Today in History - September 10

On September 10, 1608, John Smith was elected President of Jamestown Colony Council, Virginia.
From the article:


"John Smith Assumes Presidency of Jamestown
Explorer, writer, and cartographer John Smith External became the leader of the Jamestown settlement when he assumed the presidency of its governing council on September 10, 1608.* The charismatic and controversial Smith initially had been excluded from the government of the settlement on charges of conspiracy to mutiny en route to Virginia. His comrades’ suspicions notwithstanding, Smith became the de facto leader of the colony during the difficult winter of 1607 and 1608, which visited disease, starvation, and frequent Native American raids upon the settlement.

A brash and boldly self-confident figure, Smith brought years of soldiering experience to the Virginia venture. While fighting the Turks in Transylvania, he was wounded, captured, and sold, he claimed, into slavery in Turkey. Smith reported that he eventually escaped after receiving assistance from a Turkish woman who had become smitten with him. All this before his adventures in America!

Whether or not Smith’s reportage was accurate, his importance in the survival of the Jamestown colony is undeniable. In Virginia, Smith oversaw the fortification of the fledgling settlement, explored and documented the Chesapeake region, and supervised the production of critically important maps. He approached the native Algonquian Indians with a realism blending wariness and respect, establishing trade relations that enabled the colonists to acquire food from them and engaging them at different times in both friendly diplomacy and armed conflict.

On June 22, 1607, John Smith and five other settlers signed a letter reporting on the status of the colony to the directors of the charter in England. In this excerpt, they expound upon the natural bounty of the land:

We are set down 80 miles within a River,…[a]channel so stored with Sturgion and other sweete Fishe as no mans fortune hath euer possessed the like…The soil is most fruitful, laden with Oake, ashe, Wallnut tree, Popler, Pine, sweet woods, Cedar and others yet with out names that yealds gumes pleasant as Franckumcense, and experience amongest us for great virtue in healing green wounds and aches…



In December 1607, Captain Smith was captured and brought before Algonquian paramount chief Powhatan, head of the Powhatan Confederacy. Smith later described how Pocahontas, the chief’s young daughter, saved his life by throwing herself between him and the warriors ordered to execute him:

…two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him [Smith], dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death: whereat the Emperour [Powhatan] was contented he should live.…

The tale of Smith’s rescue by the Indian princess Pocahontas first appeared in his own Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, initially published in 1624, and has long since become part of American national mythology. Smith may have romanticized it; in any case, the events he describes, including Pocahontas’ intervention, appear to resemble an initiation ritual familiar to many Native American groups. There is no doubt, however, of the important role Pocahontas subsequently played as an intermediary between her own people and the English, and as a protector of the latter."