Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (31 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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It was a shrewd political move on the part of Powhatan, who had proved himself far more skilled in his dealings with the colonists than had the chieftains around Roanoke. Smith returned to Jamestown with no option but to carry out the wishes of his new “father,” supplying
him with weapons, tools, and machinery. To the immense annoyance of the English, Powhatan had seized the initiative.
 
 
Sir Walter Ralegh had been in the Tower for more than four years when John Smith met Powhatan, and there were no signs that he would ever be released. He was held at the king’s mercy, and could only be freed if James himself desired it. This looked as unlikely in 1608 as it had when he was first incarcerated.
Ralegh was fortunate in sharing his prison with his friend the Earl of Northumberland, the “wizard earl,” who had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, a Catholic conspiracy to blow up the king and Parliament. Unable to shake off the false accusations, Northumberland had been thrown in jail. He lavished considerable sums on making the men’s captivity as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. He constructed a bowling green, levelled the Tower walkways with gravel, and had canvas awnings constructed over the paths to provide shade from the midday sun. He even had new windows knocked into the walls of his dingy private quarters.
Ralegh, meanwhile, had been doing his own building works. He had converted one of the Tower’s derelict outhouses into a scientific workshop, and the two men spent much of their time distilling exotic liqueurs to quaff in the long evenings. Their favourite tipple was
spiritus dulcis
, a sweet eau-de-vie flavoured with “sugarcandie,” “sacke,” and “spirits of roses.”
But the two men did not spend all their time drinking strong spirits. Ralegh’s interest in colonisation was undiminished, and he and Northumberland were able to continue with their studies even in the confines of the Tower. For the earl had moved a part of his remarkable library into the prison, and continued to order and receive books that were of interest. He also commissioned two pairs of new globes, as well as brass spheres, clocks, watches, and compasses.
The two men kept abreast of developments in Virginia through the sporadic letters sent back to England by George Percy, Northum-berland’s
brother, who had sailed with Captain Newport in 1606. Young George had probably been talked into sailing to Virginia by Thomas Harriot, with whom he lived at Syon House, and perhaps by Ralegh himself. The information that he revealed about the fledgling colony—first brought back to England with Newport’s returning fleet—was of the greatest importance for Ralegh, since he was acting as an unofficial advisor to the Virginia Company, compiling documents and memoranda on how best the merchants should proceed.
Powhatan decided Smith was safer dead than alive. He ordered his tribesmen to get “ready with their clubs to beate out his braines.”
Sir Walter was longing to step back into the forefront of American colonisation, and even wrote to the queen begging her to intercede with the king on his behalf. “I long since presumed to offer your majestie my service in Virginia,” he wrote, “with a shorte repetition of the comoditie, honor and safetye which the king’s majestie might reape by that plantacion.” He added that “I doe still hombly beseech your majestie that I may rather die in serving the kinge and my countrey then to perrish here.” The queen listened to his appeals with sympathy but was unable to act. Sir Walter’s role within the Virginia Company remained under wraps, for the merchants knew that King James would be extremely annoyed to learn of his involvement. But not everyone remained ignorant of Ralegh’s work; one of his letters fell into the hands of the Spanish ambassador to England, Don Pedro de Zuniga, who was trying desperately to unearth information about the Jamestown settlement. “I have a paper written by Vater Rales [Walter Ralegh],” he wrote to his king. “[He] is a prisoner in the Tower, and is the one who discovered that land, and whom people here consider a great man.” He adds that “those of the council of Virginia guide themselves by it. It is here [in London] being translated, because it is his original, and when that is finished, we will compare it with the chart which they have made.”
