The whole country rang with the wonderful news that the Englishman could raise the dead, and henceforth there was, during his administration, no trouble from the Indians. They frequently brought presents to the colonists of game and fruits, and no doubt Pocahontas visited them as of yore. It is expressly stated that she came as freely to the fort as to her father's house.
Another party was soon sent into the interior to the country of the Mangoags, in search of Raleigh's lost colony, and returned with "no newes except that they were all dead." Sicklemore, who had been despatched to Chowanock, returned after a similar fruitless search. He found the Chowan River not large, the country overgrown with pines. As to the "pemminaw," the silk grass growing like hemp, there was but little, only a few tufts here and there. Queen Anne was not yet to have a gown of Virginia grass-linen. Elizabeth's robe had been woven from North Carolina grass, and was probably a present from Sir Walter Raleigh.
A marginal note in Purchas's "His Pilgrimes" distinctly states that Powhatan confessed he had been cognizant of the massacre of Raleigh's men: also that the Indian king had in his treasure-house articles that had belonged to them. Strachey, writing in 1610-1611, asserted that Powhatan himself was their murderer. Expeditions were sent out, for several years, in search of them. No clew was ever found to their fate. Indians are good keepers of secrets, as was proven by the great massacre of 1622.
In March, 1609, a few months only remained of Smith's residence in Virginia. Had he known them to be his last, he could not have worked with more energy and efficiency. He "dug a well of most excellent sweet water," he built block-houses in various places--one at Hog Island to protect his fast-growing herd there. He built the "fort for retreat neere a convenient river, easie to be defended, and hard to be assalted," around which in the next century clustered the "Legends of the Stone House." But scarcity of food constrained him to abandon the work of defence and address himself to the ever recurring struggle for bread. There were two hundred men behind the palisades, and only thirty who were willing to work. He issued a stern threat that every idler would be sent across the river to shift for himself. No empty porringer would be filled from the common kettle unless the owner were sick, or had earned his meal. He was beset with disloyal, unmanly complainers, who were clamorous that the tools, arms, nay, the very houses should be bartered for corn. Newport had brought them a terrible, warlike colony of rats, "thousands on thousands," which destroyed all the contents of his casks of grain, and baffled the colonists' efforts to exterminate them. It was supposed that Newport introduced them into Virginia--they had come originally to England from the "poisonous East"--but in the early descriptions of the dress of a savage he is represented as clothing himself with skins, and then adorning his garment with the dead hand of an enemy or paw of a beast, while a dead rat hung from his ear, through which the tail was thrust. This rat was, however, evidently scarce--a rare gem--and not in common use for an ear-ring like a living green and yellow serpent. I think we shall have to thank Captain Newport for our rats, as we thank England for our colonists, and the Dutch for the negroes, who arrived in 1619.