Evening Star Newspaper, May 24, 1925, Page 71

ILLUSTRATED FEATURES Part 5—8 Pages MAGAZINE SECTION he Sunday St WASHINGTON, D. C SUNDAY MORNING, MAY 4, 1925. Visit to Washington’s Site Linked With Potomac Discovery BY DONALD AL UNE 16 ANDER CRAIC an uncelebrated an niversary in the history of the Potoms River and the region bordering upon it, but it is the most important date of them | all. Before June 16, 1608, the history | of this entire portion of the New World was dim and uncertain. The ure is scarcely discernible at all After that date the sun rose steadily. Each year the Potomac and the sreat city that has arisen on its| banks have figured more prominently | in world events. Who can say the| Potomac will not some day become more famous among historic rivers than the Nile the Tiber the Thames? The story of that history on the Potomac can never »se its romantic interes In its main outling it has been told many times. But it may be interestins, another almost forgotten anni rolls around, to call au less known fa that shed new on the history of that period | Toward the middle of June 307 Years ago a little band of discouraged | adventurers tossed in a crazy bark on the troubled waters of ('hes:\r\e&ke‘ Bay not far from the mouth of the | Patapsco River. They had come | northward along the unknown ern shore, and but lately had crossed | over to the equally unknown western | side of the bay in ch of fresh| water to drink paked Their davs of torture under Wind and waves had little cra% undl their from ning the one tattered sail clung only by the help of ) from the shirts off their sun rned ba | They had started out gayly enough on June 2, 1608, from Jamestown, ( to perform a voyage of discovery the Bay of Chesapeake. Their of scarcely more than two tons bur- | den had seemed large enough then ln,: houd all 15 of them, including 6| gentlemen, who were as yet only im- | perfectly hardened to life in the| wilderness, 7 soldiers, toughened | by many a campaign and much hard | labor, a good doctor of physicke, and | their captain, who was a host in | himself. 3ut 12 days in an open barge { no shelter from the freak eather and with rotten bread to eat and fre- | quent suffering from thirst, were | enough to cool the ardor of the six | gallants and even to make the sol- | diers wonder what this advemurs{ would come to, especially as there seemed to be no end to the great bay. | So the gallants began to importune | the captain to let them cease rowing | and sailing to the north and turn| back to the south, whence they had come. But their captain was a stern, hard-willed man, albeit a tactful and a crafty commander. He was the son of an English farmer and he bore | the homely name of John Smith. But he had been a soldier-adventurer in Kurope and Asia since he was 15| vears of age and now he was turned | * % & % | OMETHING of a_ blusterer at| times, who had an uncanny way| of getting what he went after, Capt. | John Smith had lately found himself turned into a colonist, explorer and a patriot, who determined to main tain the English flag in that part of the New World against any effort of Spaniards to make good their claim Capt. Smith fixed a searching gaze on his motley crew, when the gentle- men began to murmur. He saw they were all sun-scorched, dejected and bedraggled. But fire came into his eves. ot far-off dawn of east- their little ins still hurt 1 hot June buffeted ozrs to a store from sun thei ached “Their shaky patches | stra with I ntlemen, if vou would remem- ber the memorable history of Sir Ralph Lane,” he began—and then he told them, in quick. impatient words how those other English colon few years before, at Roanoke Island, who had unfortunately failed to hold the first English footing in the New World, had urged their leader not to turn back from his vovage of explora- | tion so long as they had one dog left to eat and sassafras leaves with which to boil it. | “Then what a shame it would be for you—that have been so suspicious of my tenderness—to force me to re fur continued Capt. Smith, wax ing more vehement as he proceeded, with so much provision as we have -and_scarce able to where we | have been, nor vet heard of that we were'sent to seek?” | Every one of them he challenged to say that he had not shared the worst hardships of the voyage. He ridiculed their fear that they would be swal- lowed up in those unknown water and called it childish. Besides, he in-| sisted, it would be just as dangerous | to return as to go ahead. | “Regain, therefore, ~your old spirits,” he urged them, with a fine | display of his own high resolve, “for | veturn T will not, if God please, till| 1 ve seen the Mas: omeks, found | Patawomek, or the head of this water conceive to be endless.” monished, bullied against their wills; s choose to consider it—the 14 Y obeved their captain. For two or| three days more they worked the little hoat farther northward along the western shore of Chesapeake Bav They had reached a point some miles north of the Patapsco River when another spell of adverse weather v encountered and several of the crew tell sick Then Capt. John Smith, who had re- fused to listen to the weak com- plaints of the faint-hearted, vielded to the pleadings of the sick. He turned the bow of the barge to the South. ‘And then, at last, as if the elements had merely been waiting for some great event, the weather cleared. The men recovered from their illness. multaneously the clouds rolled away | from their mental