The exact nature of the advice offered by Sir Walter is unclear, for the letter has unfortunately been lost. But something of its content can be gleaned from Ralegh’s remarkable essay on colonisation, in which he drew on his vast experience of the New World to suggest the most effective way of establishing and sustaining a colony. He declared that butchering the native population was a solution that benefited no one; Lane and Grenville had proved this in 1585, as had the Spanish in their overseas possessions. Nor was it right to settle on Indian land for the sole purpose of exploitation: “No Christian prince, under the pretence of Christianity … may attempte the
invasion of any free people not under their vassaladge.” He argued, instead, that the English should try to educate the Indians in matters of law and religion—“instructe them in liberall arts of civility”—and help them to “renounce their impietyes.” Then, without too much difficulty, they could be “united to the crown of England” as grateful and loyal tributaries—a policy that would bring “riches with honour, conquest without blood.” This had already been achieved in a minor way in 1586 when the chieftain Okisko had met Ralph Lane on Roanoke and declared his submission to
Weroanza
Elizabeth, promising “that from that time forwarde, hee and his successours were to acknowledge her majestie their onely soveraigne.” Ralegh’s idea was to build on this success; it was a bold yet simple plan that was derived, in part, from his dealings with Manteo. It was also prophetic: in one short essay, Ralegh had sketched out a blueprint for the future British Empire.
His argument soon found itself echoed in the Virginia Company’s propaganda. “Our coming thither is to plant ourselves in their countrie,” wrote Robert Johnson, “yet not to supplant and roote them out, but to bring them from their base condition to a farre better.” And it was not long before the London merchants began working on plans to reduce the native chieftains of Virginia to the status of tribute kings, loyal and obedient to their English overlords. In the summer of 1608, they dispatched Christopher Newport back to America with orders to make Powhatan a subject king under the overlordship of
Weroance
James I. They acknowledged that this would not be easy, but believed that Newport was the man for the job. He was supplied with a cheap copper crown, scarlet robes, and a royal washbasin and pitcher. For a coronation present, the merchants bought a king-sized bed.
Newport arrived in Jamestown to find that much had changed. Captain Smith had replaced his corrupt predecessor as president and had immediately restarted work on the settlement, repairing the storehouses and renewing military drilling. He had also formulated his own views on how the colony should be run. When he learned of
Captain Newport’s orders to crown Powhatan, he expressed his doubts in a letter to London. “For the coronation of Powhatan,” he wrote, “I know not; but this give me leave to tell you: I feare they [the orders from London] will be the confusion of us all ere we heare from you againe.” He suggested instead that the emperor be invited to Jamestown to “receive his presents,” and added that any thoughts of a coronation should be quietly dropped.
Newport agreed with the first suggestion but overruled the second. Orders were orders, and London wanted Powhatan crowned. But he had no personal desire to break this news to the chieftain and told Smith that it was his task, as president, to inform the emperor of these developments.
Smith and his men arrived at Powhatan’s village to find the chieftain out hunting. They were greeted by young Pocahontas, who offered to entertain them while a messenger was sent to summon her father. The spectacle she organised was one they were to remember for some time. “Thirtie young women came naked out of the woods, onely covered behind and before with a few greene leaves, their bodies all painted, some of one colour, some of another.” The men were at first suspicious, for such women had proved all too adept at flaying men alive, but Pocahontas reappeared and told Smith “to kill her if any hurt were intended.” Far from planning an ambush, she had arranged for the women to entertain the Englishmen with “hellish shouts and cryes … singing and dauncing … [and] infernall passions.”
Powhatan arrived on the following day and Smith was immediately granted an audience. After the customary courtesies, he relayed the message that the emperor was to come to Jamestown to receive his presents from England. Incensed by Smith’s impertinence, Powhatan refused to comply. “If your king have sent me presents,” he said, “[then] I also am a king and this is my land. Eight dayes I will stay to receive them. Your father [Newport] is [to] come to me, not I to him.” Faced with such an obstinate reaction, Smith declined to tell Powhatan that they also wished to crown him.
It was now clear that the presents and coronation garb would have to be brought from Jamestown. After a hasty exchange of messages, a large English expedition led by Newport slowly marched its way to the imperial village, while the bed and the other gifts were transported by boat.
