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Replacing anarchy with tyranny
As the Jamestown settlers prepared to abandon North America, they met up with Lord Delaware’s fleet. It was the first ship the Virginia Company had been able to fund since the disastrous Third Supply, and it was largely thanks to Delaware’s influence that the mission was funded. He ordered them to turn around, and turned the colony into a military camp under martial law.
The settlers faced strict new rules, and the Powhatan now faced soldiers marching in armored formation.
Delaware was forced to return home, and Thomas Dale took his place. Dale took all Delaware’s reforms a step further, instituting a death penalty for even the most minor infractions. The Powhatan tried to counter the new English raids with hit-and-run attacks on lone England, and for the next five years, settlers had to face the twin dangers of Powhatan war, and Dale’s brutal oppression.
Transcript
Last week, the Jamestown and Sea Venture survivors had decided to abandon Virginia, boarded their pinnaces, and begun to sail up the James River, heading for Newfoundland. As the two groups of colonists sailed toward the Atlantic, though, they saw a longboat. As the ships passed each other, an Englishman carrying a piece of paper hopped onto the Deliverance. He told the colonists that his boat was an advance party of Lord Delaware’s expedition, returning with 150 colonists. This was the first voyage the company had been able to fund since the Sea Venture, which had driven away investors when it proved such a catastrophe. His name was Captain Edward Brewster. He ordered Gates o turn around and return to Jamestown, and Gates obeyed.
Introduction
Later that afternoon, the Sea Venture and Jamestown survivors put together the most formal ceremony they could muster to welcome their new governor. Arriving with him, on a ship captained by Samuel Argall, were Fernandino Wainman, and Robert Tindall.
Forming a guard of honor, they watched as Delaware stepped onto the shore, fell to his knees in front of his men, saying a silent prayer, and then stood up and marched briskly past a guard of 50 soldiers cloaked in and carrying flags of Delaware’s colors. He went to the chapel, where he heard a sermon. After the sermon, he had his standard bearer read out his commission, and then he spoke.
I can only imagine what the colonists were feeling watching Delaware’s talk as he took control of the colony. At this point they were an exhausted group of people who not too long ago had been pushed to behavior they couldn’t have imagined back in England. Just 24 hours ago, they thought they were going to escape and go back home, but were forced to turn around just as they were leaving. Now, they were watching as one of the highest ranking people in England reprimanded them for their many vanities and idleness.
He also announced his proposed changes, and these would mark a dramatic and in many ways permanent shift in the colony’s direction. Delaware brought changes that would turn the town into a military camp, doing away with all semblance of civilian government, imposing the kind of discipline he believed the colonists lacked, and creating a strict system of rules intended to create unity and stability. A long list of infractions would now be punishable by death, including rape, treasonous speech, theft, and trading with the Indians without permissions. Lesser offenses would be punished by beating or galley service.
To soften the shock of the change, Delaware also announced that he had brought enough food to last a year, and that he would be keeping many of the surviving earlier leaders as advisors, though he did have sole power in the colony. Gates, Somers, Newport, Wainman, Strachey and Percy were on the list, and Yeardley, Percy, Argall and a couple others would lead the militias under Delaware’s command.
Though the promise of a year’s worth of food was a relief, it was by no means a permanent measure. This was May, too late to plant crops. That meant that they couldn’t rely on a crop of corn until the next September, which was 16 months away. Indians also kept killing their livestock, so while they had things like grain, they didn’t have meat, and since there was a drought, both meat and fish were proving rare in Virginia. So, they didn’t really have enough food. They had enough food that it was no longer the most pressing concern.
George Somers offered to go to Bermuda to pick up supplies, and while some people doubted his motives (he was, after all, someone who had wanted to stay behind), Delaware agreed, and sent him and Argall in the homemade pinnaces. Somers died in Bermuda, and his nephew buried his heart there. Argall, on the other hand, was blown off course to Cape Cod, but managed to get a large supply of fish as well as exploring the North American coastline. Meanwhile, settlers rebuilt Jamestown incorporating Indian building techniques which allowed them to stay cool inside in summer.
Delaware was ill, and his condition exacerbated by a sickness most new arrivals experienced, and one which would be referred to as “seasoning” in the future, as it continued to devastate society in the Chesapeake. The Europeans brought deadly diseases to the Native Americans, but they also experienced illnesses their immune systems weren’t prepared for. He stayed aboard his ship, while his doctor, who had left London because of his bad reputation, worked to treat him.
As they restructured the colony, the most pressing question was how to deal with the Powhatan. Both Gates and Delaware agreed that appeasing the Indians and trying to convert them was the right course of action, and that would require making peace with the Powhatan. Their idealistic stance didn’t last long.
In the summer, Gates went to Fort Algernon to prepare for a fishing expedition. When he saw a longboat get loose and blow across to the south side of the river, he sent a man named Humphrey Blunt in an old canoe to recover it. His canoe was blown onto a sandbank, and Gates could only watch as a group of Indians seized Blunt, took him to the woods and tortured him to death, mocking his pained screams as a sign of English weakness.
