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It was no accident that the English settlers,
like all European explorers, quickly named the river they had discovered
as a first step in establishing their claim. From the beginning they
were determined to leave their mark on a nature that they saw as a hostile
wilderness. As representatives of an advanced civilization, they felt
it their duty to subdue the earth. Certainly they could praise the river
for its fertile banks and fish and even appreciate its beauty, but unlike
the Indians they viewed it as a road to wealth. One of the first reports
that Captain Newport carried back to England was appropriately titled
"The Discription of the now discovered River and Country of Virginia;
with the Liklyhood of ensuing ritches, by Englands ayd and industry."
The battle lines separating the white man and his European notions about
ownership and civilization from nature and its resident red man were
already drawn. For years the outcome was in doubt, although the Indians
were clearly at a disadvantage in fighting for a river they thought
no man or group of men could own.
The drama which unfolded as these two
cultures clashed was to be reenacted continually along each river which
they both prized. At the root of the conflict were two opposing ways
of seeing the river. Its resolution would set the pattern for how the
river would be treated by its human neighbors for centuries to come.
At first, the English could not praise the river enough, though they
did not know much about it. But as their mythic expectations gave way
to the reality of living with that river, it was relegated to the scenic
background of their histories. They soon ceased to describe the river
except as a convenient highway, though sometimes they viewed it as being
as unmanageable as the Indians had been.
The James may have been a new river to
them, but the English view of rivers had already been conditioned by
another river an ocean away. Most knew the Thames, a tidal river then
edged by an overcrowded city of half a million people. Like urbanites
since that time, Londoners thought little more of the river than they
would of any other highway that was troublesome to cross. They hardly
realized that the same tides which gave a handy push to boat traffic
also kept the river water relatively turgid and sluggish at London,
so that whatever went into the river--and everything did--stayed for
a while. With each rainstorm the sewage, dumped unceremoniously into
ditches and the streets, was transported down to the river. Many people
of London drank of the river's waters, especially those who could not
afford beer, and many paid the price of typhoid fever, cholera, hepatitis,
and dysentery. They knew that life was short, but not why.
Some of the people who came to the James
were possessed by a dream of far more wondrous rivers than the Thames.
This dream had been liberally fed by accounts of the voyages of Jacques
Cartier to the St. Lawrence, John Hariot and Ralph Lane to the Roanoke
and Chowan, and James Rosier to the St. George's. Many of these were
published by Richard
Hakluyt, a geographer much enamoured of golden, westward-leading
rivers. These popular works, often dispensing with inconvenient facts,
lauded the glorious waterways which penetrated the continent of the
new world to lead bold dreamers to the untold wealth of the Indies which
was surely to be found a few more days upstream. Undeterred by the disappearance
of the colonists placed on Roanoke Island in North Carolina's Albemarle
Sound by Sir Walter Raleigh, a group of Londoners, primarily merchants,
formed a joint-stock company to finance a colonizing expedition to the
probable northwest passage, or failing to find that, to the raw materials
which lay waiting transformation into profit.
The London Council's "Instructions given
by way of Advice," written by Hakluyt and given to the group of 104
or 105 prospective colonists (accounts vary) who gathered in December
of 1606 to embark on three tiny ships for Virginia, show the English
obsession with the fabled rivers. They were told to:
Hakluyt left no question about the main
goal of this river expedition:
The English were not the first white men
to sail into the Chesapeake Bay. The Spanish had sent Jesuit missionaries
in 1570, following up a 1560 expedition, but they were soon wiped out
by Indians. Another aborted settlement attempt originated from Raleigh's
colony on Roanoke Island in 1585. In 1588, the Spanish Captain Vicente
Gonzalez went up as far as the Potomac, very likely looking for survivors
of the Jesuit mission. The first Englishman to sail these waters came
in 1603, but Bartholomew Gilbert paid for his adventure with his life
at the hands of Indians.
Some
historians even report a Spanish settlement attempt on the river
itself, perhaps near what would become Jamestown Island, at the unbelievably
early date of 1526. Lucas Vasquez d'Ayllon is said to have brought 600
men and women, including many Negro slaves, 100 horses, and a Jesuit
named Antonio Montesino to build a town named San Miguel. But d'Ayllon
died of fever and the settlers suffered "hunger and sickness, internecine
quarrels, negro insurrection, and attacks from the Indians"; the survivors
were shipwrecked en route to Spain. As fate would have it, the scenario
81 years later would not be too different, except that more ships kept
coming .
