Melungeon-L Archives
Archiver > Melungeon > 2004-09 > 1096519062
From:
Subject: [Melungeon] Origin of the Melungeons - 1619, Part 6
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:37:42 EDT
"Origin of the Melungeons - 1619, Part 6
by Tim Hashaw
all rights reserved.
The Pocahontas plot
The more we examine John Rolfe's letter, the more his story becomes suspect.
Before the arrival of the Africans in the summer of 1619, John Rolfe was
accused of participating in Argall's misconduct during the former's administration
as governor.
In one particular case, the widow Lady De La ware in London accused both
Samuel Argall and John Rolfe of stealing her husband's property in Virginia.7
Lord De La ware had stocked the Neptune with trading goods for the 1618 voyage
during which he died. De La ware's private goods were unloaded in Virginia and
placed in a storehouse to which Gov. Argall held the only key.
When Capt. Edward Brewster suspected that Argall was privately selling the
deceased Lord De la ware's trade goods in 1618, he complained to John Rolfe.
According to testimony in the 1622 lawsuit Buckingham v. Argall, Brewster
alleged that, "Mister Rolfe said it would but displease the deft (Argall) and
therefore willed this dept. (Brewster) never to mencion it for that, if he did, the
deft would goe near to stay him this dept. from going for England." In other
words, Rolfe warned Brewster in 1618 to shut up about the De La ware property
or Argall would silence him, as indeed Argall later planned to do when he
sentenced Brewster to be shot..
Before Sandys replaced him, Samuel Argall was the boss in Virginia and Rolfe,
Pierce, and Tucker were his agents. The motive for John Rolfe to cover up
the White Lion/Treasurer piracy is implied in an accusation the Virginia Company
made against Samuel Argall and John Rolfe exactly 12 months earlier.
At that time, certain members of the Virginia Company suspected Argall and
Rolfe were conspiring to seize Virginia from the Company by claiming that the
Powhatan Indians had bequeathed all of Virginia to the royal heir of the
Powhatan throne; Thomas Rolfe, the infant son of John Rolfe and Pocahontas; daughter
of the Powhatan emperor!
Before becoming an ally, Sir Thomas Smith, chief executive officer of the
Company in 1618 sent a letter to then Gov. Argall listing several complaints.
One of those complaints sheds light on the underlying reason for John Rolfe's
fierce loyalty to Samuel Argall that later caused him to mislead history about
the arrival of the Africans in August 1619.
Sir Thomas, on behalf of the Company, wrote to then Gov. Argall in August of
1618, "We cannot imagine why you should give us warning that Opachankano and
the natives have given their country to Mr. Rolfe's child, and that they will
reserve it from all others until he comes of years, except as we suppose, and
as some do here report it to be, a device of your own to some especial purpose
for yourself; but whether yours or theirs we shall little esteem of any such
conveyance." 8
Here lies the skeleton of a possible scheme that to date has gone unreported
by historians. Helen Rountree who has researched Pocahontas and the Powhatans
for most of her career as a professor was unaware of this letter and emailed
me for info on how to obtain a copy for the archive collection she will donate
to the university.
The "Opachankano" named in the letter was Pocahontas' uncle who after the
death of Powhatan, became the new emperor of the tribes dominating Eastern
Virginia. Powhatan had died in May of 1618. The Indians, after the custom had
quickly recognized a matrilineal kinsman as the heir to Powhatan's throne, so Gov.
Argall's claim that the Indians recognized Thomas Rolfe as Powhatan's heir
appears to have been fraudulent. Powhatan's sisters' descendants were heirs to
the throne according to the custom.
On the other hand, there is evidence that before his death Powhatan had
challenged the matrilineal accession custom. Unlike his ancestors, Powhatan
resembled an emperor more than a king. He inherited a number of tribes as king, and
then he launched wars to bring foreign tribes under his control. And over
these new tribes he had set as rulers some of his sons and daughters. This was
contrary to custom. Did Powhatan's new anti-matrilineal policy continue after
his death? It seems so, for Powhatan's half brother Opachankano eventually
overthrew the legally recognized matrilineal heir to the throne. So, until
further light can reveal more on the claim Argall and Rolfe made to the Company,
its validity cannot be entirely ruled out.
