SOMETIME GOVERNOUR IN VIRGINIA AND
ADMIRALL OF NEW ENGLAND.

A Discourse of Virginia.  By EDWARD MARIA WINGFIELD, the First President of the Colony.  Edited by CHARLES DEANE, Member of the American Antiquarian Society, and of the Massachusetts Historical Society.  Boston :  Privately printed.  1860.

A True Relation of Virginia.  By CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.  With an Introduction and Notes, by CHARLES DEANE.  Boston.  1866.

THE ordinary reader will see in the small book lately published by Mr. Deane a simple reprint of a black-letter pamphlet which is one of the most precious jewels of American bibliopoles.  There is not a word in the title-page to suggest that the Introduction and notes, which are the work of the editor, serve any other purpose than to explain and illustrate the text.  The volume is in appearance as innocent and free from heretical taint as the reprint of the New England Primer.  Yet any one familiar with the course of Mr. Deane’s previous inquiries knows quite well, in taking up the book, that he is about to find very original views in regard to some extremely interesting questions of colonial history ;  and if Mr. Deane has chosen to adopt this modest form of publication, it is by no means because what he has to say would not warrant an original and independent work bearing his own name alone on the title-page.  If the opinions advanced by Mr. Deane, which it will be our aim to explain, are correct, a very serious change in received ideas concerning the early history of Virginia will be necessary, and one to which the American people will find it difficult to reconcile themselves.

Stated in its widest bearings, the question raised in this publication is upon the veracity of Captain John Smith ;  and since the account of the colonization of Virginia has hitherto been almost exclusively drawn from Smith’s Generall Historie, it is evident that, if the authority of that work is overthrown, it will become necessary to reconsider, not merely the statements of fact which rest only on its assertions, but the whole series of opinions which through it have been grafted upon history.  These statements and opinions have been received with unhesitating confidence for more than two hundred years.  There are powerful social interests, to say nothing of popular prejudices, greatly concerned in maintaining the credit of Smith’s narrative even at the present day.  No object whatever can be gained by discrediting it, except the establishment of bald historical truth.  A very strong case indeed must therefore be made out on the part of Mr. Deane and of those who follow him, before the American public can be induced to listen with attention to an argument which aims at nothing less than the entire erasure of one of the most attractive portions of American history.

Captain John Smith belonged to the extraordinary school of adventurers who gave so much lustre to the reign of Elizabeth, and whose most brilliant leader it was one of King James’s exploits to bring to the Tower and the block.  Like Raleigh, though on a much lower level, Smith sustained many different characters ;  he was a soldier or a sailor indifferently, a statesman when circumstances gave him power, and an author when occasion required.  He was born in Lincolnshire in 1579, of what is supposed to have been a good Lancashire family.  At a very early age he became a soldier of fortune in the Low Countries, and seems to have drifted into the Austrian service, where he took part in the campaign of 1600 against the Turks.  Afterwards he reappears as a soldier of the Prince of Transylvania, who gave him a coat of arms, which was registered at the Herald’s College in London.  The extraordinary adventures which he met with during the three or four years of his life in Eastern Europe are related in his Autobiography, or “True Travels,” a work published in London in 1630, near the close of his life.  There is an interesting note in Dr. Palfrey’s History of New England (Vol. I. pp. 89 - 92) which contains the earliest critical examination of this portion of Smith’s story from an historical and geographical point of view, with a result not on the whole unfavorable to Smith, although under reservations which admit a considerable degree of doubt as to particulars.  In the absence of other authorities, however, the credit of the Autobiography must be left to stand or fall with that of the Generall Historie.

In 1604 Smith was again in England, where he soon began to interest himself in the enterprise of colonizing America.

On the 10th of April, 1606, King James conferred a charter upon certain persons in England, who took the title of the Virginia Company, and who proceeded to fit out an expedition of three small vessels, containing, in addition to their crews, one hundred and five colonists, headed by a Council, of which Edward Maria Wingfield was chosen President, and Captains Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall were the other members.  After various delays this expedition dropped down the Thames on the 20th of December of the same year, but was still kept six weeks in sight of England by unfavorable winds.  After a long and difficult voyage, and a further delay of three weeks among the West India Islands, the headlands of Chesapeake Bay were passed on the 26th of April, 1607.  On the 14th of May following, the colonists formally founded Jamestown.

But in the mean while a difficulty, the true causes of which are not well understood, had created trouble between Smith and his colleagues.  Smith’s own story is told in the Generall Historie as follows :  “ Now Captain Smith, who all this time from their departure from the Canaries was restrained as a prisoner upon the scandalous suggestions of some of the chiefe (envying his repute) who fained he intended to usurpe the Government, murther the Councell, and make himselfe King, that his confederats were dispersed in all the three ships, and that divers of his confederats that revealed it would affirm it, for this he was committed as a prisoner :  thirteen weeks he remained thus suspected, and by that time the ships should returne, they pretended out of their commisserations to refer him to the Councell in England to receive a check, rather then by particulating his designes make him so odious to the world, as to touch his life, or utterly overthrow his reputation.”

The truth was, that Captain Newport, who was about to return to England, exerted his influence so strongly in favor of harmony, that Smith was allowed to resume his seat among the Council.  But we are left entirely in ignorance of the real motives of Smith’s colleagues, and the evidence, if any, on which they acted.  One fact, however, is quite clear ;  Smith was not liked by the persons in control of the expedition, and it is possible that some little light on the causes of this dislike or suspicion may be found in a passage of Wingfield’s “Discourse,” a work which we shall hereafter have occasion to mention at greater length.  Wingfield, who was one of Smith’s opponents, says that “ it was proved to his face that he begged in Ireland, like a rogue without a lycence.”  And he adds, “ To such I would not my name should be a companyon.”  One may imagine that, if Smith were really accused of conspiring to obtain power, the dark events and questionable expedients of his varied and troubled career might well be flung in his face, and produce a considerable influence on the minds of his judges.

