Captain John Smith Sails From Jamestown, July 24, 1608, to Explore Chesapeake Bay

Two Indian messengers hurried to the Susquehannock Indian town situated on the banks of the Susquehanna River, in what is now Lancaster County, in midsummer, 1608, and brought the tidings that there were strangers arrived in the great bay who wished to see them. The Susquehanna Indians, or Susquehannocks, as they are usually called, went to meet these white men, whom they believed to be gods worthy of worship.

The strangers were thirteen in number, and under the leadership of Captain John Smith, who had effected a settlement at Jamestown, Va., the preceding year. They had sailed away from Jamestown, July 24, on a voyage of discovery in an open boat of less than three tons burden.

The party had a tedious voyage. The vessel entered Chesapeake Bay, and the party spent seven weeks exploring its shores, returning to Jamestown September 7.

It was after Smith reached the head of the bay, on the Tockwogh (Sassafras) River, that he first met Indians. Here he found “many hatchets, knives and peeces of yron and brasse, which they reported to have from the Sasquesahanockes, a mighty people, and mortal enemies with the Massawomeckes.”

Smith approached these Indians warily, for he had already heard of them as a ferocious tribe. Smith “prevailed with the Interpreter to take with him another interpreter, to perswade the Sasquesahoncks to come to visit us, for their language are different.”

Smith made a visit to the tribe on the east side of the Chesapeake the following morning, and they received him in friendship.

He navigated his boats as far up the Susquehanna as was possible on account of the rocks, and there awaited the return of the two Indian messengers. In four days they arrived, and with them came the Indians. Captain Smith’s own story says:

“Sixty Susquehannocks came to us, with skins, bows, arrowes, targets, beeds, swords & tobacco pipes for presents. Such great and well 506proportioned men are seldom seen, for they seemed like giants to the English, yea, and to the neighbors, yet seemed of an honest and simple disposition. They were with much adoe restrained from adoring us as gods.

“These are the strangest people of all these countries, both in language and attire; for their language may well become their proportions; sounding from them as a voyce in the vault. Their attire is the skinnes of bears, and wolves, some have cossacks made of beares heads and skinnes, that a man’s head goes through the skinnes neck, and the eares of the beare fastened to his shoulders, the nose and teeth hanging down his breast, another beares face split behind him, and at the end of the nose hung a paw, the half sleeves coming to the elbowes were the necks of the beares, and the arms through the mouth with the pawes hanging at their noses. One had the head of a wolfe hanging in a chain for a jewell, his tobacco-pipe three-quarters of a yard long, prettily carved with a bird, a deare, or some such devise at the great end, sufficient to beat out ones braines; with bowes, arrowes, and clubs, sutable to their greatness. Five of their chiefe warriors came aboord us and crossed the bay in the barge. The picture of the greatest of them is signified in the mappe.

“The calf of whose leg was three quarters of a yard about, and all the rest of his limbs so answerable to that proportion that he seemed the goodliest man we ever beheld. His hayre, the one side was long, the other shore close with a ridge over his crowne like a cocks combe. His arrowes were five quarters long, headed with the splinters of a white christall-like stone, in form of a heart, an inch broad, an inch and a halfe or more long. These he wore in a woolves skinne at his backe for his quiver, his bow in the one hand and his clubbe in the other, as is described.

“They can make neere 600 able and mighty men, and are pallisadoed in their townes to defend them from the Massawomekes, their mortal enemies * * * They are seated (on the Susquehanna River) 2 daies higher than was passage for the discoverer’s barge.”

Smith further describes the Susquehannocks, and very much exaggerates their strength of numbers and other qualifications, but there can be no doubt that the great adventurer was thoroughly impressed with this powerful tribe. This was the first contact of white men with the native people of Pennsylvania. Smith almost reached Pennsylvania on this voyage.

His map of Virginia made in 1612 also shows a number of Indian villages in the interior of Pennsylvania. Besides the town of Sasquesahanough, he locates on the east bank of the Susquehanna, near its head, Tesinigh, and about midway between these two, Quadroque, which is also on the east bank. Near the heads of two tributaries of the same river he locates Attaock, and some distance north, Utchowig. 507Mr. A. L. Guss places Attaock as on the Juniata; Quadroque at or near the forks of the North and West Branches; Tesinigh on the North Branch, towards Wyoming; and Utchowig, Mr. Guss suggests might have been a town of the Erie, or Cat Nation.

During another voyage in December, 1607, Captain Smith was taken prisoner by the Indians, but afterwards released on promise to furnish a ransom of two great guns and a grindstone. Tradition says that he was saved from death during this captivity by Pocahontas.

Smith made maps of his exploration and, in 1614, explored the New England coast and made a map of that shore from the Penobscot to Cape Cod.

Captain Smith served as president of the colony of Jamestown, but he was too strict a disciplinarian. When his successor was elected, September 29, 1609, Smith sailed for England and never returned to Jamestown.

He had achieved much for Virginia, he was a good example of Elizabethian versatility, “bookman, penman, swordsman, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator, explorer.” His works have been published.