Part 4

The band was ill fitted for the work before it. In it there were only a few workmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, and many “gentlemen”--men “that never did know what a day’s work was,” and that came for adventure or in search of gold. There had been, it seems, jealous disputes on the way out, and John Smith had been put under arrest. After they landed, the settlers opened the sealed instructions given when they left England and found that Smith was appointed one of the directors of the colony; at first he was not allowed to take his place, but in course of time he became not only a director, but president, of the colony.

Some of the colonists busied themselves those spring days planting gardens as in England, and planting also cotton and orange trees, we are told. Others looked around for gold and set out to discover the Pacific Ocean, which they thought was near at hand. Unfortunately a malarial site had been chosen for the colony, and in the hot, wet summer, the men, unaccustomed to the climate, fell sick.

Their ill-health was increased by bad water and lack of food. By September half of the hundred colonists had died of famine and fever: there were not enough able-bodied men to bury the dead in decent fashion; the bodies were “trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be buried.” Fortunately the Indians did not choose this time for an attack; instead, they brought corn and game to trade for beads, bells, and other trinkets.

The Indians of this section were Algonquins, like those later encountered in Massachusetts, but these were stronger and more hostile. They attacked the white men, “creeping from the hills like bears, with their bows in their mouths.” They were repulsed, but for many years there was the fear and danger of them for the colonists.

The Jamestown colony, like many of the other early ones, was managed by a “common-store system.” All food and supplies raised or bought were put into a common store-house and dealt out in equal portions. All articles collected for export were put into a common store and sent back to England. There was no reward for individual effort, and many of the colonists shirked work or labored in a half-hearted fashion.

There was one man who was always ready to do his part and do it well. This was John Smith. He helped cut trees, and build cabins, and erect a log palisade around the settlement. He was liked and feared by the Indians from whom he secured corn needed by the colonists. He was a sober and upright man and endeavored to establish law and order in the colony. In order to check the use of bad language, he had account kept of the oaths uttered by each man and at night for each one a can of cold water was poured down his sleeve. Strict as he was, he was always just and reasonable; he set the example of working hard, and never required of others more than he was willing to perform himself.

His chief relaxation was an adventurous journey in boat or afoot through the country, of which he gave a glowing description. “Here are mountains, hills, plains,” he said, “and rivers and brooks all running most pleasantly into a fair bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitful and delightsome land.... The vesture of the earth in most places doth manifestly prove the nature of the soil to be lusty and very rich.”

On one of the expeditions, in December, 1607, into Powhatan’s country he and the men with him were captured. He was carried to the chief Powhatan--an old man who was “well beaten with many cold and stormy winters,” said Captain Smith. Captain Smith tells us that he was released at the request of the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, just as he was about to be killed. This story has been doubted. Nothing is said about it in the “True Relation” sent from Virginia in 1608. But this book was brought out by the directors of the Company. It was not to their interest to publish an incident which showed that the settlers had the hostility of the great Indian chief. The Company wished the colony to be thought successful and prosperous so as to induce men to go out. Later, settlers found it impossible to inform their friends at home of their sufferings.

In 1608 came more colonists, including some women and children. In this year Captain Smith set out in an open boat and explored Chesapeake Bay, of which he made a map that remained the authoritative one for over a hundred years. Smith returned to Jamestown in September, and was elected president of the colony which was in sore straits, needing a firm and able man at its head. “You must obey this now for a law,” he said, “He that will not work shall not eat.” Under this rule disorder was suppressed and idlers were forced to labor. Smith’s prudence and wisdom saved the colony from ruin.

In 1609 five hundred new colonists came out, commanded by men hostile to Smith. He seems to have been in frequent conflict with them, and finally he returned to England to defend himself against their charges and to have treatment for a painful wound. After his departure, took place the terrible “Starving Time.” The colonists refused to work, they were attacked by the Indians, and laid waste by disease. By famine, fever, and war, the colonists in a few months were reduced in numbers from five hundred to sixty. They embarked to leave the scene of misery, but met a ship containing food and supplies and turned back. Thus near failure came the colony which laid the foundation of English civilization, and religious and civil liberty in America. After a time the common-store system was abolished and each man was given land to cultivate for himself; then “three men did more than thirty before.” In 1612 John Rolfe began the cultivation of tobacco and this became the currency of the colony, the source of its wealth and prosperity.