Harmony, however, was a blessing which was little known among the unhappy colonists, and it is worth noticing that, before the close of the year, Captain George Kendall, another of the members of the Council, was accused of the same crime with which Smith had been charged, and was tried, convicted, and actually executed.  Newport, who seems to have had great influence over the colonists, returned to England on the 22d of June, leaving three months’ supplies behind him, and promising to return in seven months with a new company of settlers.  His departure was followed by a series of disasters and troubles of every description.  The mortality was frightful.  More than forty deaths took place before September, some of which were caused by fevers and sickness, some by the Indians, but the larger number by mere famine.  The kindness of the Indians alone, if we may believe the express statement of Percy, who was among the survivors, preserved the remaining colonists from the fate of the lost Roanoke settlement of 1585.

Even this terrible condition of the colony, though during five months together there were not five able-bodied men to mount the defences, had no effect in quieting the jealousies and dissensions of the leaders.  Captain Gosnold died, leaving only Wingfield, Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin in the Council.  The last three combined to depose Wingfield ;  and this revolution took place on the 10th of September, without resistance.  Ratcliffe, as the next in order, was chosen President, although there is strong reason to believe that Wingfield was the better man.

It became absolutely necessary to obtain supplies in order to preserve the lives of the few remaining colonists.  “As at this time,” says Smith, “were most of our chiefest men either sicke or discontented, the rest being in such despaire as they would rather starve and rot with idlenes, then be persuaded to do anything for their owne reliefe without constraint :  our victualles being now within eighteene dayes spent, and the Indians trade decreasing, I was sent to the mouth of y^e river to trade for Come, and try the River for Fish, but our fishing we could not effect by reason of the stormy weather.”  Fortunately the Indians were found willing to trade for corn, and by means of their supplies the lives of the settlers were saved.  On the 9th of November, Smith made a longer excursion, partially exploring the Chickahominy, and was received with much kindness by the Indians, who supplied him with corn enough to have “laded a ship.”  Elated by his success and encouraged by the friendly attitude of the savages, or, according to his own account, eager “to discharge the imputation of malicious tungs, that halfe suspected I durst not, for so long delaying,” he determined to carry on his exploration of the Chickahominy to its source.  On the 10th of December he set out in the pinnace, which he left at a place he calls Apocant, forty miles from the mouth of the Chickahominy, and continued his journey in a barge.  Finally, rather than endanger the barge, he hired a canoe and two Indians to row it, and with two of his own company, named Robinson and Emry, he went twenty miles higher.  “ Though some wise men may condemn this too bould attempt of too much indiscretion, yet if they well consider the friendship of the Indians, in conducting me, the desolatenes of the country, the probability of [discovering] some lake, and the malicious judges of my actions at home, as also to have some matters of worth to incourage our adventurers in England, might well have caused any honest minde to have done the like, as wel for his own discharge, as for the publike good.”

At length they landed to prepare their dinner, and Smith with one Indian walked on along the course of the river, while Robinson and Emry with the other Indian remained to guard the canoe.  Within a quarter of an hour he heard a hallooing of Indians and a loud cry, and, fearing treachery, he seized his guide, whose arm he bound fast to his own hand, while he prepared his pistol for immediate use.  As they “went discoursing,” an arrow struck him on the right thigh, but without harm.  He soon found himself attacked by some two hundred savages, against whose arrows he used his guide as a shield, discharging his pistol three or four times.  The Indian chief, Opechankanough, then called upon him to surrender, and the savages laid their bows on the ground, ceasing to shoot.  “My hinde treated betwixt them and me of conditions of peace, he discovered me to be the Captaine, my request was to retire to y^e boate, they demanded my armes, the rest they saide were slaine, only me they would reserve :  the Indian importuned me not to shoot.  In retiring being in the midst of a low quagmire, and minding them more than my steps, I stept fast into the quagmire, and also the Indian in drawing me forth :  thus surprised, I resolved to trie their mercies, my armes I caste from me, till which none durst approch me :  being ceazed on me they drew me out and led me to the King.”

Thus far, to avoid confusion, we have followed the account given in the True Relation, written by Smith, and published in London in 1608, the year following the events described.  But in 1624 Smith published in London his Generall Historie, which contains a version of the story varying essentially from that of the True Relation.  In continuing, therefore, the account of his captivity, the two narratives will be placed side by side, for convenience of comparison, and the principal variations will be printed in Italics.  After describing the circumstances of his capture, which took place far up on the Chickahominy River, Smith proceeds in his double narrative as follows : —

The instant result of comparing the two narratives thus for the first time placed side by side, is to bring into sharp prominence a certain curious tone of exaggeration which characterizes the later story.  Eight guards, which had been sufficient in 1608, are multiplied into thirty or forty tall fellows in 1624.  What was enough for ten men at the earlier time would feed twenty according to the later version.  Four guides were surely an ample escort to conduct Smith to Jamestown, but they are reinforced to the number of twelve sixteen years afterwards.  With the best disposition towards Smith, one cannot but remember that this was just the period when Falstaff and his misbegotten knaves in Kendal Green appeared upon the stage.  The execution wrought upon the wretched lawyers who wished to try Smith for his life on his return to Jamestown is most prompt and decisive, according to the story of 1624, but in 1608 Smith is happy to accept the aid of Captain Newport to disembarrass him of his too-powerful enemies.  With sabre, falcon, and musket-shot he forced the mutinous crew of the pinnace to stay or sink, if we are to believe the Generall Historie, while the True Relation is quite silent as to any such feat of arms, but simply observes that Captain Newport arrived the same evening.

The same character of exaggeration marks the whole account of the treatment he received among the savages.  According to the story written a few months after the event, a people is described, savage it is true, but neither cruel nor bloodthirsty ;  reckless, perhaps, of life in battle, but kind and even magnanimous towards their captive.  Here is an express statement that no such demonstration was made against Smith as is affirmed in 1624, to have taken place within an hour after his capture.  Only a few days after he was taken prisoner, he represents himself as giving orders to Opechankanough to take him to Powhatan, and even at this time he knew that he was to be allowed to return to Jamestown.  “ To him I told him I must go, and so return to Paspahegh.”  Powhatan received him with the greatest cordiality, and, having sought to content him with all the kindness he could devise, did actually send him with a guard of honor back to his friends.  If the True Relation is really true, the behavior of these naked barbarians towards Smith was far more humane than that which he would have received at the hands of any civilized nation on the face of the earth.  There is not a trace of his having felt any immediate fear for his life, except from a savage whose son he had killed, and from whom Opechankanough protected him.  One line indeed occurs to the effect that they fed him so fat as to make him much doubt they meant to sacrifice him ;  and this paragraph furnishes the most striking evidence of the kindness of the Indians, and of the fact that he believed himself to have been mistaken in having entertained the suspicion.  Yet in 1624 we learn that throughout his long imprisonment he was still expecting every hour to be put to one death or another.