The men sent by the London Company were
either ignorant of this dismal history or uncommonly brave, greedy,
or desperate, or all of the above. They were not mistaken in their expectation
of Indian hostility. Nevertheless, they were so eager to touch land
that a party went ashore after the ships first anchored just west of
Cape Henry. After sunset, they were attacked by "Savages creeping upon
all foures, from the Hills, like Beares, with their Bowes in their mouthes"
and two white men were injured, as George Percy's journal observations
tell us. From that time, the English constantly "suspictioned villainie."
The fleet soon turned into the river,
searching for the spot which best fit the instructions they carried.
If they felt that their progress was being watched by an Indian behind
every tree, they were not too far wrong. A number of Indian warriors
had come to the river from miles around after hearing of the first landing,
curious to see these strange boats and pale men, but with their bows
and arrows ready. They too waited to see where the ships would land.
The place which seemed to fit Hakluyt's
instructions best was a low-lying peninsula, about two miles long and
one mile wide over thirty miles upstream, which was linked to the mainland
by a narrow sand bar. Beside it was a deep river channel carved by erosion
(which would continue to gnaw at the island). On the other side was
the Back River, actually a deep marsh creek which could shelter ships.
Though the English were delighted to have found a place of easy anchor
and defense, there were many other conditions they failed to consider.
The fact that there were no Indians residing on the land that May morning
should have been a clue.
This island, which the settlers promptly
named for their king, was probably the worst piece of real estate on
the river in the summer time, and the Indians knew it. It lay very low,
invaded by stagnant swamps, and it had no freshwater springs . Salt
water mixed with fresh water in the summer at that point of the river
to create what is now called a "zone of maximum turbidity. " This meant
that the river was often turgid and brackish at low water, not at all
suitable for drinking. Perhaps the English were reminded of the tidal
Thames at London, and thus saw no problem. Defense and navigation, not
the quality of the water they had no intention of drinking, were the
prime considerations.
t is not difficult to understand why
the Indians, poised for attack, put away their weapons and generally
left the white men alone. We have their own words for the reason. George
Percy reported that some of the Indians in the villages the English
visited on their first trip to the Falls became upset at "our planting
in the Countrie." Their leader reassured them, "very wisely of a Savage,"
saying, "Why should you bee offended with them as long as they hurt
you not, nor take any thing away by force. They take but a little waste
ground which doth you nor any of us any good." That waste ground which
the Indians conceded, especially after the nearby Paspahegh Indians
had been given some copper, became Jamestown.
The English had no idea that their island
location was dangerous. After all, they had been thoroughly prepared
to find a majestic river, and that is exactly what they saw. Percy asserted
that "This River which wee have discovered is one of the famousest Rivers
that ever was found by any Christian." This river and its banks were
perceived as being a type of paradise, for Percy spoke of its "goodliest
Woods" and "Vines in great abundance, which hang in great clusters on
many Trees," just waiting harvest by eager hands. Even the ground was
"bespred with many sweet and delicate flowres of divers colours and
kindes" and the fruit of "Strawberries, Mulberries, Rasberries, and
Fruites unknowne." The river itself was bursting with abundance with
its many branches "which runne flowing through the Woods with great
plentie of fish of all kindes; as for Sturgeon, all the World cannot
be compared to it." No wonder people thought that here was a land and
river which would provide without much work on their part, and they
kept streaming into ships, disregarding rumors of starvation and disease.
A similar ecstatic response to the river
is found in a letter written in June, probably by Edward Maria Wingfield:
"Wee are sett down 80 miles within a River, for breadth, sweetnes of
water, length navigable upp into the contry deepe and bold Channell
so stored with Sturgion and other sweete Fish as no mans fortune hath
ever possessed the like." Assured that they had found the ultimate river,
he concluded that "wee think if more male be wishe'd in a River it wilbe
founde." The myth of the wondrous river had survived the reality of
its discovery.
Like the gold at the end of a rainbow
river, the lure of the South Sea still beckoned. Newport, Smith, and
twenty men took the shallop they had built up the river in late May,
quizzing the Indians along the way about the shape and headwaters of
the river. One Indian obligingly drew a map showing waterfalls, boundaries
of two strong (enemy) nations, mountains, and, a week's or ten days'
journey away, a great body of water. Upon inquiry, several Indians "recalled"
that the great sea was salt, for they were anxious to please these visitors
bearing gifts who asked such strange questions.
