Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

by Libbie Hawker

“I don’t know,” Smith admitted reluctantly. Not until the spring, for all he could tell. His skill with the language was not great enough that he had learned what the naturals did in the wintertime, where they went or how they survived. Through the autumn warmth he felt the bitter cold of snow and sleet creep into his bones. He shivered.

  “Find out,” Ratcliffe said. “As quickly as you can. Learn how we’re to make it through this winter.”

  “The men believe Captain Newport will return by then, with plenty of supplies.”

  The dark slashes of Ratcliffe’s eyes turned on him again, held him for a long moment. “You don’t believe that any more than I. You say the Indians have gone upriver. Then that is where you must go. Tomorrow you will select your men and take the shallop inland.”

  “Aye.”

  “If any man can learn how to survive the winter, John Smith, it is you.”

  So began months of trade and exploration. As the autumn advanced and cold crept deep into the woodlands, Smith, together with a crew of five, sailed the little shallop up the James River into the heart of Indian territory.

  He quickly became adept at spotting the identifying marks of a village: the low-cut riverbank, the bare-scraped earth and dark paths through bands of gravel where they had dragged their canoes. The villages near the fort, however, were thoroughly abandoned. A time or two he went ashore and inspected the remains of their towns; charred rings of fire pits were like bruises in the earth, the skeletal black frames of houses, bent into high arches but stripped of their coverings, half-concealed among the tangle of oak and willow.

  As the shallop progressed inland, the river narrowing by the day, Smith encountered his first tribe. The Chickahominy were still making their preparations for the hunt. Smith watched with interest as a group of women and young boys removed long strips of bark from the sides of a domed house. The strips were rolled and packed into bags for transportation to some distant autumn residence, to shelter a family beneath a new arched framework while the men of the household hunted the winter’s supply of meat.

  Smith’s guide, a man of middle age with a pronounced limp, explained with obvious pride that the Chickahominy were not members of Powhatan’s group—they had not capitulated, had not thrown away their identity for the privilege of paying tribute to that fat old grubber.

  “Let him keep his hundreds of wives furnished with shells and puccoon by his own sweat, not by ours!”

  Smith was left with the impression that these Chickahominy must settle for the less desirable hunting territories, whiling away their autumn in distant seclusion while the lands rich with migrating game went to Powhatan’s lot. The guide certainly kept up a brave face about their predicament. Indeed, he blustered near as much as an English gentleman.

  With prospects for the autumn hunt rather poor, the Chickahominy were overeager to trade. They had not dared approach Jamestown for fear of Powhatan’s retribution and were as hungry for Smith’s goods as he was for their dried corn. He used their desperation to his advantage, drawing them into long conversations about local weather, resources, game, and food plants. In the end he offered just a few trinkets. The English goods were so new to these isolated men that he reaped an exchange of preserved foods far out of proportion to his handful of beads. Smith almost felt guilty for it.

  Within a few weeks, the novelty of his items lost some of its luster. The Chickahominy began to bargain in earnest, and Smith coolly walked away from their offers, dropping chains of copper links and strings of coveted gaudy-colored beads around the necks of the village children. The largesse was too much for the men to ignore. The next time he appeared in his shallop, the Chickahominy were prepared to offer him a load of dried beans so extravagant the boat’s ballast had to be redistributed to accommodate the weight.

  It was a lucky strike. When Smith returned to Chickahominy territory the following day, the village was gone, its inhabitants vanished to their autumnal hunting grounds with barely a trace left behind.

  He did his utmost to share with the men of Jamestown the knowledge he had gleaned from the Indians. He told them of the marsh root called tuckahoe, bland and tough and difficult to dig from the mud but nourishing enough to keep up the strength of entire villages through famine. The men were not interested in digging tuckahoe; they kept their eyes fastened downstream, where the wide mouth of the James opened on the sea. They were certain Newport or the first supply ship—the one that had been due for months—would arrive any day now. Tuckahoe was no kind of substitute for familiar English foods, English goods, English life.

  But the prismatic, blue-skied chill of October gave way to a dreary November, heavy with rain and sleet and soaking with cold. At last even the most optimistic of the men were forced to admit that Newport would not be returning.

