Captain
John Smith Admiral of New England was an
EnglishThe Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...
soldier, explorer, and author. He was
knightA knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
ed for his services to
Sigismund BathorySigismund Báthory was Prince of Transylvania.-Biography:Hailing from the Báthory family's Somlyó branch, he was the son of Christopher Báthory, Voivod of Transylvania, and nephew of Stephen Báthory, King of Poland...
, Prince of
TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
and friend
Mózes SzékelyMózes Székely was a Transylvanian nobleman of Székely descent and briefly ruled as Prince of Transylvania.- Biography :...
. He is remembered for his role in establishing the first permanent
English settlementThe English colonial empire consisted of a variety of overseas territories colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries....
in North America at
Jamestown, VirginiaJamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
, and his brief association with the Virginia Indian girl
PocahontasPocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...
during an altercation with the Powhatan Confederacy and her father,
Chief PowhatanChief Powhatan , whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh , was the paramount chief of Tsenacommacah, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia at the time English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607...
. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between September 1608 and August 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the
Chesapeake BayThe Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
.
Smith's books and maps may have been as important as his deeds, as they encouraged more Englishmen and women to follow the trail he had blazed and to colonise the
New WorldThe New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
. He gave the name
New EnglandNew England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
to that region and encouraged people to migrate with the comment, "Here every man may be master and owner of his owne labour and land...If he have nothing but his hands, he may...by industrie quickly grow rich."
Early adventures
John Smith was baptised on 6 January 1580 at
WilloughbyWilloughby is a village in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England, on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. It lies within the civil parish of Willoughby with Sloothby, and south of the town of Alford...
near
Alford, Lincolnshire- Notable residents :* Captain John Smith who lived in nearby Willoughby* Anne Hutchinson, pioneer settler and religious reformer in the United States* Thomas Paine, who was an excise officer in the town....
, where his parents rented a farm from Lord Willoughby. He claimed descent from the ancient Smith family of
CuerdleyCuerdley is a civil parish in Warrington, Cheshire, England. It has a population of 107 and much of its area is farmland. A large part of Cuerdley is occupied by the Fiddlers Ferry Power Station....
Lancashire and was educated at
King Edward VI Grammar School, LouthKing Edward VI Grammar School is one of many Grammar schools in the United Kingdom.-Admissions:Students who wish to attend the school must take and pass a test called the Eleven Plus. It is situated in Louth, which is a small market town in Lincolnshire...
, from 1592–1595. After his father died, Smith left home at the age of sixteen and set off to sea. He served as a mercenary in the army of
Henry IV of FranceHenry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
against the Spaniards, fought for
Dutch independenceThe Dutch Revolt or the Revolt of the Netherlands This article adopts 1568 as the starting date of the war, as this was the year of the first battles between armies. However, since there is a long period of Protestant vs...
from the Spanish King
Phillip IIPhilip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....
, then set off for the
Mediterranean SeaThe Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
. There he engaged in both trade and
piracyPiracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...
, and later fought against the
Ottoman TurksThe Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in the
Long WarThe Long War took place from 1591 or 1593 to 1604 or 1606 and was one of the numerous military conflicts between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire that developed after the Battle of Mohács.- History :The major participants of this war were the Habsburg Monarchy ,...
. Smith was promoted to captain while fighting for the Austrian
HabsburgThe House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
s in
HungaryThe Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
, in the campaign of
Michael the Brave in 1600 and 1601. After the death of Michael the Brave, he fought for Radu Şerban in
WallachiaWallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
against the Ottoman vassal
Ieremia MovilăIeremia Movilă was a Hospodar of Moldavia between August 1595 and May 1600, and again between September 1600 and July 10, 1606.-Rule:...
.
Smith is reputed to have defeated, killed and beheaded Turkish commanders in three
duelA duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
s, for which he was
knightA knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
ed by the Transylvanian Prince
Sigismund BáthorySigismund Báthory was Prince of Transylvania.-Biography:Hailing from the Báthory family's Somlyó branch, he was the son of Christopher Báthory, Voivod of Transylvania, and nephew of Stephen Báthory, King of Poland...
and given a horse and
coat of ArmsA coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
showing three Turks' heads. However, in 1602 he was wounded in a skirmish with the
TatarsCrimean Khanate, or Khanate of Crimea , was a state ruled by Crimean Tatars from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was . Its khans were the patrilineal descendants of Toqa Temür, the thirteenth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan...
