Jamestown: Paradise

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When the first settlers arrived at Jamestown, it seemed like paradise. Settlers ventured through lush forests and met native peoples.

Unfortunately, they’d gotten a late start, meaning they were running low on food. In addition, it was clear that some settlers weren’t exactly who they said they were.

Faction fighting had also begun, and it wasn’t too long before the colony experienced its first attack.

A cast of characters:

Bartholomew Gosnold: The man whose idea Jamestown was, and the man who had recruited the first settlers. He named Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod on a previous expedition to Maine, and was highly respected among the settlers. His name was removed from company paperwork after someone reported his critical remarks about King James to Lord Cecil.

Edward Maria Wingfield: Gosnold’s cousin, and a former Flemish POW. He was known for his bravery, and was a godson of Queen Mary.

John Ratcliffe: He was mysteriously put on the expedition by Cecil, and put in a position of authority on both the sea voyage and in the colony itself. No one knew him, no one trusted him.

George Kendall: Another Cecil plant with a very similar backstory.

John Smith: A former mercenary and POW who had escaped from his Turkish captors and trekked across Russia, Poland and Germany to get home. He joined the voyage through a mutual acquaintance with Gosnold and Wingfield, and by the end of the sea journey, he was in the stocks for alleged attempted mutiny.

George Percy: The son of one of the noblest, most Catholic and most rebellious families in England.

Gabriel Archer: A Cambridge-educated lawyer who had accompanied Gosnold to New England.

John Martin: One of the oldest settlers, he was the son of the Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Mint.  He had privateered in the Caribbean, even as a member of Sir Francis Drake’s supply mission to Roanoke.  He arrived with his son, but soon became known as a person who used his ill-health as an excuse to do anything dangerous.

Christopher Newport: A one-armed sea captain who had gone to Roanoke, been a privateer, and was now a successful Caribbean trader.

Wahunsenaca: Leader (Mamanatoic) of the Powhatan Empire, ruler of Tsenocomoco (the Algonquian word for Virginia).

Opiechancanough: Leader (Werowance) of the Pamunkey tribe, part of the Powhatan Empire, and brother of Wahunsenaca. He may also have been Don Luis, a man who spent 11 years with the Spanish before returning to Virginia and slaughtering the mercenaries who accompanied him there.

Navaranze: The first Powhatan Indian to befriend the English, and their guide in early exploration.

 

Transcript

Virtually no Englishman had ever seen the Chesapeake Bay.  A few people connected to the Roanoke venture had glimpsed it years before, but most English people had only seen it in paintings by John White – if that.  A few French people had done some fur trading there.  Spanish had briefly made contact with the local people, but that’s important, we’ll get to that later.  The English, though, mostly hung out in the Caribbean, Newfoundland and New England.

In the early 17th Century, though, a few people decided to set up a colony there, and on December 19, 1606, a trio of ships set sail for Virginia.  Under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, 104 settlers and 40 crew left England for the unknown.

Introduction

By the time they reached Virginia – a voyage that took four months instead of the usual two – John Smith was under arrest.  Accusations and fingerpointing ran wild to the point that the company had split into factions before even losing sight of the English shore, and conditions among the settlers seemed so troubling that a group of colonists immediately jumped ship and decided to take their chances living with the Indians.

How did we get here?  Let’s back up.  The Virginia venture had started when a small group of people including Bartholomew Gosnold, Edward Maria Wingfield, John Smith and Gabriel Archer, started recruiting settlers and investors for a colony in North America.  They had recruited most of the settlers from their home counties, and soon had picked up enough steam to back up their venture with a patent, a charter, and a joint stock company called the Virginia Company.  This, they did with the help of Sir Thomas Smythe, one of the founders of the East India Company.

They needed a joint stock company, because there was no one associated with the company rich enough to fund the voyage.  There could be no private patent similar to Sir Walter Raleigh’s.  The London Company would help set colony policies, advocate on the colony’s behalf at James’ court, recruit settlers, and most importantly of all, raise the money needed to keep the colony going.  It would also be easier to keep the colony a secret if it were managed by a joint stock company, which was important because Spain was willing to reignite war with England to destroy the colony if it proved a threat.

