John Smith
from The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624)
John Smith and the General History of Virginia
Introduction
The image above, by Robert Vaughan, is an illustration that appeared in John Smith’s The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles. The center panel of the bottom row includes a map of “Old Virginia” and the caption “A description of part of the adventures of Cap. Smith in Virginia.” Some of these “adventures” can be seen in the surrounding panels, and if you put the illustration next to Smith’s narrative, you can begin to ask some important questions about the text and its author.
Perhaps the most well-known of Smith’s “adventures” is his encounter with Pocahontas, which, despite its Disney-fied romantic trappings, occupies a very small part of the text as a whole. He also relates the founding of the Jamestown colony, detailing his leadership role and the various challenges and personality conflicts the colonists grappled with. Smith also provides extensive information about what he found in this new world, including the landscape, the plants, animals, and its native inhabitants.
These varied “adventures” provide us with a number of ways to approach Smith’s work. Like so many other early American texts, The General History can be read through a variety of lenses. It is not only a historical document, but it is a travel narrative as well. It is also possible to read the text as a captivity narrative, despite the fact that most scholars now believe that Smith may have misinterpreted what happened when Pocahontas arrived on the scene. Instead of facing imminent death, Smith may have been unknowingly participating in an adoption ceremony accepting him into Powhatan’s tribe. Regardless of what actually transpired, the scene raises a number of questions for further consideration. For example, we might ask how Smith has positioned himself in that moment, and how that image is or isn’t consistent with what comes before and after it. Examining how that scene fits into the text, how it connects to the images in Vaughan’s illustration, or questioning why Smith includes this particular “adventure” at all are equally productive ways to approach the text.
Discussion Questions
- Examine the images on Vaughan’s “Map of Virginia” illustration in conjunction with Smith’s narrative. How does the visual representation compare to the one that Smith describes? What does each text—the illustration and Smith’s own words—suggest to us about how the narrative and its author are being constructed?
- How does Smith define the “New World”? How does his description compare to what we’ve seen from writers like William Bradford or Cabeza de Vaca? Does Smith seem to have the same agenda as these other writers?
- Examine Smith’s encounter with Pocahontas. What do you make of how he has presented that scene?
- What ideals or values does Smith seem to emphasize? How or why might these particular values be importa