Everyone in America probably knows the story of
John Smith – how he helped the colony at Jamestown survive its early days, only
to be captured by the local Natives. When he was about to be killed, the Chief’s
beautiful daughter, Pocahontas, threw herself over his body and saving him from
the executioner’s club.
After that the story gets a bit vague. In the
Disney version, Smith is wounded and needs to return to England in order to
survive. He and Pocahontas have a tearful goodbye, but peace is achieved between
the English and the Native tribe.
Surprisingly, the story is close to true, and Disney
didn’t even mess up the ending too badly. But did you know that not only was
John Smith a real person, he was a full time adventurer, who sailed to the Mediterranean,
gave New England its name and also dabbled in piracy?
Smith was born on an English farm in 1579 or 1580.
He had three years of formal schooling, and went to sea at age 16. He was
always a mercenary and privateer. He joined the French in fighting against the
Spanish, and when that war was over, took up with the Dutch to fight the
Spanish again and was promoted to captain. After this he sailed to the Mediterranean,
where he traded when that was profitable, and pirated when it was not.
As a leader, he inspired those under him, and when
opportunity arose, he took up work as a mercenary soldier, leading troops against
the Turks in Hungary. According to his own writings, he also defeated and
killed three Turkish commanders in duels, a feat which caused him to be
knighted by the Prince of Transylvania. (Timeline note: This took place in
approximately 1600, only 25 years after the death of Vlad the Impaler, also
called Dracula)
Also according to Smith’s autobiography, he was
later wounded in this same war, captured by the Turks and sold into slavery “like
an animal.” He claimed that his Turkins master sent him as a gift to a lady in
Constantinople, who fell in love with him. She took him to Crimea, where he
escaped in 1604 and returned to England.
In 1606, short on funds, he was employed by the
Virginia Company, a corporation dedicated to finding gold in the New World. He
set sail under Captain Christopher Newport, and caused enough trouble with the
impractical captain during the journey that he was charged with mutiny, and
might have been hanged. But the three ships arrived at the Jamestown only a
short time later. When they did, they opened the charter written by King James
and learned that Smith was to be in charge of the colony.
The colony was in grave straits. The settlers had
been promised gold lying on the ground, and had spent most of their time
loading ships with iron pyrite (fool’s gold) rather than building homes or
planting crops.
John Smith instated a simple law of “he who works not eats not,” and led the settlement through over a year of near-emergency
from starvation, cold and disease. Indeed the only reason that the colony
survived at all was that ships filled with new settlers arrived to replace
those who died. Powhatan, leader of the Natives, was concerned with the continuing
inflow of Europeans, and relations between the two groups was strained.
Then, in 1607, something happened which became the
Legend of Pocahontas. John Smith was captured and taken to see Powhatan. Smith
didn’t like the locals, but unlike many Europeans of his day, he did not regard
them as sub-human. Instead, he acknowledged that they were at different levels
of technology.
Johns Smith believed that he was about to be
killed by Powhatan, and that he was saved by the chief’s daughter. Some historians
believe that he made the story up. (It was not written down until 10 years
later.) Modern theory is that Smith may have mis-interpreted a ritual in which
he was symbolically killed and then re-born as a member of the tribe.
All sources doubt the rescue was inspired by
romance. Pocahontas would have been only 12 years old at the time.
However it really went, relationships between the
two groups stabilized for a time. The Europeans finally built a village, and
began to be almost self-sufficient. Craftsmen and women began to arrive instead
of mere treasure-seekers.
But the more Europeans arrived, the more nervous
Powhatan became. Smith explored and mapped the region around Jamestown, but he
also led war parties in skirmishes against the Natives. In 1609 he was severely
wounded by a gunpowder explosion. Then, just like in the Disney movie, he returned
to England.
Smith never returned to the Jamestown, but he published
his maps of the Virginia area, and did his best to support the colony, encouraging
it to be seen as a place where farming and industry would make money, not the easy
acquisition of gold.
In 1614, still seeking adventure, Smith sailed
again for the New World, landing this time in the area of Maine and Massachusetts.
He is credited with naming the area “New England.” He did not stay long, but
planned to return. Unfortunately, he was not successful. On is first effort to
return his ship was dismasted in a storm, and on the second, he was captured by
French pirates. Still the adventurer, he escaped and returned again to England,
where he began writing about his life.
He published: A True Relation of Such Occurrences and
Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608), A Map of Virginia (1612), The
Proceedings of the English Colony in Virginia (1612), A Description of New
England (1616), New England's Trials (1620, 1622), The Generall Historie of
Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624), An Accidence, or the
Pathway to Experience Necessary for all Young Seamen (1626), A Sea Grammar
(1627) – the first sailors' word book in English, The True Travels, Adventures
and Observations of Captain John Smith (1630), and Advertisements for the
Unexperienced Planters of New England, or Anywhere (1631).
Captain John Smith died in London in 1631, at age
51, not bad for a man of his time who had seen so much of the world. He was
formally interred in Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate Church in London in 1633.
His legend lives on.
Many of his written works are available today on
Google Books, and can be downloaded and read for free.
No comments:
Post a Comment