Love and Hate in Jamestown

by David A. Price

  Even the natives’ own narrow conception of rules of warfare, of humane considerations in combat, forbade the killing of an enemy ruler’s wife and children. They were to be enslaved, at most, not executed.13 As much as Percy attempted to distance himself from the atrocity, it was a damning indictment of his inadequacy as a commander, unable to govern the men under him and lacking the judgment to make sure he understood the orders of the man over him.

  Despite the uneven quality of Jamestown’s leaders in 1610, the colony was no longer the fragile, vulnerable endeavor it had been in its first years. Warfare against Powhatan would continue, with occasional brutality on both sides, for several more years. There would be waves of illness and other setbacks. But as Don Pedro de Zúñiga had predicted, the sheer scale of the colony now made it difficult to dislodge. The formidable challenges still confronting the colony—achieving peace with Powhatan or victory over him, for one, and keeping the investors happy, for another—would not have to be dealt with under the shadow of imminent extinction.

  John Smith, the man who had done the most to keep the colony functioning in the years leading up to 1610, received scant credit from Governor West and his council. In their report to the Virginia Company in London that July, they tacitly criticized his disregard for social rank, and promised that they would allow no repetition of it. Wrote West:

  Nor would I have it conceived that we would exclude altogether gentlemen and such whose breeding never knew what a day’s labor meant, for even to such this country, I doubt not, but will give likewise excellent satisfaction, especially to the better and staid spirits. For he amongst us that cannot dig, use the [carpenter’s] square, nor practice the ax and chisel, yet he shall find how to employ the force of his knowledge, the exercise of council, and the operation and power of his best breeding and quality.14

  George Somers, who played perhaps the most crucial role after John Smith and Pocahontas in the colony’s survival, would not return from his errand to the Bermuda Isles. After leaving Virginia in June, Somers and Argall became separated in another storm; both men fell back to the coast of today’s Sagadahoc, Maine, to look for each other, in accord with their prearranged plan for such an eventuality. When they failed to make contact, Argall made his way back to Virginia, while Somers, undeterred, attempted again to carry out the mission. This time, he did reach Bermuda, and died there on November 9 of “overtoiling himselfe.” Before his crewmen took his body back to England, they respected his last wishes by burying his heart on the island where he died.15 It is now called St. George’s Island, Bermuda, named for the patron saint of England—not so fittingly for the island that wrecked the Sea Venture, but fittingly enough for the island that sustained the men and women on it, and thus saved English America from vanishing.

  11

  THE MARRIAGE

  By 1612, English investors had lost all patience with the Virginia Company. Only the most delusional could still believe that gold bricks from Virginia would eventually make their way from Jamestown to the docks of the Thames. The company was now holding out hopes of revenues from “masts, deals [lumber], pitch, tar, flax, hemp, and cordage,” to say nothing of “sweet wines, oranges, lemons, anise seeds, etc.”—but those revenues were still just a vision. The colony had delivered none of these things in any substantial quantity. As a get-rich-quick scheme, the colony was, so far, a disaster. “Only the name of God,” it was said, “was more frequently profaned in the streets and market places of London than was the name of Virginia.”

  There was no longer any question of going back to London’s capital markets. A stock offering the previous year had raised only 60 percent of its goal—£18,000 of an intended £30,000. The company would not even see all of that. The subscribers had been allowed to pay in three yearly increments; as the enterprise took on the odor of a looming financial failure, some of them simply stopped paying after the first installment.

  Yet money was needed. It occurred to someone—perhaps Sir Thomas Smythe, the company’s treasurer—that if selling stock would not work, lottery tickets might be the next best thing. On March 12, the company received royal permission to run lotteries, and the first Virginia lottery was soon under way. The grand prize, a handsome one thousand pounds, went to a London tailor named Thomas Sharplisse and was taken to his house, as company records put it, “in a very stately manner.” The clergy tolerated the gambling contest, and fortune smiled upon them in return: the two runner-up winners of the first lottery were churches.