Captain Smith never revisited the Jamestown colony. In 1614 he came as “Admiral of New England” to explore North Virginia, as the northern part of America was called, and made a map of the country which he called New England. The next year Smith set out with the intention of planting a colony in New England. But he was taken prisoner by the French, and finally made his way back to England. There he spent quietly the sixteen years remaining to him. He wrote in 1616 a “Description of New England;” in 1624 he contributed a description of Virginia to a “General History of Virginia,” which was compiled at the request of the London Company. At the time of his death, in 1631, he was busy writing a “History of the Sea.”

Pocahontas

An Indian Princess

The white men who came to America naturally felt much interest in the new race of people which they called Indians. These were divided into tribes, differing in dialects, habits, and customs, but resembling one another in many respects. They lived, for the most part, in tents, called wigwams, made of skins or bushes. Their garments were usually made of the skins of buffaloes, deer, and other animals; they wore, also, beautiful mantels of feathers, strings of pearl, and ornaments of copper, silver, and gold. Their food was the game and fish obtained by the skill of the men, and the maize and beans raised in the fields tilled by the women and children. Their tools and weapons were made of sharp stones and of sticks hardened in the fire; the use of iron was unknown.

Powhatan was the chief of the strong and warlike tribes of Indians which the English colonists found dwelling on the banks of the River James. Powhatan had many children, one of whom, a daughter, called Pocahontas, was about twelve years old when the English settled in Jamestown. Captain Smith says that when he was a prisoner in one of her father’s wigwams she visited and made friends with him. When he was sentenced to death, he tells us that she interceded for him and that his life was spared at her request. According to Indian custom, the enemy whose life was thus granted became a son of the tribe; and Captain Smith lived for awhile with Powhatan’s tribe. In the course of time he was allowed to return to his countrymen at Jamestown.

There were few farmers among the English settlers and they had to learn to adapt their methods to the crops and climate of the new land. Their crops were scanty at first and they often suffered for food. In times of need, the Indian maiden, Pocahontas, more than once came to their relief, bringing food. She went, too, at night to warn the people of an intended Indian attack. No wonder the English called her “the dear and blessed Pocahontas.”

Powhatan seems to have been from the first suspicious of the white men; as time passed he came more and more to dislike and fear them. He had allowed them to settle on his land, thinking that they wanted it, Indian-fashion, for a season of hunting and fishing. But year after year passed and the white men remained in possession. Many died and some returned to England, but for every one that died or went away ten came. Powhatan would have liked to drive them away, but the Indians, with bows and war clubs, were no match for the white men, with guns and swords. Powhatan resolved to get guns and swords and make them fight against the white men. In one way and another, he got possession of many weapons,--some were bought with corn, some were stolen, some were taken from prisoners.

The matter became so serious that Captain Argall devised a plan to get back the weapons and also some prisoners taken by Powhatan. At this time, 1614, Pocahontas was visiting some friends who lived near the Potomac River. Captain Argall persuaded an Indian named Japazaws, and his wife, to entice Pocahontas on board his vessel. The Indian woman pretended that she wished to go on board to see the ship and her husband told her she could not go alone. To gratify her, Pocahontas agreed to accompany her. Captain Argall “secretly well rewarded Japazaws with a small copper kettle” and some other articles, which we are told he valued so highly that “doubtless he would have betrayed his own father for them.”

Pocahontas was carried to Jamestown, and messages were sent to her father that “Powhatan’s delight and darling” would be held prisoner until the English men and weapons were surrendered. “This news was unwelcome and troublesome unto him partly for the love he bore to his daughter and partly for the love he bore to our men, his prisoners ... and those swords and firearms of ours,” says an old historian. After three months delay, Powhatan sent seven men and some guns and offered these and a store of corn for his daughter’s release; the English, however, refused to release Pocahontas till all that they required was done.

Month after month passed. It was now eight years since Pocahontas, the child, had first seen English faces. She was a woman grown--gentle, generous, and noble of nature. John Rolfe, “a gentleman of approved behavior and honest carriage,” loved the Indian maiden and his love was returned. Pocahontas was baptized and given the Christian name of Rebecca. Then she and Rolfe were married in the church at Jamestown, April 5, 1614. “Ever since then,” says the historian Hamor, “we have had friendly commerce and trade, not only with Powhatan, but also with all his subjects round about us.”

