finish his discovery.

He passed by the Patowomek River and hasted to the River Bolus, which
he had before visited.  Pn the bay they fell in with seven or eight
canoes full of the renowned Massawomeks, with whom they had a fight,
but at length these savages became friendly and gave them bows,
arrows, and skins.  They were at war with the Tockwoghes.  Proceeding
up the River Tockwogh, the latter Indians received them with
friendship, because they had the weapons which they supposed had been
captured in a fight with the Massawomeks.  These Indians had
hatchets, knives, pieces of iron and brass, they reported came from
the Susquesahanocks, a mighty people, the enemies of the Massawomeks,
living at the head of the bay.  As Smith in his barge could not
ascend to them, he sent an interpreter to request a visit from them.
In three or four days sixty of these giant-like people came down with
presents of venison, tobacco-pipes three feet in length, baskets,
targets, and bows and arrows.  Some further notice is necessary of
this first appearance of the Susquehannocks, who became afterwards so
well known, by reason of their great stature and their friendliness.
Portraits of these noble savages appeared in De Bry's voyages, which
were used in Smith's map, and also by Strachey.  These beautiful
copperplate engravings spread through Europe most exaggerated ideas
of the American savages.

"Our order," says Smith, "was daily to have prayers, with a psalm, at
which solemnity the poor savages wondered."  When it was over the
Susquesahanocks, in a fervent manner, held up their hands to the sun,
and then embracing the Captain, adored him in like manner.  With a
furious manner and "a hellish voyce " they began an oration of their
loves, covered him with their painted bear-skins, hung a chain of
white beads about his neck, and hailed his creation as their governor
and protector, promising aid and victuals if he would stay and help
them fight the Massawomeks.  Much they told him of the Atquanachuks,
who live on the Ocean Sea, the Massawomeks and other people living on
a great water beyond the mountain (which Smith understood to be some
great lake or the river of Canada), and that they received their
hatchets and other commodities from the French.  They moumed greatly
at Smith's departure.  Of Powhatan they knew nothing but the name.

Strachey, who probably enlarges from Smith his account of the same
people, whom he calls Sasquesahanougs, says they were well-
proportioned giants, but of an honest and simple disposition.  Their
language well beseemed their proportions, "sounding from them as it
were a great voice in a vault or cave, as an ecco."  The picture of
one of these chiefs is given in De Bry,and described by Strachey,"
the calf of whose leg was three-quarters of a yard about, and all the
rest of his limbs so answerable to the same proportions that he
seemed the goodliest man they ever saw."

It would not entertain the reader to follow Smith in all the small
adventures of the exploration, during which he says he went about
3,000 miles (three thousand miles in three or four weeks in a row-
boat is nothing in Smith's memory), "with such watery diet in these
great waters and barbarous countries."  Much hardship he endured,
alternately skirmishing and feasting with the Indians; many were the
tribes he struck an alliance with, and many valuable details he added
to the geographical knowledge of the region.  In all this exploration
Smith showed himself skillful as he was vigorous and adventurous.

He returned to James River September 7th.  Many had died, some were
sick, Ratcliffe, the late President, was a prisoner for mutiny,
Master Scrivener had diligently gathered the harvest, but much of the
provisions had been spoiled by rain.  Thus the summer was consumed,
and nothing had been accomplished except Smith's discovery.




XI

SMITH'S PRESIDENCY AND PROWESS

On the 10th of September, by the election of the Council and the
request of the company, Captain Smith received the letters-patent,
and became President.  He stopped the building of Ratcliffe's
"palace," repaired the church and the storehouse, got ready the
buildings for the supply expected from England, reduced the fort to a
"five square form," set and trained the watch and exercised the
company every Saturday on a plain called Smithfield, to the amazement
of the on-looking Indians.

Captain Newport arrived with a new supply of seventy persons.  Among
them were Captain Francis West, brother to Lord Delaware, Captain
Peter Winne, and Captain Peter Waldo, appointed on the Council, eight
Dutchmen and Poles, and Mistress Forest and Anne Burrows her maid,
the first white women in the colony.