  The beans and corn obtained from the Chickahominy were running low. The stores of weevil-black meal were a memory now, but an experience Smith would gladly live through again if it meant a reliable source of food. There were only so many tuckahoe roots one man could dig, and Smith was not inclined to share the coarse, tasteless things with any man who did not put his own back to the task.

  “I can move farther inland,” he said to Ratcliffe one miserable morning as they took their turn at the watch. Rain drummed on their helmets and drifted in white veils across the river. “They travel by canoe. There is a barrier of some sort, they’ve told me, impassable to their vessels: rocks or falls, I’m not certain which. But I am certain they can’t move past it—not with so many women and children in tow. They must be somewhere nearby, somewhere within our reach.”

  Ratcliffe nodded thoughtfully. “We must do something, and soon. Day by day I watch those baskets and barrels of corn growing lighter.” He sighed. “It’s a terrible place we’ve come to, John Smith. This is nothing like the Virginia Company said it would be—nothing like I expected.”

  Smith kept his words to himself, but he watched Ratcliffe’s emotionless face with interest. What did you expect then, man?

  The president was probably not among the few who believed Smith’s tales of past adventures, his mercenary days, his time in Constantinople and his toil in the Turk’s fields. Smith could have told Ratcliffe—could have told any of them—how it would be, had they only cared to listen. At least no one left alive still believed the Indians to be innocents. Too many of the Virginia Company, never having gone farther from London than their country estates, expected the naturals would be childlike and eager for the improvements the English would bring to their lives, glad to be shown more efficient and civilized ways, hungering for the salvation of Christ. They’d assumed that in their gratitude the naturals would be quick to take the colony under their wings, and the adventurers would want for nothing.

  You pitiful, mad, mad fools.

  “I know enough of their ways now,” Smith said, “what they value, how they think. I can . . . trade more assertively, if need be.”

  Ratcliffe stroked his beard. It was wet from the rain, and tiny crystalline beads of ice had formed at its end. “Yes. I suppose it has come to that. Or it will very soon.”

  “And yet, we must be careful,” Smith said. “The naturals are our only help in this land, unless Newport finally does return. We mustn’t destroy what we’ve built. We mustn’t let it return to . . . what it was early on.”

  “No—no, never that. It will be a fine line to walk. But we mustn’t allow ourselves to fall again. We’ve lost too many men—nearly half our number. We cannot lose more.”

  But we will. The winter would go hard on them. Smith knew it, without understanding how he knew it. Perhaps it was something in the eyes of the Indians he’d met in trade, some wariness, some resignation. He watched droplets of rain bead and fall from the rim of his helmet. Soon those drops would turn to snow. Perhaps this river would ice over—who could say?—and then all hope of trade would be lost, even if he could find the hunting villages, e
ven if he could extract food from them by trade or by extortion.

  Faced with so many terrible possibilities, John Smith was certain of only one thing: he would not see the men of Jamestown starve.

  POCAHONTAS

  Season of Taquitock

  A cascade of chestnuts poured from the girls’ foraging bags. The shiny red spheres clattered as they fell; a few escaped the wide sorting basket and rolled across the floor of the house. Small children scampered after them, making a game of it, scooping the runaway nuts from under beds or behind stacks of sleeping mats and returning them to the sorting basket with wild giggles.

  Pocahontas and Matachanna grinned at each other over their task. Sorting chestnuts was a favorite chore, more play than work. It was pleasant to sit by a warm heart fire on a chilly day, with plenty of breath for gossiping. The chestnuts were as smooth and cool as precious roanoke shell in the hand, and there was the anticipation of delights to come: roasted chestnuts hot and steaming, or the raw meat of the little red globes ground to flour and baked into chewy cakes. Pocahontas put a nut between her teeth and bit down gently until its thin shell gave way. She peeled it and savored its sweet earthiness and grainy texture.

  “Don’t eat them all,” Matachanna scolded. “And if you keep cracking nuts with your teeth you’re bound to break them.”

