Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (29 page)

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Authors: Giles Milton

BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
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At first, few saw the drawbacks to this waterlogged island, and even John Smith declared it to be “a verie fit place for the erecting of a great cittie.” That “cittie”—in reality a collection of rotting tentswas named Jamestown in honour of a king who had little interest in America and even less concern for the settlers. It was a cruel blow to Ralegh, whose “cittie of Ralegh”—situated just 100 miles to the south—now lay in ruins.
Scarcely had the colonists landed than a hundred “savages” pitched up “in a very warlike manner … to execute their villany.” An attack was only prevented by a flash of swords and a volley of grapeshot. Alarmed by the hostility of the Indians and realising that canvas tents provided little protection against needle-sharp arrows, the settlers cut down “the boughs of trees” and “cast [them] together in the forme of a halfe moon.”
A week spent landing supplies left the irrepressible Captain Newport sorely in need of adventure. He now proposed an exploratory expedition up the murky waters of the James, in search of the ore and minerals that Thomas Harriot had singularly failed to find. Twenty-one jaunty gentlemen accompanied him in the hope of
high adventure. They had not gone far when they chanced upon a canoe rowed by eight Indian warriors. These Indians responded to the English salute with beaming smiles and, far from showing hostility, provided the men with a sketch map of the river. When they invited the English to their settlement, Newport found the welcome almost too effusive. The chieftain gave him a crown—a singularly inappropriate gift—and Newport responded by handing over “gyftes of dyvers sortes, as penny knyves, sheeres, belles, beades, glasse toyes &c.” Then, after more smiles and japes, “we satt merye, banquetting with them, seeing their daunces and taking tobacco.”
Newport’s expedition had been under way for almost a week when one of his party, George Percy, began to grow suspicious. He spied an Indian tribesman who, along with the usual panoply of bows and spears, was carrying “pieces of yron to cleave a man in sunder.” This set the alarm bells ringing: the Indians did not possess the necessary skills to smelt iron, and these chunks of metal could only have come from a European. There was no evidence that they had come from one of White’s colonists, nor did Percy see fit to ask the Indian how he had acquired such potentially dangerous objects, but he was sufficiently intrigued to make a note of it in his journal.
It was not the only oddity noticed by Percy’s sharp eyes. At one village, he caught a glimpse of “a savage boy, about the age of ten yeeres, which had a head of haire of a perfect yellow and a reasonable white skinne, which is a miracle amongst savages.” This time Percy was genuinely taken aback and leaped to his feet to question the lad, but the white-skinned “savage boy” had slipped away silently into the forest.
The English party soon learned something of the various tribes that lived on Chesapeake Bay. The situation was very different from what Ralph Lane had experienced in Pamlico Sound. Here they were allied to a mighty
weroance
, the “emperor” Powhatan, who kept an iron grip on his land by a mixture of daring and political guile. “Cruell he hath bene, and quarrellous,” wrote one, “[in order] to stryke a terrour and awe into them of his power and condition.”
He was said to be hostile to all foreigners, and most unlikely to take kindly to a contingent of English soldiers settling on his land. Yet his lesser chieftains proved delightful company. One went so far as to call Newport his “
wingpoh chemuze
”—a term of endearment that the captain later discovered meant “canoe companion.” Another was so delighted with the English “beere, aquavite and sack” that he drank himself into a stupor. Only on the following morning did he realise that there was a price to be paid for drunkenness. As he nursed his sore head, he blamed his “greefe” on Newport’s “hott drynkes.”
There were inevitable moments of misunderstanding, especially when Newport decided it was time to claim the land officially for King James. “He sett up a crosse with this inscriptyon, Jacobus Rex, 1607, and his owne name belowe.” To the colonists, it was a moment of deep significance, a sign that they had rooted themselves in the soil of the New World. “At the erecting hereof, we prayed for our kyng and our owne prosperous success in this his actyon, and proclaimed him kyng with a greate showte.”
Many of the Indians were bemused by the incident of the cross and “began to admire,” not realising that they had just witnessed the formal annexation of their homeland. But other onlookers were less impressed and asked Newport to explain what it meant. The captain sensed the hostility and attempted to defuse the situation. With a twinkle in his eye, he explained “that the two armes of the crosse signified Kyng Powhattan and himself.” This sparked a lively debate along the shores of the James, and many of the Indians “murmured at our planting in the countrie.” They were only calmed by the intervention of their tribal elders, who told their suspicious tribesmen, “Why should you bee offended with them, as long as they hurt you not, nor take any thing away by force. They take but a little waste ground, which doth you nor any of us any good.”
Soon after leading the exploratory party back to Jamestown, the energetic Newport suddenly announced his intention of returning to England, having fulfilled his role of shipping the colonists to America. On June 21, 1607, all of the settlers and sailors were given communion. Shortly after, Newport weighed anchor and departed, promising to return with supplies within twenty weeks.
 