The Virginia Company helped recruit enough settlers to round out those recruited by the “First Movers,” and chose the captain who would take them to the New World.  Its choice was Christopher Newport, a one-armed veteran of the fight with the Armada, who had been to the Chesapeake in John White’s search for the Lost Colonists, and had done privateering in the Caribbean.  When James signed a peace treaty with Spain and forbade privateering, he met equal success doing legal trade.  No one could doubt his credentials, but he was certainly given oddly favorable terms for his participation in the venture.  Unlike most colonists, he would be given an ownership of land, and wouldn’t have to give money or recruit servants from his estates to participate.

As plans to settle Virginia developed, James’ privy councilor, Robert Cecil, First Earl of Salisbury, had become involved.  Cecil was a key figure in the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, and, though no one knew this at the time, was also in the paid employment of Spain.  Soon, he had pushed a few of his own people into the venture for mysterious reasons.

The Virginia Company was completely out of the hands of the First Movers at this point in time, and when the Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery set sail from London, Christopher Newport was given the list of colony leadership in a sealed box, with instructions not to open it until he reached the shores of Virginia.  That was an odd order, and it’s hard to know exactly why the Company made that decision.  Maybe it was to prevent people from refusing to go to Virginia when they found they weren’t chosen for leadership.  Maybe it was to prevent infighting en route to Virginia.  Whatever the reason, the practical effect it had was to increase suspicion among the settlers, and help to increase tensions to a breaking point.

People already came to the venture with vastly different backgrounds and ideas, and four months on a ship with mysterious orders and even more mysterious interlopers did not help matters.  Accusations started to fly.  Smith accused Wingfield and Percy of being little better than atheists because they were hostile to Reverend Hunt’s Godly exhortations.  Side note here, when you hear Godly used in this time period, think Puritan.  It didn’t mean “religious” back then, kind of like how today, we understand the terms pro-life and pro-choice to refer to specific political views, though the terms themselves refer to values most of us would say we hold.  Hunt was Puritan-leaning, Smith aspired to be a Christian warrior, and pretty much every gentleman in the company considered Smith to be a commoner with pretensions above his station, though he was happy to point out that he was technically a gentleman, too.

Wingfield and Percy accused Hunt of having left England because he engaged in impropriety with a servant and shirked his duties.  Wingfield and Newport, meanwhile, accused Smith of plotting a mutiny along with conspirators on all three ships to usurp the government, murder the council and make himself king of the colony.  Smith was arrested, and while stopping on Nevis, he was only spared execution by the intervention of Hunt and Gosnold.

Finally, four months after leaving, the group finally glimpsed the wooded shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  Tall trees, lush foliage and abundant wildlife were like stepping into another world.  They’d left a destitute and overcrowded city, spent four months on a smelly, overcrowded boat, and finally they were at their destination, a land even as God made it.

As disembarked, though, a group of Indians appeared out of nowhere and started shooting.  Captain Archer was injured in both his hands, and one sailor in life-threatening places.  It’s also around this time that the first group of people – known as the “Renegades” – jumped ship to join the Indians.  William White was their leader.  Still, things seemed promising.

That night, they opened the names of the colony’s leaders, with a couple surprises on the list, perhaps unsurprisingly given what we already know.  This is also a good time to introduce you briefly to the leaders who shaped Jamestown’s early history.  Their faction fighting came to define the colony in this time period, and it’s just better that you have a brief idea of who is who before we move forward.

Newport, who we already know, was given sole control of the colony whenever he was there.  No surprise there, his position in the company was made clear before anyone left London.  When Newport wasn’t there, the colony would be led by a seven-man council, and the council would elect a president every year.  The president and the council were to try to cooperate, but if they simply couldn’t agree on an issue, it would be decided by a vote.  Simple majority won, and the president got two votes.  The president could be removed by a majority of the council.