There was a joyous little reunion when all the English had arrived. A team of men were instructed to unpack the bed and assemble it in Powhatan’s longhouse. That done, everyone sat down to a hearty feast. What the English knew—but Powhatan did not—was that “the next day was appointed for his coronation.”
It was with some trepidation that Newport and Smith awoke the following morning to carry out their orders. Neither of the men had attended a coronation, and they were unfamiliar with the procedure. When King James had been crowned, he had marched triumphantly into Westminster Abbey, had received the sacrament, had taken the coronation oath, and after receiving the orb and sceptre had seated himself on the throne in preparation to be crowned. If either of the men had known of this final stage, they could have made life much easier. As it was, they were forced to improvise.
“The presents were brought him,” writes Smith, “his bason and ewer, bed and furniture set up, his scarlet cloke and apparell with much ado put on him, being perswaded by Namantack [his servant] they would not hurt him.” Stage one had been accomplished without much difficulty: Powhatan had donned his robes and was ready to be crowned. But now came the tricky part in the proceedings. If the English had followed the usual custom, Powhatan would by now be seated on a makeshift throne. Unfortunately, he was still wandering around and showed no signs of stooping to receive his crown. “A foule trouble there was to make him kneele to receive his crowne,” wrote Smith, “he neither knowing the majesty nor meaning of a crowne, nor bending of the knee, endured so many perswasions, examples and instructions, as tyred them all.” They begged him to sit, cajoled him, and reasoned with him, but Powhatan refused to be dictated to. Newport and Smith realised it was time for more direct
action. “At last, by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped and, three having the crowne in their hands, put it on his head.” Powhatan was at last crowned as ordered by London—the first and last coronation ever staged on North American soil.
It was now time to celebrate in true English fashion. “The boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that the king start up in a horrible feare till he saw all was well.” Smith rushed to his side to reassure him. After overcoming his initial suspicions, Powhatan became suddenly fond of his cheap crown and robes. “Remembring himselfe, to congratulate their kindnesse, he gave his old shooes and his mantell to Captaine Newport.” With a loud cry of “Long live the King,” which Powhatan must surely have thought was referring to him, the Englishmen threw their caps into the air.
Powhatan was now a vassal king, theoretically subservient to
Weroance
James I and, in English eyes, obliged to do exactly as he was told. But just as Smith had feared, the coronation only served to increase his sense of his own importance. When Newport demanded guides to lead him upstream into enemy territory, he obstinately refused. Nor did he intend to supply his “overlords” with much-needed food. The extent of his largesse was seven or eight bushels of grain. Newport was annoyed but not too dejected. He returned to Jamestown content that he had fulfilled the first item on the Virginia Company’s list of instructions.
The second was to prove even more difficult. The merchants had ordered him to search for and find “any of them sent by Sir Walter Ralegh”—the lost colonists of 1587. The London merchants knew that their discovery would be a great boon to the Jamestown settlers, for White’s men and women would have had more than twenty years of experience in the New World and would be able to supply the new colonists with priceless information about the land and its resources. They would be able to speak fluent Algonkian, and would possibly have intermarried with the Indians. But they would also be utterly changed by their experiences. Virginia Dare—John White’s granddaughter—would be twenty-one years old and possibly married
to a native Indian. If so, there is every likelihood that she would have given birth to children whose outlook would have far more in common with the forest Indians than with their English mother, who herself had never seen England. Many of the original female colonists might well have given birth to one or two children, swelling the original numbers, and even if a few of the settlers had died each year, the group would have remained much the same size as it had been in 1587. All would have learned how to survive in a hostile land, and many would be fast losing all vestiges of their Englishness. Their Elizabethan clothes would have worn out long ago and they would now be dressed in skins and furs. Even their English would be rusty; although they would, perhaps, still use it to speak to one another, their lingua franca would quite probably be Algonkian.

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