, captured and sold as a
slaveSlavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. As Smith describes it: "we all sold for slaves, like beasts in a market." Smith claimed his master, a
TurkishTurkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
nobleman, sent him as a gift to his Greek mistress in
ConstantinopleConstantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, who fell in love with Smith. He then was taken to the
CrimeaCrimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, from where he escaped from the Ottoman lands into
MuscovyThe Tsardom of Russia was the name of the centralized Russian state from Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar in 1547 till Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew 35,000 km2 a year...
then on to the
Polish-Lithuanian CommonwealthThe Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
, before travelling through Europe and Northern Africa, returning to England in 1604.
Virginia Colony
In 1606 Smith became involved with plans to colonise Virginia for profit by the Virginia Company of London, which had been granted a
charterA charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...
by
King JamesJames VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
. The expedition set sail in three small ships, the Discovery, the Susan Constant and the Godspeed, on 20 December 1606. His
pageA page or page boy is a traditionally young male servant, a messenger at the service of a nobleman or royal.-The medieval page:In medieval times, a page was an attendant to a knight; an apprentice squire...
was a 12-year-old boy named Samuel Collier.
John Smith was reported to be a troublemaker on the voyage, and Captain
Christopher NewportChristopher Newport was an English seaman and privateer. He is best known as the captain of the Susan Constant, the largest of three ships which carried settlers for the Virginia Company in 1607 on the way to find the settlement at Jamestown in the Virginia Colony, which became the first permanent...
(in charge of the three ships) had planned to execute him upon arrival in Virginia. However, upon first landing at what is now
Cape HenryCape Henry is a cape on the Atlantic shore of Virginia north of Virginia Beach. It is the southern boundary of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.Across the mouth of the bay to the north is Cape Charles...
on 26 April 1607, sealed orders from the Virginia Company were opened. They designated Smith to be one of the leaders of the new colony, forcing Newport to spare him.
Site
The search for a suitable site ended on 14 May 1607, when
Captain Edward Maria WingfieldSir Edward Maria Wingfield, sometimes hyphenated as Edward-Maria Wingfield, was a soldier, Member of Parliament, and English colonist in America...
, president of the council, chose the
JamestownJamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
site as the location for the colony.
Harsh weather, lack of water, living in a swampy wilderness and attacks from the Powhatan nation almost destroyed the colony.
Encounter with Pocahontas' tribe
In December 1607, while seeking food along the
Chickahominy RiverThe Chickahominy is an river in the eastern portion of the U.S. state of Virginia. The river rises about northwest of Richmond and flows southeast and south to the James River...
, Smith was captured and taken to meet the
chief of the PowhatansChief Powhatan , whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh , was the paramount chief of Tsenacommacah, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia at the time English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607...
at
WerowocomocoWerowocomoco was a village that served as the political center of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom, a grouping of about 30 Virginia Indian tribes speaking an Algonquian language...
, the main village of the Powhatan Confederacy. The village was on the north shore of the
York RiverThe York River is a navigable estuary, approximately long, in eastern Virginia in the United States. It ranges in width from at its head to near its mouth on the west side of Chesapeake Bay. Its watershed drains an area including portions of 17 counties of the coastal plain of Virginia north...
about 15 miles due north of Jamestown and 25 miles downstream from where the river forms from the
Pamunkey RiverThe Pamunkey River is a tributary of the York River, about long, in eastern Virginia in the United States. Via the York River it is part of the watershed of Chesapeake Bay.-Course:...
and the
Mattaponi RiverThe Mattaponi River is a tributary of the York River estuary in eastern Virginia in the United States.It rises as four streams in Spotsylvania County, each of which is given a shorter piece of the Mattaponi's name:...
at
West Point, VirginiaWest Point is an incorporated town in King William County, Virginia, United States. The population was 2,867 at the 2000 census.-Geography:West Point is located at...