The first man on the council was Bartholomew Gosnold.  No surprise here, either.  Gosnold had participated in numerous colonial ventures, and tried to plant a colony in modern Maine.  He had named Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, but the colony had failed, though he was able to gather a cargo of cedar and sassafrass.  Today, he’s recognized as the man most responsible for England settling North America.  Back then he was recognized as the man most able to rise above the faction fighting to guide the colony and minimize conflict.  Everyone knew him, everyone liked him, everyone respected him, and he didn’t get pulled into petty squabbles.  He was the person who had first had the idea for the Virginia Colony, and the man who had first recruited people for it, but his name was erased from all documentation when Cecil discovered some negative remarks he made about King James at a dinner party.

Edward Maria Wingfield was related to Gosnold and was another one of the first movers.  He had been a POW in Flanders, and first become interested in colonization when he met Ralph Lane in Ireland.  Wingfield’s family had supported Mary Tudor, and he was her Godson.  Obviously they were a Catholic family, though his cousin had also participated in the Protestant-leaning Essex Rebellion at the end of Elizabeth’s reign.  He, himself, seemed not to have any religious leanings one way or another, and at the very least he kept them quiet.  This means that if he did have any religious leanings, he was definitely a Catholic.  Again, with his early actions in the colony and his relationship to Gosnold, Wingfield made sense as a council member.

This is where it gets weird, though.  The fourth most prominent member on the council was a man no one knew anything about.  His name was John Ratcliffe.  He was obviously there because Cecil had put him there, but no one knew why, no one knew who he was, and no one trusted him.  He and Kendall were the two people whose presence in the venture the Virginia Company deemed non-negotiable, and he had even been given command of the Godspeed while Newport commanded the flagship Susan Constant, and Gosnold captained the Discovery.  Now he wasn’t just on the council, he was one of the four most prominent members.

Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, Kendall was also on the council.  Cecil also had a spy named Bruster in the colony, possibly related to the William Brewster who helped found Plymouth, but they couldn’t all be on the council.

Captain John Martin was son of the London Mayor, Master of the Royal Mint and a former privateer who had sailed with Sir Francis Drake on the mission to pick up Lane’s men in Roanoke.  This made him one of the oldest people there, in his mid-40s while the others, including his son, were mostly in their 20s and early 30s.

The last person on the council was John Smith.  Smith wasn’t popular, and was considered by many of the colony’s leaders to be a commoner with pretensions above his station, but he had been one of the First Movers of the colony, and Bartholomew Gosnold had recommended that he be put on the council.  He had been a soldier fighting the Ottomans for the Holy Roman Empire, and was brought in by someone who knew both Wingfield and Gosnold.  Smith was still under arrest, though, and the council didn’t let him take his place, increasing hostility between Wingfield and Newport and Smith.

In addition to the two people who were mysteriously on the council, there were also two notable people who had been left off.  The first was Captain Gabriel Archer, and he was furious.  No one really knew why he was left off.  He had participated in Gosnold’s previous colonizing expedition, and written the most important account of that voyage, helping people understand the land and people they encountered by making common sense comparisons with English examples.  He had become one of the First Movers of the Jamestown project because of his connection to Gosnold.  He was a Cambridge educated lawyer, and should by all measures have been included.  He was known for his intelligence, quick wit and skill with words, and because of that he actually did a lot of the early location naming in Virginia, with some, like Cape Comfort, being puns.  He also suggested the name James Fort instead of Jamestown for the settlement’s name, a play on the name Chelmsford, which was a town the Puritans disapproved of.  This hostility to the Puritans is because Archer was a Catholic, the son of people persecuted for their Catholic faith, and a lawyer at a time that Catholics weren’t allowed to practice law.  This Catholicism became the topic of conversation just a couple years ago, because Archer’s body was found, buried with a relic.

