The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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colonists call it Point Comfort; and Captain Newport names the locality Cape Charles, and the headland on the opposite side of the bay Cape Henry, for the king's two sons.
The Indians who inhabit the country gaze upon the vessels with wonder. Captain Newport quiets their fears, and makes them presents, whereupon they invite him to visit their village, where they give him a feast of such luscious oysters as never were seen in England. Captain Smith is sent by Captain Newport to open friendly intercourse with the great chief of the Indians. The man who has had so many adventures in the East finds the chief wearing a crown of deer horns, colored red, with two eagles' feathers in his hair, and a piece of copper dangling on one side of his head. His body is painted crimson, his face blue. The chief receives him courteously, smoking a pipe, and then handing it to Captain Smith.
The ships sail up a noble river, which Captain Newport names James, in honor of the king. He comes to a beautiful island, where he selects a place for a town, erects houses and a fort, and names it Jamestown — the first permanent English settlement in the new home of liberty. The colonists go on shore, the stores are discharged, and the vessels sail away, leaving the four carpenters, twelve laborers, and forty-eight gentlemen to lay the foundations of a new order of things in the Western world. The gentlemen are unaccustomed to hardship; they are unused to labor; nor have they come to work. Labor is degrading. They are soldiers — adventurers. The summer sun blazes in the heavens like a fiery furnace, and they wilt beneath its fervent heat. Their provisions are damaged; the water is unwholesome. Fever sets in, and in a few days nearly every man, excepting the laborers, is down with fever. The gentlemen lose heart. Death makes its appearance; four die in a single night.
The governor, Edward Wingfield, is a merchant — avaricious, selfish, grasping. He has come to the new World to amass wealth. He reserves all the choice things for himself — the best tidbits and liquors. Captain John Smith, Captain John Ratcliffe, and Captain John Martin — three Captain Johns — are members of the council appointed by the king, and are so incensed at Wingfield's course that they resolve to depose him.
"You refused me a bit of chicken when I was sick, nor would you let me have a drop of beer; and you gave me mouldy corn," is Ratcliffe's accusation.
"You accused me of being lazy," says Martin.
"You called me a liar," shouts Smith.
They seize the governor, carry him on board a small vessel, and keep him as a prisoner. Ratcliffe acts as governor.
The provisions are nearly exhausted, and Captain Smith, with six men, goes in a boat to purchase corn from the Indians; but the red men, knowing the wants of the whites, ask a round price, and will only sell a basketful. The man who cut off the heads of the three Turks is not to be trifled with. He orders the soldiers to fire a volley, to intimidate the savages. The guns flash, and the Indians flee in terror. The captain follows them, and finds a great store of corn; but the Indians, seeing that no harm has come to them, rally, and let fly their arrows. The soldiers fire once more, this time taking aim, and three of the Indians are killed or wounded, while the rest flee in terror, astounded at the effect of the guns. Captain Smith seizes their medicine, or idol, knowing that they will be greatly troubled at its loss. The medicine man comes to beg him to give it up.
"Fill the boat with corn, and I will restore it."
The Indian is glad to comply, and his followers bring not only corn, but turkeys, ducks, and venison.
Smith ascends the Chickahominy as far as he can go with a large boat, and then, with two soldiers, in a canoe, goes on many miles. The soldiers left with the boat quarrel with the Indians; one is killed, the remainder flee, leaving Smith and his companions to whatever fate may await them. His two companions are killed, and he is taken prisoner. His captors lead him to their chief. He is promised his liberty if he will join in exterminating the colony. He feigns friendship, but informs them that the colonists have terrible weapons, and will destroy them all. "Send and see if it is not so." He writes a note to the colonists to fire their cannon.
The Indians arrive at Jamestown with the letter, and are amazed to see that everything happens just as Smith said it would. Their captive must be a supernatural being, for he can make paper talk. They bring back Rome gunpowder, which they intend to sow in the spring, and so raise their own powder.
Captain Smith is taken before the great chief, Powhatan, who wears a dress made of raccoon skins, with a crown of red feathers. He sits upon a platform, with his two daughters by his side — the oldest fifteen, the youngest thirteen years of age. They bring a bowl of water, that he may wash his face, and a bunch of feathers for a towel. Then he has his trial, and is condemned to die. An Indian rolls a stone into the wigwam, and the captain's head is laid upon it. Two warriors raise their clubs to beat out his brains. His time has come; yet he does not tremble. The Indians shall see that the white man can die without a sign of fear.
The youngest girl by the side of the great chief gazes upon the scene. Her heart is in commotion. A bound, and she is bending over him, shielding him from the clubs ready to descend upon his skull.
"Do not kill him! do not kill him!"
The chief loves his daughter, and for her sake spares the captain's life, and sends twelve warriors to conduct him in safety to Jamestown. Captain Smith sends back a handsome present to the chief and his daughter. He finds the colony divided. There are forty persons in all, but half of them have seized the vessel in the James, and are abandoning the place, intending to sail to England.
Captain Smith loads a cannon, and aims it at the vessel. "Return, or I will sink you."
The conspirators, awed by the command, return to the shore; and at the last moment the colony is saved from dissolution. Pocahontas is their friend. She comes often to the town, bringing provisions. The Indians who come with her respect the man who had no fear of death, and who can make paper talk.
"In a short time a great boat filled with white people will come from the sea," he says to them, and a few weeks later Captain Newport sails up the James, with one hundred and twenty emigrants. Now the brave man is a prophet; he can tell what is going to happen, and they stand in fear of him. The new-comers are nearly all "gentlemen," who despise labor, but they have come expecting to find gold as plentiful as in Peru, and are a burden rather than a help.
Captain Smith starts on a grand exploring expedition — ^up the Potomac, up Chesapeake Bay to the Susquehanna, and up that stream till he comes to a tribe of Indians who use copper hatchets, which they obtain from the far-distant north. Upon his return, he makes a treaty with the Rappahannocks, the chief giving up his arrows in token of friendship, and Captain Smith hanging strings of beads around the necks of three of the women of the tribe. After this there is a great feast and much dancing. From the Rappahannock River Captain Smith sails for Craney Island, near Norfolk, where the Indians attack him; but he fires a volley at them, bums their wigwams, and so humiliates them that they bring four hundred baskets full of corn to purchase peace.
At sunset, September 7th, 1608, the party reach Jamestown, after an absence of three months and a journey of nearly three thousand miles.
Another ship arrives with emigrants, among whom are two women — the first in the colony. Two years have passed since the colonists landed at Jamestown; but as yet little has been done toward making a permanent settlement. The gentlemen are idlers, but Captain Smith compels them
to work. Some of them are terribly profane, and he makes a law that for every oath they utter they shall have a canful of cold water poured down their backs. He discovers that the chief Powhatan, though professing friendship, is conspiring against the