. Although he feared for his life, Smith was eventually released without harm and later attributed this in part to the chief's daughter,
PocahontasPocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...
, who according to Smith, threw herself across his body: "at the minute of my execution, she hazarded [i.e. risked] the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown".
In 1860 Boston businessman and historian Charles Deane was the first scholar to question specific details of Smith's writings. Smith's version of events is the only source and scepticism has increasingly been expressed about its veracity. One reason for such doubt is that, despite having published two earlier books about Virginia, Smith's earliest-surviving account of his rescue by Pocahontas dates from 1616, nearly 10 years later, in a letter entreating
Queen AnneAnne of Denmark was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland as the wife of King James VI and I.The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at the age of fourteen and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I...
to treat Pocahontas with dignity. The time gap in publishing his story raises the possibility that Smith may have exaggerated or invented the event to enhance Pocahontas's image. However, in a recent book, Professor J. A. Leo Lemay of the University of Delaware points out that Smith's earlier writing was primarily geographical and ethnographic in nature and did not dwell on his personal experiences; hence there was no reason for him to write down the story until this point.
Henry Brooks Adams, the pre-eminent Harvard historian of the second half of the 19th century, attempted to debunk Smith’s claims of heroism. He said that Smith’s recounting of the story of Pocahontas had been progressively embellished, made up of “falsehoods of an effrontery seldom equalled in modern times.” Although there is consensus among historians that Smith tended to exaggerate, his account does seem to be consistent with the basic facts of his life. Adams' attack on Smith, an attempt to deface one of the icons of Southern history, was motivated by political considerations in the wake of the
Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Adams had been influenced to write his fusillade against Smith by
John G. PalfreyJohn Gorham Palfrey was an American clergyman and historian who served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. A Unitarian minister, he played a leading role in the early history of Harvard Divinity School, and he later became involved in politics as a State Representative and U.S...
who was promoting New England colonisation, as opposed to southern settlement, as the founding of America. The accuracy of Smith’s accounts has continued to be a subject of debate over the centuries.
Some experts have suggested that although Smith believed he had been rescued, he had in fact been involved in a ritual intended to symbolise his death and rebirth as a member of the tribe. In Love and Hate in Jamestown, David A. Price notes that this is only guesswork, since little is known of Powhatan rituals, and there is no evidence for any similar rituals among other
Native AmericanThe indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
tribes in North America.
In True Travels (1630), Smith told a similar story of having been rescued by the intervention of a young girl after having been captured in 1602 by
TurksThe Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in Hungary. Karen Kupperman suggests that he "presented those remembered events from decades earlier" when telling the story of Pocahontas.
Whatever really happened, the encounter initiated a friendly relationship between the natives and Smith and the colonists at
JamestownJamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
. As the colonists expanded further, some of the tribes felt that their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again.
In 1608, Pocahontas is said to have saved Smith a second time. Smith and some other colonists were invited to Werowocomoco by Chief Powhatan on friendly terms, but Pocahontas came to the hut where the English were staying and warned them that Powhatan was planning to kill them. Due to this warning, the English stayed on their guard and the attack never came.
Also in 1608,
Polishthumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
craftsmen were brought to the colony to help it develop. Smith wrote that two Poles rescued him when he was attacked by a native American.
Smith's leadership of Jamestown
Later, Smith left Jamestown to explore the
Chesapeake BayThe Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
region and search for badly needed food, covering an estimated 3,000 miles. In his absence, Smith left his friend
Matthew ScrivenerMatthew Scrivener was an English colonist in Virginia. He served briefly as acting governor of Jamestown, when he was succeeded by Captain John Smith...
, a young gentleman adventurer from Sibton,
SuffolkSuffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, who was related by marriage to the Wingfield family, as governor in his place. Scrivener was not to be a leader of the people. Smith was elected president of the local council in September 1608 and instituted a policy of discipline. He encouraged farming with an admonition taken from the New Testament (II Thessalonians 3:10): "He who does not work, will not eat."