Fearful of Gov. Argall's ambition and Lord Rich's schemes, the Virginia
Company in August of 1618 refused to support the Rolfe claim to Virginia and
described it as "a device of your own to some especial purpose for yourself."
Lord Rich, Argall and Rolfe were suspected of conspiring to install young Thomas
Rolfe as the king of Virginia…a highly treasonous act not only against the
Virginia Company, but also against King James!
This scheme may have been in the works for some time, for Argall's
relationship with Pocahontas and John Rolfe went back several years. Born in 1595,
Matoaka, or Pocahontas as she is popularly known, was the daughter of
Wahunsonacock by one of his many wives. Wahunsonacock, or Powhatan as he is also called,
was the paramount chief of the tribes of Eastern Virginia. Like King James of
England, Wahunsonacock claimed absolute power in Virginia.
The Powhatan Indians were matrilineal and traced descent and inheritance
through the sister's family. Matrilineal descent was how Wahunsonacock had come
to power and it is how his subjects attempted and failed to set up a new
emperor after his death.
Pocahontas' mother was a lesser wife among Wahunsonacock's more than 100
wives and her daughter would customarily rank low in the pecking order. But
custom is sometimes unofficially subject to charisma and at a young age Pocahontas
endeared herself to the chief of Eastern Virginia and became his favorite
daughter out of dozens of children.
Led by Capt. John Smith, the English first arrived in Wahunsonacock's realm
in 1607 and built Fort James. Pocahontas was then 11 years old. The timing of
the arrival was unfortunate. A cyclical drought followed by famine swept the
land, food became scarce and wars broke out between the English and Indians
as both struggled to survive.
Due to starvation, disease and Indian attacks, the number of white settlers
fell steadily from 1608 through 1613. There was no gold in Eastern Virginia,
no hoped-for river to the South Sea, and Jamestown colonists failed to turn a
profit for Virginia Company investors back in London. Eventually the few dozen
surviving colonists were about to give up and return to England rather than
stay and share the mysterious fate of Roanoke; a specter that constantly
haunted them.
But suddenly the colony was saved from utter collapse. In April of 1613,
Samuel Argall, then the young adventurous captain of Lord Rich's ship, the
Treasurer, was exploring a river in the man-o-war when he learned that the favorite
daughter of the chief of chiefs was visiting a local village.
Realizing he had an opportunity to force a truce with Wahunsonacock, Capt.
Argall seized the moment and bribed a local rival chief to entice Pocahontas
aboard the Treasurer for an inspection. The bold Capt. Argall then quickly
raised anchor and sailed away with her as his hostage.
The abduction of this favorite daughter compelled Wahunsonacock to make peace
with the English settlers. Indians attacks ceased, but because her father
was slow to pay the ransom Argall demanded, Pocahontas remained a prisoner of
the English at Jamestown and Henrico. There she met John Rolfe; the man who
introduced a commercially profitable hybrid of tobacco in Virginia and saved the
colony from financial failure. She was 18 and previously married and he was
28 and previously married. One day while the two were on an excursion aboard
the Treasurer, John Rolfe professed his love and she agreed to convert to
Christianity and become his wife. Pocahontas was baptized and took the Christian
name of Rebecca; the Biblical "mother of two peoples."
She married John Rolfe in 1614 in the Jamestown church. The man-o-war
Treasurer anchored nearby, fired her fourteen cannons in salute as the ceremony
ended. The couple moved to Rolfe's plantation at Fort Smith and in 1615 they had
a son; Thomas who would be their only child.
Always desperate to lure investors, settlers and laborers to the venture and
anxious to downplay bad press coverage of troubles between settler and native,
the Virginia Company of London realized the promotional value in the young
family. In the summer of 1616 the Company shipped Pocahontas, her English
husband and their child to England aboard the Treasurer on a publicity tour to tout
how well English and Indians were supposedly getting on in Virginia.
