LITMIR.BIZ

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of a herb into his wounded palm. The plant was wisakon, he was told (the word was in fact a general term for medicinal herb). It looked to him like liverwort or bloodwort, two well-known medicinal herbs used in England. He was also shown a root which contained the poison that had laced the arrowheads.

      The visitors watched the women bake rolls and cakes, and a demonstration of ‘the growing of their corn and the manner of setting it’. The fields, just a few hundred foot square, were more like gardens, cleared by burning sections of the surrounding woodland. The soil was neither cultivated (the Indians had no draft animals or tilling equipment) nor manured, producing, in the opinion of Smith the farmer’s son, ‘so small a benefit of their land’. He was sure the most basic English agricultural techniques would multiply the yields.²⁰

      Finally, the chief took the English into what Archer dubbed the ‘Mulberry Shade’, a hunting lodge set apart from the village, where King Arrohateck laid on a meal of ‘land turtle’ while his men went into the surrounding woods to see if they could catch a deer. The chief also asked for a demonstration of English firearms. Newport duly ordered ‘a gentleman discharge his piece soldier-like before [King Arrohateck], at which noise he started, stop’d his ears, and express’d much fear, so likewise all about him’.

      There was also an incident, confusingly documented, which enabled the two nations to compare their methods of summary discipline. Navirans drew attention to one of Arrohateck’s people who, as Archer put it, ‘press’d into our boat too violently upon a man of ours’. Newport, ‘misconstruing the matter, sent for his own man, bound him to a tree before King Arrohateck, and with a cudgel soundly beat him’. The chief intervened, saying one of his men was responsible for the ‘injury’. He went over to the culprit, who tried to run away. The chief set off in pursuit, running ‘so swiftly as I assure myself he might give any of our company 6 score in 12’ (i.e. beat them ten times over). The offender was brought back, and the rest of the king’s retinue brandished cudgels and sticks ‘as if they had beaten him extremely’. Archer does not mention if the punishment was actually executed, or only threatened.

      These violent proceedings did not dampen the convivial mood, but seemed to draw the two leaders, Newport and King Arrohateck, closer together. As the day drew to an end, Newport presented the chief with a red waistcoat as a farewell gift, ‘which highly pleased him’. The English boarded their shallop and cast off, the Arrohateck men saluting them with two hearty shouts as they pulled away from the shore.

      That night, they anchored near Appamattuck, home of those ‘most warlike’ people Newport had visited while reconnoitring the site of the English settlement. The following day, they went ashore and were led by Navirans through fields newly planted with corn to a ‘bower’ of mulberry trees. They sat down to await the Appamattuck chief, but were instead surprised by the regal approach of a ‘fat, lusty, manly woman’ clothed in deerskin, covered in copper jewellery, including a crown, and attended by a retinue of women ‘adorned much like herself, save they wanted the copper’. This, the English decided, must be a queen, as she was treated with the same reverence as the Powhatan and Arrohateck chiefs, ‘yea, rather with more majesty’. Her name, though they did not yet know it, was Opussoquonuske.²¹

      The English, struggling to readjust their assumption that Indian royalty must be exclusively male, were anxious to discover her role. She explained that she was a chief under the authority of Powhatan, ‘as the rest are’, but the visitors noted that ‘within herself’ she was ‘as great authority as any of her neighbour weroances’, if not greater. For two hours the English gazed upon this Indian Elizabeth, while feasting on the ‘accustomed cakes, tobacco, and welcome’. They offered to demonstrate their weapons, and Archer noted that, when a musket was fired, ‘she showed not near the like fear as Arrohateck’. Newport then decided they should leave for the final leg of their expedition.

      Navirans led them 5 miles downstream, and persuaded them to put in for one final meeting. The location, he said, was ‘one of King Pamunkey’s houses’, a structure that may have been a hunting lodge, or even specially constructed for the occasion, as the Pamunkey homeland lay 20 miles away, along the banks of a river neighbouring the James. The English seemed unaware that such encounters were now being carefully orchestrated, nor did they realize the importance of the man they were about to meet. He was Opechancanough, whose name meant ‘man of a white (immaculate) soul’. Later described as possessing a ‘large stature, noble presence, and extraordinary parts’, he was said by some to be Powhatan’s brother, but by others to have come from ‘a great way from the south-west … from the Spanish Indians, somewhere near Mexico’. In his forties at the time of this first encounter, he acted as the military chief of Tsenacomoco, the Indian name for the Powhatan empire. He had come to meet the English to assess their intentions and strength.²²

      After the magnificent Queen Appamattuck, Archer found ‘King Pamunkey’ a ridiculous figure, ‘so set [upon] striving to be stately as to our seeming he became a fool’. He claimed to come from a ‘rich land of copper and pearl’, and showed off a pearl necklace and a sample of copper ‘the thickness of a shilling’ which Archer managed to bend round his finger ‘as if it had been lead’. Affecting nonchalance at this information, the English asked what other commodities his land offered. The king obligingly boasted it was also ‘full of deer’ though added that ‘so also is most of all the kingdoms’.

      Archer called the venue for the encounter with Opechancanough ‘Pamunkey’s Palace’, mocking the king’s extravagant claims, and ignoring Navirans’s hints that the name was inappropriate.

      Continuing their journey home, they spent the night at the ‘low meadow point’ where they had anchored the first night of the expedition, 18 miles away from the settlement. The following morning, they went ashore with Navirans. They encountered a hunting party of ten or twelve Indians who were camping on the shore, and Navirans arranged for them to go fishing for the English. ‘They brought us in a short space a good store,’ Archer noted, who accounted them ‘good friends’.

      Then, without warning or explanation, Navirans ‘took some conceit’ of the English, and refused to go any further with them. ‘This grieved our captain very deeply,’ Archer observed, ‘for the loving kindness of this fellow was such as he trusted himself with us out of his own country.’ By now, Newport imagined that he had managed to establish a rapport with the Indians, that his diplomacy had been embraced, his honourable intentions accepted, the superiority of his weaponry acknowledged and admired. Navirans’s sudden change of heart punctured this presumption. Newport ordered the shallop’s immediate return to Jamestown, ‘fearing some disastrous hap at our fort’.

      They arrived back on 27 May, to find the settlement in chaos. It transpired that the day before, two hundred Indian warriors had mounted a sustained attack. Following his meeting with Newport, Opechancanough had evidently decided the English presence must be eliminated, before it became permanent.

      At the time of the attack, the settlers had been planting corn in the newly cleared fields. Most of their weapons were still packed in ‘dryfats’, waterproof storage casks, so they only had a few pistols and swords to defend themselves. As the ranks of Indian warriors descended upon them, they had been forced to run for cover, to few finding shelter behind the island’s single defensive bulwark. Led by President Wingfield, all five council members apparently put up a fight with hand weapons, but were forced to retreat. In the ensuing skirmish, which ‘endured hot about an hour’, one boy was slain and as many as seventeen labourers wounded. Every single member of the council sustained injuries, except Wingfield, who had a miraculous escape from an arrow which passed through his beard. According to later reports, the entire company would have been slain, had not the sailors loaded one of the ships’ cannons with a ‘crossbar’ (round shot with a spike embedded in it), and fired it towards the Indian position. The projectile had hit a tree, bringing down one of its branches, which apparently fell among the attacking Indians and ‘caused them to retire’.²³

      ‘Hereupon the

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