Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (33 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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Feeding his colonists over the winter was to prove a great deal more difficult than dressing in splendour. Five hundred mouths required more than fifty bushels of grain a week—and that was just for subsistence. Since Powhatan refused to release any food, Percy was obliged to continue Smith’s practice of dispatching small groups into the countryside to fend for themselves. Several of these expeditions ended in catastrophe. When Lieutenant Sicklemore and his men failed to return from one food-raiding expedition, a search party was sent to investigate and found them all “slayne, with their mowthes stopped full of breade, beinge donn as it seamethe in contempte.”
Food supplies soon grew perilously low—“a poore alowanse of halfe a cann of meale for a man a day.” Percy decided to take a gamble, sending Captain Ratcliffe and thirty men to negotiate with “the
subtell owlde foxe,” Powhatan. But the emperor, in no mood for clemency, turned on them with a fury. Only one, Jeffrey Shortridge, lived to tell the tale of how the men were slaughtered in now familiar fashion, with special horror reserved for Ratcliffe. “[He] surprysed Capte Ratcliffe alyve, who he caused to be bownd unto a tree naked with a fyer before [him] and by women his fleshe was skraped from his bones with mussel shelles and, before his face, throwne into the fyer.”
With no possibility of food from Powhatan, the Jamestown colonists faced the bleakest of winters—far worse than anything they had so far experienced. They were surrounded by hostile tribes and too terrified to leave the relative safety of their settlement. Many were desperately sick, poisoned by the foul water, while those that still had their strength knew that only the fit and the fortunate would survive the lean winter months.
“Now all of us att Jamestowne beginneinge to feele that sharpe pricke of hunger,” wrote Percy, “which noe man [can] trewly descrybe butt he which hath tasted the bitternesse therof.” Several men were executed for stealing the last remnants of supplies, and then, “haveinge fedd uponn horses and other beastes as long as they lasted, we weare gladd to make shifte with vermine, [such] as doggs, catts, ratts and myce.” Next to be eaten were “bootes, shoes or any other leather”; once those had been devoured, the starving men “weare inforced to searche the woodes and to feede upon serpens and snakes, and to digge the earthe for wylde and unknowne rootes.”
Many of the weakest men were picked off by the Indians, while the survivors were driven so crazy with hunger that they did “things which seame incredible; as to digge up dead corpses outt of graves and to eate them; and some have licked upp the bloode which hathe fallen from their weake fellowes.” Some of the corpses were “boyled”; others were “stewed with roots and herbs.” None tasted very wholesome.
It was not long before half of the colonists had died. Many others were so deranged that they fled into the woods and were never seen
again. The “starveinge tyme” drove men to ever more hideous acts: “And amongste the reste, this was the most lamentable: thatt one of our colline murdered his wyfe, ripped the childe outt of her woambe and threw itt into the river and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his foode.” The crime was not discovered until “he had eaten parte thereof.”
Percy professed himself so shocked by this “crewell and inhumane fact” that he immediately tortured the man, hanging him “by the thumbes, with weightes att his feete.” Once he had extracted a confession, “I adjudged him to be executed.” This story eventually made it back to England, where it quickly caught the public imagination. Eating one’s wife brought a whole new dimension to wedlock, and men began lively debates about how best to cook a spouse—all of them overlaid with a rich vein of black humour. “Now whether shee was better roasted, boyled or carbonado’d [grilled] I know not,” said one, “but of such a dish as powdered [salted] wife, I never heard of.”
As winter drew to a close, the colony faced oblivion. Some 440 men and women had starved to death or been “trecherously slayne,” and the sixty skeletal survivors were just clinging to life. They were at the point of total despair when a sharp-eyed lookout noticed a blur of sails on the horizon: “we espyed towe pinnesses comeinge into the baye.” The men soon realised that these boats were carrying the colony’s lieutenant governor, Sir Thomas Gates, who had miraculously survived the shipwreck in Bermuda. He and his enterprising men had built two new ships and sailed them to Jamestown, arriving a year late.
They soon wished they had stayed in the storm-tossed mid-Atlantic. “The nextt tyde, [they] wente upp to Jamestowne where they mighte reade a lecture of miserie in our people’s faces and perceve the skarsety of victewalles.” It was not exactly the welcome they had hoped would greet their arrival. The “starving time” had left the survivors “so maugre and leane thatt itt was lamentable to behowlde them.” Many had been driven mad “throwe extreme
hunger … [and were] so leane thatt they looked lyke anotamies, cryeinge owtt, ‘We are starved! We are starved!’”