We don’t know exactly what the torture entailed, but it forever changed Gates’ opinion of the Indians. He went from his peaceful stance, to feeling that they were without the possibility of redemption and wanting revenge on the Kekoughtans, who had committed the murder. The days of Smith-like revenge raids were over, though. Delaware knew that Jamestown was still weak, and that the Powhatan probably had 200 English weapons at this point. He was going to try for peace, but approach the problem as the leader of a military garrison.
He needed to know how strong the Powhatan really were, so he told Gates to provoke a confrontation and see what happened, so Gates put a man out in the open to temp the Indians to come get him. When Indians appeared, Gates and his men attacked, killing five men and mortally injuring some others. Gates plundered the town, though there was virtually nothing in it. He returned to Jamestown, leaving the town under the command of George Yeardley.
Delaware sent two men up the Chicahominie to meet Wahunsenaca at Orpaks. They were told to say that they didn’t blame Wahunsenaca for the attacks that had devastated their people. They only blamed his worst and most unruly people, and that they would appreciate if he would order those people to stop their attacks and release their prisoners. If Wahunsenaca did this, he’d be considered a friend to King James and his subjects. Wahunsenaca rejected their olive branch, and told them that if they left Jamestown, he would unleash all of his people to do mischief on the English. When Delaware sent a second envoy, the Powhatan leader reiterated his position and said he was not to send any more messengers, except with a coach and horses, “like the prominent people in England ride in.”
The hostility of the confrontation indicated to Delaware that his strategy of peace was impossible, so as a military man, he committed to war. Delaware’s strategy was to have groups of 50 to 100 men sneak up to a village on a river, surprise the Indians, kill as many as possible, burn their houses and leave with their corn.
It was a dramatic difference from the fighting of the early settlement. Instead of a group of individuals, the English were now a military settlement. Earlier, the Indians may have faced John Smith’s raids, or Martin’s bungled raid, or whatever happened with Francis West and his men, but it was dispersed and in many ways it was even – the Powhatan actually had the upper hand. Some individual colonists may have had military experience, but that’s all they were, individual colonists. Now they faced an organized military unit led by someone whose family had been military leaders in England for centuries – armored, organized, tactical. The game had just shifted dramatically.
In response to the overt hostility, the Powhatan started to ambush people within Jamestown. Delaware caught two ambushers, took them hostage, cut the hand of one off, and sent him back to Wahunsenaca with a message saying “if all Englishmen and weapons were not immediately returned, the other Paspaheighan would die, as would all such of his savages as the lord captain and his generals could surprise.” He wasn’t negotiating in a Smith-like manner. He meant business.
Delaware then went with a few other soldiers to avenge Blunt’s death. They captured the Kekoughtan werowance, one of his advisors and one of his sons. They sent the son on the next ship to England, and we don’t know what happened to the rest. They also sent some black walnut, cedar, oak and soil samples. Gates also returned to England, bringing news of the Sea Venture’s time on Bermuda, which reinvigorated support for the company and helped raise enough money for two expeditions in 1611.
Delaware then sent Percy with 70 men to raid Paspaheigh. Percy took a Powhatan defector as a guide, but when it became clear the guide was still working for the Powhatan, Percy threatened to cut off his head. When they reached the town, they killed 15-16 people and the rest fled. One of Percy’s lieutenants then returned with the town’s queen, her children and another prisoner. Percy ordered the captive’s head be cut off, and the cornfields and town be burned. On board the ship, they decided to kill the children. On their way back, they were attacked, fought some more, and returned to Jamestown, queen in tow. Delaware was happy with their results, but annoyed that they had left the queen alive. He ordered Percy to kill her, preferably by burning her like a witch. Percy had seen enough bloodshed for the day, and with a cooler head, didn’t want to see any more, and ordered Davies to kill her quickly and painlessly. The killing of the women and children was the clearest violation of the laws of war (the 17th century equivalent of a war crime) committed by the English yet. In a letter to his brother two years later, Percy didn’t disguise or try to justify the brutality. He simply said that after the Starving Time, relations with the Indians had crossed a threshold. It was no longer a struggle for territory, but a clash of civilizations. He had just watched well over a hundred people, some he knew, some children, some women, die horrible deaths at the hands of the Powhatan, and he was done.
Gates had gone to England, so Argall took his place as militia leader. He raided the Warraskoyaks, mostly just stealing corn. Then he went north to meet the Patawomeck. The Patawomeck were a rival tribe to the Powhatan who lived at the north of the Chesapeake, of the tribe that Francis West had dealt so brutally with, but who Smith had gotten along with pretty well. Argall met Iopassa, the brother of the tribe’s leader, and Iopassa greeted him like a brother. He also found that Spellman had been living with the Patawomeck. He spoke with the chief, exchanging creation stories and even reading the Bible to him.