The settlement grew under his leadership. During this period Smith took the chief of the neighbouring tribe hostage and, according to Smith, he did "take this murdering Opechancanough...by the long lock of his head; and with my pistol at his breast, I led him {out of his house} amongst his greatest forces, and before we parted made him [agree to] fill our bark with twenty tons of corn." A year later, full-scale war broke out between the Powhatans and the Virginia colonists. Smith was seriously injured by a gunpowder burn after a rogue spark landed in his powder keg. He returned to England for treatment in October 1609. He never returned to Virginia. He was succeeded as governor by an aristocratic adventurer,
George PercyGeorge Percy was an English explorer, author, and early Colonial Governor of Virginia.-Early life:George Percy was born in England, the youngest son of Henry Percy, 2nd/8th Earl of Northumberland and Lady Catherine Neville. He was sickly for much of his life, possibly suffering from epilepsy or...
.
New England
In 1614, Smith returned to the Americas in a voyage to the coasts of
MaineMaine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
and
Massachusetts BayThe Massachusetts Bay, also called Mass Bay, is one of the largest bays of the Atlantic Ocean which forms the distinctive shape of the coastline of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Its waters extend 65 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. Massachusetts Bay includes the Boston Harbor, Dorchester Bay,...
. He named the region "
New EnglandNew England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
". He made two attempts in 1614 and 1615 to return to the same coast. First a storm dismasted his ship. In the second attempt, he was captured by French pirates off the coast of the Azores. Smith escaped after weeks of captivity and made his way back to England, where he published an account of his two voyages as
Description of New England. He never left England again. He died in the year 1631 in London at the age of 51.
He was buried in the church of St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate, the largest Parish Church in the City of London, where there is a handsome window designed by
Francis SkeatFrancis Walter Skeat is an English glass painter who has created over 400 stained glass windows in churches and cathedrals, both in England and overseas. Skeat is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters, and a member of the Art Workers...
and installed in 1968.
Credibility as an author
Many critics judge Captain John Smith’s character and credibility as an author based on a single event, the infamous scene where Pocahontas saved his life from the hand of Powhatan. Additional and probably more accurate judgments should rest upon his relationship with both the Indians and colonists of Jamestown. Smith earned his status as an American hero through his strong work ethic and compromise with the Indians, themes that reappear in his writings such as The Generall Historie of Virginia and The True Travels…of Captain John Smith. Most of the critical scepticism of Smith’s credibility is a result of the differences between his narratives. His earliest text is A True Relation of Virginia, which was submitted for publication in 1608, the year after Smith’s experiences in Jamestown. The second, The Generall Historie, was published in 1624, sixteen years later. Compared to The Generall Historie, many events, including the Pocahontas scene, are either left out or changed; this is probably to due to the fact that The Generall Historie was composed so much later, and Smith’s memories of the colony, the Indians, and their relations were faded. Accordingly, the publishing of letters, journals, and pamphlets from the colonists were regulated by the companies that sponsored the voyage in that they must go “directly to the company,” because no one was to “write any letter of anything that may discourage others.” Smith is now known to have violated this regulation by first publishing A True Relation as an unknown author. Furthermore, the editor of The Generall Historie probably “cut out…references to the Indians’ hostility, to bickering among the leaders of Virginia Company, and to the early supposed mutiny of…Smith on the voyage to Virginia.”
The Pocahontas episode is subject to the most scrutiny by literary critics, for it does not even appear in A True Relation, but does so in The Generall Historie. According to Lemay, it is probable that “Smith was being ritualistically killed. Reborn, he was adopted into the tribe, with Pocahontas as his sponsor. But Smith, of course, did not realise the nature of the initiation ceremony.” Also important evidence to Smith’s credibility regarding the story is the fact that “no one in Smith’s day ever expressed doubt in [it], and many persons who must have known the truth…including
John RolfeJohn Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy.In 1961, the Jamestown...
[and] Pocahontas…were in London in 1616 when Smith publicised the story in a letter to the queen.”
