Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and The Start of a New Nation

As Smith feared, Newport and Ratcliffe’s generous trading terms inflated the costs of trade with Powhatan. Unsatisfied with Smith, Powhatan sent men on mostly unsuccessful raids to find valuable guns and swords. Preparing for new excursions, Smith drilled volunteers in military tactics. During this time, Captain Thomas Nelson arrived on the Phoenix, a ship meant to arrive at the same time as Newport’s John and Francis. Nelson was waylaid for months in the Caribbean, but came with new settlers and supplies.

Powhatan’s raids continued, and both sides took prisoners: two Englishmen and over a dozen Powhatans. John Smith was a ruthless captor, burning local villages and torturing prisoners to get information. Through these methods, he learned that the local tribes, Powhatan included, disliked the English and wanted them gone. Prisoners were released only after Powhatan sent his two most effective diplomats, Pocahontas and a friendly lieutenant named Rawhunt, maintaining an unsteady peace. Inter-colony factionalism increased along with Smith’s leadership, with a minority of the council reprimanding Smith for his strong-arm tactics.

Nelson and Newport returned to England in the summer, bringing with them fool’s gold, lumber, the envoy Namontack (presented before King James’s court as a Powhatan princeling), and Smith’s manuscripts, which were well received by the public—though they were edited to frame the colonists as friendly toward each other and peaceful. Smith remained ignorant of this.

John Smith and those loyal to him explored the Potomac River. On this journey, Smith learned of the Powhatan’s greatest rival, the Massawomecks, and spread rumors among new tribes of English martial prowess. While exploring, Smith was stung by a stingray, which nearly killed him.

Upon returning to Jamestown, John Smith found it in near revolt, with Ratcliffe hoarding resources for himself. As a result, Smith was named the new president of the colony, though the means of his elevation remain unrecorded. Smith made one of his trusted associates, Matthew Scrivener, his alternate. Smith established more strong-arm diplomacy against the nearby Nansemond tribe, threatening to destroy houses and boats unless he received a regular tribute of corn.

Newport returned with 70 new colonists (including a few skilled German craftsmen), new provisions, and two strange directives from the Virginia Company: The first was to continue searching for non-existent gold and the second, presenting Powhatan with an English crown, making him a tributary to King James himself. In spite of Smith’s protests, Newport took a large retinue to perform the coronation. This was conducted in a confusing ceremony in which Powhatan was made to kneel to accept his crown; as a result, he stopped trade. Smith wrote an angry letter to investors, demanding more skilled workmen and supplies and denouncing Newport’s clumsy efforts.

Newport’s failure left the colony unprepared for winter. Smith collected the Nansemond tribute through brute force, but it was a pittance compared to their needs. After some time, Powhatan reopened trade negotiations, demanding that the English build him a large house and provide him with weapons and tools in exchange for food. Smith sent some craftsmen to begin working on Powhatan’s English home but refused him weapons. This tense period was complicated by some of the craftsmen betraying the English to side with Powhatan. Pocahontas risked her own life to intervene, warning Smith to be wary of her father.

As Jamestown’s conditions deteriorated, and the craftsmen alternated between the colony and Werowocomoco, several colonists chose to side with the capable and well-stocked Powhatan. They pilfered guns and tools to take to their new ally. Still in need of trade, John Smith went to Powhatan’s brother, Opechancanough. During negotiations, Smith was ambushed and only escaped with his life and a few stores by briefly taking the chieftain prisoner.

With spies in Jamestown overturning his plans to raid, essential tools disappearing, and what little stores the colony had rotting, John Smith declared that “he that will not worke shall not eate” (108). The men built housing and fortifications, and perfected Indigenous planting and gathering techniques—with Smith severely punishing stragglers and mutineers.