The other notable exemption was George Percy, but unlike Archer, he wasn’t surprised to be left off the council.  He was the highest ranking nobleman there, but his brother was in the Tower of London for his participation in the Gunpowder Plot.  His brother wasn’t executed, though, because the death of his cousin meant they couldn’t prove the extent of his brother’s involvement.  In addition, his father had died in the Tower for his participation in a plot to try to break Mary Queen of Scots out of the Tower, and his uncle had been executed for leading the Rising of the North to try to put her on the throne.  What’s more, his grandfather had been executed for his leadership in the Pilgrimage of Grace.  Less related, but while I’m on the subject, his ancestor Henry Hotspur had been killed in a rebellion against Henry IV, and Hotspur’s uncle was executed for his participation in that rebellion.  They weren’t just Catholics, though open Catholicism seemed to have been enough to disqualify Archer, they were diehard rebels, and this meant that there was very little chance Percy was going to find his way anywhere near power in Jamestown.  He didn’t particularly want power anyway, though.  He could be distinguished by his lineage without having to resort to politics.  He had been considered a nothing in England, an epileptic, and the youngest of eight children who lived beyond the means of his modest inheritance and used his extravagance to demonstrate his social status.  He’d lived in the Caribbean for a while to try to improve his health, and spent some time in Ireland, and his brother had paid for his voyage.

You can see a very strong Catholic presence in this venture, which is very interesting.  If you listened to the English Origins series, you know that Catholics were persecuted in England at this time, and that nobility were more than twice as likely to be Catholics as the general population.  Both Kendall and Ratcliff had Catholic and Gunpowder Plot connections, too, but we’ll get to that later.

Wingfield was elected president.  It’s said that he feared only two rivals, Archer, who would if he could, and Gosnold, who could if he would.

But, that out of the way, they started to explore.  They erected a cross at Cape Henry, named in honor of James’ beloved 13 year old heir, started to make contact with the local people, and started to look for a suitable location to start the colony, following Company directions and avoiding offending the locals.  They received a warm welcome from the Kekotans, Paspaheighs and Quioquihanocs, and were especially impressed by the latter’s chief, Chopaoc.  After some deliberation, they decided on Jamestown Island as a location.  50 miles from the coast, it was unlikely to be surprised by Spanish warships but it could also easily be defended against hostile Indians, and ships could easily land there.  The Paspaheigh who owned the land considered it worthless, a swamp with bad water that was only good for hunting deer.

Their first significant encounter with the local peoples came as they were setting up camp.  The Werowance, or tribal leader, of the Paspaheigh, came to their camp with a hundred guards.  The English refused to put down their weapons, but the Werowance granted them the land as a peacemaking gesture.  This relieved the tension until a settler found a hatchet missing.  This led to a brawl, and the chief left angrily.  Two days later, though, he returned with a deer carcass as a peace offering, and the English and Paspaheigh started to communicate and try to get to know each other.  Part of this involved a shooting demonstration.  Leaning a wooden shield against a tree, they took turns shooting at it.  The Paspaheigh were impressed by gun technology, but the English were equally impressed by Indian accuracy, and to see the Indian arrow completely penetrate the shield, where their bullets had only lodged in the wood.  It was a friendly meeting, and colonists were beginning to settle into their new routines and new surroundings.

It was now May 1607, and the colony had planned to have Newport return with the first supply mission by May.  They had given the settlers supplies based on this assumption, erring on the side of stinginess, but the long voyage had pushed the timeline back.  In addition, Newport and the Company both benefitted more from his exploring to find valuables than his crossing the Atlantic for food.  The long-term success of the mission depended on finding some way to make the Colony worth investing in, and he couldn’t return to England with nothing, so while the settlers were eager for Newport to leave, he took 20 men, including Smith, Percy and Archer, up the James River.