Smith did not relish the arrival of Captain Newport nor the
instructions under which he returned.  He came back commanded to
discover the country of Monacan (above the Falls) and to perform the
ceremony of coronation on the Emperor Powhatan.

How Newport got this private commission when he had returned to
England without a lump of gold, nor any certainty of the South Sea,
or one of the lost company sent out by Raleigh; and why he brought a
"fine peeced barge" which must be carried over unknown mountains
before it reached the South Sea, he could not understand.  " As for
the coronation of Powhatan and his presents of basin and ewer, bed,
bedding, clothes, and such costly novelties, they had been much
better well spared than so ill spent, for we had his favor and better
for a plain piece of copper, till this stately kind of soliciting
made him so much overvalue himself that he respected us as much as
nothing at all."  Smith evidently understood the situation much
better than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him in
his rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions.
There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need not
turn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster.

To send out Poles and Dutchmen to make pitch, tar, and glass would
have been well enough if the colony had been firmly established and
supplied with necessaries; and they might have sent two hundred
colonists instead of seventy, if they had ordered them to go to work
collecting provisions of the Indians for the winter, instead of
attempting this strange discovery of the South Sea, and wasting their
time on a more strange coronation.  "Now was there no way," asks
Smith, "to make us miserable," but by direction from England to
perform this discovery and coronation, "to take that time, spend what
victuals we had, tire and starve our men, having no means to carry
victuals, ammunition, the hurt or the sick, but on their own backs?"

Smith seems to have protested against all this nonsense, but though
he was governor, the Council overruled him.  Captain Newport decided
to take one hundred and twenty men, fearing to go with a less number
and journey to Werowocomoco to crown Powhatan.  In order to save time
Smith offered to take a message to Powhatan, and induce him to come
to Jamestown and receive the honor and the presents.  Accompanied by
only four men he crossed by land to Werowocomoco, passed the
Pamaunkee (York) River in a canoe, and sent for Powhatan, who was
thirty miles off.  Meantime Pocahontas, who by his own account was a
mere child, and her women entertained Smith in the following manner:

"In a fayre plaine they made a fire, before which, sitting upon a
mat, suddenly amongst the woods was heard such a hydeous noise and
shreeking that the English betook themselves to their armes, and
seized upon two or three old men, by them supposing Powhatan with all
his power was come to surprise them.  But presently Pocahontas came,
willing him to kill her if any hurt were intended, and the beholders,
which were men, women and children, satisfied the Captaine that there
was no such matter.  Then presently they were presented with this
anticke: Thirty young women came naked out of the woods, only covered
behind and before with a few greene leaves, their bodies all painted,
some of one color, some of another, but all differing; their leader
had a fayre payre of Bucks hornes on her head, and an Otters skinne
at her girdle, and another at her arme, a quiver of arrows at her
backe, a bow and arrows in her hand; the next had in her hand a
sword, another a club, another a pot-sticke: all horned alike; the
rest every one with their several devises.  These fiends with most
hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast
themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing with most
excellent ill-varietie, oft falling into their infernal passions, and
solemnly again to sing and dance; having spent nearly an hour in this
Mascarado, as they entered,in like manner they departed.

"Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited him to their
lodgings, where he was no sooner within the house, but all these
Nymphs more tormented him than ever, with crowding, pressing, and
hanging about him, most tediously crying, 'Love you not me?  Love you
not me?'  This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of all
the Salvage dainties they could devise: some attending, others
singing and dancing about them: which mirth being ended, with fire
brands instead of torches they conducted him to his lodging."

The next day Powhatan arrived.  Smith delivered up the Indian
Namontuck, who had just returned from a voyage to England--whither it
was suspected the Emperor wished him to go to spy out the weakness of
the English tribe--and repeated Father Newport's request that
Powhatan would come to Jamestown to receive the presents and join in
an expedition against his enemies, the Monacans.

Powhatan's reply was worthy of his imperial highness, and has been
copied ever since in the speeches of the lords of the soil to the
pale faces: "If your king has sent me present, I also am a king, and
this is my land: eight days I will stay to receive them.  Your father
is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort, neither will I
bite at such a bait; as for the Monacans, I can revenge my own

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