Smith focuses heavily on American Indians in all of his works concerning the New World. Smith’s relationship with the Powhatan Indians is the sole factor that saved the Jamestown colony from sharing the fate of the Roanoke colony. His relations with the Indians were very wise in that:
He was friendly toward them, but never let them forget the might of English weapons… Realizing that the very existence of the colony depended on peace, he never thought of trying to exterminate the natives. Only after his departure were there bitter wars and massacres, the natural results of a more hostile policy. In his writings, Smith reveals the attitudes behind his actions.
However, in The Generall Historie, Smith implies that the Virginia colonists resented the Indians and the two peoples had mostly hostile feelings towards each other. He compares Chief Powhatan to the devil, and refers to the Indians as “barbarians.” Numerous times, he mentions sending spies to discover the Chief’s intent and declining Powhatan’s request to relinquish their arms. He also stresses the many experiences where the Indians threatened and attempted to kill him. However, Lemay contests Smith’s depiction of the relations between colonists and Indians: “[He] was not only fair, he was surprisingly kind and humanitarian. He treated the Indians as he treated whites…tortured [none], executed none, and saved Indians when others wanted to slay them.” Smith’s own past as a commoner allowed him to sympathise with the Indians, and he believed that the Indians were not inferior to the whites but just “at a different stage of civilisation.” The respect between Smith and the Powhatan earned him the title of a werowance, “a chieftain among the whites.” The relationship between Smith and Chief Powhatan is further evidence of the understanding between these two cultures. In The Generall Historie, Smith addresses a number of letters exchanged between him and Powhatan that reflect the respect that existed between them: “Half a dozen years after Smith had left Virginia—and after the whites had repeatedly assured Powhatan that Smith was dead—[the] leader instructed his advisor… [and] Pocahontas to look for Smith in England;” judging from his directions, the Chief seems to have been deeply affected by the Smith’s rumoured death. This is another indication of the positive relationship held between colonists and Indians: if their associations were as Smith depicted them in The Generall Historie, Powhatan would not have been much concerned about his absence or death.
Concerning his relationship with the colonists, Smith is considered by historical and literary critics to be an arrogant braggart. On numerous accounts, he outwardly expressed the colonists were worthless; most of them were gentlemen who felt no need to do physical labour. As a method of survival, Smith blatantly rejected the social order that existed in England, which obviously angered the gentlemen of the colony. Smith became regularly frustrated with the amount of delegation that the colonists went through before a decision could be made. Smith’s disgust with the “gentlemen” of Jamestown was clear: he makes several references to them as “useless parasites,” for their ignorance in the laborious tasks that are required for beginning a colony. His frustration with them did not end at their inability to work, but also extended to the social order that they believe they were entitled to. The colonists, accustomed to the social order of England, rejected the social construct that Smith created in Jamestown. They perceived Smith’s establishment of this new structure as a challenge to their “deserved” respect. Smith mentions several times in his works that having actual workers would have been better than what the Virginia Company sent over: “twentie good workmen had been better than all them all.” In Smith’s hopes to better colonise the Americas, he urges to the Massachusetts Bay Company not to make the same mistake that the Virginia Company made: “…nor such multitude of Officers, neither masters, gentlemen, gentlewomen and children as you have men to work, which idle chares you will fine very troublesome, and the effects dangerous, and one hundred good labourers better than a thousand such Gallants as we were sent me that could do nothing.”
In reality, Smith was discontent with only a few colonists who acted this way: he “claimed the early colonists were heroes. His primary purpose in writing The Generall Historie…was to eternalise ‘the memory of those that effected’ the settlement of Virginia.” In Smith’s publication, A Description of New England (1616), he goes so far as to compare the colonists to Adam and Eve; just as Adam and Eve spread productivity throughout the world, the colonists created life in the Virginia colony. Smith essentially sympathised with gentlemen; he knew it was not their fault they were useless and that this trait was merely a product of the imposed standards of English society. He recognised that “they were imprisoned by their own self-imposed limitations. What they could and could not do was decided by their awareness of traditional roles and by the shame that they would feel if others saw them engaged in physical work.” Lemay speculates that as a result of Smith’s strict rules and the emigration to America, these men could shed these roles and create new lives for themselves in which they could celebrate the products of their labours and not feel humiliated.
