Smith, John

Smith, John (1580–1631), colonial historian and promoter, governor of Virginia. Captain John Smith, by his own account, saved the Jamestown colony. The son of a yeoman farmer, he served in the religious wars in Europe, first in France and then against the Turks. In Jamestown, Smith was frustrated by the inept leadership of his social superiors compounded by the Virginia Company's pressure for riches. He explored Chesapeake Bay, of which he produced a remarkably accurate map. He spent three weeks as a captive of Powhatan, the paramount chief of the region, after which the two men formed a relationship of mutual respect and wariness. His supposed rescue by Powhatan's twelve‐year‐old daughter, Pocahontas, would become one of America's most enduring legends.

Elected president of the Virginia Council in September 1608, effectively the colony's governor, Smith set about to assure the floundering colony's survival. Following Indian practice he dispersed the men in small groups to live off the land, and he forced everyone to work. Smith left Virginia in late 1609; he had been severely injured by the explosion of his powder bag, and the Virginia Company's reorganization of the colony's government ended his authority.

Except for a brief trip to New England, Smith spent the rest of his life publishing his accounts of the colonies. He disliked Virginia's reliance on tobacco, and coined the name “New England” to promote creation there of a truly English American society based on fishing and family farms. His influential Generall Historie of Virginia, New‐England, and the Summer Isles (1624) was the first comprehensive history of English America written by an eyewitness.
See also Colonial Era; Exploration, Conquest, and Settlement, Era of European; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Tobacco Industry.

Bibliography

Alden T. Vaughan , American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia, 1975.
Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 3 vols., 1986.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman