an international audience in mind. In many ways, it resembles prior Spanish narratives of the possession of Hispaniola and Florida. Archer tells how Newport discovers new lands and claims them by planting a cross in the name of James I, a ritual borrowed from accounts of earlier explorers. Yet in staking a claim to Virginia, the “Relatyon” does more than merely imitate earlier accounts. Most of the text is devoted to chronicling the diplomatic interactions between the English and the indigenous kings that rule the rivers. Far from denying the jurisdiction of these figures, Archer depicts them as legitimate leaders, holding territory and exercising sovereignty over loyal subjects. Their most important acts, however, involve their acceptance of the foreigners. The riverbank kings extend a formal welcome to the English, granting them recognition as a political power in the bay.
Virginia colonists sailed to the New World with a great deal of anxiety about their legal status. While James I had asserted the right of the crown to annex New World territory, and had given the Virginia Company a grant to the Chesapeake Bay, both the crown and its colonial proprietors were fearfully conscious of Spain’s continuing claims to land north of Florida.16 They could look to the massacre at Fort Caroline, a French Huguenot outpost destroyed by Spanish raiders, for evidence of the fate that might await Jamestown colonists if Philip III decided to assert Spanish claims.17 The English had many ways of defending colonies from the Spanish, such as building forts or hiding settlements from view. Yet writing was also an important mode of defense. The crown viewed written reports as a central part of the public defense of New World rights. It was up to colonists to complete the crown’s claims by taking possession of land and sending home “relations” or reports of their activities. English colonists used many kinds of writing to document their possession of New World territory. They described the construction of fortifications, the tilling of fields, and the extension of fences, hedgerows, and other ways of marking English property.18 However, much of the territory in the Chesapeake claim was densely populated by indigenous people. Claiming this land demanded a different legal strategy—the assertion of treaty rights. The company’s instructions to the colonists made clear how this transatlantic relay of treaty documents would work. The colonists would “entreate those salvages in those parts,” bringing them to “God” and “Obedience,” and would likewise “Send a perfect relation by Captain Newport of all that is Done” on the first returning supply ship.19
The company’s appointment of Gabriel Archer as secretary was one part of the plan for carrying out this directive. Archer possessed considerable expertise in writing and law, having studied at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn. Before arriving in Virginia, Archer tested his education widely, accompanying Bartholomew Gosnold on a transatlantic voyage in 1602 and penning a report on the results of the expedition.20 Archer sailed to Virginia on the first fleet of ships under the command of Newport. After the party’s arrival in the Chesapeake Bay, he recorded many of the colony’s official proceedings, but devoted the majority of his writing to settlers’ interactions with coastal Native groups. While the company had known Indians would be nearby, “entreat[ing]” surrounding leaders turned out to be a far more complicated venture than the colony’s meager instructions had anticipated. Hostile groups immediately approached the first landing party, and on May 21, 1607, Christopher Newport led a discovery and diplomatic outreach up the James River with the hopes of establishing a peaceful rapport. Over the course of the exploration, the party encountered several smaller werowances, or leaders, affiliated with Powhatan. They exchanged goods and friendly words with those who came forward to greet them, giving them penny knives, scissors, bells, beads, and toys. Despite the English provenance of the gifts, the exchanges were largely conducted on Native terms. The Powhatans viewed these items as desirable not because they were easily dazzled by shiny things, as some observers would later conclude, but because foreign objects had value in the tributary networks that tied together the chiefdom.21 The embassy culminated in the meeting with the great Indian king. Afterward, Newport planted a cross inscribed with the name of James I, much to the confusion of his Indian guide.22
From the English point of view, Newport’s discovery accomplished a number of things. It signified the peaceful intentions of the English (at least in the short term), offering some measure of protection against the numerically superior Powhatans. It opened trading routes, which would be crucial to the colony’s survival. Yet the discovery was also an act of possession. By describing the journey in writing, the colony’s governors intended to announce the crown’s rights to the area, and to show that the Indians were not going to interfere.
As the colony’s chief recorder, Archer accompanied Newport on the discovery. Archer’s “Relatyon,” sent to London with Newport, was one of the first official reports on the colony’s progress. Based on Archer’s records, it is clear he took notes as the party went along. The “Relatyon” is organized by date, and includes information on weather and the distance the party traveled each day.23 Archer describes how Newport claims the river for the English crown by planting a cross and performing other acts of possession. However, Archer also combines the genre of the discovery with the story of the peaceful conclusion of a treaty with the king who rules the river. Archer’s text details the words, gestures, and gifts exchanged between sovereign parties and enumerates the binding agreements that result. Like the planting of the cross, these agreements support English possession by suggesting that Newport’s claims will not be troubled by Native challenges.
The “Relatyon” moves chronologically, charting the party’s progress up the James River. Along the way, they treaty with indigenous leaders of increasingly impressive rank. After departing from Jamestown, Newport and his party arrive at the first great Indian “kyngdome,” which Archer calls “Wynauk.” The people respond to the English arrival with “rejoycing.”24 The next day, a canoe approaches. Its passengers happily greet the English, and one of them, quickly taking to Archer’s pen and paper, offers to draw a map of the river and its kingdoms. The people bring mulberries, acorns, wheat, and beans to sustain the party on their travels. These preliminary acts of diplomacy lead to the narrative’s first encounter with a political leader. Journeying past several poor cottages, Newport and his men find a figure clothed in savage garb but also immediately recognizable as a king in state. “We found here a Wiroans (for so they call their kynges),” Archer writes, “who satt upon a matt of Reedes, with his people about him.” “[H]is name is Arahatec,” Archer goes on, “the Country Arahatecoh.”25 The image is exotic, hearkening to sixteenth-century texts of Near Eastern exploration, which depicted sultans sitting in lavish surrounds.26 But Archer’s description of Arahatec’s body also fixes the moment in a framework familiar to European readers. In audiences with diplomats, kings frequently retained a sitting or relaxed posture while subjects stood arrayed at attention. This was especially the case in diplomatic proceedings. While the mat is an exotic touch, Arahatec’s posture makes him the equivalent of a European king receiving visitors. Archer’s description authorizes the king to offer a treaty to the English. Greeting the newcomers to his kingdom, Arahatec “cause[s] [a mat] to be layd for Captain Newport” and immediately bestows upon Newport “his Crowne which was of Deares hayre dyed re[d].”27 While the English used copper crowns to deputize lesser authorities, Archer emphasizes that Arahatec gives Newport his own crown, thereby placing the English captain in the position of a superior.
Though implausibly free of any friction, Archer’s narrative corresponds in some particulars to what contemporary anthropologists have reconstructed of coastal diplomacy. As Helen C. Rountree has shown in her account of Powhatan foreign policy, the Powhatans used mats, crowns, and smoking as diplomatic implements.28 Smoking and sitting was a way of “breaking the ice,” or defusing tension before important negotiations. Given how numerically weak the English were, Arahatec likely understood the exchange as confirming Powhatan authority.
The treaty offer from Arahatec is only a prelude to an encounter with a more powerful king, whom Archer calls “Pawatah.” The “Pawatah” the party encountered was not, in fact, the paramount chief Powhatan. It was instead his son, Parahunt, whom Newport and Archer misidentified as Powhatan.29 As Newport and his party banquet and smoke with
