“What Can You Get by War . . . ?”: Powhatan Addresses Capt. John Smith

Background: Powhatan, a leader of the Algonquian-speaking people in colonial Virginia, speaks eloquently about the rapidly deteriorating relations between the first colonists and the Native people upon whom the English were so dependent in the colony’s early years. Powhatan addressed Captain John Smith, governor of the Virginia colony, in 1612 (only five years after the colony’s founding), and this statement is the version of his remarks written down by two of Smith’s associates.

Captain Smith, you may understand that I . . . know the difference of peace and war better than any in my Country. But now I am old, and ere long must die. My brethren, namely Opichapam, Opechankanough, and Kekataugh, my two sisters, and their two daughters, are distinctly each other’s successors. I wish their experiences no less than mine, and your love of them, no less than mine to you: but this bruit [noise] from Nansamund, that you are come to destroy my Country, so much affrighteth all my people, as they dare not visit you. What will it avail you to take [by force] that you may quietly have with love, or to destroy them that provide you food? What can you get by war, when we can hide our provisions and fly to the woods, whereby you must famish, by wronging us your friends? And why are you thus jealous of our loves, seeing us unarmed . . . and are willing still to feed you with that [which] you cannot get but by our labors? Think you I am so simple not to know it is better to eat good meat, lie well, and sleep quietly with my women and children, laugh, and be merry with you, have copper, hatchets, or what I want being your friend; than be forced to fly . . . , and thus with miserable fear end my miserable life, leaving my pleasures to such youths as you? . . . Let this therefore assume you of our loves, and every year our friendly trade shall furnish you with corn; and now also if you would come in friendly manner to see us, and not thus with your guns and swords, as [if] to invade your foes.

Source: Wilcomb E. Washburn, ed., The Indian and the White Man (1964).