  The lottery device proved successful, and the company came back to it again and again for nearly a decade. Among all the means for “get-tinge in monneys,” the company found, “the first & most certaine is by the lotteries.” Their operation was simplicity itself: The tickets went into a locked container. The winning tickets were pulled by hand from the container. To counter suspicions of a fixed contest, the task of pulling the tickets at random from the container was sometimes assigned to children, who were presumed (then as now) to be less corruptible then their elders. 1

  Meanwhile, Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, had left Virginia in March 1611, after suffering from one ailment after another, including dysentery and scurvy. The governor and captain-general for life had lasted in the colony less than ten months. It was not exactly a rousing recommendation for life in the New World, and the news of his return to England was a further embarrassment to the company. After his departure, the colony was led at various times by George Percy, by Sir Thomas Gates (who returned in August 1611), and by a newcomer named Sir Thomas Dale.

  During much of Dale’s time in Virginia, he was theoretically second in command to Gates—as “marshal and deputy governor”—but as a practical matter, Dale was in charge and molded the government of Virginia in his image. Dale had been a fighter in the Netherlands, like so many of the colonial leaders; he and Gates, as it happened, were comrades in arms there. Gates, for some reason, emerged from the experience as a bit of a soft touch. Dale did not.

  As a ruler, Dale is sometimes described as a martinet. It would be more accurate to say he was a martinet’s ideal of a martinet. He enlarged and toughened the colony’s “Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall” to the point that execution was the penalty for adultery, for stealing anything in the least amount from the stores, for unauthorized trading with the natives, or for removing so much as a flower or an ear of corn from another man’s garden. In battle, any man under arms who would “runne away cowardly” was to be executed “with the armes which he carrieth.”

  The laws called for the workday to begin promptly with the beating of a drum in the morning, and to end the same way in the evening; those who started late or quit early were to be whipped for the second offense, and sentenced to a year in the galleys for the third. To “do the necessities of nature” within a quarter mile of the fort was also punishable by whipping, “since by these unmanly, slothfull, and loathsome immodesties, the whole fort may bee choaked and poisoned with ill aires.” (No doubt many went ahead and risked the punishment, considering that the colony was still at war with the natives, who might be ranging beyond the fort’s walls.) Furthermore, any colonist who failed to keep his home “sweete and cleane” was liable to face a court-martial.

  Anyone who disagreed with Dale’s policies was best advised to keep quiet: to “detract, slaunder, calumniate, [or] murmur” against an order of any official was itself an offense punishable by three lashes of the whip. Those who wished to vote with their feet—by leaving—were in even worse luck. Emigration had been forbidden since the colony’s first days, but it had not been punished by death; now it was. Apart from some rare grants of permission in individual cases, the company would not allow colonists the liberty to return to England until 1617.

  Justice in the home country was severe to begin with, so it is all the more notable that the English in Virginia saw Dale’s justice there as a horror. Upon the recapture of some colonists who had run away to the natives, Percy recalled, Dale seized the chance to show he meant
business. “Some he appointed to be hanged, some burned, some to be broken upon the wheel, others to be staked [burned at the stake], and some to be shot to death,” Percy recorded. “All these extreme and cruel tortures he used and inflicted upon them to terrify the rest. . . .” Dale ordered another group of men, convicted of stealing from the communal stores, to be tied to trees and starved to death. A group of colonists later remembered “continual whippings, extraordinary punishments, working as slaves in irons for terms of years—and that for petty offenses!”2

  In the continuing Anglo-Powhatan war, Dale and Gates had more than martial discipline on their side. Beginning in late 1612, they enjoyed another advantage: a friendship with the Patawomecks, who lived on the south bank of today’s Potomac River. The Patawomecks were nominally part of Powhatan’s empire, yet distant enough that they were independent in fact. The word Patawomeck is thought to mean “trading place,” and the tribe was true to its name, selling the colonists as much grain as they could carry away (1,400 bushels, on one occasion). As far as the English were concerned, Powhatan’s food embargo against them had become a nullity.