These variations would be of little consequence to the ordinary reader of the colonial history, if they stopped at trifling inconsistencies.  They would merely prove, what is almost self-evident, that the earlier narrative is the safer authority for historians to follow, and that the confidence which has hitherto been felt in the exactness of the Generall Historie cannot be altogether maintained.  But there is one particular point in the text where every American who has heretofore enjoyed the most favorite story in the early annals of his country will stop with a feeling of wonder and a desire to doubt the evidence of his eyes.  When he comes to the paragraph in which the Generall Historie relates the touching story of Pocahontas, and her intercession at the moment of Smith’s extremest peril, and when he turns to the opposite column of the True Relation to find its version of the incident, he will surely be amazed to see not only that it fails to furnish the remotest allusion to this act, or even by a single word to indicate that Pocahontas so much as existed, but that it expressly asserts the remarkable kindness with which Powhatan treated his captive and assured him at once of his early liberation.

No American needs to learn that this tale of Pocahontas is probably the most romantic episode in the whole history of his country.  Her name and story are familiar to every schoolboy, and there are even families whose greatest pride is to trace their descent from the Emperor’s daughter that saved the life of Captain John Smith.  Perhaps this feeling is based on admiration of the heroism and rare qualities of the Indian child, though her character as a princess of blood royal may offer a certain attraction to some of her descendants even in our own day.  In the general enthusiasm, language, and perhaps common sense, have been a little strained to describe her attributes.  Her beauty and wild grace, her compassion and disinterestedness, her Christian life and pure character, have been dwelt upon with warm affection, which is the more natural as the childhood of the nation has furnished little latitude to the imagination.  One after another, all American historians have contented themselves with repeating the words of the Generall Historie, vying with each other in heaping praises which no critics were cynical enough to gainsay, now on the virtues of Pocahontas, and now on the courage and constancy of Smith.

The unquestioning faith with which this narrative has been hitherto received is well shown by a quotation from the work which ranks as the standard authority for American history.  In the early editions of Mr. Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” we read the following version of Smith’s adventure : —

“ The gentle feelings of humanity are the same in every race, and in every period of life ;  they bloom, though unconsciously, even in the bosom of a child.  Smith had easily won the confiding fondness of the Indian maiden ;  and now, the impulse of mercy awakened within her breast, she clung firmly to his neck, as his head was bowed to receive the strokes of the tomahawk.  Did the childlike superstition of her kindred reverence her interference as a token from a superior power ?  Her fearlessness and her entreaties persuaded the council to spare the agreeable stranger, who might make hatchets for her father, and rattles and strings of beads for herself, the favorite child.  The barbarians, whose decision had long been held in suspense by the mysterious awe which Smith had inspired, now resolved to receive him as a friend, and to make him a partner of their councils.  They tempted him to join their bands, and lend assistance in an attack upon the white men at Jamestown ;  and when his decision of character succeeded in changing the current of their thoughts, they dismissed him with mutual promises of friendship and benevolence.”

In a note appended to these paragraphs the author quotes : —

“ Smith, I. 158-162, and II. 29-33.  The account is fully contained in the oldest book printed on Virginia, in our Cambridge library.  It is a thin quarto, in black-letter, by John Smith, printed in 1608, — A True Relation, &c.”

One sees at a glance that the story, in passing through the medium of Mr. Bancroft’s mind, has gained something which did not belong to the original, or belonged to it only in a modified degree.  The spirit of Smith has infused itself into the modern historian, as it had already infused itself into the works of his predecessors.  The lights are intensified ;  the shadows deepened ;  the gradations softened ;  the copy surpasses its model.  This tendency is carried so far that the author quotes the True Relation as the full authority for what is only to be found in the Generall Historie, if indeed it is all to be found even there.  When Mr. Bancroft made the careful collation of his own version of the story with the black-letter pamphlet in the Cambridge library, the brilliant popular reputation of Smith had already created an illusion in his mind resembling the optical effect of refracted light.  He saw something which did not exist, the exaggerated image of a figure beyond.

No one, however, has now a right to triumph over the error.  The time has gone by when the mistake contained in this note could be made use of to point any attack upon the merits of Mr. Bancroft’s work, or upon the soundness of his study ;  he has himself corrected his own blunder, and in his last editions, since 1860, another note has been substituted in the place of the one already quoted.  It stands at present as follows : —

“ The rescue of Smith by Pocahontas was told with authority in 1617, in Smith’s ‘Relation to Queen Anne’; Historie, 127.  It is confirmed in his New England’s Trials, printed in 1622 ;  and the full narrative is to be found in the Historie, printed in 1624.  In 1625, Purchas, who had many manuscripts on Virginia, gives the narrative a place in his Pilgrims, as unquestionably authentic.  Compare Deane’s note on Wingfield, 31, 32.”

From a critical point of view, this statement of the case may be open to objection as well as the other.  If it is to be understood as a defence of Smith, strict critical justice would require that the existence of some accusation should be mentioned, its nature noticed, and its authority given.  If it is not intended as a defence, but merely indicates a doubt in the author’s own mind, which he wishes to place with its corrective before his readers, without laying too much stress upon it, exact accuracy demands a softening in the assertion of facts.  It is unfortunate, too, that, as the note now stands, the ordinary reader, who is not directed to the Archoeologia Americana, may be led to suppose that Mr. Deane, whose edition of Wingfield seems to have caused the alteration, is referred to in support of Smith and of Mr. Bancroft.  But it is no part of our purpose to dwell upon these small and of course accidental mistakes, which would not have been worth mentioning except to illustrate the tyrannical sway still exercised by Smith over the intelligence of the country.