  Pocahontas shrugged. She lifted a handful of chestnuts and thumbed through them expertly, flicking the rotten and shriveled ones into her discard basket and dropping the rest into the tall woven-bark canister that sat between her and Matachanna.

  Her half sister picked up a string of chatter as if she had never dropped it to scold. The topic, as it so often was these days, was the handsome priest Utta-ma-tomakkin. “Three days ago when he came to Werowocomoco to bless the hunt, he looked at me. For the longest time.”

  “Surely he intends to marry you, then,” Pocahontas said drily.

  “Don’t tease! Oh, I’d burst if he asked me to marry him!”

  “Just like a rotten chestnut.”

  Matachanna’s braid had crept forward to dangle in the pile of nuts, and she scowled at Pocahontas as she flipped it back over her shoulder. In the sudden movement, Pocahontas saw that her sister’s chest was beginning to swell into a woman’s breasts. Why had she not noticed before? She truly will be marrying soon.

  The sudden realization made Pocahontas burn with a poignant loneliness, like a wind moaning through a desolate wood. She had no man of her own to giggle over, no handsome priest or young warrior destined to become a great werowance. She still found men and boys to be uninteresting at best and infuriating at worst, forever puffed up with their boasts, strutting about town displaying the deer they’d shot or the muscles they’d made by endlessly drawing their precious bows.

  Worst of all men was Naukaquawis. At the opening feast of taquitock, Powhatan had announced that soon Naukaquawis would be promoted to werowance. Her heart still sank when she recalled the scene. Envy and a desperate, futile desire had stabbed at her with twin knives as she watched her half brother accept the acclaim of the tribe, their father beaming as he draped a feather cloak around Naukaquawis’s shoulders. Pocahontas had had no choice but to shout her approval along with everybody else, while inside she felt as hollow and sour as last winter’s gourds.

  Matachanna noted the sudden sorrow on Pocahontas’s face. “What is it?”

  “Toothache,” she said quickly.

  “I warned you about cracking nuts.”

  “I will never disregard the advice of wise Matachanna again. But tell me . . . doesn’t Utta-ma-tomakkin love Chiskinute?”

  Matachanna blinked at her. “Chiskinute?”

  The girl was homely and simple, though friendly enough. The very idea of a man like Utta-ma-tomakkin losing his heart to the empty-headed muskrat Chiskinute was more than Pocahontas could bear. She pressed her lips tight to hold back her laughter, but it forced its way out in an explosive snort.

  “You are cruel to torment me!” Matachanna grew serious. “You shouldn’t mock Chiskinute, though. She has a good spirit.”

  “She has a dull spirit.”

  “Chiskinute looks up to you. She would be your friend, if you’d have her.”

  Pocahontas fluttered her eyelids. “I have no need of more friends.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Matachanna muttered, “you don’t have so many to spare.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, come now, Pocahontas. Don’t play the fool. You’re smart enough to see how many girls dislike you.”

  Pocahontas gaped at her sister. “Why should anyone dislike me?”

  “You truly don’t see it?” Matachanna dropped her chestnuts to study Pocahontas’s face, eyes wide with surprise. “Then I’m sorry I teased you over it. I didn’t mean to wound you.”

  “Who dislikes me?”

  Matachanna blushed. “You must admit, you can be . . . abrasive.”

  “Abrasive! Is that what you think of me?”

  “Not me,” Matachanna said weakly, in a hesitant, halting manner that revealed her lie. “Others. And it’s only your ambition that makes you so . . . so rough with other girls.”

  “My ambition?” Pocahontas folded her arms across her chest and glowered. “What are you talking about?”

  Matachanna sighed. “Oh, Pocahontas. I’m not trying to wound you, truly. You must believe me. But the way you desire . . . whatever it is you desire. Status? Influence? I don’t know what to call it. I only know the longing I see in your eyes whenever we’re around our father, or another chief.”

  “I long for nothing.”

  Matachanna went on as if Pocahontas had never spoken. “But you know what you are, what your place in life will be.”

  Pocahontas tensed, offended by the stark truth of her sister’s words.