  For this, the colonists could thank the mariner Samuel Argall. The company had retained Argall merely to serve as the hired transportation between Virginia and England—it was Argall who hauled Lord De La Warr back to his life of comfort in London—but his role as a pilot to the distant shores of the Potomac evolved into the broader role of intermediary there. He was evidently charming, and projected an image of trustworthiness in the eyes of native leaders. “Yea, to this pass he hath brought them, that they assuredly trust upon what he promiseth. . . . ,” wrote Ralph Hamor, Jr., who had recently become the colony’s recording secretary. “They have even been pensive and discontented with themselves because they knew not how to do him some acceptable good turn. . . .”

  Argall was not so trustworthy as he seemed, however. In March 1613, after delivering some lumber to carpenters at Point Comfort, he and his men took a side journey up the Potomac to explore the countryside inland from the river. Along the way, he hired several Patawomeck men to serve as guides. In the course of his sightseeing, Argall obtained a most interesting piece of intelligence:

  Whilst I was in this business, I was told by certain Indians my friends that the Great Powhatan’s daughter Pokahuntis was with the Great King Patawomeck, whither I presently repaired, resolving to possess myself of her by any stratagem that I could for the ransoming of so many Englishmen as were prisoners with Powhatan, as also to get such arms and tools as he and other Indians had got by murther and stealing from others of our nation, with some quantity of corn for the colony’s relief.3

  Pocahontas had not shown herself at Jamestown since John Smith’s death (as she thought) three and a half years earlier. By this time, she was known to the colonists only through Smith’s writings and through stories told by a few of the colony’s old hands. Even so, Argall must have understood that the plot simmering in his brain was aimed at a singularly undeserving victim: the girl who was the best friend the English in Virginia ever had. She was about to learn that the colonists had a peculiar idea of gratitude.

  In a state of excitement, Argall sailed directly to the small Patawomeck village of Passapatanzy. On his arrival, he sent for the local weroance, Japazeus, and also for James Swift, whom he had left with Japazeus as a hostage the preceding December. (Exchanging hostages as a pledge of good behavior—or, as Argall put it, “a pledge of our love and truce”—remained a customary part of trading on the Virginia frontier.) Japazeus was one of the Patawomecks with whom Argall had struck up a friendship of convenience, and Argall felt no need to be deferential. Almost as soon as Japazeus greeted him, Argall delivered an ultimatum: he must prove his affection by betraying Pocahontas into his hands that day. If he did, there would be a reward for him. If he did not, Argall said, “we would be no longer brothers nor friends.”

  Japazeus, understandably, blanched at the idea. It was absurd. Pocahontas, now around sixteen years old, was well known to be the great chief’s “delight and darling.” Selling the English corn was one thing; this would make him Powhatan’s mortal enemy. No doubt Japazeus pondered visions of being tied up, his joints sliced with mussel shells, and then . . .

  Argall listened to Japazeus’s objections, and assured him there was nothing to fret about. He would treat Pocahontas with the greatest courtesy, he said. If Powhatan were rash enough to wage war against Passapatanzy, the English would intervene and beat him back.

  On the latter point, Argall was talking through his hat. Japazeus took him at his word, though, and took the proposition to his brother, the weroance of all the Patawomecks. Surprisingly, after a few hours of deliberation, they agreed.

  Once Japazeus gave his word, he was a model accomplice. He and his wife quickly conceived a plan to bring Pocahontas to the riverbank, whereupon his wife would act as if she were overcome with curiosity about Argall’s ship. Accordingly, Japazeus and his wife brought Pocahontas on a stroll past the ship late that afternoon. There, his wife (whose name, unfortunately, is unrecorded) asked if they could go aboard and look around. Japazeus turned her down with a show of irritation. His wife, pretending her feelings were hurt, started to sob—“as who knows not that women can command tears!” remarked Hamor in his account of the incident.

  Japazeus, feigning pity for his wife, soothed her by backtracking and agreeing that she could go on board, on one condition. It would not do to leave Pocahontas, he told her. If Pocahontas were willing to join them, that would be fine. Now his wife turned to their young companion. Pocahontas declined at first to go along—possibly she sensed that something was amiss—but finally acceded to her friend’s “earnest persuasions.”

