Cast of Characters
The fort in the autumn of 1609
John Smith sailed for England early in October 1609, too badly burned to stand. He left behind a fort on a marshy island in the James and some five hundred people, most of whom had arrived only that August with the summer fleet.
George Percy. The eighth son of the Earl of Northumberland, one of the first settlers of 1607. He was so sick that autumn he could not leave his bed when the colony made him its president. Years later he wrote an account of these years for his brother the earl, and much of this book rests on it.
Gabriel Archer and John Martin. Two gentlemen of the colony's old council, who undertook to carry the business of government while Percy lay sick. Martin had just come back from the Nansemond country without his boats and with nearly half his men gone.
John Ratcliffe. A former president of the colony, whose enemies said his right name was Sicklemore. Percy sent him to build a fort at Point Comfort, at the mouth of the river.
Francis West. The younger brother of Lord De La Warr, back from the falls of the James with what was left of his company.
Captain James Davis. A soldier who commanded a pinnace and, later, the fort at Point Comfort.
Daniel Tucker. The keeper of the colony's store, a man good with his hands, who measured out the meal.
William Phetiplace. A captain of one of the colony's pinnaces.
The women of the summer fleet. A few women and children had come out with the 1609 fleet, most of them wives and servants. None of them left a word in writing.
The castaways from Bermuda
The 1609 fleet's flagship, the Sea Venture, had been wrecked on Bermuda in July with the colony's new leaders aboard. The fort did not know whether they were alive.
Sir Thomas Gates. The commander of the Sea Venture, carrying the colony's new commission.
Sir George Somers. The admiral of the fleet.
Christopher Newport. The captain who had brought the first ships into the James in 1607, wrecked with Gates.
John Rolfe. A gentleman of the Sea Venture.
William Strachey. A gentleman of the Sea Venture who became the colony's secretary and gathered its laws for the printer.
The lord governor and his men
Under its charter of 1609 the Virginia Company replaced the colony's president and council with a single ruler.
Thomas West, Lord De La Warr. The colony's first lord governor, an English peer who came out with three ships, a guard in livery and a commission under the King's name.
Captain Brewster. A captain of the lord governor's company.
Samuel Argall. A sea captain of the lord governor's fleet, who would spend these years on the colony's coasts and rivers, trading for corn.
Laurence Bohun. The lord governor's physician.
Dale's colony
Sir Thomas Dale. A soldier who had served in the Low Countries, sent out in 1611 as the colony's marshal, the officer of martial law.
Ralph Hamor. The colony's secretary, who later wrote the fullest account of the years from Dale's coming to the peace.
Alexander Whitaker. A minister of the colony.
Master Sparkes. A man of the colony.
Two English boys among the Powhatans
Henry Spelman. A gentleman's son of about fourteen who came with the summer fleet of 1609 and was left among the Powhatans within weeks of landing. He later wrote an account of what he saw there, the one account in this book by an Englishman who lived inside the towns.
Thomas Savage. A boy given to Powhatan as a son in 1608, who had learned the language and lived in Powhatan's household.
Samuel. A Dutchman, one of the craftsmen the Company had sent out in 1608, living in Powhatan's household.
The Powhatan chiefdom
More than thirty peoples along the rivers from the falls to the bay paid tribute to one paramount chief. They called their country Tsenacommacah. This book calls them, together, the Powhatans, and each people by its own name: the Paspaheghs, whose country held the island; the Pamunkeys, at the head of the York; the Kecoughtans, at the mouth of the James; the Appamattucks and the Arrohatecks, upriver; the Nansemonds, on the south shore.
Powhatan (Wahunsenacah). The paramount chief, an old man by 1609, who had withdrawn from his seat at Werowocomoco to Orapax, deep in the woods, the winter before. He left no writing; his words survive only as the English took them down.
Pocahontas (Amonute, also called Matoaka). Powhatan's daughter, a girl the English had known since the first years of the colony. By 1613 she was not yet twenty.
Opechancanough. Powhatan's brother and werowance of the Pamunkeys, a war leader of great standing.
Apachamo. A brother of Powhatan's, as Ralph Hamor names him.
Opachisco. Pocahontas's old uncle.
Pepaschicher. One of Powhatan's council.
Namontack. One of Powhatan's trusted men, who had gone to England with Newport in 1608.
The Paspahegh werowance and his wife. The chief of the Paspaheghs, the people around the island, whose own name the English never wrote down, and his wife, mother of his children.
Munetute. A Powhatan fighting man who went into battle covered in feathers, with swans' wings fastened at his shoulders. The English called him "Jacke of the feathers".
The little Powhatan. The chief of the town at the falls of the James.
Peoples outside Powhatan's close rule
The Patawomeck king. The chief of the Patawomecks, the people of the Potomac, who kept their distance from Powhatan and traded with whoever came up their river.
Paupauwiske. One of the Patawomeck king's wives.
Japazaws and his wife. A man of the Patawomeck country, an "old friend, and adopted brother" of Samuel Argall's, in Hamor's words, and his wife.
The Chickahominies. A people of the river that runs into the James above the island, long free of Powhatan's rule, governed by eight elders.
The Spaniards
Don Diego de Molina. A Spanish captain, commander of a fort in the West Indies, who came into the bay aboard a caravel in the summer of 1611.
Antonio Perez. An ensign, Molina's companion.
Limbrecke. Their pilot.
Writers
Most of what is known of these years was written by a few of the people above: Percy, Smith, Spelman, De La Warr, Molina, Hamor, Dale and Rolfe. Smith, back in England from the first weeks of this book, never returned to Virginia; his history of 1624 tells these years from what others wrote and told him.