LITMIR.BIZ

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worthless to them if they could not find a suitable river or safe harbour.

      Later that evening, a group rowed out to examine further the river mouth they had passed earlier that day. They started to zigzag across the water, taking soundings as they went. Slowly, painstakingly, their measurements built up a profile of the river bed beneath, revealing a channel 6 to 12 fathoms deep, enough for heavy shipping. So great was their relief, that Archer named the neighbouring point of land ‘Cape Comfort’.

      With this discovery, the decision was taken to commit the settlement’s fortunes to the Chesapeake. To mark the decision, a group rowed to the southern side of the mouth of the bay, and on the promontory they had passed when they arrived erected a large cross, facing out to the ocean. They named the land upon which they stood Cape Henry, in honour of Tyndall’s patron, James’s 13-year-old heir.

      On 30 April 1607, the fleet nosed past Cape (later known as Point) Comfort and into the broad river that lay beyond. Five Indians appeared on the shore, running along the beach to keep up with the ships. Newport called to them from the deck of the Susan Constant. At first they did not respond. Newport then laid his hand upon his heart as a gesture of friendship. They laid down their bows and arrows, and waved to him to follow them. Newport, together with Percy and a few others, clambered into a boat, and rowed towards the shore. The Indians dived into a tributary and swam across with their bows and arrows in their mouths. The English followed, until they found themselves floating towards a group of warriors waiting for them on the bank. From there, they were escorted to a town, which the English understood to be called ‘Kecoughtan’.

      Kecoughtan comprised a cluster of twenty or so dwellings built ‘like garden arbours’, interspersed among the trees. The walls of each house were made of saplings, the roof by the branches bent over to create a vault. The entire construction was covered with reed mats and in some cases with bark, a free-hanging mat acting as the door. The English were intrigued by the elegant simplicity of the buildings, and the lack of permanent structures or even of locked doors.⁷

      The Indians who emerged from the houses presented a sight not altogether unfamiliar to some of the English, as they wore clothes and followed customs similar to those at Roanoke, whose appearance had been carefully recorded by the painter John White. The most distinctive feature was the hair. The men shaved the right side of their heads, and let the left side grow to the length of an ‘ell’ (3 foot 9 inches), which they tied in an ‘artificial knot’ and decorated with feathers. In the intensifying heat of the Virginian late spring, they dressed sparingly, covering their ‘privities’ with an animal hide decorated with teeth and small bones, but were otherwise naked. To welcome the English, some had painted their bodies black, others red, ‘very beautiful and pleasing to the eye’, and wore turkey claws as earrings.⁸ Gabriel Archer, standing among the exhausted, louse-ridden, poorly-nourished English could only admire the strength and agility of the ‘lusty, straight men’ whom they now encountered.⁹

      As soon as the English entered the village, the men greeted them with a ‘doleful noise’, and approached ‘laying their faces to the ground, scratching the earth with their nails.’ Percy, a man of insecure religious convictions, was alarmed, fearing that the Indians were practising their ‘idolatry’ upon him.

      Once the welcome was over, the Indians brought mats from their houses and lay them on the ground. The elders sat in a line, and were served with corn bread, which they invited the English to share, but only if they sat down. The English crouched awkwardly on the mats ‘right against them’, and accepted the offer. The elders then produced a large clay pipe, with a bowl made of copper, and filled it with tobacco. It was lit, and they offered it to their guests, who puffed it appreciatively.

      To complete the ceremonies, the Indians put on a frantic dance, ‘shouting, howling, and stamping against the ground, with many antic tricks and faces, making noise like so many wolves or devils’. The display lasted half an hour, during which Percy, drawing on a knowledge of courtly dance acquired as a child, noticed that they all kept to a common tempo with their feet, but moved to an individual rhythm with the rest of their bodies.

      When the dance ended, Newport presented the elders with beads and ‘other trifling jewels’. The English then returned to the fleet, content that, as instructed by the Royal Council, they had not only taken ‘Great Care not to Offend the naturals’, but laid the basis of a fruitful trading relationship.

      Over the following few days the fleet carefully felt its way up the broad river, which even 20 or so miles upstream was wider than any in England, the channel deep enough for large ships. Tyndall carefully mapped the route of the channel, naming a large and treacherous sandbank about 30 miles upstream ‘Tyndall’s Shoals’. Just beyond, the river turned sharply, forming a loop similar to that of the Thames around the Isle of Dogs, which was later named the ‘Isle of Hogs’ (now home to a wildlife reserve, and a nuclear power plant). Opposite it, Gabriel Archer spotted an island which looked ideal as a location for their settlement. He had a fondness for puns, so he dubbed it ‘Archer’s Hope’, a ‘hope’ also being a stretch of land cut off from its surroundings by marsh or fenland.

      Continuing slowly upstream a further 20 miles, they reached a point where the river forked. They anchored the fleet in the broad waters of the confluence, and a landing party was sent to reconnoitre. They came to a town called Paspahegh, on the northern shore of the wider tributary, where they were entertained by an ‘old savage’ who made ‘a long oration, making a foul noise, uttering his speech with a vehement action, but we knew little what they meant’. While witnessing this unimpressive spectacle, they were approached by the chief or weroance of the tribe on the southern bank of the river, who had paddled over in a canoe to remonstrate with them for favouring the Paspahegh over his own people. Gratified by this competition for their attention, and dismissive of the Paspahegh’s efforts, the English said they would visit him the next day.

      The following dawn was heralded by the arrival of a canoe alongside the Susan Constant, paddled by a messenger, who signified that he had come from the chiefdom on the opposite bank of the river. He beckoned the English to follow him. They duly manned their shallop, and pursued the canoe to the southern shore, which some had begun to call the ‘Salisbury Side’, in honour of Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury. As the English drew up by the river bank, Percy beheld the chief and his warrior escort waiting for them, ‘as goodly men as any I have seen of savages or Christians’.

      The chief, called Chaopock, presented a particularly impressive spectacle, his body and visage a map of promising commodities. His torso was painted crimson, which was perhaps how he got his name, the local word chapacor being the name of a root used to produce red dye. His face was painted blue, ‘besprinkled with silver ore as we thought’, probably a paste made of antimony, which was mined further north. He wore ‘a crown of deer’s hair coloured red in fashion of a rose fastened about his knot of hair’, and on the shaven side of his head, a ‘great plate of copper’. He played a reed flute as the English clambered ashore, and then invited them to sit down with him upon a mat, which was spread out for them on the bank. There, sitting ‘with a great majesty’, he offered them tobacco, his company standing around him as they watched the English puff on the pipe. He then invited them to come to his town, which the English understood to be called Rappahannock (but which they later learned was called Quiyoughcohannock). He led them ‘through the woods in fine paths, having most pleasant springs’, past ‘the goodliest cornfields that ever was seen in any country’, up a steep hill to his ‘palace’, where they were entertained ‘in good humanity’.¹⁰

      The next day, Newport left the fleet riding at anchor before Paspahegh and continued in the shallop up the wider branch of the river, stopping at a point where it once again divided. There he encountered another tribe, the ‘most warlike’ Appamattuck, who came to the banks of the river and confronted the English, their leader crouched before them ‘cross-legged, with his arrow ready in his bow in one hand and taking a pipe of tobacco in the other’ uttering a ‘bold speech’. After an

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