It was brilliant propaganda. Rebecca Rolfe, clothed in the latest Jacobean
gowns furnished by the Company became a sensational hit among the elite of
London. She played cards with Queen Anne and was introduced to King James who,
suspicious of Rolfe's motive for marrying her, expressed his disapproval of the
marriage of a royal born "princess" to a commoner. King James after all had
married Princess Anne of Denmark because she brought to the marriage new lands
and property. Nevertheless, the personal charm that had endeared Pocahontas
to her father also won over the king of England and he invited her to be his
guest at royal plays, jousting tournaments (tilts) and court feasts.
The suspicions of King James were as it soon appeared, justified. While John
and Rebecca Rolfe were in England, the earl of Warwick quickly and quietly
laid the groundwork for a dangerous plan not only to turn the colony into a
pirate base but also to take control of all of Virginia. Evidence indicates that
behind this scheme the deeply devout Puritan earl ultimately planned to turn
Virginia into a refuge for religious dissidents fleeing the persecution of King
James. Lord Rich attempted to do the same in other colonies in which he
invested and even in 1617, he was concerned about the fate of the Pilgrims.
Looking to set up Jamestown as the secret base for his private war with
Spain, Lord Rich finagled the appointment of his man Samuel Argall as deputy
governor to stand-in for the absentee Gov. Lord De La ware who preferred to live in
England. At the same time, the Company, pleased by the outcome of the
"Princess" tour, elected John Rolfe as colony Secretary and Recorder.
Then a tragic event opened the door for Lord Rich to bring John Rolfe into
his scheme
In March of 1617, newly elected Gov. Argall along with John Rolfe, his wife
and child all boarded a ship in London to return to Virginia. But before the
vessel reached the mouth of the Thames, Pocahontas became seriously ill and was
taken off the ship on the outskirts of London. The 21-year-old daughter of
Powhatan died not long after and on March 21 she was buried in the hallowed
ground of the Gravesend church. Young Thomas was too ill to continue the voyage
so his father left him in England with his brother, Henry Rolfe.
The death of Pocahontas set John Rolfe to thinking about his young son's
inheritance. Rolfe had already lost one family; a wife and infant daughter who
had perished years before in Bermuda. Gov. Argall, who had known John and
Pocahontas almost as long as any Englishman offered sympathy and advice to the
grieving widower on the voyage from London to Jamestown.
Arriving in Virginia Gov. Argall put Warwick's grand scheme into action. At
the direction of Lord Rich, he sent the ship Treasurer now under the command
of Daniel Elfrith to raid the West Indies with Jamestown as her port of refuge.
Colony Recorder John Rolfe remarried the daughter of his neighbor William
Pierce and Gov. Argall made Pierce his senior military officer in Jamestown.
The vital Point Comfort stockade controlling access and departure from Jamestown
was the colony's second highest military post, and to this command Gov.
Argall appointed William Tucker whose family was allied with his patron, Lord Rich.
Gov. Argall now had men loyal to him installed in all the important offices.
Argall's next step was to cut the Company off from direct access to the
colony's profits and control and divert that profit to himself, his cronies
including Rolfe, Tucker and Pierce, and Lord Rich. Rich and Argall began to assume
control of virtually all trade between England and Virginia. Company investors
in London would watch their profits decline steadily over the next months.
First, Gov. Argall issued proclamations forbidding settlers and Company
representatives from dealing with the Indians. One year after Samuel Argall became
governor of Virginia, then-Company president Thomas Smith charged Argall that
"you appropriate the Indian trade unto yourself." The sale of beads, axes
and kettles to the Indians was one of the Company's sweetest plums and their
employee Samuel Argall was cutting them out of the action.
Second, Gov. Argall arbitrarily abolished the Company's forced price cap on
the colony's two most profitable exports, tobacco and sassafras. Planters were
previously required to sell to the Company at the Company's set price. Now,
thanks to Argall, the planters cut out the middleman and sold directly to
customers in London. Without the Company to suck up the profit, tobacco planters
like Rolfe, Pierce, Ewens and Tucker were becoming quite wealthy under
Argall's autocratic governship. Virginia was suddenly flourishing, but the Company
was floundering.
