2 Servants and Servitude in Colonial America
to a small, struggling fort where many had already died in the previous two
years of settlement. The people on board the vessels were hungry, as were the
settlers of Jamestown. Yet under the leadership of Captain John Smith, who
had served as president of the colony since September 1608, the colony had
become better ordered. Smith had explored the environs of the James River
valley and Chesapeake Bay and tributaries, had come to know and interact
with the varied Algonquian tribes of the region, had established trade with
the Algonquians, had instilled discipline among the colonists, had solidified
defenses, and had put everyone to work for the good of the whole. Shortly
after the arrival of the girl in August, Captain Smith was horribly injured in
an accident and was forced to return to England. With him went the stolidity
of uncompromising leadership; the people of the colony as a result suffered
during the ensuing winter—the starving time.
Smith learned during his slow recovery after his return to England of the
trials the colony endured—brought upon them by themselves—how in his
absence all frugality and concern for the future vanished in the wake of
hubris and concern for the immediate present. The stores that they had at the
beginning of winter were quickly consumed, and the tools they had to pro-
vide food lay unused. Of the 500 men and women of Jamestown when Smith
left for England in October, “within 6 months after there remained not many
more than 60. most miserable and poore creatures.”2
It did not have to be this way; Smith knew that with proper management
and dedicated occupation the colony could survive, even thrive. During the
ensuing years, he kept this faith in England’s colonial ventures in his heart,
yearning to return to America, to establish a proper colony with the knowl-
edge he had gained at Jamestown. Although Smith never returned to Vir-
ginia, in 1614 he did sail once again to America, to the lands of the north. He
journeyed along the coast, christening the land New England; he kept a
journal of his experiences, which he turned into a small book, the Descrip-
tion of New England.
When the Description of New England appeared in 1616, Smith was 36
years old, a man of humble roots still seeking his fortune. Having been raised
by yeomen farmers in Lincolnshire in the 1580s, Smith had decided when he
was a teenager to seek his fortune in the military, fighting in the European
religious wars. Courage and ability with the sword enabled him to rise above
the condition that most other people in 16th- and 17th-century Europe and
England experienced—utter poverty.
During the years that Smith was growing up, when Elizabeth I was queen,
England continued to be dominantly agricultural; farm productivity
increased in the wake of privatization of public lands. Many English farmers,
such as George Smith, John’s father, were tenants of larger landowners; oth-
ers were not so fortunate and had to labor on farms for set wages regulated
by parish justices. Unemployment, low wages, and limited manufacturing