Promoter of American colonisation
One of John Smith’s main incentives in writing about his New World experiences and observances was to promote the colonisation of The New World by England. Many promotional writers sugar-coated their depictions of America in order to heighten its appeal, but Smith was not one to exaggerate the facts. He was very straightforward with his readers about both the dangers and the possibilities of colonisation: instead of proclaiming that there was an abundance of gold in the New World—as many writers did—Smith illustrated that what was truly abundant within America was monetary opportunity in the form of industry. Smith was realistic about his proposition for colonisation and the benefits that it could yield. He recognised that no “other motive [besides] wealth…would draw [potential colonists] from their ease and humours at home.” Therefore, he presented in his writings actual industries that could yield significant capital within the New World: fishing, farming, shipbuilding, and fur trading.” In A Description of New England, Smith illustrates America as an ideal environment for such trades and enumerates the monetary benefits that they would bring. Rather than making false promises of abounding gold to his readers, Smith attempted to attract interest for colonisation by depicting the opportunities that fertile soil and abundant resources would bring. He insists, however, that only hard workers will be able to reap such benefits. Just as Smith did not exaggerate the possibilities for wealth within America, he did not understate the dangers and toil associated with colonisation. He declared that only those with a strong work ethic would be able to “live and succeed in America” in the face of such dangers. Colonists would have to risk their lives in order to benefit from the “phenomenal possibilities” that the New World offered. As a promoter of American colonisation, Smith did not placate his readers: he wished for potential colonists to be aware of the dangers that they faced, the work that colonisation would require, and the benefits that they stood to gain.
Additional Works
A Map of Virginia is focused centrally on the observations that Smith made about the Indians, particularly regarding their religion and government. This specific focus would have been Smith’s way of adapting to the new world by assimilating the best parts of their culture and incorporating them into the colony. A Map of Virginia was not just a pamphlet discussing the observations that Smith made, but also a map which Smith had drawn himself, to help make the Americas seem more domestic. As Lemay remarks, “maps tamed the unknown, reduced it to civilisation and harnessed it for Western consciousness,” promoting Smith’s central theme of encouraging the settlement of America. Many “naysayers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century” have made the argument that Smith’s maps weren’t reliable because he “lacked a formal education in cartography.” That allegation, however, was proved false by the fact that Smith was a “master in his chosen fields of experience.”
The Proceedings of English Colonie In Virginia was a compilation of other writings; it narrates the colony’s history from Dec. 1609 to summer 1610, and Smith left the colony in Oct. 1609 due to a gun-powder accident. The writing style of The Proceedings is better constructed than A Map of Virginia. It is well organised and more focused, and this could’ve been a result of Smith’s ever conscious self promotion by allocating it to a wider reader base: “Books stood a better change…if they had been Testimonial.”
Publications
- A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608)
- A Map of Virginia (1612)
- The Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia (1612)
- A Description of New England (1616)
- New England's Trials (1620, 1622)
- The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles
The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles is a book written by Captain John Smith, first published in 1624. The book is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, histories of the territory administered by the Virginia Company....
(1624)
- An Accidence, or the Pathway to Experience Necessary for all Young Seamen (1626)
- A Sea Grammar (1627) – the first sailors' word book in English
- The True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith (1630)
- Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, or Anywhere (1631)
John Smith Monument, New Hampshire
The Captain John Smith Monument currently lies in disrepair off the coast of
New HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
on
Star IslandStar Island is one of the Isles of Shoals that straddle the border between New Hampshire and Maine, seven miles from the mainland in the Atlantic Ocean. Star Island is the largest of the four islands in the group that are located in New Hampshire...
, part of the
Isles of ShoalsThe Isles of Shoals are a group of small islands and tidal ledges situated approximately off the east coast of the United States, straddling the border of the states of New Hampshire and Maine.- History :...