Captain John Smith looked extraordinary. He had bright red hair and his face was so covered in whiskers that he was more like an animal than a man
His departure coincided with the colonists’ first message from the shadowy emperor, Powhatan, whose spies had been keeping a close eye on the English settlement. Powhatan’s mistrust of the white man was born of long experience. He had known all about Ralegh’s adventures on Roanoke in the 1580s and could even recall an earlier attempt at North American colonisation—when Spanish Jesuits had landed in Chesapeake Bay. What gave him such disquiet about this new influx were the prophecies of his superstitious elders, who informed him that “from the Chesapeake Bay, a nation should arise, which should dissolve and give end to his empier.” Their warning had a disturbing postscript: they told Powhatan that the white man’s first two attempts would fail, but “the third time, they themselves [the Indians] should fall into their subjection and under their conquest.”
Powhatan was alarmed by such predictions, but he decided to bide his time, sending his envoy to Jamestown with the message that he offered only friendship. To prove his goodwill, he said he would ensure that all mischief-making on the part of the Indians would cease immediately. This message temporarily heartened the colonists, but they soon found they had other, more pressing concerns. So long as Newport’s ships had lain at anchor on the river, “our allowance was somewhat bettered by a daily proportion of bisket which the sailers would pilfer to sell, give or exchange with us, for mony, saxefras [sassafras], furrs or love. But when they departed, there remained neither taverne, beere-house nor place of relief but the common kettle.” This common kettle—the communal cooking pot—was far from appetising. “[It] was halfe a pinte of wheat and as much barly boyled with water for a man a day, and this having fryed some 26 weeks in the ship’s hold, contained as many wormes as
graines.” Although the bullish John Smith was happy to munch his way through worm-infested barley, the gentlemen colonists were disgusted with the fare. None was more distraught than the illustrious George Percy, the sharp-eyed brother of the Earl of Northumberland, who moaned that Newport had left “verie bare and scanty victuals” and did not take kindly to a diet he considered fit only for animals.
It was not long before men began to go hungry and fall sick. “It fortuned that within tenne daies,” wrote Percy, “scarse ten amongst us could either goe, or well stand, such extreame weaknes and sicknes oppressed us.” The sultry heat and the clouds of mosquitoes took their toll on the weary colonists. Men began to drop like flies, and scarcely a day passed without at least one of the colonists being shuffled into a grave. “The sixt of August there died John Asbie of the bloudie flixe. The ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling. The tenth day died William Bruster, gentleman, of a wound given by the savages.” The death rate appalled the colonists, for each man was terrified that he would be the next to die. Some, like Jerome Alikock, “died of a wound”; others “died suddenly” and without warning. Their ignorance in burying the men in shallow graves only increased the mortality rate. “The fifteenth day there died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthrope. The sixteenth day their died Thomas Gower, gentleman. The seventeenth day their died Thomas Mounslie. The eighteenth day there died Robert Pennington and John Martine, gentlemen. The nineteenth day died Drue Piggase, gentleman.” On August 22, the sickness claimed its first council member, the Elizabethan privateer Bartholomew Gosnold, a friend of Sir Walter Ralegh. “He was honourably buried, having all the ordnance in the fort shot off with many vollies of small shot.”
The sickness hit indiscriminately, regardless of rank or status. No one knew what caused it and no one could put a name to it. George Percy was horrified by what he witnessed, and left a graphic account of the suffering experienced by the settlers. “Our men were destroyed
with cruell diseases, as swellings, fluxes, burning fevers, and by warres, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of meere famine. There never were Englishmen left in a forreigne countrey in such miserie as wee were, lying on the bare cold ground what weather soever came warded all the next day, which brought our men to bee most feeble wretches.”
The common kettle was now almost empty, and “our food was but a small can of barlie, sod in water, to five men a day.” Worse still was the water: “Our drinke [was] cold water taken out of the river, which was at a floud [tide] verie salt [and] at a low tide full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of many of our men.” Most were too sick to move, while those that had not yet succumbed to typhoid or dysentery were brought low from hunger. “Our men, night and day, groaning in every corner of the fort, most pittifull to heare.” Even the robust John Smith was brought low, although his sickness did not stop him from cracking a cruel jest: “Had we beene as free from all sinnes,” he wrote, “we might have bin canonized for saints.”
In such a grim atmosphere, men began to look for scapegoats. The colony’s president, Wingfield, was the obvious target. Never popular, he was now accused of “ingrossing … otemeale, sacke, oil, aquavitae, beefe, egs or what not.” Wingfield denied any wrongdoing and vigorously defended his distribution of victuals. “I did allwayes give every men his allowance faithfully,” he said, and dismissed allegations of secretly hoarding food. But he found himself wrong-footed when accused of roasting squirrels for his own private consumption. “I never had but one squirell roosted,” he stuttered, “whereof I gave part to Master Ratcliff then sick; yet was that squirell given me.” The argument was lost: Wingfield was deposed and Captain John Ratcliffe elected to replace him.
The change of leadership did nothing to halt the deaths. Fifty men had now died and still the sickness continued. The men were utterly at a loss to explain the cause of the disaster. They had studied the accounts of Ralph Lane and Thomas Harriot and were all too
familiar with Lane’s infamous boast that America was so wholesome that “but foure of our whole company … died all the yeere.” Such words seemed cruel to the survivors, whose chief occupation was digging graves for the dying, “many times three or foure in a night, in the morning their bodies trailed out of their cabines like dogges to be buried.”
The forty survivors were surprised that the local Indians, led by the bellicose Chief Pasapegh, had not mounted an assault, for there was no one left to defend the palisade, and few had enough strength even to fire a musket. “If it had not pleased God to have put a terrour in the savages hearts,” wrote Percy, “we had all perished by those vild and cruell pagans.”
When several Indians did approach the settlement, the English were astonished to see that they were carrying not bows and arrows but baskets of bread, fish, and meat. The explanation for this unexpected windfall was simple: now that the harvest was gathered, the natives had surplus food to trade with the English. “[It] was the setting up of our feeble men,” wrote Percy, “otherwise wee had all perished.” The influx of food happened to coincide with a break in the sultry weather, which brought an abrupt end to the sickness and death. Even Smith was grateful. “God,” he wrote, “so changed the hearts of the salvages that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provision as no man wanted.”

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