  Argall entertained the party with supper on board his ship, the Treasurer. Japazeus and his wife kept their countenances merry to set Pocahontas at ease. They gave Argall a good-natured kick under the table every so often, which Argall took to be a reminder of their eagerness for their reward.

  He obliged them after supper. The visitors decided to spend the night, with Pocahontas in agreement, so he escorted Pocahontas to her quarters. Once out of Pocahontas’s earshot, Japazeus and his wife told Argall proudly of the subterfuge with which they had conned Powhatan’s daughter. For their pains, Argall gave them a small copper kettle and some even more trifling presents. The reward was not trifling in the eyes of its recipients, however; Japazeus could offer them to the Patawomeck god of rain, Quioquascacke, to placate him when the rainfall was too heavy or too little. The couple retired to their room on the ship with a feeling of satisfaction, the reward “so highly by him [Japazeus] esteemed that doubtless he would have betrayed his own father for them.”

  The next morning, Pocahontas woke up fearful and apprehensive. The murmurs of doubt that she felt the afternoon before had become full-throated voices of alarm. She hurried to the quarters of Japazeus and his wife and woke them up, urging them to leave for their safety’s sake. Argall now presented himself and explained that Japazeus and his wife were free to go. Pocahontas, he said, would have to stay as his honored guest—at which, Hamor wrote, “she began to be exceeding pensive and discontented.” Argall explained that her father had seven English prisoners and many stolen swords, guns, and tools, for which he would shortly redeem her.

  To remove himself from suspicion, Japazeus expressed shock and outrage at Argall. He and his wife then went shoreside with their loot. Pocahontas remained as a prisoner, still unaware that Japazeus had been the engineer of her capture.4

  Argall sent a native man, presumably one of his Patawomeck guides, to inform Powhatan “that I had taken his daughter, and if he would send home the Englishmen whom he detained in slavery, with such arms and tools as the Indians had gotten and stol’n, and also a great quantity of corn, that then he should have his daughter restored, otherwise not.” The chief of chiefs immediately sent the messenger back with a plea for Argall to treat his daughter well. Argall needed only bring his ship to his royal
residence at Matchcot on the Pamunkey River, Powhatan said, and he would have all that he demanded. Argall then sailed from Patawomeck country on April 13 to bring the news, and his prisoner, to Sir Thomas Gates in Jamestown.

  Powhatan tired of waiting for Argall to appear. In a few days, he took the initiative and sent his seven English captives home, along with a handful of tools and broken guns and a canoe filled with corn. The men were overjoyed to be free, having lived from hour to hour in fear of an agonizing execution at the natives’ hands. The men passed along a message from Powhatan to the effect that the rest of the English guns he had taken were either broken or missing, but that he would provide another five hundred bushels of corn in compensation when the English returned his daughter.

  Not good enough, Gates replied. “We could not believe that the rest of our arms were either lost or stol’n from him,” Hamor wrote, “and therefore till he returned them all we would not by any meanes deliver his daughter.”

  Gates then sailed to England and delivered the good news, arriving around August 1. For once, after a half dozen years of airy promises, the company had a tangible cause for hopefulness. At the least, the investors probably assumed, Argall’s exploit would let the colonists conclude a peace with the natives. It might bring much more: either from sly insinuations in the company’s reports, or as a result of their own wishful thinking, some investors saw the capture of the Virginia princess as cause for renewed optimism about the quest for gold. John Chamberlain, an investor who had fretted to a friend a year earlier that the company “would fall to the ground of itself, by the extreme beastly idleness of our nation,” now felt more buoyant about the company’s prospects:

  There is a ship come from Virginia with news of their well-doing, which puts some life into that action, that before was almost at the last cast. They have taken a daughter of a king that was their greatest enemy, as she was going afeasting upon a river to visit certain friends, for whose ransom the father offers whatever is in his power, and to become their friend, and to bring them where they shall meet with gold mines. They propound unto him three conditions: to deliver all the English fugitives, to render all manner of arms or weapons of theirs that are come to his hands, and to give them 300 quarters of corn. The first two he performed readily, and promiseth the other at their harvest, if his daughter may be well used [treated] in the meantime.5