  “You must accept it, Pocahontas. You’ll be happier if you accept it, if you acknowledge your true place among the Real People rather than striving for what can never be. It will make you kinder to others, more generous, more giving.”

  Pocahontas rose stiffly. “Maybe I see no reason to be kind or generous or giving to those who are not kind to me.”

  Matachanna scowled. “Who is not kind to you? You, who can get away with any kind of foolishness in Powhatan’s sight? Who doesn’t treat you better than you deserve to be treated? It’s time you returned the kindnesses you’ve been granted.”

  Pocahontas stalked to her bed and rummaged through her baskets. She found a pair of doeskin leggings and yanked them over her bare legs, jerking the laces so tight they bit into her thighs. It was too cold outside to go about naked; she wound a soft silk-grass cloth between her legs and knotted it about her waist.

  “Where are you going?” Matachanna shrilled. “We still have chestnuts to sort!”

  Pocahontas made no reply. She took her cloak down from its peg and flung it across her shoulders, slid her feet into her warm winter moccasins, and tied the strings at her ankles. Then she stomped past her sister, who still crouched wide-eyed on the fireside mat.

  “Be careful,” Matachanna called crossly as Pocahontas lifted the door flap. “I won’t continue to pick up your dropped oars and paddle your canoe forever. One day even I will grow tired of your selfishness, Pocahontas, and then you’ll be all alone!”

  Taquitock had set in—cold, bitter, and grudging, a sudden, dramatic counter to the unrelieving heat and dryness of summer. The slap of the late-autumn air left Pocahontas gasping. The exposed skin of her stomach and face prickled like nettle-burn and her eyes watered in the cold. Here in Werowocomoco, where Powhatan received the wealth of his tribute, there was no need to move for the winter. An early sunset was falling beyond the most distant cornfields, and a rose-soft glow tinted the rounded roofs of the village. The warmth of the light played cruelly against the biting chill.

  From a far garden she heard the rising
whoop of children perched in a crow tower. They were crying and leaping, slinging stones, frightening the evening roost away from the season’s last ears of corn. The women all said that in a normal year, such small and withered ears could be left for the winged pests; late taquitock corn was hardly worth gathering when the rains were steady and the summers damp. Pocahontas could recall neither damp summers nor rich crops. Plentiful harvests with more baskets of corn than any family could store seemed to belong to a distant time, so long gone it might as well be the time of legends, when gods and spirits walked freely among men. Now, even these small, dry ears were precious, and crows were more than ill-luck spirits to be spat at and killed, they were an open threat. Every bit they consumed meant less food for already-thin caches; each ear lost to the crows meant a night of hunger for one of the Real People. This winter would be brutal, the food stores sparse, and the crows wary and sly.

  Pocahontas headed for the nearest crow tower. After Matachanna’s harsh words, she would welcome the task of hurling stones at the roosting birds; it sounded splendid to shout until her throat was raw and her lungs burning. But halfway across town she drifted to a halt.

  Is it true what Matachanna said? Do the other girls hate me?

  If so, they would not welcome her at the crow towers. She paused, listening to the laughter and the happy cries mingling with the loud, repetitive pop of stones beating against old bark sheets. A flight of crows lifted from the cornfields with a great rush of black feathers. Their raucous cries erupted in the treetops, fading to a rolling echo as they crossed the river to seek out a friendlier evening roost. The chorus was thin with distance, yet the crows’ ominous calls still shivered the bones of her head, trembling behind her eyes, running through her veins like the sound of a copper bell struck by a mallet. She turned to follow the path of the crows, down toward the low bank of the river.

  Before she had even passed the outer ring of houses, Pocahontas became aware of a commotion on the river track. The sound filled her with a slow, wary dread, a pinch in her stomach that was halfway between curiosity and fear. She slunk behind the planks of the nearest drying rack and peered between slats rank with the odor of fish scales and hardwood smoke. There were footsteps coming up the track from the direction of the shore—the heavy steps of men—several men. There was nothing unusual in that. Likely a band of hunters had returned from one of the nearby meat camps, bearing deer and fowl for the mamanatowick and his relations.