The Starving Time

Hamor set down his errand himself, in the book he printed in London the next year. Before he went home to England he had wanted to see Powhatan and his court, so that he could write of them from his own knowledge, and in May the governor gave him the chance. He was to go up to Powhatan with a message and an English boy to interpret. The message was a request. Powhatan had another daughter, and the governor wanted her as well, as a surer pledge of the peace than the one he already held. Hamor wrote that the daughter in English hands was reported to be Powhatan's delight and darling, and that he believed it. He was going to ask Powhatan for her sister. The boy was Thomas Savage, who had lived three years in Powhatan's household and spoke the language as his own. Powhatan was fond of him. Two Powhatan men were to guide them. One of them was Pepaschicher, of Powhatan's council, and he knew what the errand was. They left the Bermudas early on the morning of May 15.

The way ran overland through the woods, away from the river where Dale's people had their palisade and their planted ground. The guides went first along paths the English could not have found alone, and Hamor and Savage came behind them, the secretary of the colony in his doublet and boots with his sword at his side and the boy from Powhatan's household walking easily on ground he knew. It was the season of new leaf. The oaks and hickories had come out, and the undergrowth was green and close along the trail, and the creeks they waded were cold with the spring. In the clearings the women of the towns were at the planting, making hills for the corn and the beans with their crooked sticks, and they looked up from the ground at two Englishmen going by. The guides answered what was asked of them and went on. Matchcot lay near the head of the Pamunkey, about sixty miles from the Bermudas by Hamor's judgment. They walked until dark. That night they slept in the open woods by a fire. They lay there, Hamor said, fearless and without danger.

They walked all the next day, and it was full night when they came down to the water opposite Powhatan's town. The main river lay between them and the houses. Hamor read the river as Powhatan's guard: with the water between, no one could march on him by land unseen. The guides called across the dark water for a canoe, and called out who was waiting: two Englishmen sent to Powhatan on business from the English werowance. Fires showed among the houses on the other side. A canoe came over at once, a single hollowed log paddled by men of the town, and the four of them were ferried across with the water black around them. It was about twelve o'clock at night. Powhatan himself was at the landing place to meet them.

He spoke first to the boy. He knew him well, and Hamor gave the greeting in English:

"my childe you are welcome, you haue bin a straunger to me these foure yeeres, at what time I gaue you leaue to goe to Paspahae (for so was Iames towne called before our seating there) to see your friends, and till now you neuer returned".

Savage, he said, was his child by the gift of Captain Newport, given him in exchange for one of his own people, Namontack, whom he had sent on purpose to King James's land to see it and bring him back a true report. Namontack had not come back. Many ships had come in from England since then. How the English had dealt with him, Powhatan said, he did not know. Then he turned to Hamor. His first greeting to the secretary was without any words at all. He put his hand to Hamor's neck and felt round it. Hamor wrote that he might have imagined Powhatan meant to cut his throat, except that he knew he did not dare.

Powhatan was looking for a chain. He asked where the chain of pearl was. Hamor asked him what chain, and Powhatan told him: the one, he said, "which I sent my Brother Sir Thomas Dale for a present, at his first arriuall." Since the peace, Dale had sent him word that any Englishman he sent up on business would wear that chain about his neck, and any who came without it Powhatan was to bind and send home again. It was true. Dale had sent such word, and Hamor had never heard of it until that moment. The governor had even given his page orders to deliver the chain to Hamor before he left, and the page had forgotten.

Hamor stood on the landing place without it, in the dark, among Powhatan's men. He was doubtful at first how to answer. Then he said that he knew of the message well enough. The chain was meant for an Englishman sent up in haste and alone, without a Powhatan guide, as a token that the governor had sent him. When Powhatan's own people brought an Englishman in, as two of his men had brought Hamor, and one of them a councillor who knew the business, their word was sufficient and the chain was needless. The answer pleased him well.

He took them at once to his house, not a full stone's cast from the waterside. It was long and low, built of bent saplings covered with mats, with a fire burning inside and the smoke going up through the roof. Powhatan sat down on the side of his bedstead. He had no bed there but a single mat. On each side of him sat a young woman, comely and well made, the elder of them not twenty years old; his people called them his queens. Men and women sat close all round the walls of the house, and outside it a hundred bowmen stood guard with their quivers on their backs, as they stood at all times and in all places where he went.