Gates was shocked by what he found. “Entering the towne, it appeared raither as the ruins of some auncient [for]tification than that any people living might now inhabit it.” He quickly realised that the place had been hit by a catastrophe of such magnitude that it was hard to see how it could recover. “We found the pallisadoes torne downe, the ports open, the gates from off the hinges, and emptie houses (which owners’ death had taken from them) rent up and burnt.” Gates had expected to arrive at a colony in good spirits, having been only recently refreshed by a new work force. Instead, the newcomers were dead and the rest were starving.
As he wandered through the half-derelict settlement, he knew there was nothing he could do. He had no supplies and meagre food, and had only added to the colony’s woes by bringing an extra 148 mouths to feed. With heavy heart, he concluded that Jamestown was doomed to fail. Ralegh had been right all along: without the support of the native tribes, a colony was unable to sustain itself. If the settlers had been more hardworking, more determined, they might have succeeded in their enterprise. But they had been let down by their commanders, who, with the notable exception of John Smith, had failed to bring discipline and order to the unruly colonists in their charge.
The crunch came at the tail end of May. “It was resolved oppon by Sir Thomas Gates and the whole collonie with all spede to retourne for England.” The curtain had fallen for the last time. America was being abandoned by the English.
Greeting the decision with enthusiasm, the sick and starving began preparing themselves for the voyage. “Moste of our men weare sett to worke, some to make pitche and tar for trimminge of our shippes; others to bake breade … so thatt [in] a small space of tyme, fower pinnasses weare fitted and made reddy.” They were to sail to the Newfoundland Banks, where they could fish for cod and, with luck, find sturdier vessels to carry them home.
Shortly before boarding the ships, the colonists showed what they thought of Jamestown by preparing brands to set fire to their shacks. Sir Thomas stopped them in the nick of time: had he “nott laboured with our men, they had sett the towne on fyer.”
There were no tears shed as the colonists clambered aboard. They had suffered such extreme privations in Jamestown and witnessed such appalling cruelty that they were prepared to risk their lives in Gates’s hand-built pinnaces. A beating drum summoned the survivors to their boats and a volley of shot was fired into the forest. It seemed a fitting farewell to a hostile land.
As the flotilla slipped downstream, Jamestown slowly receded from view and its wooden shelters soon merged into the landscape. “At noone, they fell to the Ile of Hogs and the next morning to Mulbery Point.” They were on their way at last. Beyond lay the entrance to Chesapeake Bay and the wide Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. and Mrs. Rolfe Go to England
It was shortly after dawn when the departing colonists noticed a small longboat racing towards their pinnaces. From afar, it looked like an Indian canoe, but as it drew nearer the men were surprised to see that it was flying from its helm the flag of St. George. The vessel was English, and it brought the worst possible news for these melancholy men and women. A new fleet had arrived in Chesapeake Bay, and it was equipped with tools, victuals, and colonists. It was also carrying a formidable new governor, the Right Honourable Thomas West, the Lord De La Warr, a man of ferocious temperament.
His lordship blew his top when he learned that the settlers had abandoned Jamestown and were on their way back to England. He had no sympathy for the sufferings they had endured, and refused to listen to tales of their hardships. Ruddy-faced and shaking with anger, he chastised them “for many vanities, and their idlenesse, earnestly wishing that he might no more finde it so, least he should be compelled to draw the sword of justice to cut off such delinquents.” The colonists were immediately landed and frog-marched straight back to Jamestown, where De La Warr vowed to whip them into order. He appointed a new council, instituted a harsh penal code, and insisted upon a great deal of pomp and ceremony whenever he was seen in public.
The colonists soon realised that this was a man to be obeyed. When De La Warr attended the newly repaired church on the first Sunday, they lined up in such numbers that they found it hard to march without tripping over one another. His lordship was accompanied by his captains, officers, and gentlemen, “with a guard of halberdiers in his lordship’s livery, faire red cloakes, to the number of fifty, both on each side and behinde him.” To protect his posterior from the chill, “a greene velvet chaire” was carried into the church; to provide comfort for his knees when praying, he had a velvet cushion placed on the rough earth floor. Yet these provided small comfort to a man used to luxury. As he toured his spartan quarters, he was perturbed to find none of the furnishings that adorned his house in England—“arras hangings, tapistry, and guilded Venetian cordoran, or more spruce household garniture.”
Lord De La Warr was a cold, unsentimental man who had no interest in Ralegh’s lost colonists, nor any desire to find them. Although he must have known that their presence would be a boon to the Jamestown settlers, now more than ever, he also knew that it would detract from the achievements resulting from his own rule and actions. He chose to ignore them completely in his first letter to the “subtle King Powhatan,” calling instead for the immediate return of all the English weapons that had been acquired over the previous few years. He began his letter with the customary pleasantries, but his fiery nature quickly got the better of him. Writing in English, a language that several of the tribesmen could now understand, he reminded Powhatan that the Indians were subjects of King James, “the great
weroance
,” and that he had “formerly vowed not only friendship but homage, receiving from his majestie therefore many gifts, and upon his knees a crowne and scepter with other ornaments.” He also took the opportunity to inform him that these were “symbols of civill state and Christian soveraigntie” and that they obligated him “to offices of dutie to his majestie.”
