Seba Smith

“ To the deep shadow of her side,
Where the rocking boat seems but a speck;
Man after man mounts to the deck,
And here Sir John with joyous smile
Greets Newport from Britannia’s isle.
IV.
A thousand questions now are ask’d,
And a thousand answers given;
Sir John tells how with savages,
And famine, he has striven;
How in his light and open barge,
With scarce a dozen men,
He had scour’d the mighty Chesapeake,{105}
Round all her shores had been,
And up the rivers from the bay
To where the waters fall,
And seen the wild and warlike tribes,
And dared the power of all. ”

“ Opechancanough had been dragged by the hair, at the head of hundreds of Indians; but never had the majesty of Powhatan been violated by personal insult.
“In all disputes and conferences with the English, he never once forgets that he is a monarch; never permits others to forget it. ‘If your king,’ said he to Smith, ‘has sent me presents, I too am a king, and I am in my own land.’ No matter who the person is whom the partiality of the historian may think proper to distinguish as his hero; we never lose sight of the manly figure and venerable majesty of the Indian hero. ”

“ Follow him to the wilderness of Virginia, and witness the toils and struggles he went through to plant the first European settlement in these states. Behold him the guardian spirit of the little colony, in repeated instances and in various ways protecting it by his single arm from utter destruction. When the colony was sinking under famine, the energy and activity of Smith always brought them food; when beset by the subtle and ferocious tribes around them, the courage and skill of Smith never failed to prove a safe and sufficient shield for their protection. ”

“ SKETCH OF THE CHARACTER OF POCAHONTAS.
“The character of this interesting woman, as it stands in the concurrent accounts of all our historians, is not, it is with confidence affirmed, surpassed by any in the whole range of history; and for those qualities more especially, which do honor to our nature—a humane and feeling heart, an ardor and unshaken constancy in her attachments—she stands almost without a rival. ”

“ The laws of war, and that humanity, which in the moments of victory give quarter to the vanquished, were forgotten amid the suggestions of craving and insatiable revenge. But the opportunities of retaliation, owing to the swiftness of the natives, were not frequent enough to appease the boiling spirit of vengeance. The Indian, pressed by hunger, or stimulated by the hope of plunder or revenge, would on a sudden burst from his concealment on his enemy, and if outnumbered and pursued, he vanished amid the eternal midnight of his forests. ”

“ Age could not chill the ardor of his heroic bosom.
“In the private circle of his family, who appears to greater advantage than Powhatan?—what affection for his brothers! how delicate and considerate his regard for his children! what moderation and pity does he not manifest towards{11} Captain Smith, when, subdued by the tears of Pocahontas, and touched, perhaps, with compassion for the bravery and misfortunes of his captive, he consented to spare his life! ”

“ There must be taste and judgment in the selection of subjects, for many subjects are in their nature unsuited to the true spirit of poetry.
The author of Powhatan does not presume to claim for his production the merit of good and genuine poetry; nor does he pretend to assign it a place in the classes or forms into which poetry is divided. He has chosen to call it a metrical romance, as a title of less pretension than that of poem; and he is perfectly willing that others should call it by whatever name they please. Whatever may be its faults, they must rest solely upon the author. ”

“ Of five hundred, within six months after Captain Smith’s departure, there remained not past sixtie men, women, and children, most miserable and poor creatures; and those were preserved for the most part, by roots, herbes, acorns, walnuts, berries, now and then a little fish. They that had starch in these extremities made no small use of it; yea, even the very skins of our horses. Nay, so great was our famine, that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him, and so did divers one another, boyled and stewed with roots and herbes. ”

“ Great joy then felt King Powhatan,
Great joy felt all his men,
And wild and loud were the shouts that made
Their forests ring again.
No more in long suspense and fear
They lay like a strong man bound,
But light and free, the feast and song{131}
Through all the tribes went round ”

“ The severe muse, which presides over this department, cannot plant the cypress over her grave, and consign her to the tomb, with the stately pomp and graceful tears of poetry. She cannot with pious sorrow inurn the ashes and immortalize the virtues of the dead by the soul-piercing elegy, which fancy, mysterious deity, pours out, wild and plaintive, her hair loose, and her white bosom throbbing with anguish. ”

“ He is always the principal figure in the group; and in his presence, even the gallant and adventurous Smith is obliged to play a second part; and all others are forgotten.
“Owing to that obscurity in which, unhappily, every thing relating to this people is involved, we know little of the dawn of Powhatan’s glory—little of his meridian. Those particular traits which would have enabled us accurately to estimate the character and capacity of his mind, have felt the fate of oral record and remembrance. The exploits of his youth and his manhood have perished, for the want of a poet or historian. ”

“ It was a sort of vast amphitheatre, the limits{176} of which were the horizon; and when to the real beauty of the landscape, be added the ardent spirit of adventure, which delights in the marvellous, and kindles and dilates itself by the enthusiasm of fancy; there is little cause for our surprise at the glowing descriptions of the first settlers, who represented it as a kind of earthly paradise or elisium.”—Burk’s History of Virginia.
There is a simplicity and an occasional richness in the original descriptions of Captain Smith, which cannot fail to be relished by the reader. ”

“ The remainder of this scene is honorable to the character of Powhatan. It will remain a lasting monument, that, though different principles of action and the influence of custom have given to the manners and opinions of this people an appearance neither amiable nor virtuous, they still retain the noblest property of the human character, the touch of pity, and the feeling of humanity.
“The club of the emperor was still uplifted; but pity had touched his bosom, and his eye was every moment losing its fierceness. ”

