John Smith and the Jamestown Colony: West's and Paspahegh

At Jamestown the provision of the public store had been spoiled by exposure to the rain of the previous summer, or eaten by rats and worms. The colonists had been living there in indolence, and a large part of their implements and arms had been trafficked away to the Indians. Smith undertook to remedy these disorders by discipline and labor, relieved by pastimes and recreations; and he established it as a rule that he who would not work should not eat. The whole government of the colony was now, in effect, devolved upon him, Captain Wynne being the only other surviving councilor, and the president having two votes. Shortly after Smith's return, he met the chief of Paspahegh near Jamestown, and had a reencounter with him. This athletic savage attempting to shoot him, he closed and grappled, when, by main strength, the chief forced him into the river to drown him. They struggled long in the water, until Smith, grasping the savage by the throat, well-nigh strangled him, and, drawing his sword, was about to cut off his head, when he begged for his life so piteously that Smith spared him, and led him prisoner to Jamestown, where he put him in chains. He was daily visited by his wives, and children, and people, who brought presents to ransom him. At last he made his escape. Captain Wynne and Lieutenant Percy were dispatched, with a party of fifty, to recapture him, failing in which they burned the chief's cabin and carried away his canoes. Smith now going out to "try his conclusions" with "the salvages," slew some, and made some prisoners, burned their cabins, and took their canoes and fishing-weirs. Shortly afterwards the president, passing through Paspahegh, on his way to the Chickahominy, was assaulted by the Indians; but, upon his firing, and their discovering who he was, they threw down their arms and sued for peace. Okaning, a young warrior, who spoke in their behalf, in justifying the escape of their chief from imprisonment at Jamestown, said, "The fishes swim, the fowls fly, and the very beasts strive to escape the snare, and live." Smith's vigorous measures, together with some accidental circumstances, so dismayed the savages that from this time to the end of his administration they gave no further trouble.

In 1609 an addition to the colony of five hundred men and women was sent out, with stores and provisions, in a fleet of nine vessels.

Upon the appearance of this fleet near Jamestown, Smith, not expecting such a supply, took them to be Spaniards, and prepared to encounter them, and the Indians readily offered their assistance. The colony had already, before the arrival of the fleet, been threatened with anarchy, owing to intelligence of the premature repeal of the charter, brought out by Captain Argall, and the new settlers had now no sooner landed than they gave rise to new confusion and disorder. The factious leaders, although they brought no commission with them, insisted on the abrogation of the existing charter, rejected the authority of Smith, whom they hated and feared, and undertook to usurp the government. Their capricious folly equalled their insolence: to-day the old commission must rule, to-morrow the new, the next day neither,--thus, by continual change, plunging all things into anarchy.

Smith, filled with disgust, would cheerfully have embarked for England, but, seeing little prospect of the arrival of the new commission (which was in the possession of Gates on the island of Bermudas), he resolved to put an end to these incessant plots and machinations. The ringleaders, Ratcliffe, Archer, and others, he arrested; to cut off another source of disturbance, he gave permission to Percy, who was in feeble health, to embark for England, of which, however, he did not avail himself. West, with one hundred and twenty picked men, was detached to the falls of James River, and Martin, with nearly the same number, to Nansemond. Smith's presidency having expired about this time, he had been succeeded by Martin, who, conscious of his incompetence, had immediately resigned it to Smith. Martin, at Nansemond, seized the chief, and, capturing the town, occupied it with his detachment; but owing to want of judgment, or of vigilance, he suffered himself to be surprised by the savages, who slew many of his party, rescued the chief, and carried off their corn. Martin not long after returned to Jamestown, leaving his detachment to shift for themselves.

Smith, going up the river to West's settlement at the falls, found the English planted in a place not only subject to the river's inundation, but "surrounded by many intolerable inconveniences." To remedy these, by a messenger he proposed to purchase from Powhatan his seat of that name, a little lower down the river. The settlers scornfully rejected the scheme, and became so mutinous that Smith landed among them and arrested the chief malcontents. But, overpowered by numbers, being supported by only five men, he was forced to retire on board of a vessel lying in the river. The Indians daily supplied him with provisions, in requital for which the English plundered their corn, robbed their cultivated ground, beat them, broke into their cabins, and made them prisoners. They complained to Captain Smith that the men whom he had sent there as their protectors "were worse than their old enemies, the Monacans." Smith, embarking, had no sooner set sail for Jamestown than many of West's party were slain by the savages.