John Smith
he had postponed his visit in order to ensure that the fort’s provisions were adequate. By engaging in his duty as cape merchant on the heels of Captain Martin’s frustrated attempt to return to England, Smith indirectly situates himself as the more dutiful member of the colony. In an uncharacteristic move, Smith directly addresses the reader’s or another person’s criticism of his behavior when he orders members of his party to remain with the barge and not return to Jamestown without him as he hires a canoe and two Indians to guide him farther up the river, whose shallowness makes the barge’s further progress impossible. Smith explains: Though some wise men may condemn this too bold attempt of too much indiscretion, yet if they will consider the friendship of the Indians in conducting me, the desolateness of the country, the probability of some lake, and the malicious judges of my actions at home, as also to have some matters of worth to encourage our adventures in England, might well have caused any honest mind to have done the like, as well for his own discharge. (45)
Barbour interprets Smith’s belabored language as his attempt to justify his actions in light of the deaths of three in his party (101). Shortly after this explanation, Smith, hearing “a loud cry, and a howling of Indians, but no warning [shot],” as he had instructed his seven comrades to fi re in case of danger, grabs the guide with him and holds him as he fi res with his French pistol (45). Although wounded in the thigh, Smith suffers no further injury from the 200 men accompanying Opeckankenough, second in line of succession after Powhatan (47, 102). When they discover that Smith is a captain, his life is spared, for the tribe had a law of not executing a captain, tribal chief, or werowance, a chief who owed allegiance to Powhatan (102). Smith’s fi rst encounter with Powhatan occurs with his men dead, himself wounded in the thigh and without any weapons, and yet he appears to use his remaining technology and knowledge of
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astrology to create interest, even awe, in the chief. “I presented him with a compass dial, described by my best means the use thereof, whereat he so amazedly admired, as he suffered me to proceed in a discourse on the roundness of the earth, the course of the sun, moon, stars, and planets” (47). Barbour attributes Smith’s scheme to his familiarity with Thomas Harriot, who reported in his narrative of items used to mystify the American Indians (102). Smith utilizes another bit of strategy when requested to discharge his pistol and fi re at a target placed “at six score.” He “broke [the pistol’s] cock, whereat they were much discontented though a chance supposed” (51). Smith pretends to have disabled the gun accidentally while Barbour interprets this scene as a further example of the captive’s attempts to use his wiles and technology to his advantage. If he were to shoot the pistol as requested, Barbour argues, Smith would have demonstrated the weapon’s limitations since pistols at the time were capable of hitting a target only at short range (103). The spectacle of Powhatan and his entourage, elaborately dressed, garners awe from Smith, who details the costuming of the chief and his highranking kinsmen and remarks that “such a grave and majestic countenance drove me to admiration to see such a state in a naked savage” (53). In Smith’s description, perhaps, we see the notions of the noble savage at work, for his admiration is lessened, if not reversed, by his labeling of Powhatan as a “a naked savage.” What is striking, then, is not Powhatan himself but a non-Englishman so bedecked and garnering so much respect from those around. Further, to Smith Powhatan’s majestic affect seems at odds with the chief’s racial identity. Such a moment reveals to readers the extent of Smith’s culture shock as well as his uneasiness at being powerless in relation to such a figure. Conspicuously absent from Smith’s tale of his four-day captivity by Powhatan and his adoption into their tribe is the famous rescue effected by Pocahontas. Because this tale appears in Smith’s Generall Historie and not in A True Relation of Virginia, historians and critics alike have cast doubt on the veracity