A Little Waste Ground

Smith went ashore at Werowocomoco with "20. shot armed in Jacks," twenty men with guns, in the coats of thick leather that soldiers wore against arrows. The pinnace lay out in the channel of the York with Newport and Scrivener aboard, her yards bare, the river gray and wide under a February wind. The twenty came over the side into the barge with their pieces wrapped against the spray, and their breath went off them in the cold. The bay below Powhatan's town had three creeks running into it, and a mile and a half of ooze between the channel and firm ground, gray and sucking at the ebb. Smith had picked his creek from the water and picked wrong; the town lay within a mile of all three, and the men sent to guide him had brought him in by the one he had not meant. Powhatan's son walked with him, and Opechancanough, who had taken him in the swamp in December, and several of Powhatan's chief men. Halfway to the town a great creek cut the path. Over it they had built a bridge of forked stakes and rails, and Smith, looking at it, began to suspect "some mischiefe." He had sent the barge round to meet him at the right landing. It was nowhere near.

The journey was Newport's, and it had been a month in coming. All through January Powhatan's carriers had crossed the neck with venison and bread, half for Smith and half for the father Powhatan had never seen, and every load came with the same request, until "at last Captaine Newport resolved to go see him." By then the people who came to trade at the fort would not come near the gate until Smith came out to them. They called him by his name, and they would sell nothing until he had first taken their presents. The president and the council they did not know at all. Smith had talked up Newport's greatness to them until they took him for the chief of the English and everyone else for his children, officers and servants. So Newport, Scrivener and Smith took the pinnace and the barge down the James and into the bay, and up the York, about a hundred miles by water to a town twelve miles from the fort by the paths. They carried copper and hatchets to trade, and for Powhatan a suit of red cloth, a white greyhound and a hat.

Few of the twenty liked the bridge. Smith judged that the courage of these men came mostly from other men's fear, and he answered the bridge by putting Powhatan's son, the guides and the chief men in among his own files and leading on, with half his men left at the near end to guard the crossing. The rails gave under the first men's hands and the stakes leaned in the mud, with brown water running fast beneath. The stakes would not bear them. The Powhatans saw how weak it was and brought a canoe, and took Smith off from the middle of the bridge with four or five of his men, and the rest came over under a guard on the far bank. Then, two in a rank, the shot in their leather and their wet shoes, they marched up to Powhatan's house. Before the door stood forty or fifty great platters of fine bread. The smell of it met them in the cold.

Inside, the people raised loud tunes and made signs of joy, and the smoke of the fire hung under the roof above them. The greyhound came in on a cord among the English, white in the half dark. Powhatan had his finest women and his principal men about him in their ranks, as Smith had seen them in December, and he sat at the upper end of the house "as upon a Throne." Smith wrote that he had seldom seen such majesty, "either in Pagan or Christian." Powhatan bade him welcome with a kind face and had a place made for him at his side. Smith gave him the red suit, the greyhound and the hat, and three of Powhatan's nobles made a great oration over the gifts, which Smith understood as a public confirmation of a perpetual league and friendship. Then came a turkey cock and bread. When Smith had eaten, Powhatan asked where his father was, whom he much desired to see. Smith told him Newport was aboard and would come ashore the next day.

Then, with a merry face, Powhatan asked for the guns. Smith had promised him guns in January, when he was sent home, and he had kept the promise in his own fashion. He had offered the man who went home with him four demi-culverins, a kind of cannon too heavy for any man to carry off, and the guides had refused them. Smith told him so. Powhatan answered it "with a lowde laughter," and asked for something of less burden. The offer had cost Smith nothing. Powhatan asked next where the men were whom Smith had promised to bring, and Smith told him they were outside. Powhatan had them brought in two by two, the guard kept up at the door, and as each pair came before him he thanked Smith and had four or five pounds of bread given to every man. They came in out of the wind with their guns on their shoulders and went back out carrying loaves. Twenty men took in close to a hundred pounds of bread before anything had been asked or bargained. The guard at the door changed and the next pair came in. Powhatan thanked Smith again.