. Built in 1864 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of John Smith's visit to what he named Smith's Isles, the original monument was a tall pillar set on a triangular base atop a series of steps surrounded by granite supports and a sturdy iron railing. At the top of the original
obeliskAn obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...
were three carved faces, representing the severed heads of three
TurksTurkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
that Smith lopped off while in combat during his stint as a soldier in
TransylvaniaTransylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
.
In 1914, the New Hampshire Society of Colonial Wars partially restored and rededicated the monument for the 300th anniversary celebration of his historic visit. The monument had weathered so badly in the harsh coastal winters that the inscription in the granite had worn away.
In popular culture
- Captain Smith was portrayed by Anthony Dexter
Anthony John "Tony" Dexter was an American actor known for his resemblance of Rudolph Valentino, whom he portrayed in the 1951 biographic Valentino. Dexter sometimes used the pseudonym Walter Craig...
in the 1953 low-budget film Captain John Smith and PocahontasCaptain John Smith and Pocahontas is a 1953 American historical film directed by Lew Landers. The distributor was United Artists. It stars Anthony Dexter, Jody Lawrance and Alan Hale. It depicts the foundation of the Jamestown Colony in Virginia by English settlers and the relationship between...
.
- John Smith is one of the main characters in Disney's 1995 film Pocahontas
Pocahontas is the 33rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and was originally released to selected theaters on June 16, 1995 by Walt Disney Pictures...
and its 1998 straight-to-video sequel Pocahontas II: Journey to a New WorldPocahontas II: Journey to a New World is a 1998 straight-to-video sequel to the 1995 Disney film Pocahontas. The film is inspired by true events in the life of Pocahontas which took place several years after her encounter with John Smith and the founders of Jamestown...
. He is voiced by Mel GibsonMel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...
in the first movie and by his younger brother Donal GibsonDonal Gibson is an American actor, and younger brother of award-winning actor and director Mel Gibson.Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York. Donal has done voice acting in shows like ReBoot and Justice League Unlimited...
in the sequel.
- Smith and Pocahontas
Pocahontas was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, the head of a network of tributary tribal nations in Tidewater Virginia...
are also central characters in the Terrence MalickTerrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....
film The New World, in which he was portrayed by Colin FarrellColin James Farrell is an Irish actor, who has appeared in such film as Tigerland, Miami Vice, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit, Alexander and S.W.A.T....
.
Further reading
- Woolley, Benjamin. Savage Kingdom, The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America, First Harper Perennial Edition Published 2008
- Horn, James, ed. Captain John Smith, Writings, with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the English Settlement of America (Library of America
The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-001-8.
- Philip L. Barbour, The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606–1609, 2 vols., Publications of the Hakluyt Society, ser.2, 136–37 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)
- A. Bryant Nichols Jr., Captain Christopher Newport: Admiral of Virginia, Sea Venture, 2007
- Philip L. Barbour, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964)
- Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
- Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler, Captain John Smith: Jamestown and the Birth of the American Dream (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2006)
- Horn, James. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (New York: Basic Books, 2005)
- Jenks, Tudor. Captain John Smith (New York: Century Co., 1904)
- Kupperman, Karen Ordahl ed., John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
- Price, David A., Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation (New York: Knopf, 2003)
- Lemay, J.A. Leo. Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1992, p. 25.
- Giles Milton, Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, Macmillan, New York, 2001
- John Smith, The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580–1631) in Three Volumes, edited by Philip L. Barbour, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for The Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, 1986)
- Smith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. 1624. Repr. in Jamestown Narratives, ed. Edward Wright Haile. Champlain, VA: Roundhouse, 1998. pp. 198–9, 259.
- Smith, John. Letter to Queen Anne. 1616. Repr. as 'John Smith's Letter to Queen Anne regarding Pocahontas'. Caleb Johnson's Mayflower Web Pages. 1997. Accessed 23 April 2006.
- Symonds, William. The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia. 1612. Repr. in The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Vol. 1, pp. 251–2
- Warner, Charles Dudley
Charles Dudley Warner was an American essayist, novelist, and friend of Mark Twain, with whom he co-authored the novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.-Biography:...
, Captain John Smith, 1881. Repr. in Captain John Smith Project Gutenberg TextProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
, accessed 4 July 2006
External links