March 27, 1613 - captains Adriaen Block and
Hendrick Christiaensen leave Amsterdam for a new trade expedition bound
for the Hudson River estuary, respectively aboard the Tiger and the Fortuyn,
two ships chartered by the Van Tweenhuysen Company.
April 13, 1613 - Pocahontas is abducted as
hostage and taken to Jamestown by captain Samuel Argall.
In Spring, Argall sailed up the Potomac River
and seized Pocahontas, the daughter of the Indian leader who had proved herself
sympathetic to the settlers. He took her hostage in Jamestown to obtain, in
exchange, the release of eight English settlers held prisoners by his father,
Chief Powhatan.
Pocahontas stayed at Passapatanzy, a Patawomek
village on the Potomac River where she had been sent by his father, Chief
Powhatan, keen to strenghten ties with the Patawomecks living in the northern
part of his confederacy at a moment when the English colonists had obviously
control over the James River. The Patawomecks had seldom been allied to
Powhatan and the coming of Pocahontas aimed at a peace offering. The young
Henry Spelman who acted as interpreter since a few years informed two English
merchants come to barter of the presence of Pocahontas. Aware, Argall was able
to convince the Patawomeck weroance Iopassus to hand Pocahontas over to him in
exchange for an alliance with the English against the Powhatans. This one
agreed and Argall attracted Pocahontas aboard his boat and made her captive.
She was then brought to Jamestown.
Chief Powhatan.
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| Iopassus and his wife exchanging Pocahontas for gifts |
Samuel Argall sent a message to Powhatan saying
that he would return him his daughter only having got back the English
prisoners he held, as well as weapons and all that had been stolen by the Indians. All
things considered, Powhatan released the prisoners and sent a part of the
ransom, asking his daughter to be treated well. Argall returned to Jamestown in
April, 1613 with Pocahontas. She was afterward sent to the new village of
Henricus and placed under the care of Sir Thomas Dale. It is there that began
her introduction to the Christian Faith, and that she met, in July, 1613, a
prosperous tobacco planter widower named John Rolfe. Pocahontas was allowed to
enjoy a relative freedom in the village and began to play a role in the
relations between the colony and the representatives of her people.
An oral tradition claims however that she was
raped during her stay but it has been found no evidence that she suffered such
an assault.
[Mars 1614]
Reverend Alexander Whitaker (1585 - c. 1617)
took care of Pocahontas' religious training. Arrived at Jamestown in 1611, He had
founded there the first Presbyterian church in America. The Indian princess was
baptized and took the name of Rebecca.
Whitaker published the same year a sermon entitled "Good news from Virginia" in which he called for a greater
support to the colony and described its climate and the indigenous people.
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| The Baptism of Pocahontas |
April 21, 1613 - The supposed date of the " Two Row Wampum Treaty" (Gushwenta) sealing the friendship between the Mohawks representing the Five Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) and the Dutch envoys.
According to the tradition, this one was signed at Taagonshi and materialized by a wampum (ceremonial belt) consisted of two rows of purple shells on a white shells background.
Both parallel purple rows symbolized the Dutch
ships and the Indian canoes sailing down the Hudson River side by side while
the white strips represented peace and friendship.
This agreement which was of use as a basis to
all the treaties signed later between Iroquois and representatives of the
American colonies, still stays valid today.
The proposed date is rightly very
controversial. It takes far too early in the timeline, at a moment when the
Dutch still arranged no administrative structure. Captain Adriaen Block had
made a first reconnaissance trip two years earlier but he had not far enough
ventured to meet the Mohawks who, anyway, did not still occupy the area. This
one was inhabitated, indeed, by Mahicans, an Algonquian tribe with which the
Dutch would have had at first rather to get on. Trade agreements with the
Indians were on the whole logical but despite its symbolic strength, a treaty
of friendship seemed at this time rather too early.
Actually, there was an alliance between the
Dutch and the Mahicans but this one dates 1624. The first historic treaty with
the Mohawks goes back up, as for it in 1643, even in 1645. The fact to put
forward such an old date was certainly intended to thwart the demands of the French
who could boast to have as early as 1624, a real agreement with the Iroquois
and further question the rights claimed later by the English, as heirs of the
Dutch.
Early June, 1613 - Samuel Argall heads North to
investigate French colonies the existence of which had been reported.
Samuel Argall found the French at Saint Sauveur, near Penobscot (Maine), in July, before they had time to build a fort. They were led by captain Le Coq De La Saussaye who had received order to found a new settlement apart from Port Royal, in the grip of dissensions between the Jesuits. Argall had no evil to seize their ships including the 100-ton Jonas, taking advantage of the fact that most French colonists had left to work ashore. When Argall burst in with his company, some settlers surrendered but most managed to escape in the woods. Several were killed, including Gilbert Du Thet, a lay-brother. Argall allowed Le Coq to leave to France and returned to Jamestown with 14 prisoners, including two Jesuits.