This mission, as it started, epitomized the romance of exploration.  They sailed the Pinnace up the James River in a land overgrown with foliage, with birds filling the trees, and peaceful peoples with beautiful cultures.  A man Archer dubbed the “kind consort” followed them in a canoe until they agreed to let him be their guide, and he led them to village after village of people who welcomed them into their towns, fed them, and were eager to trade.  At one point, the kind consort was drawing a map with his toe, and Archer offered him a pen.  It was a cultural moment, sharing, feasting, talking, listening.  They watched beautiful dances, and Percy, who was trained in the arts, noted that while they moved their upper bodies individually, their feet moved to the same beat.  The principles and understanding of dance transcended culture, though he did worry they were worshiping the devil at times.  They sat around fires in village huts, and learned of Powhatan Wahunsenaca, the Mamanatoic, or leader of the Powhatan empire.  The women were warm, feminine and beautiful, while the men were big and strong.

Finally, they met the person they believed to be “Powhatan,” the leader of the Powhatan nation.  This was partially the result of a misunderstanding, and partially the result of the Powhatan misleading them.  They sat down with the Werowance – Wahunsenaca’s sun Parahunt – and talked.  Archer showed him the injuries in his hands, and Parahunt said it was a rival Chesapeake tribe.  The English said they had vowed revenge, and that this makes the Powhatan and English allies.  This, also, was the result of some deception, because they had been attacked by Powhatan allies.  Both sides are being careful, though, and the initial meetings were peaceful and promising.  Archer befriended an Indian named Navaranze, who taught him some Algonquian, and they decided to return the Indians’ hospitality and cook a meal from the ship’s rations.  Before they did, they found some stuff missing, and informed the chiefs.  As soon as the chiefs ordered it to be returned, every piece was given back to the English.  They were impressed by the deference to authority within the culture, and as a sign of good will, Newport gave everything that had just been returned back to the Indians, except for the bullets.

They also exchanged delicacies.  The Indians brought tobacco, and the English brought alcohol.  They smoked and drank together.  Parahunt got drunk almost immediately, and started telling them about the area, hinting at the presence of copper.  The English listened intently.  Like I said, both sides were playing a bit of a game here.  They did mention exploring for minerals, though, and Parahunt got very serious and told them not to.  There were enemy Monicans occupying the land around the falls.  The English offered men to help fight the Monicans, and he was happy.  The English and Indians parted ways for the time being, except Navaranze who accompanied them.

This was everything they could have dreamed America would be.  The English wanted to distinguish their Protestant country’s conversion efforts from those of Catholic Spain by being friendly with the Indians instead of acting as conquerors.  Their time in the Caribbean had confirmed the superiority of their ways.  They didn’t consider the Indians inferior.  Both England and Germany, now the greatest Protestant civilization, had been barbaric before the Romans changed them, giving them law and religion.  Now they would do the same for the Indians.  Even  John Locke mentions this.

When they reached the other end of the James River, they raised a second cross, with the inscription, “Jacobus Rex,” proclaiming James king of the region.  Navaranze got very uncomfortable when he saw this, but Newport told him it was a sign of peace and unity between their peoples.  He was unconvinced, and told Parahunt when they returned to his village.  Parahunt was angry, but Newport’s explanation reassured him, and he rebuked his people.  “Why should you be offended with them as long as they hurt you not, nor take anything away by force?” he asked. “They take but a little waste ground which doth you nor any of us any good.”

Parahunt was less impressed, though, when he fell ill.  He blamed the drinks the English had given him, and thought he had been poisoned.  Newport confidently predicted that he would feel better in the morning, and when this proved true, he ordered venison to be given to the visitors.  A woman came up to Archer and put leaves on his hands, and they resumed their exploration of the area and peoples.  They met a female chief, an “Indian Elizabeth,” and did similar firearms demonstrations as they had with the Paspaheigh.

Soon, they were led to another town, which Archer mockingly dubbed “Pamunkey Palace,” though Navaranze told him that was inappropriate.  There, they were met by an older warrior, clearly the head of his tribe.  He showed them pearls and copper, and the English affected nonchalance while asking what else was in their kingdom.  Lots of deer, though this is in all the kingdoms.  This was Opiechancanough, brother of Wahunsenaca, and it’s with him that the Spanish enter our story.