The quiet investigations of Mr. Deane have, however, now made it necessary for historians to meet this difficulty.  They must either rely upon the testimony of Smith concerning matters of his own personal experience, and upon the prescription of two centuries in favor of his story, or, rejecting the authority hitherto considered unquestionable, they must undertake the reconstruction of this whole history out of original material hitherto considered as merely auxiliary to Smith’s narrative.  Unfortunately, there is no possibility of compromise in the dispute.  Cautious as the expressions of Mr. Deane are, and unwilling as he evidently is to treat the reputation of Smith with harshness, it is still perfectly clear that the statements of the Generall Historie, if proved to be untrue, are falsehoods of a rare effrontery.

The argument against the Generall Historie does not rest, however, upon the text of the True Relation alone.  Properly speaking, this is only the cause of a discussion which has rapidly spread itself over the whole field of contemporaneous history.  Even Mr. Deane’s publications do not yet quite cover all the disputed ground, and probably future students will be able to throw fresh light upon the question from sources now unknown.

The original Virginia Colony was so incongruous in composition, its sufferings were so severe, and its disasters so frequent, that in the course of a very few years several entirely different classes of men came upon the scene, and each to some extent effaced the memory of its predecessor.  Of these, many leaders besides Smith have left records of more or less interest, though the most important of all, the papers of the Company itself, are mostly lost.  It is even a considerable undertaking to go through the mass of these documents, and to cull out the isolated passages which bear upon the point now in dispute ;  but here we have fortunately the assistance of Mr. Deane’s notes, which leave little to be desired.

It has already been mentioned that the first President of the Colony was Edward Maria Wingfield, who, in September, 1607, was deprived of his office and placed in confinement by Smith, and the other members of the Council.  When Newport — who, with a new company of settlers, arrived at Jamestown on the 8th of January, 1608, immediately after Smith’s release — set out on his second return voyage to London, he took the deposed President Wingfield with him, and they arrived safely at Blackwall on the 21st of May.  Wingfield appears to have kept a sort of a diary during his stay in Virginia, and after his return he wrote with its assistance a defence of himself and his administration, which seems to have been privately circulated in manuscript, and at a later period used by Purchas, but afterwards was forgotten and hidden in the dust of the Lambeth Library.  From this obscurity it was at length drawn by Mr. Deane, who published a copy of it with notes in the fourth volume of the Archæologia Americana in 1860.  Excepting a few papers of little consequence, this is the earliest known writing which comes directly from the Colony.  The manuscript of Smith’s True Relation, which is its only possible rival, could not have reached England before the month of July, while the Discourse appears to have been intended for immediate circulation in May or June.  Wingfield’s work, which is called “ A Discourse of Virginia,” is therefore a new authority on the early history of the Colony, and has peculiar value as a means of testing the correctness of the True Relation, and as furnishing some idea of what was thought and said by the party jealous of Smith’s influence.  Its account of Smith’s captivity could only have been gained from his own mouth, or from those to whom he told the story, and the more accurate it is, the closer it should coincide with the True Relation.

There are a number of passages in this short pamphlet which would be well worth extracting ;  but the question as to Smith’s veracity had for the present best be narrowed to the evidence in regard to Pocahontas, and we will only quote the passage from Wingfield which tells of Smith’s adventures among the Indians.

“ Dec.  The 10th of December, Mr. Smith went up the ryver of the Chechohomynies to trade for corne.  He was desirous to see the heade of that river ;  and when it was not passible with the shallop, he hired a cannow and an Indian to carry him up further.  The river the higher grew worse and worse.  Then he went on shoare with his guide and left Robinson and Emmery, twoe of our men in the cannow ;  which were presently slaine by the Indians, Pamaonke’s men, and he himself taken prysoner ;  and by the means of his guide his lief was saved ;  and Pamaonche haveing him prisoner, carryed him to his neybors wyroances to see if any of them knewe him for one of those which had bene, some two or three yeres before us, in a river amongst them Northward, and taken awaie some Indians from them by force.  At last he brought him to the great Powaton (of whome before wee had no knowledg) who sent him home to our towne the viii^th of January..... ”

“ Mr. Archer sought how to call Mr. Smith’s lief in question and had indited him upon a chapter in Leviticus for the death of his twoe men.  He had had his tryall the same daie of his retorne, and I believe his hanging the same or the next daie, so speedie is our law there.  But it pleased God to send Captn. Newport unto us the same evening to our unspeakable comfort, whose arrivall saved Mr. Smyth’s life and mine.”

Mr. Deane, in editing this work of Wingfield’s, in 1860, furnished a note upon this passage, in which for the first time, so far as we are aware, a doubt was thrown upon the story of Pocahontas’s intervention.  Yet the discovery of Wingfield’s narrative adds little to the evidence contained in the True Relation, which has always been a well-known work.  From the Discourse we learn few new facts.  It supplies precise dates, fixing Smith’s departure on the 10th of December, and his return on the 8th of January, so that we now know that his absence was exactly four weeks in length.  It says that Smith’s guide saved his life, which may or may not be a variation from the story of the True Relation.  It states rather more strongly the danger Smith ran from the enmity of Archer, which may perhaps have been only the result of Wingfield’s own dislike of that person.  But, in general, this new piece of evidence, though clearly independent of the True Relation, confirms it in all essential points, and especially in the entire omission of any reference to Pocahontas.  It is highly improbable that so remarkable an incident as her protection of Smith, if known to Wingfield, should not have been mentioned in this narrative, which, it may fairly be assumed, contained the current version of Smith’s adventures, as told among the colonists after his return to Jamestown.

These two works are the only actually contemporaneous authority for the events of the first year of the colonial history.  There is a wide gap between them and the next work from which we can quote ;  and indeed the strength of Mr. Deane’s case rests so largely on the negative evidence offered by the True Relation and the Discourse, that for his purpose it was scarcely necessary to go further.  Every one, whether believing or disbelieving the Generall Historie, must agree that Pocahontas was not mentioned, either by name or by implication, in the account given of Smith’s captivity, either in the True Relation or in Wingfield’s Discourse.  If the matter in dispute were of little consequence, the inquiry might stop here, and each reader might be left to form his own opinion as to the truth, or the relative value as authority, of the conflicting narratives.  But the interest of the question requires an exhaustive statement.  We shall therefore return to the history of Smith and of the Colony, which has been interrupted for the purpose of explaining the difficulty which the publications of Mr. Deane have raised.