Smith asked for the corn and the ground he had been promised. He should have them, Powhatan told him. There was one condition, and Smith set down his own answer to it:

"he expected to have all these men lay their armes at his feet, as did his subjects. I tolde him that was a ceremonie our enemies desired, but never our Friends"

With the refusal went a promise. Smith told him that "the next day my Father would give him a child of his," and more than a child: when Powhatan thought it convenient, "wee would deliver under his subjection the Country of Manacam and Pocoughtaonack his enemies." The Monacans lived inland above the falls, outside Powhatan's tribute. The English who were to deliver them had a burned fort on an island and twenty shot standing outside the door. "This so contented him," Smith wrote, that Powhatan called for silence in the house. The talk along the ranks stopped. The women behind the chief men were still, and there was only the fire, and the wind on the mats outside. Then Powhatan spoke, loud enough for every man and woman in the house to hear.

"with a lowd oration he proclaimed me Awerowanes of Powhaton, and that all his subjects should so esteeme us, and no man account us strangers nor Paspaheghans, but Powhatans, and that the Corne, weomen and Country, should be to us as to his owne people."

Smith thanked him with what words and signs he had and took his leave. Powhatan rose from his seat and walked him out of the house himself. He had each of the twenty given as much more bread as he could carry, and a basket of it for Smith, and as much again sent aboard the pinnace for Newport. In Smith's words, "Victuals you must know is all there wealth, and the greatest kindnes they could shew us." At the river the barge had dropped far down with the ebb and lay stranded on the ooze, though Smith had sent word more than once to keep it off. The sky was thick and it had begun to rain. The men stood in it with their arms full of bread.

Powhatan heard of the barge and sent his son and Namontack, his trusted servant, who had guided the English the whole way up the river, to take them to a house big enough to lodge them all. It was hung round inside with bows and arrows. The people built them fires and Powhatan's orators made a speech charging that nobody should steal from the guests or offer them injury. A quarter of venison came, sent "to stay my stomacke." The twenty stood their wet pieces against the wall under Powhatan's own bows and spread their coats to the fires, and the leather steamed. Smith set his men on guard and kept two sentries at the doors all night. In the evening Powhatan sent for him to come with only two shot, and at supper set before him meat enough for twenty men. When Smith could not eat it, Powhatan had it carried to his men, by a custom Smith learned that night: "what they give, not to take againe, but you must either eate it, give it away, or carry it with you." They talked for two or three hours. Then a man with a burning stick lit Smith back to his lodging through the rain. The sentries stood at the doors with their pieces under their coats to keep the powder dry, and the town around them went quiet early. Inside, the twenty slept in their clothes by the fires.

In the morning Powhatan walked him down to the river. The canoes lay drawn up on the shore, long hulls burned and scraped out of single trees. Powhatan showed them to him and told him how he sent them over the bay for tribute of beads, and which countries paid him in beads, which in copper and which in skins. Then the pinnace's boat put in and Newport and Scrivener came ashore, and Powhatan turned back to his house to receive them there. Smith went down to meet them. They marched up "With a trumpet before him," and the sound of it went up through the town and across the fields to the woods. Powhatan had sent half of every load since January to a man he had never seen. Now he saw him. He had heard Smith call him a father and the king of all the waters, and he had heard of his greatness at the fort. Newport came up through the ranks into the smoke with Scrivener and Smith beside him and the trumpet gone quiet at the door. Powhatan received him kindly, in his old manner.

Newport had brought the child. Thomas Savage, a boy of thirteen from the ships, was handed to Powhatan before the ranks, "whom he gave him as his Sonne." Smith's promise of the day before had been kept, as he said it would be. Powhatan gave each of the English a great basket of beans. They passed the day in talk of the same kind as the night before, agreed to bargain on the next, and went back to the pinnace in the evening. The boy did not go with them. He watched the trumpet go back down the path to the water and the boat pull out to the pinnace, and he stayed. That night he slept in the long house on the York, on mats by a fire, among women who ground corn in the mornings and men who painted themselves for feasts, with nobody in the town who spoke his tongue. The fort was twelve miles off by land and a hundred by water. He was Powhatan's son now.

The next day the English came ashore in the same order, the trumpet, the officers, the shot in their leather with their pieces in their hands, and Powhatan gave them breakfast. His own men sat about him with nothing in their hands. There was not a bow among them. The English ate among them in their leather, the twenty pieces close at hand. Then Powhatan asked his question, and Smith took it down.

"Why we came armed in that sort, seeing hee was our friend, and had neither bowes nor arrowes; what did wee doubt?"

