description of Powhatan’s foreign affairs includes a catalogue of the “many enimies” that encircle his empire.65 This observation aligns Smith’s own views with the strategy recently expressed in the “Instructions” to Gates. The suggestion, subtly conveyed, is that the English can undermine Powhatan by making treaties with tribes that oppose him.
While war is the order of the day among the Powhatans, the reality of New World combat differs radically from what European readers might expect. War is not separate from diplomacy, but is itself a diplomatic tactic, a way of pressuring other parties for favorable terms. When engaging with foreign leaders, Smith continues, the Powhatans do not hesitate to employ “Stratagems, trecheries, or surprisals.”66 Most prominent is a military tactic Smith calls “Ambuscado.” Ambuscado, or ambush, was not a Powhatan word or concept. In early modern military theory, the term described the use of surprise or deception to gain a military advantage. Smith likely encountered the concept during his military training in the Netherlands, where he had served before traveling to Virginia. In The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres (1598), Robert Barrett defined “Ambuscado” as “a Spanish word” that “signifieth any troupe or company of soldiers either foot or horse, lodged secretly in some covert, as in woods, hollow wayes, behind bankes, or such like.” It could also mean “to entrappe the enemy secretly attending his comming.”67 Many authorities depicted ambuscado as a violation of natural law.68 The term was frequently associated with the military tactics of Turks and Ottomans.69 It was also associated with the Irish, who were viewed by Elizabethan military commanders as unfair fighters.70 In his Map, Smith employs the concept in a similar way. Powhatan’s acts of ambush stand in violation of the laws of war and expose the Native king to lawful conquest by invaders. But Smith also adapts the concept of ambuscado to his own purposes. Powhatan’s lawless acts encourage his subjects to make alliances with the colonists, and give the English legal clearance to launch ambushes of their own.
According to Smith, ambush is universal in Virginia. Americans are virtually built for surprise attack. “They are very strong, of an able body and full of agilitie,” he writes, “able to endure to lie in the woods under a tree by the fire, in the worst of winter, or in the weedes and grasse, in Ambuscado in the Sommer.”71 Ambushing is not only part of war, however. It is also a tactic Powhatan uses to surprise ostensible allies at treaty negotiations. Smith relates a cautionary tale of Powhatan’s willingness to launch surprise attacks against friends: “In the yeare 1608, [Powhatan] surprised the people of Payankatank his neare neighbours and subjects. The occasion was to us unknowne, but the manner was thus. First he sent diverse of his men as to lodge amongst them that night, then the Ambuscadoes invironed al their houses, & at the houre appointed, they all fell to the spoile, 24 men they slewe.” These are not the kindly Indians described by Archer. They visit Payankatank on a diplomatic errand, yet when night falls, Powhatan takes advantage of his hosts’ hospitality to slay them and take their land. At his next parley with the English, Powhatan brandishes his grisly spoils to gain an advantage at the bargaining table. “The lockes of haire with their skinnes he hanged on a line unto two trees,” Smith writes. “And thus he made ostentation of as great a triumph at Werowocomoco, shewing them to the E[n] glish men that then came unto him at his appointment, they expecting provision, he to betray them, supposed to halfe counquer them by this spectacle.”72 Collecting scalps at one meeting, Powhatan brandishes them at the next, using his conquest of one neighbor to try and cow another into submission.
Throughout A Map, Smith laments the “terrible crueltie” of such acts.73 However, Smith also sees the violent nature of Virginia diplomacy as offering an opportunity for the English conquerors, if only the colonial government will abandon any pretense of recognizing Powhatan and instead seek out alliances with his enemies. Of the effect of Powhatan’s reign of diplomatic terror, Smith writes, “The Sasquesahanocks, the Tockwoughes are continually tormented by [the Powhatans]: of whose crueltie, they generally complained, and very importunate they were with Captaine Smith and his company to free them from these tormentors.” The Indians flee into the arms of the English, “offer[ing] food, conduct, assistance, & continuall subjection.” However, the colony’s official policy stands in Smith’s way. Clinging to an older model of diplomacy, the Jamestown governors “would not thinke it fit to spare [Smith] 40 men,” Smith complains.74 Nevertheless, Smith soldiers on, enjoying a partial triumph. “I lost but 7 or 8 men,” Smith writes at the close of A Map, “yet subjected the Savages to our desired obedience, and receaved contribution from 35 of their kings, to protect and assist the[m] against any that should assalt them, in which order they continued true & faithful, and as subjects to his Majestie, so long after as I did govern there, untill I left the Country.”75 Powhatan’s tactics, though awful to behold, give the English an unlikely diplomatic opening. While he intimidates the newcomers, he also alienates his own subjects, pushing them into the arms of the newcomers. With only a small number of men, Smith forms the lasting league that has so eluded Newport, making the Indians “true & faithful” friends of the English, at least until Smith’s untimely departure.
In the Proceedings, Smith offers a more detailed account of his treaty-making strategy. The book picks up where its companion volume leaves off, describing “how [the Indians] have revolted, the Countrie lost, and againe replanted, and the businesses hath succeeded from time to time.”76 The Proceedings might be described as offering a narrative accompaniment to the Map’s ethnographic portrayal of Powhatan’s warlike ways. Powhatan is again a villain. However, as sinister as he is, he is not the book’s true target. The book is instead an indictment of the colony’s government during its first years. It blames the colony’s problems on Newport’s diplomatic approach to Powhatan, arguing that Newport’s overly solicitous diplomacy has led to the colony’s collapse and the subjection of its leaders to an emboldened Powhatan. In place of this failed policy, Smith presents a model of treaty making based around retaliatory ambushes and kidnappings, which he claims will induce the Powhatans to treaty in good faith.
In choosing to title the book the Proceedings, Smith and the editors identified their volume with a familiar generic tradition. The English crown printed proceedings of Parliament and other bodies in order to legitimize its own actions and publicize the business of English government to international readers.77 Aristocratic houses, joint-stock companies, and churches also published accounts of their proceedings in order to raise funds or inspire supporters or adherents.78 Proceedings were often a compilation of different genres, such as speeches, accounts of battles, official documents, and other scribal forms. Often, published proceedings offered an apology for apparent mismanagement of government affairs. Thomas Digges’s A Breife and true report of the Proceedings of the Earle of Leycester (1590), for example, described the battle for the town of Sluce in the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), in an attempt to show that Sir Robert Dudley “was not in anie fault for the losse of that towne.”79 While military leaders or other interest groups often explained their conduct to the king in relations or letters, printed proceedings offered a means of publicizing political business for readers at home and abroad.
Like Digges’s book, The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia is concerned with apologizing for overseas failure. As the preface announces, “Long hath the world longed, but to be truely satisfied what Virginia is, with the truth of those proceedings, from whence hath flowne so manie reports of worth, & yet few good effects of the charge, which hath caused suspition in many well willers.”80 The book includes dramatic renderings of a number of government rituals, such as speeches, meetings, coronations, and depositions. It also includes “the Salvages discourses, orations and relations of the Bordering neighbors, and how they became subject to the English.” However, these political performances are not cast into the stately forms of Archer’s “Relatyon.” The volume presents, not official documentation of treaty negotiations, but rather accounts by “diligent observers, that were residents in Virginia.”81 The book might be described as an exposé of colonial government. While Archer views Anglo-Powhatan diplomatic