About two years after Pocahontas and Rolfe were married they went to England, carrying with them their little son. John Smith wrote a letter to the queen telling how Pocahontas had saved his life and the colony and bespeaking for her the queen’s favor. She was received at court like a princess. “She did not only accustom herself to civility,” says a writer of the time, “but carried herself as the daughter of a king.” The Indian princess never returned to her native land. On the eve of her departure, she was taken ill and died in England, leaving one little son.

Miles Standish

A Pilgrim Leader

Early in the seventeenth century, James I. was king of England. He was a very self-willed man and was unwilling for his subjects to differ from him in religious or political matters. Naturally, all men were not willing to accept his opinions. Some were so unwilling to be dictated to by the king that they preferred to leave their homes in England and go where they could worship according to their own preferences. Some of these men, called Separatists because they had separated themselves from the established church of England, went in 1607 to Holland.

There they had full liberty in religious matters, but after a time they became dissatisfied.

The Dutch people were not strict enough in the observance of Sunday to please them, and their children were learning Dutch language and customs and would grow up to be Dutch men and women instead of English. These Separatists loved their native land and wanted their children to grow up English, but with their own religious views. Moreover, fighting between Spain and Holland was beginning again after ten years of peace and the Englishmen did not wish to become involved in this war.

So they resolved to go to the New World and establish a settlement there. They discussed many places before they decided where to go. They thought of Guiana which Raleigh had described as being fertile of soil and mild of climate, but they remembered his fights with the Spaniards and wished to avoid so troublesome a neighbor. There was the same objection to Florida, where a French colony had been destroyed by the Spaniards. They did not care to go to the English settlement at Jamestown, where the people were devoted to the Established Church of England and observed its forms even more strictly than people in England. They did not wish to go to the far north, for some Englishmen had already tried to settle in Maine and had come home with pitiful tales of their suffering during the severe winters. The Pilgrims, as these English religionists began to be called, from traveling about so much, at last decided to settle between Jamestown and Maine, about the coast of what is now New Jersey. They obtained a charter from the “North Virginia Company,” the Plymouth branch of the Virginia Company, which controlled from 41 to 45 degrees, giving them permission to settle in the southern part of North Virginia.

One hundred and two Pilgrims sailed in the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, in September, 1620. One of the men on board the Mayflower was Miles Standish, who was to be the soldier-savior of the northern English colony as John Smith was of the southern one.

Miles Standish was born about 1584 in England; he is said to have been the heir of a noble English family who was deprived of his rights. He entered the army and was sent by Queen Elizabeth to help the Dutch in their war against Spain. He was probably about nineteen or twenty then, and he seems to have remained in Holland after peace was made, and there he met the Pilgrims. His portraits represent him as a small man clad in leathern jacket and high boots, wearing a cartridge belt across his shoulder. He did not adopt the Pilgrims’ faith or ever become a member of their church, but he was a brave and faithful comrade.

The voyage was a long and stormy one. During it one member of the party died and was consigned to an ocean grave. Two months after leaving England, land was sighted, November 20, 1620. This land was a point marked Cape James on Captain Smith’s map; the name Cape Cod was given it later on account of the quantity of codfish caught there by Gosnold’s men in the expedition of 1602. Cape Cod was farther north than the Pilgrims had intended to go, and they sailed southward but were turned back by “dangerous shoals and roaring breakers” and unfavorable winds.

The men met in the cabin of the Mayflower to discuss the situation. The shore they were approaching was not the land granted by their charter and therefore its laws did not apply there. They decided to establish their colony on the coast and they signed an agreement to obey such laws as they should make for their guidance. John Carver was chosen governor.

The Pilgrims made several trips ashore to get wood and water and to explore the country. Captain Standish led his party of sixteen soldiers, in warlike array, armed with muskets and swords; they had no need to use their weapons, as the only Indians they saw fled at their approach. The chief event of the expedition was finding some corn in a mound; they carried it to the ship and later, when they were informed to whom it belonged, they paid the owners for it.

Other expeditions were made along the coast and up the streams in a shallop, or small boat. Often the spray froze on their clothes and “made them many times like coats of iron.”

While the Pilgrims tarried on the coast a child was born, son of William White and they called him Peregrine from a Latin word meaning “pilgrim.”

