As Weraskoyack makes clear, Powhatan aims to treat the English like the people of Payankatank; his diplomatic overtures conceal intentions to kill or enslave them.
In response to this bit of frightening intelligence, Smith suggests that the English ambush the chief themselves before he can put his plans into motion. Over the protests of others, Smith assembles a company of English soldiers disguised as laborers and travels to Pamaunke, the proposed site of the house. What follows in the Proceedings is an intricate account of an openly hostile series of negotiations that constantly threaten to dissolve into outright violence. Smith again uses gestural interpretation and facial reading to divine Powhatan’s true intentions. However, he also openly embraces violence as a negotiating tactic that will restore order and bring about treaty agreement. Powhatan begins the entertainment with the same invitation to open giving he had extended to Newport. Addressing Smith from inside his old house, he declares, “Captaine Newport gave me swords, copper, cloths, a bed, tooles, or what I desired, ever taking what I offered him, and would send awaie his gunnes when I intreated him.” At this moment, Powhatan’s real desires are exposed to all who know how to read him. The gift he truly wants is not found in any precious object—it is, menacingly, the disarmament of the colonists. Rather than allowing himself to be led to his death by this bit of deception, Smith responds to Powhatan’s offer with an ambush of his own: “Smith seeing this Salvage but trifled the time to cut his throat … gave order for his men to come ashore, to have surprised the king, with whom also [Smith] but trifled the time till his men landed.”96 Smith sees through Powhatan’s friendly overtures, and, maintaining decorum, signals to his men to make ready for attack. Yet English victory is not yet in hand. When Powhatan discovers Smith’s countermove, he keeps up the façade, sending his wives to make small talk with Smith and slipping out the back while his men encircle the house. This leaves Smith in a bind; while each party has been planning murder behind smiles, Powhatan’s men get to the house first.
Smith’s response to this predicament dramatizes his central solution to the problem of forming treaties during wartime—a solution he enacts again and again in the latter part of the Proceedings. When Smith realizes that Powhatan’s plan has been sprung into motion before his own, he recovers the initiative by storming out of the house “with his Pistol, Sword & Target” while the Indian men flee in every direction. This abrupt move has an immediately pacifying effect. After Smith’s wild display, the Indians immediately “dissemble” their treacherous intentions and send Smith “a greate bracelet, and a chaine of pearle,” valuable diplomatic gifts recognizing Smith’s power.97 More important from Smith’s point of view, they satisfy his demands for corn, offering him as much as he can carry back to Jamestown. This violent rapprochement is not a perfect solution. After conceding to Smith’s demands, the Indians suggest again that the soldiers put their guns down to carry the baskets to the barges. However, the English threateningly cock their weapons, frightening the Indians back into submission. “[T]he verie sight of cocking our matches against them,” Smith writes,” caused them to leave their bowes & arrows to our gard, and beare downe our corne on their own backes.”98 While Powhatan had planned to trick the English into putting their weapons down so he could cut their throats, Smith’s violent bluffing compels the Indians to load their corn on English barges. The flow of tributary goods is reversed, and with it, the relation of authority.
Smith is well aware that this strategy poses a legal problem. The colony’s international legitimacy hinged in part upon voluntary treaties. Smith’s actions more resemble those of the Spanish conquistadors of the Black Legend—the very image many metropolitan supporters of colonization wanted to avoid. Later in the narrative, Smith seeks to distinguish his own brand of violence from that of the Spanish and to show that his actions are consistent with the legal strategy of proving possession through treaties. After sacking Werowocomoco, Smith heads upriver toward the kingdom of the sachem Opechancanough, Powhatan’s brother. The king greets them with the “strained cheerefulnes” Smith believes is typical of Powhatan diplomacy, and Smith finds himself in the familiar position of a target of ambush, with “6. Or 700. of well appointed Indians [having] invironed the house and beset the fields.”99 This time, however, Smith’s thoughts concern not his immediate danger but rather the question of how an international audience will react when news of his violent entanglements finds its way across the Atlantic. Smith delivers a “speech to his company” on the international legal predicament in which they have found themselves. “Worthy countrymen,” he says, “were the mischiefes of my seeming friends [the colony’s governing council], no more then the danger of these enemies, I little cared, were they as many more, if you dare do, but as I. But this is my torment, that if I escape them, our malicious councell with their open mouthed minions, will make mee such a peace-breaker (in their opinions) in England, as wil break my neck”100 Even before violence is joined, Smith is acutely conscious that the moment will be recounted in transatlantic correspondence. Indeed, his “greater torment” is not the sting of Indian arrows but rather the knowledge that he will be drowned out in transatlantic space by the “open mouthed minions” who dominate the colony’s correspondence with the London Council. If Smith takes Opechancanough’s friendly overtures at face value, as Newport did, the party will be massacred, clinging to their stately diplomatic protocols while the Indians fall upon them. Yet if Smith fights his way out, he will be construed as a “peace-breaker” and hanged for treason.
As in the earlier escape from ambush, Smith’s solution is found in an abrupt and violent violation of diplomatic courtesy—this time, the kidnapping of Opechancanough. Smith “snatche[s] the king by his vambrace [or armor] in the midst of his men, with his pistoll ready bent against his brest: thus he [leads] the trembling king, (neare dead with feare) amongst all his people, who delivering the Captaine his bow and arrowes, all his men were easily intreated to cast downe their armes.”101 Like the previous outburst among Powhatan’s men, this sudden and unpredictable gesture leads to an improbably swift resolution of the colony’s diplomatic problems. After Smith releases Opechancanough into the custody of the terrified Powhatan retinue, “The rest of the day [is] spent with much kindnesse.… And what soever we gave them, they seemed well contented with it.”102 Though the kidnapping is a violation of the terms of the old peace, it intimidates the Indians into embracing a new one, based on their willing acceptance of English demands. And though Smith breaks the peace by laying hands on Opechancanough, his actions create peaceful subjection without spilling any blood.
Smith was right to believe that the moment would find an audience in London and beyond. After The Proceedings was published, the kidnapping acquired some degree of folk prominence among readers in Europe. It was engraved by Robert Vaughan, and Smith later printed the engraving in his heavily embellished The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624) (see Figure 3). The image hearkened back to stories of Spanish conquistadors kidnapping Indian kings.103 However, in the Proceedings, Smith carefully severs it from any association with lethal force. He is a conquistador without the killing. Indeed, Smith invites readers to compare his own narrative to those of Spanish conquest, emphasizing his ability to do without bloodshed what Spanish conquerors had carried out with great violence. “[P]eruse the Spanish Decades, the relations of M. Hacklut,” he directs readers “and tell mee how many ever with such smal meanes, as a barge of 2 Tunnes; sometimes with 7. 8. 9, or but at most 15 men did ever discover so many faire and navigable rivers; subject so many severall kings, people, and nations, to obedience, & contribution with so little bloud shed.”104 Smith’s conquests are comparable in scope to those of the Spanish, yet they involve none of the actual bloodletting that (according to English propagandists) had made Spanish conquest unlawful.
Figure 3. Robert Vaughan’s engraving of John Smith kidnapping Opechancanough, from John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Courtesy of The Newberry Library.