Powhatan must have been utterly perplexed by the letter. The symbolic nature of the coronation ceremony had passed right over
his head, and although he was immensely fond of his crown, he had no idea that this cheap ring of copper had somehow removed his authority. Far from complying with his lordship’s request, Powhatan sent an angry reply to Lord De La Warr, ordering him to “confine ourselves to Jamestowne … or otherwise he would give in command to his people to kill us, and doe unto us all mischiefe.” He added that the English should not bother to send any more messengers “unlesse … they brought him a coach and three horses.”
Lord De La Warr had never been treated with such impertinence and was “mutch incensed” by Powhatan’s disobedience. Worse still, the neighbouring Indians were becoming increasingly bold in their attack on the English, and the countryside surrounding Jamestown was now so dangerous that it was no longer safe for the governor to send parties of men to pick the wild strawberries he liked to munch after dinner. He decided to take firm and immediate action. He captured an Indian—“a notable villain”—and had “his right hand stroke off” with a blade. He then sent the one-handed Indian to Powhatan with the message that unless the English weapons were returned immediately, he would deliver the same punishment to every Indian that he captured.
He did not bother to wait for a response from Powhatan. Troops of soldiers were straightaway sent to butcher hostile tribes and wreak as much carnage and destruction as they could. One of the murder squads was led by George Percy, who was sent to ambush two particularly truculent tribes, the Paspaheghs and the Chickahominies. Percy delighted in the command and took to the task with gusto. “We fell in upon them,” he wrote, “putt some fiftene or sixtene to the sworde, and almoste all the rest to flyghte.” The Paspahegh tribe’s queen and children were taken captive, and the rest of the elders were beheaded. Percy then ordered his men “to burne their howses and to cutt downe their corne groweinge aboutt the towne.”
The bloodthirsty soldiers fulfilled this with unseemly relish, then returned to Percy and begged that they be allowed to kill the queen
and “putt the children to deathe.” Percy spared the queen, but allowed the men to slaughter the children, “which was affected by throweinge them overboord and shoteinge owtt their braynes in the water. Yett for all this crewelty, the sowldiers weare nott well pleased and I had mutche to doe to save the quenes lyfe for thatt time.”
When Percy arrived back at Jamestown, he found that Lord De La Warr was annoyed that the queen had been kept alive. He ordered “thatt we sholde see her dispatched,” and when Percy asked how to kill her, De La Warr calmly replied that “the way he thowghte beste [was] to burne her.” Even Percy baulked at such savagery: “I replyed thatt haveinge seene so mutche bloodshedd thatt day, now, in my cowld bloode, I desyred to see noe more.” He added that “I did not howlde itt fitteinge [to burn her], but either by shott or sworde to geve her a quicker dispatche.”
Percy’s argument won the day; the task of executing her fell to Captain Davis, who “did take the quene with towe sowldiers ashoare and, in the woods, putt her to the sworde.”
The new governor’s policy of slaughter and destruction ran counter to everything that Ralegh had sought to promote over the previous two decades. He had urged colonists and colonial governors to avoid bloodshed, arguing that “no Christians may lawfully invade with hostility any heathenish people … to kill, spoile, and conquer them only upon pretence of their fidelity.” Lord De La Warr heartily disagreed, and his firm hand rapidly succeeded in brutally subjecting the local Indians. Chieftains were put to the sword, hundreds of tribesmen were butchered, and entire villages razed to the ground. But before the English had time to celebrate, their governor suddenly fell ill. “I was welcomed by a hot and violent ague,” he wrote, “[and] began to be distempered with other greevous sicknesses, which successively and severally assailed me.” Each illness further weakened him, and reduced his body’s ability to fight off the numerous diseases that were rife in Jamestown. “The flux surprised me … the cramp assaulted my weak body with strong paines; and
afterwards the gout … [which] afflicted me in such sort that making my body through weaknesse unable to stirre, or to use any maner of exercise, drew upon me the disease called scurvy.” His physician ordered him to leave Jamestown immediately—and De La Warr readily complied. In March 1611 he set sail for the Caribbean island of Nevis, “to try what help the heavenly providence would afford me by the benefit of the hot bathe.”
