treaties. Like the English authors whose texts he intercepted, Zúñiga had a vested interest in circulating a particular image of Anglo-Powhatan relations. His account of an Indian boy playing prince makes an argument about the conduct of New World diplomacy and about who rightfully owns Virginia. If the English stake possession on the recognition of Native kings, Zúñiga tries to rebuff English claims by denying the royalty of Powhatan’s ambassadors. Through this counter-narrative of Anglo-Indian ceremonies, Zúñiga asserts Spanish rights over the New World and the right of Philip III to destroy English outposts. Yet Zúñiga does not simply dismiss the legal strategy of the Virginia Company. He argues instead that the company’s various documents and legal rituals, including its treaties with Native people, are bits of theatrical artifice, designed only to disguise the colony’s true purpose as a staging ground for piracy against Spanish fleets. Zúñiga accepts the theoretical validity of Native treaties, but attempts to prove, through his own accounts of Anglo-Powhatan negotiations, that Jamestown has not resolved the question of Native consent.
The print publications of Smith and his allies were intended to be as public as possible. Indeed, Smith’s future involvement in English colonial ventures largely depended upon reaching potential supporters indirectly through the medium of print. Zúñiga’s correspondence, by contrast, was a covert affair. While Zúñiga sent regular dispatches to Philip III, he also composed secret letters. This secret correspondence with Philip III lasted from 1607 until Zúñiga’s final return in 1612. The letters touch on a number of issues of state, such as the readiness of the English navy and English intentions in the East Indies. They also touch on trivial matters such as gossip and scandals at court. Yet the question of the legality of the Virginia Colony is never far from Zúñiga’s concerns. From the beginning of his correspondence about the New World, Zúñiga depicts colonization itself as a kind of diplomatic intrigue, a show intended to conceal the English crown’s piratical intentions.
In the first letter to deal with Virginia at any length, written in January 1607 shortly after the departure of Newport’s first fleet, Zúñiga relays sinister intelligence about the colony, depicting settlement as part of an international conspiracy against Spanish claims. “After I informed your Majesty that the English were equipping some ships to send to Virginia,” Zúñiga writes, “the matter was held up a great deal, and now I learn that they have made an agreement, in great secrecy, for two ships to go there every month.… [and] they have agreed with the Rebels [the Dutch] to send what people they can.”113 In citing a conspiracy with “the Rebels,” Zúñiga is referring to the English alliance with the Dutch in the Eighty Years’ War against the Spanish. Throughout the war, the English crown financially supported the armies of Dutch states and sent English conscripts to help them in the fight against Spain. A number of figures in Virginia had been involved in these efforts, including John Smith.114 However, while the Anglo-Dutch alliance had been officially ratified in the Treaty of Nonsuch (1585), Zúñiga views it as a conspiracy, and portrays colonization as an extension of a broader, global plot against the Spanish. “The justification they advance is that this King [James I] has given them licence and letters patent for planting their religion there, provided they do not plunder anyone, under pain of losing his protection if they do not obey,” Zúñiga writes.115 While James has widely publicized his rights and dominion in Virginia, Zúñiga views the crown’s legal justifications as mere propaganda intended to conceal sinister motives.
Zúñiga’s fear that the New World could be a site of conspiratorial alliance is reflective of the kind of paranoia that characterized correspondence from both English and Spanish spies. As Garrett Mattingly has shown in his account of early modern diplomacy, Protestant and Catholic diplomats depicted themselves as soldiers in a global war for religious and national supremacy.116 Zúñiga reads the colony’s accounts of Powhatan negotiations with the same kind of conspiratorial eye, viewing Indian treaties as a maneuver in a worldwide struggle. In a letter dated March 15, 1609, he describes intercepting the colony’s correspondence about Indian affairs and collecting information as to its real meaning. “I have also seen a letter written by a gentleman who is there in Virginia to a friend of his who is an acquaintance of mine, and he showed it to me,” Zúñiga reports. “It says that he will find out from Captain Newport, the bearer, just what is going on there.… He says also that they have deceived the King of that region [Powhatan] with an English boy whom they gave him, saying that he is the son of this King [James I], and he [Powhatan] makes much of him.”117 The letter was most likely a report that detailed the first meeting between Newport and Powhatan. The “English boy” was undoubtedly Thomas Savage.118 Zúñiga characterizes the whole exchange as a kind of geopolitical charade, a deceptive performance designed to make the Virginia Colony appear legitimate. Like the colony’s patents and legal documents, the exchange of boys gives an appearance of legality to a conspiracy against Spanish interests.
Zúñiga likewise portrays Namontack’s appearance in court as an act staged for international benefit. In a letter dated June 26, 1608, he describes Namontack’s debut in London society. “This Newport brought a lad who they say is the son of an emperor of those lands and they have coached him that when he sees the King he is not to take off his hat, and other things of this sort.”119 The English, Zúñiga concludes, are pretending that Namontack is a prince so they can cite treaties as evidence of their own possession. But Zúñiga also reveals what he believes to be the artifice behind such a strategy—the colonists have coached Namontack to decline to doff his hat before the king. In describing this gesture, Zúñiga was referencing hat honor, an important diplomatic protocol in early modern courts. Like bowing before the king, doffing one’s hat was a way of showing submission. Loyal subjects were expected to take off their hats in the presence of kings, or even before an empty throne.120 However, princes sometimes made a distinction between domestic subjects and visitors. Throughout his reign, James I insisted that foreign dignitaries keep their hats on as a way of recognizing their status as representatives of foreign powers. In 1614, the Russian secretary Alexis Ziuzin reported to Tsar Mikhail I that James had refused to allow Russian ambassadors to take off their hats in his presence. “King James said to the ambassadors that they should put on their hats, and he reminded them about it twice and three times, and by his royal word he strongly insisted on it.”121 In coaching Namontack to keep his hat on in the presence of the king, the company presents him as a visiting ambassador from a foreign power. Namontack’s hat, safe on his head, elevates him to the same status as European ambassadors. There is certainly a tragic irony here. By coaching Namontack to keep his hat on, the company seeks to give him the authority to welcome the English to his land.122 They give him rights so he can give them up. But this is not Zúñiga’s criticism. He does not attack the company out of respect for Namontack or Powhatan sovereignty. Instead, he claims that the wearing of the hat is a mere show intended to deceive onlookers into believing Jamestown has formed alliances with Powhatan leaders. In couching his criticism in this way, Zúñiga stops short of denying Native sovereignty or dominion outright. He does not comment on whether real Indian kings should keep their hats on. He claims instead that Namontack himself is something less than a prince and therefore not qualified to make a treaty.
Zúñiga’s silence on the true nature of Native sovereignty had a certain advantage. While the Spanish crown denied the rights of Native kings on the basis of their supposed heresy or lack of intellectual faculties, the Spanish also gained occasional diplomatic advantage from recognizing Native rights and employing arguments like those advanced by the English crown. In a letter of March 15, 1609, Zúñiga takes a page from the English book, voicing his concern for Powhatan welfare: “I understand that once they have fortified themselves well, they will manage to destroy that King [Powhatan] and the savages, so as to take possession of everything.”123 While the English frequently criticized what they believed to be the lawless violence of Spanish conquest, here, Zúñiga ironically applies the same criticism to the English, portraying them as violent conquerors bent on seizing land. Zúñiga’s remark illustrates the provisional nature of colonial arguments over Native rights. While the English frequently borrowed from Spanish texts in order to construct hybrid legal arguments, this traffic could occasionally run in the other direction, with Spanish diplomats adopting