Newport returned to England on the 10th of April, 1608, carrying Wingfield with him, and leaving Ratcliffe President of the Colony, with Martin, Smith, and Archer in the Council, together with a new member, Matthew Scrivener, who had arrived with Newport.  Smith in June explored successfully a part of Chesapeake Bay, and, returning on the 21st of July, found, according to the Generall Historie, the colonists in a miserable condition, unable to do anything but complain of Ratcliffe, whose principal offence appears to have been his obliging the colonists to build him “an unnecessary building for his pleasure in the woods.”  Ratcliffe, whose real name was Sicklemore, appears to have been really a poor creature, if the evidence in regard to him can be believed.  He was now deposed, and Scrivener, Smith’s “deare friend,” though then exceedingly ill, succeeded him as President.  This revolution was rapidly effected ;  for three days later, on the 24th of July, Smith again set out, with twelve men, to finish his explorations, and made a complete tour round the bay, which supplied his materials for the map published at Oxford in 1612.  He did not return to Jamestown till the 7th of September, and on the 10th assumed the Presidency, “by the Election of the Councell, and request of the Company.”  Scrivener appears merely to have held the office during Smith’s pleasure, and voluntarily resigned it into his hands.

The history of Smith’s administration of the Colony from the 10th of September, 1608, till the end of September, 1609, is given in the Generall Historie, and may be studied with great advantage as an example of Smith’s style.  It abounds in praise of the President, combined with vigorous attacks upon every one else, from the authorities in England down to the laborers at Jamestown.  We will not even try to draw a line between truth and fiction in this part of his story.  Whatever may have been the merits of his government, it is certain that he had no better success than his predecessors, and that he not only failed to command obedience, but that he was left almost or quite without a friend.  He was ultimately deposed and sent to England under articles of complaint.  The precise tenor of these articles is unknown ;  but the indefatigable Mr. Deane has unearthed in the Colonial Office a letter of Ratcliffe, alias Sicklemore, dated 4th October, 1609, in which he announces to the Lord Treasurer that “ this man [Smith] is sent home to answere some misdemeanors whereof I perswade me he can scarcely clear himselfe from great imputation of blame.”  Beyond a doubt, the difficulties of the situation were very great, and the men Smith had to control were originally poor material, and were made desperate by their trials ;  but it is equally certain that his career in Virginia terminated disastrously, both for himself and for the settlement.  The Virginia Company, notwithstanding his applications, never consented to employ him again.

The Colony went on from bad to worse.  George Percy, a brother of the Earl of Northumberland, succeeded Smith in the Presidency.  The condition of the colonists between Smith’s departure in October, 1609, and the arrival of Sir Thomas Gates, in May, 1610, was terrible.  Percy “was so sicke hee could neither goe nor stand.”  Ratcliffe, with a number of others, was killed by Indians.  The remainder fed on roots, acorns, fish, and actually on the savages whom they killed, and on each other, one man murdering his wife and eating her.  Out of the whole number, said to have been five hundred, not more than sixty were living when Gates arrived ;  and that the situation was beyond hope is proved by the fact that Gates immediately took them on board ship, and, abandoning Jamestown, set sail for England.  It was only an accident that they fell in with a new expedition under Lord Delaware at the mouth of the river, who brought with him a year’s provisions, and restored the fortunes of the settlement.  In spite of the discouragement produced in England by the news of these disasters, the Company renewed its efforts, and again sent out Sir Thomas Gates with six vessels and three hundred men, who arrived in August, 1611.  The government was now in the hands of Sir Thomas Dale, who had assumed it in May, 1611, and retained it till 1616.  If the ultimate success of the Colony was due to any single man, the merit appears to belong to Dale ;  for his severe and despotic rule crushed the insubordination that had been the curse of the state, compelled the idle to work, and maintained order between the colonists and the Indians.  But whatever were the merits or the faults of the government subsequent to the abandonment of Jamestown and the practical destruction of the first colony in May, 1610, it is indisputable that previous to that time nothing could have been worse than the management of the settlement ;  and it is evident that the horrors of the winter of 1609-10 must have had their causes in the misfortunes, or the mistakes, or the incompetency of Wingfield, Ratcliffe, and Smith.  That the colonists, after so long a trial, were still dependent for their bread on the Indians and on supplies from England, could scarcely have been the fault of any but themselves, and could not be excused by throwing the blame of their improvidence upon the distant board of directors in London.

In the mean while Smith, who had taken his final leave of the Colony, appears to have led a quiet life in London during several years.  But he was not a man to be crushed by any disaster.  The point in Smith’s character which really commands admiration, although it habitually caused him to neglect his nearer duties, is the spirit of adventure which nothing could quench, and the energy in action which often overtasked his resources and caused his disasters.  Although we lose sight of him during the years 1610 and 1611, we again find him in 1612 busied in the same direction as before.  In this year he published at Oxford a short work called “A Map of Virginia.  With a Description of the countrey, the Commodities, People, Government, and Religion.  Written by Captaine Smith, sometimes Governour of the Countrey.  Whereunto is annexed the proceedings of those Colonies &c. by W.S.”  This latter part of the publication, which purports to be drawn from the writings of certain colonists, was afterwards reprinted, with alterations, as the Third Book of the Generall Historie, from the title of which it appears that W.S. stood for the initials of one William Simons, Doctor of Divinity.

There is in the text of this tract only one passage bearing upon the point now principally in dispute.  Among the customs which he describes as peculiar to the Indians was the form of execution practised against criminals.  Their heads, he says, were placed upon an altar, or sacrificing-stone, while “ one with clubbes beates out their braines.”  During his captivity, he adds, not indeed that he had actually seen this mode of execution, but that an Indian had been beaten in his presence till he fell senseless, without a cry or complaint.  Here is, therefore, the whole idea of the story which he afterwards made public.  Practised lawyers may decide whether, under the ordinary rules of evidence, this passage amounts to a positive implication that he had himself not been placed in the position described, or it may perhaps be possible for future students to explain why Smith should have suppressed his own story, supposing it to have been true.  The inference is very strong that, if anything of the sort had ever occurred, it would certainly have been mentioned here, and this argument is considerably strengthened by a short narration of the facts of his imprisonment, given in the second part of the pamphlet, for which Dr. Simons is the nominal authority.  This version is as follows : —

“ A month those barbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations they made of him, yet he so demeened himself amongst them as he not only diverted them from surprising the fort, but procured his own liberty, and got himself and his company such estimation among them that those savages admired him as a Demi God.  So returning safe to the Fort, once more stayed the pinnace her flight for England.”

