The company’s appointment of Gabriel Archer as secretary was one part of the plan for carrying out this directive. Archer possessed considerable expertise in writing and law, having studied at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn. Before arriving in Virginia, Archer tested his education widely, accompanying Bartholomew Gosnold on a transatlantic voyage in 1602 and penning a report on the results of the expedition.20 Archer sailed to Virginia on the first fleet of ships under the command of Newport. After the party’s arrival in the Chesapeake Bay, he recorded many of the colony’s official proceedings, but devoted the majority of his writing to settlers’ interactions with coastal Native groups. While the company had known Indians would be nearby, “entreat[ing]” surrounding leaders turned out to be a far more complicated venture than the colony’s meager instructions had anticipated. Hostile groups immediately approached the first landing party, and on May 21, 1607, Christopher Newport led a discovery and diplomatic outreach up the James River with the hopes of establishing a peaceful rapport. Over the course of the exploration, the party encountered several smaller werowances, or leaders, affiliated with Powhatan. They exchanged goods and friendly words with those who came forward to greet them, giving them penny knives, scissors, bells, beads, and toys. Despite the English provenance of the gifts, the exchanges were largely conducted on Native terms. The Powhatans viewed these items as desirable not because they were easily dazzled by shiny things, as some observers would later conclude, but because foreign objects had value in the tributary networks that tied together the chiefdom.21 The embassy culminated in the meeting with the great Indian king. Afterward, Newport planted a cross inscribed with the name of James I, much to the confusion of his Indian guide.22
From the English point of view, Newport’s discovery accomplished a number of things. It signified the peaceful intentions of the English (at least in the short term), offering some measure of protection against the numerically superior Powhatans. It opened trading routes, which would be crucial to the colony’s survival. Yet the discovery was also an act of possession. By describing the journey in writing, the colony’s governors intended to announce the crown’s rights to the area, and to show that the Indians were not going to interfere.
As the colony’s chief recorder, Archer accompanied Newport on the discovery. Archer’s “Relatyon,” sent to London with Newport, was one of the first official reports on the colony’s progress. Based on Archer’s records, it is clear he took notes as the party went along. The “Relatyon” is organized by date, and includes information on weather and the distance the party traveled each day.23 Archer describes how Newport claims the river for the English crown by planting a cross and performing other acts of possession. However, Archer also combines the genre of the discovery with the story of the peaceful conclusion of a treaty with the king who rules the river. Archer’s text details the words, gestures, and gifts exchanged between sovereign parties and enumerates the binding agreements that result. Like the planting of the cross, these agreements support English possession by suggesting that Newport’s claims will not be troubled by Native challenges.
The “Relatyon” moves chronologically, charting the party’s progress up the James River. Along the way, they treaty with indigenous leaders of increasingly impressive rank. After departing from Jamestown, Newport and his party arrive at the first great Indian “kyngdome,” which Archer calls “Wynauk.” The people respond to the English arrival with “rejoycing.”24 The next day, a canoe approaches. Its passengers happily greet the English, and one of them, quickly taking to Archer’s pen and paper, offers to draw a map of the river and its kingdoms. The people bring mulberries, acorns, wheat, and beans to sustain the party on their travels. These preliminary acts of diplomacy lead to the narrative’s first encounter with a political leader. Journeying past several poor cottages, Newport and his men find a figure clothed in savage garb but also immediately recognizable as a king in state. “We found here a Wiroans (for so they call their kynges),” Archer writes, “who satt upon a matt of Reedes, with his people about him.” “[H]is name is Arahatec,” Archer goes on, “the Country Arahatecoh.”25 The image is exotic, hearkening to sixteenth-century texts of Near Eastern exploration, which depicted sultans sitting in lavish surrounds.26 But Archer’s description of Arahatec’s body also fixes the moment in a framework familiar to European readers. In audiences with diplomats, kings frequently retained a sitting or relaxed posture while subjects stood arrayed at attention. This was especially the case in diplomatic proceedings. While the mat is an exotic touch, Arahatec’s posture makes him the equivalent of a European king receiving visitors. Archer’s description authorizes the king to offer a treaty to the English. Greeting the newcomers to his kingdom, Arahatec “cause[s] [a mat] to be layd for Captain Newport” and immediately bestows upon Newport “his Crowne which was of Deares hayre dyed re[d].”27 While the English used copper crowns to deputize lesser authorities, Archer emphasizes that Arahatec gives Newport his own crown, thereby placing the English captain in the position of a superior.
Though implausibly free of any friction, Archer’s narrative corresponds in some particulars to what contemporary anthropologists have reconstructed of coastal diplomacy. As Helen C. Rountree has shown in her account of Powhatan foreign policy, the Powhatans used mats, crowns, and smoking as diplomatic implements.28 Smoking and sitting was a way of “breaking the ice,” or defusing tension before important negotiations. Given how numerically weak the English were, Arahatec likely understood the exchange as confirming Powhatan authority.
The treaty offer from Arahatec is only a prelude to an encounter with a more powerful king, whom Archer calls “Pawatah.” The “Pawatah” the party encountered was not, in fact, the paramount chief Powhatan. It was instead his son, Parahunt, whom Newport and Archer misidentified as Powhatan.29 As Newport and his party banquet and smoke with Arahatec, they are interrupted by “Newes … that the greate kyng Powatah was come.” As in his description of Arahatec’s riverside court, Archer carefully choreographs the king’s appearance. When the great chief appears, Archer writes, “[the Indians] all rose of their mattes (save the kyng Arahatec); separated themselves aparte in fashion of a Guard, and with a long shout they saluted him.” Arahatec’s subjects recognize his authority, standing on his arrival and shouting, while Arahatec remains seated, preserving his status as a king. For their part, the newcomers follow this protocol. The English, Archer writes, “saluted [the great king] with silence sitting still on our mattes, our Captaine in the myddest.”30 Like Arahatec, Newport sits in the middle of his subjects, marking him as a sovereign in the presence of other princely powers. But crucially missing in the English response is the spontaneous standing that had accompanied the chief’s welcome by Arahatec’s subjects. The English remain seated, identifying them as superiors to the Indians. Through an intricate rendering of gesture and posture during treaty negotiations, Archer divides Natives into subjects and kings, while the English, seated confidently on their mats, collectively embody the crown and its power.
Soliciting a treaty agreement from the more powerful sachem proves tricky. While Arahatec gives Newport his crown, no such act of welcome is forthcoming from the paramount Indian. Indeed, far from accepting English power, the king issues a mandate, commanding the English to travel no farther. Intimidated, Newport backs down. That Archer would portray an Indian leader giving commands to Newport—and Newport obeying them—is somewhat surprising, given his concern with establishing the legal rights of the English crown. Indeed, the moment is difficult to explain if one assumes that English colonial writers always selectively edited Native treaties to suit their agenda. Archer’s intended audience was thousands of miles away, and he could have omitted the incident altogether. That he did not do so sheds light on the role that Native diplomacy played in transatlantic correspondence. As I will detail later in this chapter, the first Jamestown government was composed of figures with many different agendas. Even before the discovery of the river, the colony’s government had seen considerable controversy. Newport had detained John Smith on the charge of attempting to usurp the company’s authority, releasing him a short while later.