In London, the Virginia Company processed some of Smith’s notes and raised funding for an even larger group of colonists from a more skilled portion of the population. In order to gain support, the Virginia Company spread propaganda exaggerating Indigenous receptivity to settlers throughout England. They rewrote the colony charter, divesting the broken council of power and naming wealthy military commander Sir Thomas Gates as governor. This rewritten charter put Smith in an advisory role but exiled him to a military garrison 30 miles away from Jamestown.

Smith was reluctant to give up authority, especially since the eight incoming ships brought not only his replacement but many of the highborn men with whom he quarreled. However, reinforcements came at a staggered pace.

John Smith discovered Jamestown’s spies and offered them leniency as long as they continued to work. The spies wavered in their loyalty, and in early 1609, Powhatan put them to death for being untrustworthy. With several hundred new colonists, Smith ordered them to set up colonies along the James River. While he wished to have these expeditions led by capable adventurers, he appointed newly arrived highborn men for political reasons. The new colonists did not adapt well to the realities of life in North America.

One of the new colonies, led by a man named George Percy, immediately began antagonizing the Nansemond tribe, burning and pillaging a nearby village. In another colony, Francis West abandoned his post near the village of Powhatan, ruled by Powhatan’s son Parahunt, when he came under attack by local Algonquins. Generating a tentative peace in both situations required John Smith’s intervention. These interventions caused resentment and revolt in the highborn men, who simply wanted to find their fortune in nonexistent gold. During this crisis, Smith suffered serious burns in an accident involving black powder. By the time he recovered, he arranged for passage back to London on the ships still docked in Jamestown. Fearing that Smith would denounce them to the Virginia Company, the new leaders delayed the return voyage (along with necessary provisioning) in order to collect indictments of his character. Among these was an accusation that Smith planned to marry Pocahontas.

George Percy, the second son of an English nobleman, was named the new president in the absence of the revised charter. After Smith’s departure, word of his “death” spread among the Algonquins, and Powhatan made plans to oust the 500 or so remaining colonists. His tribe attacked the colonies and forced the new ones to retreat back to Jamestown. Percy constructed no other defenses. Former president John Ratcliffe was sent to Powhatan to trade for food. Him and his 50 men were ambushed and killed; Ratcliffe himself was tied to a stake and ritually murdered. Captain Francis West and 34 of his men absconded with food and left the colony to their fate.

Seeing that the English could not fend for themselves without competent leadership, Powhatan simply stopped the flow of food. In the dead of winter, and with the colonists afraid to leave their fort to hunt and fish, they began to starve, resorting first to eating shoe leather, and finally to cannibalism. By March, only 60 stragglers remained of the initial 500 colonists of the previous autumn.

In the summer of 1609, the flagship Sea Venture was lost at sea, along with Jamestown’s new charter and governor, Sir Thomas Gates (Chapter 8). Sir George Somers, an admiral pulled out of retirement to man the ship, ordered crew and passengers to escape the sinking. Through leadership and luck, the ship ran aground near an unpopulated island in Bermuda, rich in fresh water, food, and shelter. Somers remained committed to his duty and ordered a new flagship built using remnants of the Sea Venture. Nine months later, they departed once more.

When Somers and his retinue arrived at Jamestown on May 24, they were horrified. The 60 or so survivors of the winter starvation, “resembling corpses held upright by unseen marionette strings,” were burning buildings for firewood (137). With their provisions lost at sea, Sir Thomas Gates could do nothing but order Jamestown dispersed. However, this dispersal was interrupted by breaking news: A year’s worth of provisions, a fleet of three ships, and a newly appointed governor-for-life named Thomas West, Lord De La Warr was days away.

As new leadership established a more rigorous work schedule, Somers returned to Bermuda to retrieve hogs for domestic use—but died there on November 9. While the new charter called for peace with the Algonquin, it also advised that leaders such as Powhatan be captured, the better to influence their subjects “in your manners and religion” (141). By contrast, Gates, Percy, and West began a reign of terror against nearby tribes, committing atrocities. In spite of this, Jamestown thrived for years to come.