Smith told him it was "the custome of our Country," with no doubt of his kindness meant by it. Powhatan seemed satisfied. Newport, all the same, sent the men back to the waterside, thirty score yards off. They went down the path in their files and stood about on the cold shore by the barge, with the town's smoke going up behind the trees and the pinnace riding out in the channel, too far off to be any help to the house. Smith did not like it. He and Scrivener took turns at the barge, one always at the water, and whenever Smith was missing from the house Powhatan sent for him, and when Smith came up he sent Scrivener down. Experience, Smith wrote, "had well taught me to beleeve his friendship till convenient opportunity suffred him to betray us."

The trading went as Powhatan meant it to go. He asked to see all their hatchets and copper together, and he would give them corn for the whole. Smith knew that move from the Chickahominies and would not have it; he offered instead to see what Powhatan would give for a single piece. Powhatan "did scorne to sell." The English should give freely, and he would requite them freely. Newport took him at his word. He "would not with lesse then twelve great Coppers try his kindnes," and Powhatan requited them with as much corn "as at Chickahamania I had for one of lesse proportion." In the autumn, in the towns up the Chickahominy, Smith had bought the same heap of corn for a single smaller copper. Newport had paid twelve great ones for it, at a price Powhatan set by calling it a gift. He had the hatchets at his own rate too, and for that kindness he seemed much to take to Newport. Smith had a few bunches of blue beads, which Powhatan wanted badly. Seeing how few they were, he offered a basket of two pecks for them, and Smith worked him up to three, and settled with him for two bushels more the next day. The twelve great coppers lay on the mats, and the corn came in from the storehouses in baskets on women's backs. It went down to the boats a basket at a time. The ebb drove them off before dinner, and Powhatan sent the dinner after them aboard the pinnace: bread and venison for fifty or sixty men.

They stayed on into March. On one of the days Smith's canoe stuck fast in the ooze a stone's throw out, and six or seven of Powhatan's chief men threw off their skins, waded in to the waist and offered to carry him ashore on their heads. Smith would not be carried, and asked them instead for wood, a fire and mats to cover him, and they brought all of it through the mud and were paid with a couple of bells. Scrivener and seven or eight men tried the bridge for deeper water at the other creek and were caught there by the wind and rain. A man of the town with his canoe set up a house of mats on the bank in a few minutes and sheltered them in it from the storm, and near midnight the flood came in and carried the English aboard. On another day Powhatan sent everyone out of the house but his principal men and offered, if the English wanted to make war on the Monacans, spies to learn their strength and a hundred of his own men under Opechancanough to go before them as if hunting; Newport almost took it. Then they went up the river to Opechancanough in the Pamunkey country, where his wife, his women and his children came out to meet Smith. He had built a feasting house on purpose for them. He fed them till noon and traded, and the afternoons went in games and dancing, and he would not let them go until a third feast of venison came in, having spent his first and second provision waiting for them. The pinnace went back down to Werowocomoco by water, and they took their leave of Powhatan there.

At the parting Powhatan gave Newport a man of his own. Namontack had led them up the river and across the bridge and to their lodging in the rain. Now he came down to the water with the English and went aboard. He was to go to England with the ships, in place of the son Powhatan had been given. Smith thought he knew why. The cause, he wrote, was "to know our strength and Countries condition." At Kiskiack, down the river, the people met them with scorn and every sign of it they could make, and the English went on without trading. They came down the York and round into the James with the boats low in the water, and reached the fort on March 9 with "250. bushells of Corne" in the boats. The men at the fort came down to the landing to carry it in. The corn went into the store a basket at a time, past the burned ground. They found Ratcliffe, the president, still not over his sickness, with a hand broken and split in firing his own piece.

Newport sailed for England on April 10. Wingfield went with him, a private man now, and Archer, and Namontack. Smith and Scrivener took the shallop down the river and saw the ship out to Cape Henry. Powhatan sent Newport a farewell of five or six men's loads, with turkeys among them, for the swords Newport had sent him. The shallop turned back up the James. Smith was still of the council and still the cape merchant, with the fort to rebuild and the corn to stretch. In Powhatan's oration he was also a werowance of Powhatan. Twelve miles off through the woods, on the north bank of the York, an English boy of thirteen lay down at night in Powhatan's house, as Powhatan's son.