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of Smith’s tale of deliverance at the hands of Powhatan’s young daughter. In its place, Smith offers a brief ethnographic account of the beliefs and customs of Powhatan and his people. This account involves Smith’s recollection of a ceremony in which at 10 o’clock in the morning, three of four individuals began singing around a fire, each with a rattle in his hand. They laid down grains of wheat in three concentric circles around the fire. “One disguised with a great skin, his head hung round with little skins of weasels and other vermine with a crown of feathers on his head, painted as ugly as the devil, at the end of each song will make many signs and demonstrations with strange and vehement actions; great cakes of deer suet, dear, and tobacco he cast in the fire” (59). Critics conjecture that Smith was relating the ceremony of his own adoption into Powhatan’s tribe. He provides further accounts of consulting a council about the following day’s deer hunt, and the means by which they heal their sick and mourn their dead (59). His next meeting with Powhatan affords Smith the honor of being a werowance of him, “and that all his subjects should so esteem us, and no man account us strangers nor Paspaheghans but Powhatans, and that the corn, women, and country should be to us as to his own people” (67). Note that the items listed as gifts or as Smith’s entitled resources as werowance include land, food, and women. Smith does not comment on the offer of women, however, but alerts readers to the cultural significance of food: “Victuals you must know is all their wealth, and the greatest kindness they would show us” (67). Smith reports the generosity of Powhatan when he fi rst meets Smith’s “father,” Captain Newport, and prepares for them a feast consisting of bread and venison. In exchange for these signs of friendship, the most crucial of them Smith’s naming as Powhatan’s werowance, Powhatan rightly inquires twice why Smith, Newport, and their fellow colonists appear at each meeting fully armed. In response, a rather cunning Smith refers to their arms as “the custom of our country” (69). A sense of tentative trust between the Jamestown colonists and the native inhabitants of what would
become Virginia is broken when members of a few tribes, the Paspahegh, Chickahamanian, Youghtanum, Pamunka, Mattapanient, and Kiskiack, ambush the fort (91). Smith had previously mentioned enmity among the Paspahegh and Kiskiack but had had favorable trading relations with many of the other tribes. He eventually releases the prisoners captured during the failed ambush, but not before Powhatan sends his daughter Pocahontas to plead for their freedom (93). In Smith’s only reference to the famous chief’s daughter, he describes her in terms that mark her as exceptional: “a child of ten years old, which not only for feature, countenance, and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of his people, but for wit, spirit, the only nonpareil of his country” (93). He treats her kindly, stating that he showered her with the gifts she deemed worthy and returned her to her father, along with the captives. Smith concludes the narrative in a rather abrupt manner, but he seems to have considered the triumph of the colonists over this attempted ambush as a sign of their perseverance and a means of ensuring future peaceful relations with the land’s natives. Smith writes assuringly, “We now remaining being in good health, all our men well contented, free from mutinies, in love one with another, and as we hope in a continual peace with the Indians” (97).
For Discussion or Writing 1. How does Smith’s position as cape merchant in charge of trading compare with Á LVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA’s assumption of the same role? How do they imagine themselves and those with whom they trade? 2. How does Smith’s use of technology compare with OLAUDAH EQUIANO’s narrative of wonder and awe in his autobiography? In what ways do the American Indians awe or inspire Smith?
Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1623) Smith’s “most important friend,” Samuel Purchas, enabled Smith to publish his Generall Historie,