The first thing Powhatan offered his visitors was a pipe of tobacco, which the Powhatans called a pissimore. He drank the smoke first himself, then handed it to Hamor, who drew on it as long as he pleased and gave it back, and Powhatan took it from him with his own hands. Then he asked how his brother Sir Thomas Dale did. After that he asked after his daughter. He wanted to know how she did, and about her marriage, and about the son-in-law he had never seen, and how they liked each other and lived and loved together. Hamor answered that his brother was very well, and that his daughter was so well content she would not change her life to come back and live with him. Powhatan laughed heartily at that and said he was glad of it. Then he told Hamor to deliver the cause of his coming, which nobody had expected.

Hamor said his message was private. Powhatan alone was to hear it, with no one else but Pepaschicher, who knew the business already. Powhatan commanded everyone out of the house at once, men and women both, except his two queens, who on no occasion whatever might leave him. The guards and the household went out into the dark. He told Hamor to speak on, and Hamor began through Savage, with the queens on either side. He gave the greeting first. Sir Thomas Dale, the principal commander of the English, sent Powhatan, his brother, love and peace, inviolable on his part, and in witness of it had sent a present: two large pieces of copper, five strings of white and blue beads, five wooden combs, ten fishhooks and a pair of knives. Hamor laid them before Powhatan one thing after another, so that he could look at each. A grinding stone was promised besides, whenever Powhatan sent men to fetch it. The message and the gifts pleased him.

Then Hamor came to the request. "The bruite of the exquisite perfection of your yongest daughter, being famous through all your territories, hath come to the hearing of your Brother Sir Thomas Dale," he said, and Dale had sent him to entreat Powhatan, by the brotherly friendship he professed, to let her come back with him. Dale wanted her, and her sister wanted to see her. If she was what fame said, Dale would gladly make her his nearest companion, wife and bedfellow. The reason was that the two peoples were now friendly and firmly united, one people in the band of love, and Dale would make a natural union between them. He had resolved to live in Powhatan's country as long as he lived, and he wanted the firmest assurance of perpetual friendship that could be had, and to bind himself to it as well. Powhatan broke in on the speech many times. Each time Hamor asked him to hear it out and answer afterward. When it was done there was no need to ask for his answer.

The old man gave it readily, and with no less gravity. He gladly accepted the greeting of love and peace, and he and his people would keep it while he lived. He took the gifts with thanks, though they were not so ample as the presents Captain Newport had been used to bring him. Then he came to the purpose: "my daughter whom my brother desireth, I sould within these few daies to be wife to a great Weroance for two bushels of Roanoake," he said. Hamor glossed the word for his readers: roanoke was a small kind of bead "made of oystershels", which the Powhatans passed from hand to hand as the English passed money, a cubit's length of it worth sixpence. She had left with her husband: "and it is true she is already gone with him, three daies iorney from me."

Hamor did not take that for an answer. He said he knew Powhatan's greatness and power to be such that, if he pleased to gratify his brother, he could give back the roanoke without any charge of injustice and take his daughter home again. The more reason was that she was "not full twelue yeeres old", and so not of an age to marry. Besides the bond of peace, Hamor promised, Powhatan should have three times her price in beads, copper, hatchets and many other things more useful to him. Hamor was offering to buy a daughter.

Powhatan's answer began with the girl. He loved his daughter as dear as his own life, he said, and though he had many children he delighted in none so much as in her. If he could not see her often he could not possibly live, and he could not see her if she lived with the English, for he had resolved on no terms whatever to put himself into their hands or to come among them. He asked Hamor to press the suit no further and to carry his brother this answer. He wanted no firmer assurance of Dale's friendship than the promise Dale had already made him. Then he spoke of the daughter Dale already had:

"from me, he hath a pledge, one of my daughters, which so long as she liues shall be sufficient, when she dieth he shall haue another childe of mine, but she yet liueth".

He did not hold it a brother's part in their king, as he called Dale, "to desire to bereaue me of two of my children at once." He bade Hamor tell him further that if Dale had no pledge at all he need fear no injury from Powhatan or from any of his people. "there haue bin too many of his men and my killed," he said, and by his doing there would never be more. He had the power to make that good, and he had said it. He would keep to it even if he were given just cause to break it:

"for I am now olde, and would gladly end my daies in peace, so as if the English offer me iniury, my country is large enough, I will remoue my selfe farther from you."

He hoped that would satisfy his brother. Then he ended the talk. They were weary, he said, and he was sleepy, and "we will thus end the discourse of this businesse."