If the colonists expected a respite from hard work and butchery, they were in for a rude shock. Just eight weeks after De La Warr’s departure, a new fleet of vessels roared into Jamestown under the command of Sir Thomas Dale, a terrifying martinet whose long years spent rising through the military ranks had taught him that men would best obey through fear. He had been appointed as marshall of Jamestown, but in Lord De La Warr’s absence he assumed the role of governor and prepared to impose his own special brand of discipline on the colonists. His first action on landing was to grab Christopher Newport by the beard and threaten to hang him for misleading London with reports of nonexistent prosperity in the colony. “Was it meant,” he screamed, “that the people here in Virginia should feed upon trees?” Dale was truly shocked by what he saw, and blamed the colony’s woes on the “disordered persons” who lived in Jamestown. They were “so prophane, so riotous, so full of mutenie” that he decided to teach them a lesson they would never forget. Within a week of his arrival, he issued a new legal code that made virtually every crime—from blasphemy to stealing an ear of corn—punishable by death. Even picking a flower from a neighbour’s garden became a capital offence.
Quick executions were deemed far too humane for Jamestown’s good-for-nothing settlers; Dale used his tortured imagination to dream up ever more hideous ways of dispatching dishonest colonists. “Some he apointed to be hanged, some burned, some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to deathe; all theis extreme and crewell tortures he used and inflicted upon them to terrefy the reste.” Dale’s punishments were so hideous
that men began to look upon De La Warr’s administration with something approaching nostalgia, and the only person who praised the new governor’s harsh decrees was the colony’s official chronicler, Ralph Hamor. “Dale hath not bin tyranous nor severe at all,” he wrote, adding that “the feare of a cruel], painefull and unusuall death more restrains then death itselfe.”
Once Jamestown’s petty criminals had been disposed of, Sir Thomas set to work on those he had chosen to keep alive. Carpenters were ordered “to build cabins and cottages,” and everyone else was sent to the fields to dig, weed, and plant grain. This took five days, after which time many of the men hoped they would be given a day or two of rest. But Dale was in no mood to be lenient and sent them straight back to work, ordering “the reparation of the falling church and so of the storehouse, a stable for our horses, a munition house, a powder house [and] a new well.” Bricks were made, a quay was built, and a large barn constructed. No sooner was this finished than Dale penned a letter to his old friend Lord Salisbury, asking him “to furnish hither 2,000 men to be here by the beginning of next Aprill.” He promised that “in the space of two yeares … [he would] render this whole countrie unto his majestie” by building a string of forts and settlements in the area of land between the James and York rivers.
The Indians watched Dale’s progress with fear and trepidation, aware that the time would soon come when he would turn his wrath on them. They were absolutely right; Dale had brought from England “greatt store of armour [and] municyon” with which he intended to launch an all-out offensive against the Indians. His aim was “to so over-master the subtil mischievous Great Powhatan that I should leave him either no roome in his countrie to harbour in, or drawe him to a firme association with ourselves.”
The armour was Dale’s secret weapon. He had found a stockpile of Elizabethan weaponry in the Tower of London, where it was slowly gathering rust. Breastplates, pauldrons, gorgets, and greaves—none provided any protection against lead shot, but they formed an
effective shield against the Indians’ arrows and would enable his musketeers to get close to their targets before firing. Dale was itching to launch an offensive and soon had his men sufficiently trained to lead them into battle. Without provocation, he marched a band of his well-armed soldiers against the troublesome Nansemond tribe on the western shores of the Chesapeake, leading from the front with such foolhardy bravado that he almost got himself killed. An arrow landed “juste upon the edge or brimme of his headpiece, the which, if itt had fallen a thowght lower, mightt have shott him into the braynes.”
The Indians, having never before seen men in complete suits of armour, were astonished that their arrows bounced off the metal without the slightest effect. “[They] did fall into their exorcismes, conjuracyons and charmes,” wrote one soldier, “thereby to cawse raine to fall from the clowdes to extinguishe and putt owtt our men’s matches and to wett and spoyle their powder.” But the rain held off, and the Indians were killed or captured. The men revelled in their easy victory. “[They] cutt downe their corne, burned their howses and, besydes those which they had slayne, browghtt some of them prisoners to our foarte.”
Sir Thomas Dale’s brutally effective leadership had shaken Jamestown out of its torpor in a way that not even Lord De La Warr could have imagined. The tribes nearest to the settlement had been all but neutralised, and the threat of violence had subdued even the belligerent Powhatan—at least for the time being. But Dale still had one serious problem that needed to be tackled if Jamestown was ever to prosper. It was imperative that he find a long-term source of wealth for the colony—something that would justify the expense of the Virginia Company’s supply ships.
The difficulty was to discover what that commodity might be. As long ago as 1586, Ralph Lane had concluded that no American colony could survive unless it generated more wealth than the cost of its upkeep. “The discovery of a good mine … or a passage to the
south sea … and nothing else, can bring this country in request to be inhabited by our nation.” Harriot had agreed with Lane’s prognosis, although he had been rather more imaginative in his conclusions. In the absence of gold and silver, he concluded that tobacco was the only commodity that had the potential to reap massive cash dividends.

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