Paper Sovereigns. Jeffrey Glover
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.
When words fail to guarantee peaceful intentions, the threat of violence paradoxically creates the calm political order that diplomacy cannot. In the wake of the disasters brought on by Newport’s stately overtures to Powhatan, Smith’s confrontational tactics pacify the Indians. But if Archer is worried about the credibility of Native words and gestures for international readers, Smith faces a problem of his own. If violence, or the threat of violence, inspires agreement, how are readers to know that such agreement is any more sincere than the false promises that led to violence in the first place? Smith’s model of treaty making seems to lead to an infinite regress, with broken promises begetting only more violence. Smith addresses this problem in a culminating chapter entitled “How the Salvages became subject to the English.” The chapter describes how Smith unravels a Dutch conspiracy against Jamestown while simultaneously bringing Indians to treaty through threats. The ultimate effect of violence, in Smith’s account, is not simply to produce fearful acquiescence, but rather to inspire the kind of credible promises necessary for consensus ad idem. After discovering the betrayal of the English by the Dutch and their Indian co-conspirators, Smith explodes into action with typical decisiveness. He “burn[s] their houses, [takes] their boats … and … resolve[s] not to cease till he had revenged himselfe upon al that had injured him.” As in previous encounters, the Indians “thr[ow] downe their armes and desir[e] peace” in the face of Smith’s hectic peace-breaking.105 This time, however, the concession leads to a treaty that satisfies the criteria of consensus ad idem. An Indian orator named Ocanindge steps forward to deliver what the narrative calls a “worthie discourse.” Ocanindge notes Smith’s destructive intentions. “[W]e perceive & well knowe you intend to destroy us,” he says. But Ocanindge also turns the tables, reminding Smith that the Indians can destroy the English as well: “we can plant any where … and we know you cannot live if you want our harvest.” This threat leads to an offer of truce backed up not by ceremonial gestures, such as the exchange of gifts, but rather by a recognition of the mutually assured destruction the two camps can visit upon one another: “if you promise us peace we will beleeve you, if you proceed in reveng, we will abandon the Countrie,” Ocanindge declares. Smith is impressed by this geopolitical reasoning, and the English and Indians come to an agreement: “Upon these tearmes the President promised them peace, till they did us injurie, upon condition they should bring in provision, so all departed good friends.”106 Smith will agree not to destroy the Indians (and, by implication, himself) if the Indians will continue to bring the English provisions. A treaty at last.
In practice, the compelled promise that ends the Proceedings seems little different from the acts of extortion Smith carried out earlier. But here extortion is formalized by a verbal agreement that has real force. The two parties promise each other, and this time, because of the threat that lurks behind their words, the promise is real. As well as compelling submission, violence ironically produces the truth in speech necessary for treaties.