After this first victory, The Virginia Council
asked captain Argall to leave as quickly as possible aboard the Treasurer with
both seized French vessels and go to destroy all other
settlements in the North, up to 46 degree 1/2. Landing first at Saint Sauveur,
Argall attacked the remnants of the De La Saussaye colony, brought down the
cross set up by the Jesuits and replaced it by an other one with the name of
the king of England. He sailed then to Sainte-Croix, where he made raze to the
ground the remains of the former settlement and seized a heap of salt stored by
French fishermen. He reached then Port Royal on the other side of the bay. The
village was deserted, all its inhabitants having left for hunting. He took
opportunity to loot it and sack buildings and crops.
The Argall fleet left Port Royal on November 13 and suffered almost immediately a storm. Argall came back in Virginia aboard the Treasurer after a short stop at the mouth of the Hudson River, the time for him to subdue the small Dutch colony. The smallest boat sailing with him disappeared without leaving a trace while the Jonas, commanded by lieutenant Turner, with the Jesuits on board, drifted meanwhile eastward. It made stopover in the Azores and managed to reach Pembroke, at the tip of Wales. The Jesuits were not welcome there but the mediation of the ambassador of France allowed them a safe passage to France.
[November, 1613]
May, 1613 - Dutch captain Adriaen Block enters the New York Bay. He then sails up the Mauritius River (today Hudson) to current
Albany where he makes erect a fort called Fort Nassau. The disagreements are
many with his second, occurring a mutiny. The arrival of another Dutch boat
chartered by a rival company strengthens dissensions and Block is dropped by a
part of his crew.
Dutch skipper and fur trader. He explored the coast of current New Jersey and Massachusetts during four trips between 1611 and 1614, after Henry Hudson's expedition in 1609. He set up trade connections with the Natives for the first time in this area. The map drawn further to his 1614 journey makes mention of details of the American coast as well as the name of the New Netherlands. Block is mostly regarded as the first European to have visited the Long Island Sound, the Connecticut River and to have proven that Manhattan and Staten Island were actually islands.
After the first contacts between Hudson and the
Indians of the area, the Dutch merchants of Amsterdam considered that the region
could prove to be interesting for beaver pelts, the trade of which was in the
time very lucrative.
In 1610, a boat from Monnickendam, captained by
Symen Lambertz Mau, had sunk in the Hudson estuary; in May, 1611, Adriaen Block
and Hendrick Christiaensen, backed by Arnout Vogels and a group of Lutheran
merchants under the name of the Van Tweenhuysen Company, explored again the
mouth of the Hudson River and brought back to Amsterdam furs and the son of an
Indian leader. The 1613 expedition had been organized in a climate of distrust
due to the trade war in which were engaged the Van Tweenhuysen Company and Hans
Claesz about the beaver pelts.
No agreement having been able to be signed in
Holland, the contention continued in America and ships chartered by both companies,
on one side the Tiger commanded by Block and the Fortuyn captained by Hendrick
Christiaensen and, on the other hand the Nachetagael of captain Mossel,
indulged in a merciless struggle until a compromise finally provides a fair
distribution of skins.
Months had passed and Block found himself in
January, 1614 trapped on the North River (Hudson) by the first winter ices and
forced to dealy his return.
Nassau: this small fort was built by captain
Hendrick Christiaensen and his men on an island in the Hudson River called Castle
Island, at some distance of the present-day city of Albany. Jacob Eelkens insured
the command. It would perhaps have been built on the ruins of a French fort
going back to 1540s. Located on a territory belonging to the Mahicans, it was
used to garner the beavers skins provided by the Indians.
This fort proved to be subject to repeated
floods was abandoned, for that reason, from 1617.
[January, 1614]
July 20, 1613 - captain Robert Adam arrives in
London aboard the Elizabeth. Having left Virginia June 28, he brings with him
letters from Thomas Dale and Samuel Argall, the first news coming from the
colony since September 1612.
He also carries the first John Rolfe's tobacco
crop.
Robert Adam made regular trips between England and Virginia and had a strong reputation. It was said that goods travelled with him safely, to the point that the Spanish officials entrusted him too the routing of their letters.
.jpg) |
| Thomas West, Baron De La Warr |
Lord De La Warr gave it the name of West and
Shirley Hundred, for his wife Lady Cessaeley Shirley whom he had married in
1596.
This plantation was to employ approximately 25
persons supervised by captain Maddeson. It was exclusively dedicated to tobacco
raising.
November, 1613 - Back from his expedition
against the French, captain Samuel Argall arrives at the mouth of the Hudson
River where he requires the Dutch captain Hendrick Christiaensen to lower his
flag and raise instead the English one.
1613 - In a report to the ambassador of Spain
in London, Don Diégo de Molina, sent two years ago to spy the Jamestown colony,
draws up of it a grim description.
".. And the forts they have are made of so
little thick boards that a single kick would be enough to break them down, and
when you get to the wall, it's as if the assailant got the same advantage as
the defender because it is designed on both sides in the same way; it is a
fortification without genius made by incompetent people. They are not either
effective soldiers even if their leaders and their captains make much of what
they served in Flanders and in Holland where some commanded companies and
castles. The men are poorly trained and ill-prepared for military action.
"
The report, dated 1613, describes clearly
what he had seen when he had been sent by the Spanish authorities to spy the
settlement. He had moreover been captured by the colonists and kept some time
in custody. Molina concluded that a military action could easily allow to chase
away the 150 settlers he had counted.
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| Pocahontas held hostage by Samuel Argall |
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