After exploring the country for several weeks, the Pilgrims determined to settle at a place called on Captain Smith’s map Plymouth, which was the name of the city from which they had sailed. On December 21, 1620, the men landed on the great boulder known as Plymouth Rock. Their first work was to build a “Common House”; January 31, 1621, this was completed and the women and children landed. The Pilgrims were not molested by Indians, but cold and famine were enemies that almost destroyed them. During the winter most of the colonists were ill and more than half of the hundred died; of eighteen women, only four survived the winter. One of those who died was Captain Standish’s wife.

At one time only seven men--one of whom was Captain Standish--were able to work. These seven, says Bradford their historian, tended the sick, cooked, washed, and did all the work indoors and outdoors. Rude houses were built of logs, with thatched roofs and windows of oiled paper. A church was erected which had cannon on top of it, so that at need it might serve as a fort.

To keep the Indians from suspecting their weakness, the Pilgrims leveled the graves and in the spring planted corn over them. On the whole, the Indians were friendly. One day an Indian approached the settlement and “saluted us in English and bade us ‘welcome.’” This was Samoset, “a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind and short before and no beard. He was naked except for a strip of leather about his waist, which had a fringe a span long or more. He had a bow and two arrows, the one bended the other not.” Samoset had learned broken English from fishermen who came to the coast of Maine. With him came later Squanto, the only survivor of the tribe which had lived near Plymouth and which had been destroyed by plague. Squanto showed the English how to plant corn and to enrich the soil with fish. Another of the visitors was Massasoit, an Indian chief, who made a “treaty of friendship” which was kept fifty years.

In April the Mayflower returned to England, but despite the hardships and sufferings of that terrible winter, not one of the Pilgrims went back. They were busy making cabins, cultivating gardens and fields, getting fish and game for food, building up a home in the wilderness. They traded with the Indians for beaver skins, collected sassafras, and sent furs and lumber back to England, laboring to repay the money borrowed to defray their expenses. At first and for several years the Pilgrims, like the Jamestown settlers, labored together; they prospered more after the land was divided and each man worked for himself.

They had a prosperous season and good crops and in the fall they celebrated their harvest and the end of their first year in the new land by a feast,--the first Thanksgiving. Fish and wild fowl and game were cooked in the big fireplaces or on wood fires out of doors. Massasoit came with about ninety men, bringing five deer as his contribution to the feast. There was a military drill and a shooting match, and three days were spent in merry-making. Year after year the Pilgrims observed this festival, and it came at last to be a national holiday.

The Narragansett Indians were unfriendly and the Pilgrims had to be on their guard against them. At one time Canonicus, their chief, sent the settlers a rattlesnake skin filled with arrows as a declaration of war; it was sent back filled with powder and balls, in token that the white men were ready to defend themselves. A strong fence, or palisade, was built around the settlement. In many ways the Pilgrims lived like soldiers on duty. Sunday morning at beat of drum, people marched to church. Each man had his weapon near in case of Indian attack.

More than once Indians tried to kill Miles Standish, the brave and prudent little captain. One gigantic Indian, Pecksuot, ridiculed him because he was small; in a fight soon after Pecksuot was killed. “I see you are big enough to lay him on the ground,” said one of the Indians.

About 1623 Captain Standish married a second time, his wife being an English woman, the sister of his first wife. In “The Courtship of Miles Standish” Longfellow tells a romance--for so far as we know it had no foundation in fact--about the fiery little Captain’s unsuccessful wooing by proxy of a maiden named Priscilla Mullins. The poem gives a vivid picture of Captain Standish and of life in the New England colony.

In 1625 Captain Standish made a voyage to England on business for the colony, but he returned in a few months. He subdued the English settlers at Merrymount who were selling arms to the Indians, and were living idle, drunken lives.

In eight years the Plymouth colony had grown so that Elder Brewster, John Alden, and Miles Standish went one summer to Duxbury on the north side of the bay; Standish made his home there on a high hill called Captain’s Hill. His sword and musket were now laid aside and he was busy plowing and tending his farm, settling sites for mills, practicing his skill in medicine, and serving the public welfare in peaceful ways. The brave, honorable, helpful man died October 3, 1656, and was buried at his home on Captain’s Hill. For forty years he had been the leading spirit in every undertaking requiring courage and military skill.

“For Standish no work was too difficult or dangerous, none too humble or disagreeable. As captain and magistrate, as engineer and explorer, as interpreter and merchant, as a tender nurse in pestilence, a physician at all times, and as the Cincinnatus of his colony, he showed a wonderful versatility of talent and the highest nobility of character.”

John Winthrop

A Puritan Governor