This work was, as above stated, afterwards reprinted, under the author’s name, as the Third Book of the Generall Historie.  The passage just quoted is there reproduced with the evidently intentional substitution of “ six or seven weekes ” for “ a month,” as in the original.  In the Generall Historic the concluding paragraph is omitted, and in its place stands, — “ The manner how they used and delivered him, is as followeth.”  And then, breaking abruptly into the middle of the old narrative, the story which has been quoted at such length was interpolated.

The narrative in the second part of the Map of Virginia, of which the above extract forms a part, is signed by the name of Thomas Studley alone, while in the Generall Historie the enlarged account bears also the signatures of Edward Harrington, Robert Fenton, and Smith himself.  A question may arise as to the extent to which these persons should be considered as dividing with Smith the responsibility for the story.  Thomas Studley, however, died on the 28th of August, 1607.  Both he and Edward Harrington had lain four months in their graves before Smith ever had heard of Powhatan or Pocahontas.  The date of Robert Fenton’s death is not so clear, but there is no reason to suppose that he had any share in the narration of events which Smith alone witnessed.

The argument so far as the Oxford tract is concerned would therefore seem to be strong enough, even if it went no further.  But it becomes irresistible when we find that this tract not only mentions Pocahontas, but actually introduces her in the role of guardian allgel and saviour of Smith’s life, although it says no word of her most famous act in this character.  The allusion occurs towards the end of the pamphlet, where the assumed writer takes occasion to defend Smith against certain charges, one of them being an alleged scheme on his part of marrying Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas in order to acquire a claim to the throne.  The writer denies the charge, and adds : —

“ It is true she was the very nonparell of his kingdome and at most not past 13 or 14 yeares of age.  Very often shee came to our fort with what shee could get for Captaine Smith, that ever loved and used all the countrie well, but her especially he ever much respected :  and she so well requited it that when her father intended to have surprised him, shee by stealth in the darke night came through the wild woods and told him of it.”

This Oxford tract of 1612 may be considered as decisive of the fact that, down to that date, the story of Pocahontas had not been made public.  We are obliged to confess that no explanation whatever, consistent with an assumption of the truth of the later narrative, occurs to the mind to account for Smith’s continued silence so long after his connection with the Colony had ceased.

Here we take leave of Smith, as an authority, for a period of some ten years, during which he published but one work, not relating to the present subject.  But an entirely new class of colonists had, in 1610 and 1611, taken the place of the first settlers, almost exterminated by the disasters of 1609-10.  Among the new-comers there arrived in the train of Lord Delaware, in 1610, a certain William Strachey, who held the office of Secretary of the Colony.  Little is known of Strachey, except that, after his return to England, he compiled a work called the “Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” never completed in its original plan, but still extant in two neatly written manuscripts, and printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1849.  The date of its composition was probably about the year 1615.  It consists largely of extracts from Smith’s previous works, though without acknowledgment of their origin ;  but it also contains original matter, and especially some curious references to Pocahontas.  (See Deane’s edition of the True Relation, p. 72.)  There is, however, no reference, direct or indirect, to her agency in saving Smith’s life, and no trace of the high esteem which such an act would have won for her.

Next in order after Strachey’s manuscript, we have a work which is quite original, and which gives, perhaps, the best account of the Colony ever made public by an eye-witness.  This is a small volume in quarto, printed in London in 1615, and called “A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia.... till the 18th of June, 1614, together with.... the Christening of Powhatan’s daughter and her Marriage with an Englishman.  Written by Raphe Hamor, late Secretarie in the Colonie.”  In it we find a minute and graphic story how “Pocahuntas, King Powhatan’s daughter, whose fame has spread even to England under the name of Non Parella,” while staying with some tribe, subject to her father, on the Potomac, was seized and carried away by Captain Argol, who had sailed up that river on a trading expedition.  Her imprisonment as a hostage at Jamestown, her visit to her father’s residence with Sir Thomas Dale and a strong force of English, Powhatan’s failure to redeem her, and her subsequent marriage to John Rolfe, on the 5th of April, 1613, are all circumstantially narrated ;  and finally an extremely interesting account is given of a visit which Hamor made to Powhatan, and of the conversation he had with that extraordinary savage.  Besides this work of Hamor, the volume also contains several letters from persons in Virginia, one of which is by John Rolfe himself, written with the single object of justifying his marriage.  Afterwards, when the arrival of Pocahontas in England had excited an interest throughout Europe in her story, Hamor’s book was translated and published in Germany.

Although there are repeated allusions to Pocahontas in the works already mentioned, it is in Hamor that she makes, for the first time, her appearance as a person of political importance.  In the True Relation, Smith represented her as a pretty and clever child of ten years old, who was once sent with a trusted messenger by Powhatan to the fort to entreat the liberation of some Indians whom Smith had seized.  The Oxford tract mentions her as a friend of Smith’s, but a mere child.  Strachey gives a curious description of her intimate relations with the Colony during his residence there.  “ Pocahuntas, a well featured but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, would get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over.”  All this seems to indicate that she was considered merely as a child, whose age made her a general favorite.  But from the time when Argol treacherously seized her, she occupied an important position, in the first place as the guaranty of a peace which Powhatan promised, and seems to have faithfully preserved during the remainder of her life and of his own ;  in the second place as a person well calculated to excite interest in England in behalf of the Colony ;  and, finally, as an eminent convert to the English Church, through whom a powerful religious influence might, it was believed, be exercised among her father’s subjects.  Hamor’s book is filled with her history, and Rolfe’s letter shows much anxiety to prove the propriety of his course in marrying her.  Both writers were interested in exciting as much sympathy for her as could be roused.  Yet neither the one nor the other alludes in any manner to the act which has since become her first claim to praise, and in the light of which the rest of her story has been almost thrown out of sight.  There is no reason to suppose that in Virginia at this time the persons best informed were yet aware that Pocahontas had ever saved Smith’s life.

