Captain John Smith: American Hero

On this episode of Our American Stories, many people know John Smith as the man who was saved by Pocahontas. What you may not know is that he led a life full of adventure.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories and the story
of Captain John Smith. Let's return to Julianna Rodgers.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
They take John into the biggest longhouse and it's estimated
to be about the size of half a football field.
And as they walk in, as John's eyes adjust to
the darkness, he realizes it's filled with all of the
leaders from all the different tribes he had just visited
on his journey too. We're a wokamoko and all of

(00:40):
the leaders are painted red from the shoulders up, and
when he enters, they all give a loud whoop. And
the very first question Chief Powaton asks is why are
you here and when are you leaving? Meaning Jamestown, And
John immediately lies because he knows his face is in
this man's hands. He says, I went from a country

(01:02):
called England, and we're going to build a colony here
and spread across the land. You know, Chief Powaton is
going to have him killed. So he lies and says,
a Spanish ship chased us here. We are here until
Captain Newport comes back, and then he will take us
back to England. So Chief Powaton seems satisfied with that answer,

(01:24):
and John thinks it's going pretty well when suddenly Chief
Powatin gives an order. Two of his men take John.
They force him to kneel down and lay his head
across a huge boulder in the center of the room,
and they raised their clubs about to lower them and
smash his head. There's nothing John can do again, certain death,
so he closes his eyes and prepares for the strike.

(01:47):
And that's when he hears a small voice speaking quickly
in Algonquin, and he realizes it's the chief's daughter, Pocahontas,
and she's asking her father to spare John Smith's life,
and Chief Poughton says no, but she keeps talking quickly,
and she's afraid she's not going to convince him by
the time he gives the order to have John killed.

(02:08):
So she rushes over and lays her head on top
of his, knowing full well that they will not hurt her. Now,
Disney has transformed this into a romance, but we know
that that was not true. Pocahontas was probably ten or
eleven years old. More than likely they were similar. They

(02:28):
were both brave and bold and strong and stood up
for what they believed in. There probably was a mutual
respect as the time went on, but at this time
it was unlikely so was he arrived back at Jamestown.
There were a few men that were not happy to
see him, Wingfield being one of them. Wingfield and some

(02:49):
of his friends were tired of being at Jamestown. They
wanted to go home. They were tired of these brutal conditions.
But they knew John would never let them abandon Jamestown.
So they decided they needed to get rid of John.
So they said, the men that were with you on
the expedition were your responsibility, and they were killed, So
that's on you. You need to be punished, and the

(03:12):
punishment is death. So the very next morning they walked
John up to be hanged at the gallows. As they're
about to put the noose around his neck, someone yells
ship on the horizon and it's Captain Newport. He had
returned again and to save John Smith's life yet again.
So during the summer of sixteen oh eight, John led

(03:32):
an expedition of the Chesapeake Bay. So he's exploring its tributaries.
He's looking for that Northwest passage, going up every tributary
hoping it will go through along the way, he made
a map, a map so detailed of the Chesapeake Bay
that it was used for over three hundred years. John
was a very skilled map maker. In fact, he might

(03:52):
have been known throughout history for his maps had he
not done all of these other things. One thing that
I never understood, and they never seem to have fishing
gear with them. So as they're exploring up these tributaries,
they are hungry and tired, and they notice there's a
school of fish below them, and they don't have any
fishing gear with them. But John takes his sword and

(04:13):
stabs it down into the water, and as he lifts
his sword, there's a fish. So they all take their
swords and start stabbing the water. When John feels a
sharp pain in his arm and he realizes that one
of the fish he had caught on his sword is
a stingray, and it just lashed its tail out and
stung them on the arm, and his arm is now
red and swollen, and in the poisonous traveling up his

(04:36):
arm toward his shoulder, becoming more red and swollen, and
he realizes it's eventually going to travel all the way
to his heart and kill him. So still in charge,
he orders the men to dig his grave, and as
they are digging his grave, the doctor on board puts
some medicine on his arm and it heals it. So
John survived and ate the stingray for dinner. So he

(04:59):
gets back to Jamestown and it's a little bit different
this time because the men that were with him on
this journey had grown to trust him so much that
he John Smith was now voted president of Jamestown. So
during this time, it kind of looked like a campground
up until this point, and John wanted it to look