Then, Argall and Rich played their trump. Stressing young Thomas Rolfe's
importance, in March of 1618, Gov. Argall informed the Company in London that
Chief Powhatan was pining for his grandson far away in London. "Powhatan goes
from place to place visiting his Country taking his pleasure in good friendship
with us. [He] laments his daughter's death but is glad her child is living.
So doth Opachank (Powhatan's half brother and future king). Both want to see
him but desires that he may be stronger before he returns." 9
Argall's intent was clearly to present young Thomas Rolfe as vital to the
peace between the Company and the Indians. And through his close friendship with
John Rolfe, who was becoming wealthy, Argall held the trump; little Thomas
Rolfe.
A few weeks after Argall's letter, Powhatan died and Gov. Argall immediately
trumpeted Thomas Rolfe as heir to his Indian grandfather's throne and... to
all of Virginia. Argall served the Company notice "that Opachankano and the
natives have given their country to Mr. Rolfe's child, and that they will reserve
it from all others until he comes of years." Lord Robert Rich and his
protégé Samuel Argall saw in the young son of John and Rebecca Rolfe a chance to
seize control of much more than the slivers of land and resources then claimed by
the Company.
The Company became alarmed that Gov. Argall intended to claim Virginia for
his own fiefdom under the pretext of the Rolfe claim to the Powhatan throne.
Pres. Smith wrote a letter to absentee governor De La ware in England
complaining that Argall "hath forbidden all trade and commerce with the Indians, but
trades amongst them himself with our Summer Islands frigatt and our men to his
own benefit…He proclaims that no man shall dare to buy any skins or furrs of the
Indians but himself, as if the plantation and people there were ordained only
to serve his turn." 10
The Company's suspicions of Samuel Argall's intentions for Virginia had
become so acute that some investors threatened to complain directly to King James.
"They are hardly restrained, notwithstanding the King is far off in progress,
from going to the court to make their complaint and to procure his Majesty's
command to fetch him (Argall) home."
The Company expected Argall to clear business decisions with London before
proceeding, but the governor was acting unilaterally. President Smith bluntly
told the governor that he was assuming more power than he had been given. "We
thought it impossible when we made you Governor that ever you should offer us
this kind of dealing; not once to mention how many, to whom, nor for what
considerations, but to do them all away of your own head and to take satisfaction
to yourself…Either you must think highly of yourself or meanly of us, as that
being our substitute you will presume to offer us these wrongs and to suppose
you may do what you list in such a publick cause without being called to an
account." 11
The Virginia Company complained that Argall had suppressed its monopoly on
exports, accusing that "you being Governor restrain no man, but passengers,
master and mariners bring the greatest part of tobacco and all the sassafras for
themselves."
Immediately after Gov. Argall informed the Company that the Indians had given
Virginia to young Thomas Rolfe, the Company moved to recall Argall to London.
Pres. Thomas Smith roused the ill Lord De La ware from his castle to sail to
Virginia in the summer of 1618, but during that Neptune's voyage De La ware
died and Argall continued as governor. Capt. Brewster survived the voyage and
became a thorn in Argall's side.
After escaping Argall's firing squad, Capt. Brewster of the Neptune returned
to London to spread rumors of the theft of De La ware's trade goods and the
Treasurer's unique method of fishing with cannon balls and muskets. These
rumors gave Smith's successor, Edwin Sandys the excuse to engineer the election of
George Yeardley over Lord Rich's objections. On April 9th, Lord Rich's
pinnace arrived barely in time to whisk Argall to safety before Yeardley sailed up
on April 19th too late to clap him in irons.
So, five months later, the man-o-war that Argall had sent out before fleeing
had returned to Virginia under a cloud of suspicion and ignorant of the change
of governors. John Rolfe realized that the plan to set his son up as king of
the Powhatans and claim Virginia for his family could not go forward without
Samuel Argall on hand to enforce it. For this reason Rolfe led the allies of
Lord Rich in vigorously defending Argall from Sandys' investigation of Argall
for piracy.