One of his men was sent to fetch bread for them. While it came, Powhatan told them that his people, not looking for visitors, had eaten up all their other food, as they usually did. The bread came in two great wooden bowls, about a bushel of it, boiled and made up into rounds the size of a tennis ball. Hamor and Savage ate a few, and the rest went to the guard standing about them, who were hungry. Then Powhatan had a great glass of sack brought, the strong sweet wine of Spain, three quarts or more of it. Captain Newport had given it to him six or seven years before, and he had kept it so carefully that not much above a pint was gone in all that time. He gave each of them some three spoonfuls of it in a great oyster shell. Then he gave orders for a house to be found for them, took his leave for the night, and they went out. They were not half an hour in the house before the fleas drove them out of it. They lay down on a mat under a broad oak in the open and slept there for what was left of the night.

In the morning they were no sooner awake than Powhatan came out to them himself, asked how they had fared, and took them straight to his house. A great bowl of peas and beans boiled together was waiting for their breakfast, with as much bread as would have fed a dozen hungry men. About an hour later came boiled fresh fish, and not long after that roasted oysters, crayfish and crabs. His men had gone out hunting meanwhile, some for venison and some for turkeys and whatever other beasts and fowl the woods afforded. Before ten o'clock they were back with three does and a buck, good fat venison, and two great cock turkeys. All of it was dressed that day. When supper was over there was scarce a bone to be seen.

While Hamor was still there an Englishman came into the town by chance. He was William Parker, taken almost three years before as he worked near Fort Henry, at the river's mouth, and he had grown so like the Powhatans in his color and his dress that Hamor knew him for an Englishman only by his tongue. Whenever the English had asked after him, the Powhatans had told them he had fallen sick and died, and the English had believed it. He was joyful to meet Hamor there, and begged him to do his best to get him home. Hamor had meant to from the moment he knew him. He went with Parker to Powhatan at once and told him that the English had believed the man dead. Since he was alive, Hamor must have him home. He would have to tell the governor he had seen him, and if Parker did not come back the governor would make another voyage up the river for him.

Powhatan was much displeased. "You haue one of my daughters with you, and I am therewith well content," he said, but the English could no sooner see or hear of an Englishman with him than they must have him away, or else break the peace. If Hamor must have the man, he should have him, but Powhatan would send no guides with them, and if any harm came to them on the road they could thank themselves. Hamor answered that rather than go without Parker he would go alone; he knew the way well enough, and he feared no other dangers. If he did not come home safe, Powhatan must expect the English revenge on himself and his people. And if Powhatan sent him home without guides, his brother would have just cause to doubt his love. Powhatan made no answer. He went off in anger and did not speak to Hamor again until suppertime. Then he sent for him, gave him a share of the delicacies that had been prepared for himself, and showed him as good a face as before. He said not a word about the going home.

At midnight he came himself to where they lay and woke them. Pepaschicher and another of his men, he told Hamor, would take them home in the morning. Then he asked him to remember to have his brother send him certain things. He wanted ten pieces of copper, a shaving knife, and an iron frow, the wedge-bladed tool for splitting boards. He wanted a grinding stone, not so big but four or five men could carry it, which would be big enough for his use, and two bone combs like those Newport had given him. The wooden ones his own men could make. He wanted a hundred fishhooks, or if he could spare it, rather a fishing net, and a cat, and a dog. If his brother would furnish him with these things he would repay his love with skins. He had none at present, he said. Hamor knew he was well stored with them, and judged him distrustful and jealous by nature, always wanting the surer hand.

Powhatan asked whether he would remember every particular, and had him repeat them, and still doubted he might forget one. He told Hamor to write them down in a table-book, a pocket book of leaves for notes, and showed him one of his own, a very fair one. Hamor asked him for it, since it could be of no use to him. Powhatan said no; it did him much good, he said, "to shew it to strangers which came vnto him". So Hamor wrote each thing down in his own table-book, and the old man went away again in the dark.

In the morning Powhatan and his guests were up early to be gone. They went first to breakfast, a good boiled turkey, and when it was eaten he gave them a whole turkey more, besides what they had left, and three baskets of bread to carry them home. When they were ready to leave he gave each of them "an excellent Bucks skin, very well dressed, and white as snow," and sent one each to "his sonne and daughter". Then he asked Hamor whether he remembered his answer to his brother well. Hamor repeated it to him. Powhatan heard him through:

"I hope (said he) this will giue him good satisfaction, if it doe not? I will goe three daies iourny farther from him, and neuer see English man more".

Then the old man walked them down to the water side himself, and there he took his leave of them, and they of him.