In the 1570s, the Spanish had explored the Chesapeake Bay, and taken a young Native back to Spain to live with them, learn about their culture, and be converted.  They named him Don Luis, and he had lived in Spain for eleven years, and asked to go home.  They wouldn’t, lest he return to his pagan ways, but when he said he wanted to go home to convert his people, they agreed.  On his way back to Virginia, they took him on a tour of their colonial possessions, especially to Mexico.  They sent a group of missionaries to accompany him, and once they reached Virginia, he left them.  He returned as a leader of his tribe, and leading a group of warriors, killed them all.

We don’t know exactly who Don Luis was.  We just know he was a Powhatan Werowance or Mamanatoic.  Some descendents of the Mattaponi tribe believe Don Luis was Wahunsenaca, but the Chicahominie strongly indicate that he was Opiechancanough.  Their name for Don Luis was Paquiquineo, and they said that Opiechancanough had come from far to the South.  He was Wahunsenaca’s brother, and the Werowance of the Pamunkey tribe under Wahunsenaca’s Powhatan empire.  Opiechancanough also had a decidedly different approach to the English from that of most of the Native Americans.

Soon after leaving Opiechancanough, Navaranze’s attitude changed dramatically.  The English began to worry about what was going on at Jamestown, and returned to the settlement as fast as possible.  When they arrived, the colony was in disarray.  It had been attacked two days before.

 

Learn More:

My favorite book on Jamestown:

A Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley

  • This book is also available as an audiobook.  I particularly like Woolley’s writing style, and the way he integrates all the primary source material.  This was the best-researched book on Jamestown at the time it was printed, and I’d say that’s still true today.

A Land as God Made it by James Horn

  • I strongly prefer A Savage Kingdom, but Horn’s book is worth mentioning because it does better address the colony’s later history.  Early on, it lacks some of the detail and scope of Woolley’s work (it’s too John-Smith-centric), but it does do a better job of discussing the colony’s history from 1619-1630.

Primary Source Documents and Articles:

Virtual Jamestown’s Firsthand Accounts

An amusing article in the Telegraph about the Percy Family (Pippa Middleton is dating one)

Who’d want to be a Percy? No end of people, actually. There is a prominent American branch of the family – the Percys of Mississippi – supposedly founded by Charles Percy, the disinherited, bigamist son of an early earl. According to one historian, the plantation-owning Percys “virtually built the Deep South”. And then there’s Kevin Percy, a 76-year-old former Olympic hockey player from New Zealand, who claims to be the rightful heir to the Percy millions. Kevin believes he is a direct descendant of Hotspur, and has written to the Queen asking for the knight’s remains to be exhumed and checked against his DNA.

Another history of the Percy family

In the early 17th century the 10th Earl of Northumberland Algernon Percy played a prominate part in the restoration of the Monarchy. He married twice; first to a daughter of the Cecil family, in spite of his father’s deep disapproval, who said that ‘the blood of a Percy would not mix with the blood of a Cecil if you poured it on a dish’. That may have well been the case, but the trouble was it appeared that there was very little Percy blood left, and something had to be done.

“Algernon,” the 10th Earl, was George’s nephew, son of the brother who had financed his voyage to Virginia.  When George became president of Virginia, he named a settlement after this nephew, Fort Algernon.  During the English Civil War (the American side of which I’ll be discussing in the podcast), Algernon was an early Parliamentary leader, but grew uncomfortable with the movement’s excesses (like many people did) and became an outspoken Royalist.  His brother, however, remained one of Henrietta Maria’s closest allies, even following her into exile.

The discovery of the four Jamestown bodies

A couple years ago, archaeologists found the bodies of Robert Hunt, Gabriel Archer, Fernandino Wainman and William West (spoiler alert, they die).  This is when they discovered Archer’s Catholicism.  Perhaps less notably, this was also the event which inspired this podcast.