(05:19):
more like a settlement. So all of those gentlemen in
Jamestown didn't do any hard labor. So at this point
there were about thirty men who were commoners and they
worked to support and feed over two hundred men at Jamestown.
So John made a rule that said he who will
not work shall not eat, and as you can imagine,

(05:42):
the gentlemen were furious they never had to do hard
physical labor. But John worked right alongside them and said, hey,
we all need to pitch in if this is going
to work. So it's really taking shape under John's leadership.
So in September sixteen oh nine, spark from a flipmock
gun fell onto his gunpowder pouch and exploded, and he

(06:05):
was in so much pain. He was in bad shape.
There was actually a ship leaving within a day or two,
and so he asked the captain if he could go
on board, And so just a few days later, on
October fourth, sixteen oh nine, John Smith left Virginia. He
would spend the rest of his life dreaming of this place,
riding about this place, and trying to get back. So

(06:27):
John returned to England, and he took him a few months,
but he got better. He spent the next several years
writing books about Virginia about his experience. He was quite
obsessed with it, and he really wanted to return. But
in sixteen fourteen he was hired to go in a
fishing expedition off the coast of Massachusetts and Maine, and

(06:48):
he made a detailed map of the area and he
referred to the area as New England, which we still
refer to it as New England today. Well, John decided
he didn't need the Virginia Company. He would arrange his
own trip and he would go to New England and
establish a settlement there. So he worked hard to organize it.
He raised the funds, He got supporters and crew and

(07:08):
colonists and money. He had everything he needed and they
finally set sail in sixteen fifteen. But it wasn't long
before four French pirate ships chase them. They try to
outrun them, it doesn't work, so Captain Smith goes on
board their ship. He's going to talk his way out
of this situation yet again. His crew they're done with this,

(07:31):
so they take off without him and they leave him
on the pirate ship. So he's on that pirate ship
for several weeks. And during that time what does he do.
He writes a book. He writes a book about New England,
and he escapes during a storm. He gets on a
small boat and the pirate ship actually sinks, but he

(07:52):
escapes by quickly bailing the water out of this small boat.
He finds a small bit of land. Some hunters find
him and they bring him to safety, and he published
that book. It was called a Description of New England.
It's actually the book that the Pilgrims used to go
to Plymouth. He left Virginia in sixteen oh nine and

(08:15):
he spent the next twenty two years trying to get
back and also writing about it, promoting it to others,
encouraging them to go. Shortly after that, he died in
sixteen thirty one at the age of fifty one. John
Smith wrote a book called The Description of New England,
and in it he wrote and argued and believed that

(08:37):
English Americans had a unique opportunity to create their own destiny,
unlike the workers in England who were bound by the
rigid class system. Here's what John wrote here. Every man
may be master and owner of his own labor and
land if he have nothing but his hands. He may
set up this trade and by industry quickly grow rich

(09:00):
if he have but the taste of virtue and ambition.
What to such a mind can be more pleasant than
planting and building a foundation for his prosperity by God's
blessing and his own industry, without prejudice to any And
that's just what America became a place where every person
determines his or her own future for their American dream

(09:22):
is a reality and.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
A terrific job on the production, the editing, and the
storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks
to Julianna Rogers. He's the author of Captain John Smith,
American hero. And you can get the book at Amazon
dot com. And my goodness, the number of times this
man escapes certain death early in his life, sold as

(09:47):
a slave, almost dies in battle, almost dies jousting, almost
dies well, almost dies at the hand of his fellow sailors,
and in the end almost dies at the hands of Indiana,
And of course that stingray two and in the end
dies well the way the rest of us do in
the end of natural causes. But John Smith's life, well,

(10:11):
it started the American life in many ways. By the way,
if you ever get a chance, go to Jamestown and
visit it, and start there, and then head west, and
from there go to Williamsburg and visit William and Mary
and the colonial Williamsburg. From there go to Charlottesville and
visit Monticello, then to Madison and Montpellier and Montpellier, and

(10:32):
then straight up an hour and a half north to
Washington's home in Mount Vernon, very close to Washington, d C.
There's something special about the state of Virginia in American history,
the story of Captain John Smith. Here on our American
Stories