In the month of June, 1616, Sir Thomas Dale arrived at Plymouth, on his return home, bringing with him, among his suite, the baptized Pocahontas, now called Rebecca Rolfe, who, with her husband and child, came at the charge of the Company to visit England, and to prove to the world the success of the Colony.  She became at once the object of extraordinary attention, and in the following winter she was the most distinguished person in society.  Her portrait, taken at this time, still exists, and shows a somewhat hard-featured figure, with a tall hat and ruff, appearing ill at ease in the stiff and ungraceful fashions of the day.  Gentlemen of the court sent the engraving, as the curiosity of the season, in their letters to correspondents abroad.  The Church received her with great honor, and the Bishop of London gave her an entertainment, celebrated in enthusiastic terms by Purchas.  At the court masque, in January, 1617, she was among the most conspicuous guests.  The king and queen actually received her in special audiences ;  and to crown all, tradition reports, with reasonable foundation, that King James, in his zeal for the high principles of divine right and the sacred character of royalty, expressed his serious displeasure that Rolfe, who was at best a simple gentleman, should have ventured so far beyond his position as to ally himself with one who was of imperial blood.

Just at this time, when the influence of London society had set its only too decisive stamp of fashion on the name of the Indian girl, and when King James had adopted her as rightfully belonging within the pale of the divinity that hedges a king, — just at this moment Samuel Purchas, “ Parson of St. Martin’s by Ludgate,” published the third edition of his “Pilgrimage.”  The excellent Purchas, although not himself an explorer, was an enthusiast on the subject of travels and adventures, and in compiling the collection which is now so eagerly sought and so highly valued by collectors of books he had, so far as related to Virginia, the direct assistance of personal witnesses, and also of manuscripts now unhappily lost except for his extracts.  He was well acquainted with Smith, who “gently communicated” his notes to him, and who was now in London, and visited Pocahontas at Brentford.  Purchas himself saw Pocahontas.  He was present when “my Hon^ble. and Rev^d. Patron the Lord Bishop of London, D^r. King, entertained her with festivall state and pompe beyond what I have seen in his great hospitalitie afforded to other ladies,” in his “ hopefull zeale by her to advance Christianitie.”  He knew Tomocomo, an Indian of Powhatan’s tribe, who came with her to England.  “ With this savage I have often conversed at my good friend’s Master Doctor Goldstone, where he was a frequent guest ;  and where I have both seen him sing and dance his diabolicall measures and heard him discourse of his countrey and religion, Sir Thomas Dale’s man being the interpretour.”  He knew Rolfe also, who lent him his manuscript discourse on Virginia.  Yet in Purchas’s book no allusion can be found to the heroic intervention on behalf of Smith, the story of whose captivity is simply copied from Simons’s quarto of 1612 ;  the diffuse comments on men and manners in Virginia contain no trace of what would have been correctly regarded as the most extraordinary incident in colonial history.

Silence in a single instance, as in Wingfield or in Strachey, might be accounted for, or, at all events, might be overlooked.  But in the course of this examination we have found silence absolute during a long period of years and under the most improbable circumstances.  Wingfield, Smith himself, Simons, Strachey, Hamor, Rolfe, and Purchas, all the authorities, without exception, known to exist, are equally dumb when questioned as to a circumstance which, since 1624, has become the most famous part of colonial history.  The field is literally exhausted.  There exist no other sources from which to draw authentic information.  Nothing remains but to return to Smith, and to inquire when it was that this extraordinary story first made its appearance, and how it obtained authority.

The blaze of fashionable success that surrounded Pocahontas in London lights up the closing scene of her life.  It is said that she was obliged, against her will, to set out on her return to Virginia, but she never actually left the shores of England.  Detained in the Thames by several weeks of contrary winds, her failing strength altogether gave way ;  and in March, 1617, in the poor word-play of Purchas, “she came at Gravesend to her end and grave.”  Her father, Powhatan, survived her less than a year.  Smith, in the mean while, was busied with projects in regard to New England and the fisheries.  His efforts to form a colony there and to create a regular system of trade had very little success ;  but to spread a knowledge of the new country among the people of England, he printed, in 1616, a small quarto, called “A Description of New England,” and in 1620 he published another pamphlet, entitled “New England’s Trials,” a second and enlarged edition of which appeared in 1622.  Here, at last, in 1622, we find the long-sought allusion to his captivity, in the following words : —

“ For wronging a soldier but the value of a penny I have caused Powhatan send his own men to Jamestowne to receive their punishment at my discretion.  It is true in our greatest extremitie they shot me, slue three of my men, and by the folly of them that fled, took me prisoner ;  yet God made Pocahontas the King’s daughter the means to deliver me ;  and thereby taught me to know their treacheries to preserve the rest.”

This in order of time is the third version given by Smith of his own adventure, the account in the Generall Historie being the fourth.  Each of these four stories is more or less inconsistent with all the others ;  but this of 1622 is, we are sorry to say it, more certainly mendacious than any of the rest.  Read it in whatever light we please, it is creditable neither to Smith’s veracity nor to his sense of honor.  “ By the folly of them that fled,” he now states that the Indians succeeded in capturing him.  All the other versions agree in this, that at the time Smith was attacked and his two men slain he was quite alone, except for his Indian guide, whom he used as a shield.  To throw upon the invented cowardice of companions who were far away, out of sight and out of hearing of the contest, the blame for a disaster which was solely due to his own over-boldness, was not an honorable way of dealing with his command.  Perhaps it would be better to leave this point unnoticed, in deference to Smith’s real merits, but unfortunately this is not the only passage in his works in which the same tendency is apparent.

Nevertheless, the fact remains, that here for the first time the story of Pocahontas appears in print.  “ God made Pocahontas the means to deliver me.”  The devout form is characteristic of the age, though the piety of a man like Smith, if his autobiography gives a true idea of his course of life, must have been a curious subject for study.  But for those who assume, with Mr. Deane, that the agency of Pocahontas is a pure invention, this paragraph becomes doubly interesting, as showing to what a degree of quaint dignity the Elizabethan age could rise, even in falsehood.