The barrier of the Falls proved insurmountable,
especially since the Indians refused to guide the English through the
enemy territory. A frustrated
Captain Smith failed to see much beauty in these "great craggy stones
in the midst of the river, where the water falleth so rudely, and with
such a violence, as not any boat can possibly pass." Another report,
probably written by Gabriel Archer, projected mercantile possibilities
in this area of "overfall, where the water falls downe from huge great
Rockes: making in the fall five or six several Ilettes, very fitt for
the buylding of water milnes thereon." Archer was so certain of the
sea beyond the mountains that he felt no need to provide details for
his English readers: "beyond this the Falls not two dayes journey, it
the river hath two branches which come through a high stoney Country
from certaine huge mountains called Quirank, beyond which needs no relacion."
Before leaving the Falls on this first
expedition, the English "set up a Crosse at the head of this River,
naming it Kings River, where we proclaimed James King of England to
have the most right unto it," as Percy wrote. To name this river was
to claim it for England. The Indians settled below the Falls under Powhatan's
rule were justifiably puzzled and disturbed by this rite of rights,
but Newport smoothly explained that the two sticks bound together represented
the two kings, Indian and English, and the name Kings River commemorated
their union.
How could the English have so arrogantly
established their ownership of the Indian river? The answer lies deep
in attitudes toward nature and its resident Indians formed long before
1607, as well as the race with Spain to claim the new world. The fact
that the Indian had left little evidence of his occupation of the land,
that even in farming he made hills instead of extensively turning the
earth, was prima facie evidence that he had not dominated nature and
thus did not truly own the land. Besides, the Indians were savages in
need of the civilizing order of Christianity. As Bernard
Sheehan argues, it made little difference whether they were noble
primitives or the devil's servants; either way they were uncivilized
animals, not yet deserving of full human status. This reasoning might
not have held as well had the Indians first encountered by the English
been the apparently more settled and agricultural Monacans. Yet some
other excuse would have been found, for the English intended to possess
the river and its lands by fair means or foul.
Captain Newport soon left for England,
"leaving us (one hundred and foure persons) verie bare and scantle of
victualls, furthermore in warres and in danger of savages," as Smith
complained. There was no more beer to drink, only river water. Unwilling
and unable to find food as the Indians did or settle for a diet different
from the accustomed one, the men began to die from a combination of
starvation and disease. By the end of the summer of 1607, only 35 to
40 men still lived.
Each summer for the next several years
the gruesome tale was to be the same. Many out of each new group of
colonists succumbed in the summer before they had been properly "seasoned."
George Percy, so quick to see the river's beauty, also recognized the
river's role in the mortality rate. As he explained, "our food was but
a small Can of Barlie sod in water, to five men a day, our drinke cold
water taken out of the River, which was at a floud verie salt, at a
low tide full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of many
of our men." This is an apt description of America's first major public
health crisis.
At least one historian,
Carville Earle, who has compared the reported medical symptoms with
the composition of the river during summer droughts, when the wedge
of salt water generally moves up to the Jamestown area of the river,
agrees with Percy's assessment. With relatively little movement of the
water caused by the mixture of salt and fresh water, sewage which washed
into the river stayed to spread typhoid fever and dysentery, as it did
in the Thames. There were likely several carriers of those London-bred
bacteria; ironically, one may have been the Reverend Hunt, who patiently
tended and cooked for the sick. The high salt content of water taken
when the tide was rising also may have literally poisoned the men, making
them too lethargic even to dig a well for fresh water. Those that were
eventually dug were shallow and probably contaminated, like the river.
can visualize the Indians camped at
the fresh springs on high ground, nodding their heads wisely at rumors
of the deaths of the English and restraining eager young warriors, counseling
patience while these white strangers died off. But the ships kept on
coming, filled with new settlers, and the people kept on dying. Soon
malaria, spread by marsh- bred mosquitoes which had fed on infected
European blood, also began taking a heavy toll. By 1624, of the 5,000
who had come to Virginia (not counting infants born after arrival),
only about 1,000 remained according to conservative estimates. Some
historians say that as many as six colonists died for every one that
survived. These figures include the nearly 350 settlers killed in the
1622 massacre, when the Indians finally lost patience, for the ships
and men never seemed to stop coming. At least half of the earliest colonists
died of water-related diseases at Jamestown. The English assumed that
the river would sustain them, without any effort on their part to know
it as intimately at the Indians had. Perhaps they were blinded by their
own myth of a golden river created solely to serve their needs and lust
for wealth.
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