THE RESCUE

  After waiting impatiently for two weeks, Don Pedro de Zúñiga, Spain’s ambassador to London, had finally obtained an audience with King James on Sunday, October 7, 1607, at two o’clock in the afternoon. The subject on the ambassador’s mind was the new settlement in Virginia, a region that the Spanish regarded as theirs and theirs alone—an extension of the Indies they had dominated (at least against other Europeans) since 1492.

  Zúñiga had been getting updates on the colony from informants whose identities remain unknown. One of them seems to have been involved in the Virginia Company at home: “I have found a trustworthy person through whom I can learn everything that goes on in the [company] council” in London, Zúñiga wrote to his employer, King Philip III.1 Another was probably former councilor George Kendall, who was executed in Jamestown in November for exactly that offense. 2 While the reports Zúñiga received were not always reliable, they were enough to alert him to the essential truth: namely, that the activities upriver from the Chesapeake Bay, in the region that the Spanish called Ajacán, threatened Spain’s supremacy in the New World.