The first appearance of this famous story can therefore be fixed with sufficient certainty within five years between 1617 and 1622, although the published account in all its completeness is only to be found in the Generall Historie, printed in 1624, from which such copious extracts have already been quoted as to make any further allusion unnecessary.  There remains only one point of difficulty requiring attention in this work.

Smith has there stated (pp. 121 - 123) that, when Pocahontas came to England, he wrote for her a sort of letter of introduction to the Queen, or, in his own words, “ a little booke to this effect to the Queen, an abstract whereof followeth.”

“ Some ten yeeres agoe, being in Virginia and taken prisoner by the power of Powhatan their chiefe King.... I cannot say I felt the least occasion of want that was in the power of those my mortall foes to prevent, notwithstanding al their threats.  After some six weeks fatting amongst those Salvage Courtiers, at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her owne braines to save mine, and not onely that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestowne.”

If Smith really wrote this statement to the Queen, and the Queen received the letter, the case unquestionably becomes even more complicated than before.  But the fact is, that the letter itself rests on the authority of the Generall Historie, and has neither more nor less weight than the other statements in that work.  It is by no means necessary to believe that this “abstract of the effect” of the little book is freer from interpolations than the text of the Generall Historie elsewhere.  At the time it was published, in 1624, not only had Pocahontas long been dead, but Queen Anne herself had, in 1619, followed her to the grave, and Smith remained alone to tell his own story.  The Virginia Company certainly had no interest in denying the truth of a story so admirably calculated to draw popular sympathy towards the Colony.  But even if it be granted that Smith’s letter as it stands was really sent to the Queen, the argument against its truth, so far as it is based on the silence of all previous authorities, is left quite untouched ;  and if there is no conclusive evidence to prove that the story was unknown in 1617, it is at least equally difficult to prove that, if known, it was believed.  Smith’s character was certainly a matter of warm dispute in his own day, and his enemies seem to have been too numerous and strong for even his energy and perseverance to overcome.  No more decisive witness on this point is needed than Thomas Fuller, himself one of Smith’s contemporaries, whose “ Worthies of England ” first appeared some thirty years after Smith’s death, when the civil wars had intervened to obliterate the recollection of all personal jealousies, and when Smith himself must have been almost as little remembered as he is to-day.  Fuller devotes a page to his history in the following vein : —

“ From the Turks in Europe he passed to the Pagans in America where, towards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, such his perils, preservations, dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond truth.  Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the prose and the pictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to the diminution of his deeds that he alone is the herald to publish and proclaim them.”

The essential evidence on each side of this curious question has now been exhausted, although it would be easy to argue indefinitely in regard to Smith’s general character.  This must indeed be done by the first historian who attempts again to deal with the history of the Virginia Colony.  But although the argument has been stated fairly, and may now be left for future and final judgment, some reasonably clear theory is still required to explain the existence of the story now assumed to be false.  If Mr. Deane had departed a little farther than he has done from his sphere of work as an editor, and given the result of his studies in a more general form, his deep acquaintance with the subject would have made his conclusions particularly valuable.  As it is, he, like Dr. Palfrey, only hints that Smith, in the latter part of his life, had fallen into the hands of hack-writers, who adapted his story for popular effect.  Perhaps, if we may venture to guess at his real opinion, the view he would be inclined to take might be somewhat as follows.

The examination of Smith’s works has shown that his final narrative was the result of gradual additions.  The influence exercised by Pocahontas on the affairs of the Colony, according to the account given in 1608, was very slight.  In 1612 she first appears in her heroic character.  Her capture and her marriage to Rolfe gave her importance.  Her visit to England, however, made her beyond question the most conspicuous figure in Virginia, and it became inevitable that romantic incidents in her life would be created, if they did not already exist, by the mere exercise of the popular imagination, attracted by a wild and vigorous picture of savage life.

The history of the emperor’s daughter became, as we are led by Smith to suppose, a subject for the stage.  Nothing was more natural or more probable.  It is not even necessary to assume that Smith himself invented the additions to his original story.  He may have merely accepted them after they had obtained a strong and general hold on the minds of his contemporaries.

In the mean while Smith’s own career had failed, and his ventures ended disastrously, while in most cases he did not obtain the employment which he continued to seek with unrelaxed energy.  In 1622, however, a great disaster occurred in Virginia, which roused the greatest interest and sympathy in England, and gave occasion for renewed efforts in behalf of the Colony.  The Indians rose against the English, and in the month of May a terrible massacre took place around Jamestown.  The opportunity was not one to be lost by a man who, like Smith, while burning to act, was still smarting under what he considered undeserved neglect, and he at once hastened to offer his services to the Company, with a plan for restoring peace ;  but his plan and his offer of services were again declined.  Still, the resource of which he had already made such frequent use remained, and by publishing the Generall Historie he made a more ambitious appeal to the public than any he had yet attempted.  In this work he embodied everything that could tend to the increase of his own reputation, and drew material from every source which could illustrate the history of English colonization.  Pocahontas was made to appear in it as a kind of stage deity on every possible occasion, and his own share in the affairs of the Colony is magnified at the expense of all his companions.  None of those whose reputations he treated with so much harshness appeared to vindicate their own characters, far less to assert the facts in regard to Pocahontas.  The effort indeed failed of its object, for he remained unemployed and without mark of distinction.  “ He led his old age in London, where his having a Prince’s mind imprisoned in a poor man’s purse rendered him to the contempt of such who were not ingenuous.  Yet he efforted his spirits with the remembrance and relation of what formerly he had been and what he had done.”  So Fuller writes, who might have known him in his later years.  He died quietly in his bed, in London, in June, 1631 ;  his will is extant, and has been published by Mr. Deane, but furnishes little new information ;  in the absence of criticism, due perhaps to the political excitement of the times, his book survived to become the standard authority on Virginian history.  The readiness with which it was received is scarcely so remarkable as the credulity which has left it unquestioned almost to the present day.

*    From the North American Review for January, 1867.