John Rolfe deliberately omitted the identity of the White Lion so that the
ship could not be found and her crew questioned concerning the Treasurer's role
in the taking of the Spanish slave ship in the summer of 1619. The duke of
Buckingham, Lady De La ware, Edwin Sandys, the Spanish ambassador Gondomar and
the King of England eventually would all want to know more about the Bautista
raid by the two corsairs. Rolfe threw them all off the trail when he referred
to the Plymouth White Lion and her Cornish captain as "Dutch." The substance
of his letter blurred any detail by which the White Lion might be located and
her captain and crew questioned regarding her consort with the Treasurer in
the capture of the Bautista.
According to John Rolfe, the nameless "Dutch" man-o-war simply sailed off the
edge of the world and disappeared.
Sent by a naive Gov. Yeardley to detain the Treasurer at Point Comfort that
day, John Rolfe, despite what he claimed, met with Capt. Elfrith and warned him
and the Treasurer of the warrant. The Treasurer escaped to Bermuda, but not
before selling at least some of its Africans at Elizabeth Town, where the
black woman named Margrett soon appeared in a colony census. She would become the
wife of John Geaween and the mother of Mihill Gowen.
Rolfe additionally implicated the new governor of Virginia in the very piracy
he was supposed to be investigating.
That was George Yeardley's own fault.
Gov. Yeardley owned a plantation he named "Flowerdew" after his wife.
Tobacco had already made several planters around Jamestown wealthy. One man alone
could raise a crop of tobacco in one year worth the fabulous sum of 200lbs
English sterling, while a common planter with six servants could clear 1,000lb and
live like a duke. But during those years the premature mortality rate among
English settlers due to starvation, disease and Indian attack approached an
incredibly high fifty percent. English laborers willing to sail to Virginia were
hard to find and Gov. Yeardley could not pass up the opportunity the White
Lion presented with her cargo of Africans pirated from the Bautista.
Pres. Edwin Sandys anticipated the temptations on the faraway Virginia
frontier when he wrote a letter two months earlier reminding Gov. Yeardley that he
had been sent to Virginia to "reform those errors which have formerly been
committed… We cannot but in particular commend you carefully upon the proceedings
of the Treasurer set out by Capt Argall…we pray you therefore according to our
former instructions that nothing be neglected in that business…And we pray
you to certify us at large of your doing therein…according to your promise and
our trust you will in all things observe them to the utmost of your power."
But, tobacco fever overcame the reformist governor and he soon had as much to
hide as anyone else in Virginia.
Evidence indicates that John Rolfe revised the events at the latter end of
August 1619 to shield Argall from charges of piracy with the hope that Samuel
Argall would be exonerated and returned to power in Virginia to further continue
the claim of his son to the throne of Powhatan. Rolfe's interest in Argall's
defense was the accession of his son Thomas and the resulting wealth,
prestige and power that would come by controlling Virginia's trade with England
through Lord Rich and Samuel Argall.
But it was not to be. Argall, who survived the scandal and even received a
knighthood, would go on to other things and die a few years later.
In the very letter in which he obscured important details about the arrival
of the Africans, John Rolfe defended himself and Argall to Edwin Sandys against
their accusers. "I cannot choose but to reveal unto you the sorrow I
conceive, to hear of the many accusations heaped upon Captaine Argall, with whom my
reputation hath been unjustly jointed. But I am persuaded he will answer well
for himself…When it shall come to farther triall I assure you that you shall
find many dishonest and faithless men to Captain Argall, who have received much
kindness at his hand and to his face, will contradict and be ashamed of much,
which in his absence they have intimated against him." 12
John Rolfe and his fellow conspirators deliberately revised the true story of
the first arrival of African Americans and in so doing, concealed the arrival
of at least two of the first Melungeon ancestors.
...to be continued.
Tim Hashaw
This thread: