John Smith

Explorer

• Born: January 9, 1580 (baptized)
• Birthplace: Willoughby, Lincolnshire, England
• Died: June 21, 1631
• Place of death: London, England

English-born American colonist

Smith’s strong leadership in early Virginia and his promotional literature on North America helped ensure the success of England’s efforts at colonization.

Areas of achievement: Government and politics, exploration, literature

Early Life

John Smith was born in January, 1580, in the small Lincolnshire village of Willoughby. His father, George Smith, a yeoman farmer, and his mother, née Alice Rickard, were from families long linked to the land in northern England. Smith was the eldest of the couple’s five sons and one daughter. He attended local schools until age fifteen, primarily studying grammar and mathematics, and then was apprenticed to a merchant in the coastal town of King’s Lynn. Though he inherited some land after his father’s death in 1596, Smith joined with other English Protestants in their conflict with the Spanish in the Netherlands. After three years of fighting, Smith rambled about France and Scotland, at times as a companion to the sons of his noble patron, Lord Willoughby, and at times as a solitary wanderer.

These episodes prompted the restless young man to seek new adventures. Throughout his life, he was eager to experience the demanding and the dangerous. Motivated in part by the thrill of the challenge, Smith, as a commoner, also sought to prove his worth in an age dominated by gentlemen. Accordingly, Smith decided to take up the seemingly endless Christian crusade against Islam. In 1600, he started across the continent to fight the infidel Turks in Hungary. Over the next four years, Smith engaged in privateering on the Mediterranean Sea as well as in numerous battles in Hungary, suffering serious wounds, capture, and enslavement; after he escaped, Smith trekked through Russia, Poland, Germany, France, and Spain before returning to England. A 1616 portrait of Smith reveals a short and stocky adventurer in military garb. His face features a high forehead, a long, slender nose, and a full beard. The artist captured the confident air that characterized Smith throughout his career.

Life’s Work

In 1606, when Smith learned that the Virginia Company of London intended to settle a colony in North America, he enlisted for what became the most important venture of his life. The approximately 105 men dispatched by the joint stock company in three small ships established a base on the James River in Virginia in the spring of 1607. The company appointed a resident council to supervise affairs in the colony, and Smith was one of the seven selected. During his two and a half years at Jamestown, Smith was instrumental in furthering the survival of the colony. He led numerous exploratory and mapping ventures along the coast and into the interior. He established a vital trade with the leader of the Tidewater natives, Powhatan. Smith also struck up an important, paternal friendship with the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, a youngster who served as a liaison between the natives and the English. Her role in promoting the trade of food with the colonists led Smith later to claim that she saved them “from death, famine, and utter confusion.”

When Smith was elected president of the council in September, 1608, he faced a host of problems. Most of the initial settlers, almost half of whom were gentlemen, were poorly suited to the harsh task of creating a settlement in a hostile environment. Further, several settlers refused to work because they had assumed incorrectly that they, like the Spanish in Mexico and Peru, would be able to compel the natives to do the hard labor. Even those colonists who were willing to work could not contribute because they were often ill (or had died) from malaria or dysentery, a consequence of building Jamestown on swampy ground. Indian attacks, although sporadic, also claimed some lives. The other leaders could provide little guidance because the council suffered from unending dissension. Yet, to Smith, the most significant dilemma was gold fever. Hoping to replicate the Spanish success in discovering New York gold, for most, “there was no talk, no hope, no work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, [and] load gold,” Smith explained.

Smith quickly imposed the discipline necessary to save the colony. He forced the surviving men to build new housing at Jamestown, enlarge the fort, and plant more than thirty acres of grain. In short, he made them work; if they did not, they did not eat. Smith also secured, through cajolery, intimidation, and brutality, a steadier supply of food from the natives and relatively peaceful relations with them. His significance to the fledgling colony was most evident when a serious gunpowder burn forced Smith to return to England in October, 1609. Shortly after his departure, Virginia once again fell into chaos, and almost 90 percent of the settlers died in the winter.

The documentary record permits only occasional glances into Smith’s life after he left the troubled colony. He returned to North America in 1614, to explore and map the New England coast. The experience convinced Smith that colonists could prosper there by exploiting the region’s fish and fur. He secured financial backing for two more voyages to New England, but French pirates and storms prevented their completion. He was briefly reunited with Pocahontas when she came to England in 1616. She had married planter John Rolfe, and he had changed her name to Rebecca. It was a bittersweet reunion because she died in early 1617. Two years later, Smith offered his expertise and service to a group of religious dissenters, the Pilgrims, when he discovered that they intended to settle in North America, but they turned down his offer. Smith was also snubbed by the Virginia Company of London. They rejected both his plea for compensation and his offer to lead an armed force against the natives to avenge their assault on the colony in 1622.

Significance

In the last half of his life, Smith became less a man of action and more a writer and advocate of further colonization. In all, he published ten works. These autobiographical sketches, histories, reprints of other accounts, guides for seamen, and promotional tracts constitute the most important source of information on Smith’s life. For generations, historians dismissed them as unreliable because Smith’s portrayal of his career was so fantastic. He did include episodes that stretch the limits of credibility. For example, he tended to attribute his escapes from difficult circumstances to the intervention of women. When the Turks captured him, Smith explained, they sold him as a household slave to a young woman named Charatza Tragabigzanda. She quickly became attracted to the Englishman and worked to ease his enslavement. After he escaped and made his way across Russia, Smith claimed that a noblewoman there aided him as well.

Smith’s most famous rescue, however, occurred in Virginia. After his capture by Powhatan’s warriors, the eleven-year-old Pocahontas prevented his execution. There were others. As he escaped from the French pirates who had captured his ship headed for New England, Smith wrote that he was helped by a Madame Chanoyes. Finally, when he had difficulty finding a backer for his longest book, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624), Frances Howard, the duchess of Richmond and Lennox, provided the funds. Smith also included incredible claims of victories over great warriors in single combat. The most prominent example came while he fought in Hungary. He met on successive days three Turkish opponents and not only killed them but also removed their heads for trophies.

Even Smith’s most sympathetic biographers have acknowledged his enormous ego and his determination to emphasize his role in the events he chronicled. (In his publications, he referred to himself as captain, or governor of Virginia, or admiral of New England, or all three.) Nevertheless, Smith’s writings remain important. Modern research has largely confirmed the accuracy of his histories (although the episodes involving female saviors and single combat have not been substantiated). Indeed, his A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Hapned in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Collony (1608) and A Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country (1612) are the most complete accounts of early Virginia and the best sources on the natives of the Tidewater region.

Smith’s work, moreover, had significance in his own era. A Description of New England: Or, Observations and Discoveries of Captain John Smith (1616), New Englands Trials (1620), and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles served as promotional literature for expanding the English empire. He wrote in glowing terms of the prospects for North America. Yet, to build flourishing colonies, England would have to learn from his experiences in Virginia and New England. Success would come, Smith argued, only from a combination of firm leadership, industrious settlers, and aid from the English crown.

Smith closely followed events in the New World until his death in London in 1631. He lived long enough to learn of Virginia’s stability under royal control (King James I revoked the Virginia Company charter in 1624) and of the large Puritan migration to Massachusetts, developments that vindicated his enthusiastic support of empire. The unashamedly ambitious and arrogant Smith had been a crucial figure, both as a leader and as a promoter, in England’s efforts to colonize North America.

Bibliography

Allen, Paula Gunn. Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003. Allen presents a multifaceted view of Pocahontas’s life and historical significance, which includes information about John Smith.

Barbour, Philip L. The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. This is the most complete biography by the leading authority on Smith. Barbour presents the greatest details on Smith’s years in Virginia and the most thorough discussion of sources.

Emerson, Everett H. Captain John Smith. New York: Twayne, 1971. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1993. Rather than a biography, this is a study that focuses on Smith as a writer. While acknowledging Smith’s embellishments, Emerson praises his prose, particularly his ability to draw vivid word pictures.

Hawke, David Freeman, ed. Captain John Smith’s History of Virginia: A Selection. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970. Hawke offers an edited reprint of the sections on Virginia in Smith’s The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. Although Hawke has a good, brief introduction, he includes scarcely any footnotes to help the reader.

Lemay, J. A. Leo. The American Dream of Captain John Smith. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. Lemay updates Philip L. Barbour’s biography, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith, and defends Smith’s character and accomplishments.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. An interesting study that attempts to discern the truth or falsehood of John Smith’s account of his rescue by Pocahontas.

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Reprint. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Morgan describes the origins of slavery in Virginia and its impact on the colony’s economic, social, and political development. The early chapters include an excellent description of the difficulties faced by Smith and the other settlers at Jamestown.

Price, David. Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation. New York: Knopf, 2003. Price draws on period letters, chronicles, and documents to relate the founding of the Jamestown colony.

Smith, Bradford. Captain John Smith: His Life and Legend. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1953. In this well-researched volume, Smith receives his most sympathetic treatment. Particularly valuable on John Smith’s early years. The author draws upon the research of Laura Polanyi Striker, which largely substantiates Smith’s account of his experiences in Hungary.

Vaughan, Alden T. American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. Vaughan does more than present a short, balanced biography of Smith; he also details the history of Virginia from Smith’s departure in 1609 until his death in 1631.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Seventeenth Century

May 14, 1607: Jamestown Is Founded; December 26, 1620: Pilgrims Arrive in North America; March 22, 1622-October, 1646: Powhatan Wars.