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John Smith

Page history last edited by Jenny Houge 8 years, 5 months ago

 

 

Biography

John Smith was born in Willoughby, near Lincolnshire, England, in January of 1580. He began work as a merchant's apprentice[5], but when he was sixteen, his father died and Smith joined a group of Frenchmen to fight for Holland's independence from Spain. He continued military work for the next eight years, and was promoted to Captain during his time in Hungary. In 1606, Smith became involved with the Virginia Company's plans to colonize the New World for profit. After a charter was given to the company by King James I, Smith was selected as one of the colony's leaders. His ship landed, at what would become Jamestown, in April of 1607[1]. Smith was the first to refer to the colonies as "New England", though he initially used the name to refer to Virginia, his original place of arrival.

 

In September of 1608, Smith was elected president of the Jamestown colony, and wielded his new power harshly. By some accounts, he was a tyrant and gained the ire of his fellow settlers by terrorizing uncooperative natives and having his detractors flogged[2]. Tempers reached near the point of mutiny when a gunpowder accident in 1609 caused him to leave the colony and return to England. Several years later, he returned to chart and map the colonial coast, recording his findings in A Description of New England. He died in 1631, and was buried at  the Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate Church two years later.

 

John Smith as an Author

While Smith has initially arrived at the colonies as a colonist, he became a writer once he entered the New World for the dual purpose of encouraging colonization and establishing his own reputation as an explorer. While many of his works, such as A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia, were travel-based writing, he also recorded historical works as well, such as The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. The latter is significant as the first history of the territory was controlled by the Virginia Company, the original founders and proprietors of the colony[4]. Smith devoted much of this book to the relations between the colonists and the native civilization, and was a significant voice in the colonials' policy. However, while he supported learning about the customs and lifestyle of the natives to allow for better survival of the colonists, he was also of the opinion that the natives could and should be controlled by sufficient force, a point of view which created conflict with the representatives of the Virginia Company.

 

While Smith's work in literature, particularly his histories of the early colonies, are seen as a important contribution to the knowledge of the time[5], Smith himself was often not considered fully credible as an author. This can be traced back to his accounts of Pocahontas saving his life in 1607. Not only does it not appear in one of his two written histories of the time, but it is believed that if it did occur, Smith had misinterpreted a ritual among the natives that symbolized him being accepted into the tribe, or alternatively, that he had embellished or invented heroic acts to give Queen Anne cause to treat Pocahontas well when she was sent to England[3].

 

Style

His chronicles were vivid and prolific, covering numerous aspects of the New World from its people to its geography to the history of the new colonies. However, his works contain some of the earliest examples of publicized tall tales[7], and this sets most of his writing in a new context. His propensity for exaggeration and self-aggrandization in his works makes him a somewhat unreliable narrator, and the accounts of others of his time do corroborate that he may not have been entirely truthful in all of his accounts. Nonetheless, his style, which often portrayed himself as a powerful and exaggeratedly important figure exploring a strange new world, provided an archetypal prototype for the quintessential "early American hero".

 

Influence

Smith's prolific journal inspired emigration to the colonies and colonial industry because he claimed any man could make a living if he was willing to work for it. In addition, he solidified an early perception of the Native Americans by convincing his audience that they had a weak side: naive, simple minds. Smith was one of the first writers in the New World, and his style and manner would later influence staples of American literature such as Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain[7].

 

Published Works

 

Quotations

"Then seeing that we are not borne for our selves, but each to help other, and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth, and the minute of our death: Seeing our good deeds, or our badde, by faith in Christs merits, is all we have to carrie our soules to heaven, or hell: Seeing honour is our lives ambition; and our ambition after death, to have have an honorable memorie of our life: and seeing noe meanes wee would bee abated of the dignities and glories of our Predecessors; let us imitate their virtues to be worthily their successors."

From A Description of New England

 

"And here in Florida, Virginia, New-England, and Cannada, is more land than all the people in Christendome can manure, and yet more to spare than all the natives of those Countries can use and cultivate. The natives are only too happy to share: If this be not a reason sufficient to such tender consciences; for a copper kettle and a few toyes, as beads and hatchets, they will sell you a whole Country . . . the Massachusets have resigned theirs freely."

From Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, or Anywhere 

 

Further Readings

BBC producer and Historian Peter Firstbrook states in his biography of John smith, “If John Smith has one endur­ing legacy, it was that he was the first Englishman to understand the great American Dream.” This further reading provides a glimpse at a historians opinions and research insights to the motivation behind Smith and his relationship with Pocahontas [8]

 

Link: http://library.icc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=97314810&site=lrc-live

 

It is unlikely historians will ever know how accurate Smith’s writing’s are, but they had an undeniably significant effect on the course of American history, creating interest in the region of the Chesapeake Bay which resulted in further exploration and settlement. The link below looks specifically at Smith's importance with the Chesapeake region and this related writings.

 

Link: http://smithtrail.net/captain-john-smith/smiths-journals

 

References

1: "Captain John Smith" Jamestown Rediscovery http://apva.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=25

2: "Captain John Smith: 'An Ambityous unworthy and vayneglorious fellowe'" Dennis Montgomery, Colonial Williamsburg Journal http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/smith.cfm

3: "Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith?" J.A. Leo Lemay, University of Georgia http://books.google.com/books?id=o_NCZiICtygC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

4: "John Smith (1580-1631)" Amy Winans, Susquehanna University, Heath Anthology of American Literature, Fifth Edition http://college.cengage.com/english/lauter/heath/4e/students/author_pages/colonial/smith_jo.html

5: "John Smith: A Literary Pioneer" Jennifer Larson, Documenting the American South http://docsouth.unc.edu/highlights/smith.html

6: "The Virginia Company" Emily Rose, Princeton University http://www.folger.edu/html/folger_institute/jamestown-new/c_rose.htm

7: "John Smith, 1580-1631." Colonial America, 1607-1783. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/16071783/lit/smith.htm

8. "A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, And The Invention Of America." Publishers Weekly 261.30 (2014): 76. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Oct. 2015. 

 

 

  

 

 

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