The Indians responded to English raids with hit-and-run attacks and managed to kill about a third of the remaining colonists over the next few months, including Delaware’s nephew, William West. It was also during this time period that the colonists got one of their more unique residents when they captured a Spanish spy named Don Diego de Molina. Molina would spend the next five years of his life observing the struggles of the colony from a prison cell.
Delaware’s illness forced him to return to England via the Caribbean in August, and at home, he was accused of cowardice. He left Percy in charge of Jamestown, but he was almost immediately replaced as leader by Thomas Dale. Percy wouldn’t stay in Virginia for long, and he’d left by the next April. He would never return to North America, but remained interested in colonization ventures and tried unsuccessfully to start a colony in Guiana. His health was better in Southern Climates, but he ultimately joined the military and died in the Low Countries some years later.
Dale was a man of lower social status who had worked his way up through the military, from common soldier to serving some of the highest men in the kingdom. We don’t know all that much about his background, but Dale also had a puritan outlook, and spoke fluent Dutch as well as English. He had been serving in the Netherlands, but Prince Henry, James’ beloved older son who was dedicated to the colonization of America, had personally asked that Dale be given a three year leave of absence from the military to go to Virginia.
Dale immediately solidified and expanded everything that Delaware started. He built Henrico, but the most notable implementation of this was a refined and expanded version of Delaware’s strict rules called the Laws Martial, Divine and Moral. Now, virtually any misconduct resulted in the death penalty, and even swearing resulted in a lifetime ban on owning property.
And it wasn’t just harsh, it was brutal. Dale showed no sympathy for people based on their situations. One person who stole to satisfy his hunger was chained to a tree until he starved to death. Others were simply hanged.
Dale’s government prompted several settlers to risk death to go join the Indians. Molina, the Spanish spy, even managed to convince some people to try to escape for Spanish Florida. We don’t know what happened to them, but Molina doubted Dale’s motives when he said they’d been killed by savages. Molina even said many settlers at this time would have welcomed Spanish invaders as liberators. He said the colonists were “held captives by their own masters,” and that he saw them as “brothers” whose distress he felt more than his own.
On the other hand, some people approved of these measures. Ralph Hamor (one of the Bermuda castaways) thought Dale’s measures were the only way to deal with the dangerous and incurable members of the colony, and justified the brutality by saying that harsher measures had been used in France. John Rolfe said they ensured men spent their time productively. Dale’s laws brought the kind of order and stability that tyranny tends to bring, and the company approved Dale’s rules, too.
In addition to tyranny, Dale’s reforms brought economic privatization that helped people survive better. Now, private gardens would provide food, while public ones would be used for the crops that were sent back to the company. Each region specialized in something different, and they would trade. The beginnings of a market economy started to emerge within the context of Virginia – not just a Virginia that acted as part of a greater market economy.
This period of Jamestown history also brought the influence of Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick. Warwick was a major Puritan, and his son would actually end up becoming a leader for the Parliamentary side of the English Civil War. He, like many Puritans, was a merchant, and in particular he owned a ship called the Treasurer, which he made available to the Virginia Company. He had also bought a share in the company, hoping to turn Virginia into a base for piracy against the Spanish.
Dale also continued the war against the Powhatan, and obviously he also was a military leader. His men marched in armored formation, and the Powhatan couldn’t combat that. Though they might inflict the occasional injury, armor meant the Powhatan could no longer attack the English head-on. They simply could not win in direct conflict. Worse, if they tried, they would show that they had no answer to English technical superiority. With such a demonstration, tribes who remained part of the Powhatan empire out of fear rather than loyalty (which was most of them) might seek an alliance with the English. The English encouraged this by offering to take less in tribute than Wahunsenaca did. All the Powhatan could do was more hit-and-run raids.
The enforcement of discipline and introduction of military organization to the colony didn’t help its deeper issues, though. The Company was still nearly bankrupt. When Gates returned, he brought 300 men, though he had tried to recruit 2,000. Virginia’s great leader, Prince Henry, died. In fact, though they’d fixed the aesthetic problems and perhaps some of the food issues, things were so dire that the Spanish didn’t even consider wiping out Jamestown to be worth the monetary cost, because the colony would likely sink on its own within a year or two.
Dale blamed the colonists for the failures. He said the English were intentionally being lazy so that the company would be shut down and they could go home, and that they’d rather starve than work. The people blamed Dale, saying his unjust laws were “mercilessly executed, oftentimes without trial or judgment,” and that they had insufficient daily rations of moldy oatmeal and peas that were not fit for beasts, forcing colonists to flee to the Indians for relief. They added that even if they survived, they had to work for the colony like slaves.
The Spanish probably had the best view of the situation, saying that the bad reputation of the colony was driving away investors, and especially settlers.
As harsh as Dale’s rule was, the war with the Powhatan was even more damaging. Hit-and-run raids made day-to-day life difficult, and the fighting was diverting resources necessary to grow the colony. The colony would never be viable until the war was over. Next week, we’ll discuss how the war ended, and it’s a story which brings the return of Jamestown’s most famous character – Pocahontas.