Newport set sail once more for England, in December
1608. He took with him a letter written by Smith pleading
with the directors of the Virginia Company to change the
way they thought about the colony. There was no possibility
of a get-rich-quick exploitation of Virginia along the lines of
Mexico and Peru. There were no gold or precious metals,
and the indigenous people could not be forced to work or
provide food. Smith realized that if there were going to be a
viable colony, it was the colonists who would have to work.
He therefore pleaded with the directors to send the right
sort of people: “When you send againe I entreat you rather
to send some thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners,
fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees,
roots, well provided, then a thousand of such as we have.”
Smith did not want any more useless goldsmiths. Once
more Jamestown survived only because of his
resourcefulness. He managed to cajole and bully local
indigenous groups to trade with him, and when they
wouldn’t, he took what he could. Back in the settlement,
Smith was completely in charge and imposed the rule that
“he that will not worke shall not eat.” Jamestown survived a
second winter.
The Virginia Company was intended to be a
moneymaking enterprise, and after two disastrous years,
there was no whiff of profit. The directors of the company
decided that they needed a new model of governance,
replacing the ruling council with a single governor. The first
man appointed to this position was Sir Thomas Gates.
Heeding some aspects of Smith’s warning, the company
realized that they had to try something new. This realization
was driven home by the events of the winter of 1609/1610
—the so-called “starving time.” The new mode of
governance left no room for Smith, who, disgruntled,
returned to England in the autumn of 1609. Without his
resourcefulness, and with Wahunsunacock throttling the
food supply, the colonists in Jamestown perished. Of the
five hundred who entered the winter, only sixty were alive by
March. The situation was so desperate that they resorted to
cannibalism.
The “something new” that was imposed on the colony by
Gates and his deputy, Sir Thomas Dale, was a work
regime of draconian severity for English settlers—though