“ With a dozen men in an open boat, he performs a voyage of a thousand miles, surveying the shores of the great Chesapeake Bay and exploring its noble tributary streams, with thousands of the wild sons of the forest ready to meet{175} him at every turn. When, in the cabin of the powerful chief Opechancanough, five hundred warriors, armed with bow and club, surrounded him with a determination to seize him and put him to death, who but Captain John Smith would have extricated himself from his perilous situation? ”

“ Which Powhatan’s caution kept constantly out,
To watch every movement the pale-faces made,
And see that his people went not there to trade.
‘What tidings from Jamestown?’ the monarch inquires;
‘Do the pale-faces thrive by their council-fires?
‘Are their hearts as light as the wild-bird’s song?
‘Do they walk like a people who feel they are strong?
‘Do our tribes still obey our imperial command?{66}’
‘Or has food been bestow’d by a traitor’s hand?’
—‘The tree of the pale-face is sapless and dried,’
The messenger spy to the monarch replied ”

“ The great massacre of the Virginia colony by the Indians in 1622, is thus described by Burk.
“Whilst the colony was thus rapidly advancing to eminence and wealth, she carried in her bosom and about her an enemy which was to blight her budding honors, and which brought near to ruin and desolation her growing establishment. Since the marriage of Pocahontas, the natives had lived on terms of uninterrupted and apparently cordial amity with the English, which daily gained strength by mutual wants and necessities. Each had something beyond their wants, which the other stood in need of. ”

“ The cape at the south is Cape Henry, in honor of our most noble prince. The land white hilly sands, like unto the Downes, and all along the shores great plentie of pines and firres.
“The north cape is called Cape Charles, in honor of the worthy Duke of Yorke; the isles before it, Smith’s Isles, by the name of the discoverer. Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places knowne, for large and pleasant navigable rivers; heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation. ”

“ All these they tie by their tails, so as all their tails meet on the top of their head like a great tassell. Round about this tassell is as it were a crowne of feathers; the skins hang round about his head, necke and shoulders, and in a manner cover his face. The faces of all their priests are painted as ugly as they can devise; in their hands they had every one his rattle, some base, some smaller.”—Smiths Virginia. ”

“ They battle with the air.
“The manner of their devotion is sometimes to make a great fire, in the house or fields, and all to sing and dance about it with rattels and shouts together, four or five hours. Sometimes they set a man in the midst, and about him they dance and sing, he all the while clapping his hands, as if he would keepe time; and after their songs and dancings ended, they go to their feasts.”—Smith’s Virginia. ”

“ Powhatan must be viewed as he stands in relation to the several Indian nations of Virginia. To judge him by European ideas of greatness would be the climax of injustice and absurdity.{13}”
PROEM.
There’s a warrior race of a hardy form,
Who are fearless in peril, and reckless of storm;
Who are seen on the mountains when wintry winds blow,
And, in midsummer’s blaze, in the valleys below—
Their home is the forest, the earth is their bed,
And the theme of their boast is the blood they have shed;
With a spirit unbroken by famine or toil,
They traverse the rivers and woods for their spoil ”

“ Poetry like that, will always find readers and admirers among all classes, whether high or low, rich or poor, learned or unlearned. True poetry is the unsophisticated language of nature—so plain and simple, that he that runs may read. ”

“ And villages by the river banks
In smoking ruins lie.
At last the broken, flying tribes
In many a rallying band,
Meet round the home of Powhatan
For one more desperate stand.
And here an oath each warrior swears,
To fall—if he must fall—
With face to the foe, and hand to his bow,
And his back to the council-hall.
XIII.
The fearful battle soon grows warm
Between the opposing foes—
Three hundred muskets in the field
Against three thousand bows.
And thickly flew with deadly aim
The Indian arrows then;{152}
But where one man by an arrow fell,
The musket slaughter’d ten. ”

“ The time and the hands of labor were considered too valuable to be employed in an idle and holiday array of arms; and in this situation, wholly intent on amassing wealth, and totally unprovided for defence, they were attacked by an enemy, whose resentment no time nor good offices could disarm; whose preparations were silent as night; to whom the arts of native cunning had given a{194} deep dissimulation, an exterior so specious, as might impose on suspicion itself.
“Opechancanough (who succeeded Powhatan in the government) possessed a powerful recommendation in the eyes of his countrymen. ”

“ Smith was set on shore at Antibes, with a box of one thousand chequins, (about two thousand dollars,) by the help of which he made the tour of Italy, crossed the Adriatic, and travelled into Stiria, to the seat of Ferdinand, archduke of Austria. Here he met with an English and Irish Jesuit, who introduced him to Lord Eberspaught, Baron Kisel, and other officers of distinction; and here he found full scope for his genius; for the emperor being then at war with the Turks, he entered into his army as a volunteer. ”

“ The powerful confederacy of the Manakins and Manahoacks, and the more distant inhabitants of the lakes, heard the name of Powhatan with uneasiness and alarm.
“At the coming of the English he had reached the advanced age of sixty years, and enjoyed in the bosom of his family the fruits of his long and glorious exertions. The spectacle of men who came from beyond the sea, in floating and winged houses, and who fought with thunder and lightnings, could not fail to strike him by its grandeur and novelty. The intent of the strangers appeared, at first view, to be friendly ”