Out of the frying pan and into the fire! John Smith wasted no time picking a fight with the Powhatans after Christopher Newport sailed back to England. Smith had no choice. If he wanted the colony to survive, then he would have to figure out a way to feed those under his command. Smith only had one choice, go to the Indians for food.

Going to the Indians, however, was a dangerous problem. They didn’t have much food, and weren’t about to part with any that they had. Smith, ever the survivor, then switched from friendly trader, to belligerent invader. He simply wasn’t going to die sitting still.

His domineering manner saved the colony through the 1608 winter, but it came at a high cost. Powhatan and Opechancanough both tried to kill the colony president during Smith’s trading tour, thereby ensuring that relations between the two peoples would never be trustworthy for long.

But that’s not entirely what Smith cared about. He wanted to live, even if others had to suffer.

LINKS TO THE PODCAST:

• John Smith’s Presidency – Part 2
• RSS Feed
• VA History Podcast on iTunes
• VA History Podcast on Stitcher

SOURCES:

1. Billings, Warren M.; Selby, John E.; and Tate, Thad W. Colonial Virginia: A History. White Plains, NY: KTO Press. 1986.
2. Dabney, Virginius. Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1971.
3. Deans, Bob. The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James. Plymouth, UK: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009.
4. Firstbrook, Peter. A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Founding of America. London: Oneworld Publications, 2014.
5. Horn, James. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
6. Hume, Ivor Noel. Here Lies Virginia. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963.
7. Hume, Ivor Noel. The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to James Towne – An Archaeological and Historical Odyssey. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
8. Kelso, William M. Jamestown: The Buried Truth. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006.
9. Kupperman, Karen Ordhal. Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown The Journal of American History, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Jun., 1979), pp. 24-40
10. Kupperman, Karen Ordhal. Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press published for the Omohundro Institute, 1988.
11. Kupperman, Karen Ordhal. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
12. Mapp, Alfred J. Virginia Experiment: The Old Dominion’s Role in the Making of America, 1607-1781. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2006.
13. Price, David A. Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation. New York: Vintage, 2003.
14. Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1999.
15. Rountree, Helen C. Powhatan Foreign Relations: 1500-1722.Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993.
16. Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. Charlottesville, VA: UVA Press, 2005.
17. Smith, John. The Generall History of Virginia. 1624.
18. Wallenstein, Peter. Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
19. Williams, Tony. The Jamestown Experiment: The Remarkable Story of The Enterprising Colony and the Unexpected Results that Shaped America. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2011.
20. Wooley, Benjamin. Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America. New York: Harper and Collins, 2007.

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

1. Historic Jamestowne
2. Virtual Jamestown
3. Maps of John Smith’s Chesapeake Voyages
4. The Pamunkey Indian Tribe
5. Virginia History Podcast Store

 

 

 

All photography used on this site is owned and copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted. The featured image is of “John Smith Taking the King of Pamunkey Prisoner” from Smith’s 1624 General History of Virginia.

Music used for this episode – Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers,”Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” available on iTunes, and “Pick a Fight” by the Vespers, available on Soundcloud.