vision. (m(’\".ml\rl‘; they were care-free explorers in :l"‘ unknown land—impelled by that age- | old desire to behold what no man—at j least no white man—had ever beheld before—and thrilled by the romance and adventure of it all. PR A LMOST immediately they were re- warded for all they had under- gone. They came to the wide mouth of a deep and beautiful river, which en- tered the bay from the west. With ex- pressions of delight they turned their boat into the great estuary of a stream that was destined to engrave its name indelibly on the pages of the world's history. They River. The date was June 16, 1608. It will aiways be remembered as the day \ipon which the curtain of history rose completely on the Potomac. A It is fitting to quote John Smith's own words in recording this impor- tant event. In his General History of Virginia, New England and the Sum- mer Isles, published in 1612 and re- published in a revised form in 1624, he begins the story of the discovery as folows: “The 16 of June we fel with the river Patawomeck. Feare being gone, and our. men recovered, wee were all © Thus a snaded per u | had discovered the Potomac How Capt. John Smith and 14 Discouraged Adventurers Lifted the Curtain of History on the Famous River and the Region Bordering Upon It More Than Three Hundred Years Ago—Presenting Some Important Facts That Shed New Light on a Dimly Understood Period of Local History and Indicate That Smith Visited Various Places Hereabout. . - £ OF Saly Bffi _flhw thy Spiritand w sk Glor, yi Braffe without; but gakf withén. . Sethou are 4 contemporar Captlain John sooun afler the Discover Potomacd River Phrotog ‘(T hefs are the Lintes that fhew thy Face; Thar fhew thy Grace and glar Ty Faire-Difcoueries and Fowle~ Overthrowes eS,much CivillZd by the but thofe. 5 brighter Eccj: picture of miflu,pubhsheol y of the % ; raph of Caplain John Smiths Map meluding the Potomac River, Maryland a District of Columbia . (much reducect) contented to take some paines to knowne the name of this 9 mile broad river.” Whether the Indians told him that the river's name was Patawomek— which Smith and other writers spell in various ways and which has finally settled down in comparatively recent vears to Potomac—is not known for certain. There was on the river a tribe of Indians which he calls Patawo- meks, and the principal village on the river bore the same name. The Great King of Patawomek figures frequently in Smith’s accounts and the chronicles of other early colonial writers. Pre- sumably Smith took the name of this tribe or village, and applied it to the river, as he did in other in- stances. In any event it was he who first gave the river the name it bears. But, while the chief credit for dis- covering the Potomac River undoubt- edly belongs to Capt. John Smith and has been accorded to him by history, others had a part in it. True, some of the less strong-minded and strong- bodied men in his crew might have gone back to Jamestown without ever exploring the river if it had not been for Smith, but certain it is that some of his hardy soldiers stood by him through the period of stress, and it is probable that every member of the crew contributed to the labors and hardship that made the discovery possible. 1t is a duty and a pleasure to record the names of these men. Capt. Smith, always mindful of his‘men, has left us a complete list of them, as follows: Ralph Morton, Thomas Momford, Wil- liam Cantrill, Richard Fetherstone, James Bourne and Michael Sickle- more, gentlemen: Anas’ Todkill, Rob- ert Small, James Watkins, John Powell, soldiers; James Read, black- Y smith; Richard Keale, fishmonger, and Jonas Profit, fisher, these last three being also classed as soldiers. Capt. Smith left a highly interesting account in Book V of his history of this first voyage of Englishmen on the Potomac River—the first voyage of any white man, so far as definite written history goes, although there is circumstantial evidence that the Spaniards had discovered and forgot- ten the Potomac Riyer some 40 years before that time. In the second book of his history Capt. Smith also printed a summary of his discoveries in the Chesapeake, and gave a list of the Indian village then existing on both sides of the Po- tomac, with a few more descriptive details. He also published a remark- able map of the region now compri: ing Virginia, Maryland and the Dis- trict of Columbia, including a map of the Potomac River. That map is still the marvel of cartographers and his- torians on account of its geographical accuracy. It stood unsurpassed for 58 years, although several other maps were made in the meantime. Parenthetically, I may say here that if the National Geographic Society should ever want a patron saint, it could find him in this son of an Eng- lish farmer—the first man speaking the English language Who Is entitled to the names of explorer, historian, cartographer and geographer of the New World, in the truest acceptation of those terms. ‘What could be more fitting than that this great soclety for the advance- ment of the knowledge of the earth and its peoples should honor John stands the Capital of the United States of America, home of the society? Nor is this the only claim of John Smith to fame as a geographer. He explored, described _and mapped the New England Coa$t before the arrival of the Pilgrims. Curiously enough, modern historians of the Potomac region have based their accounts exclusively on the well know Smith's distory of Virginia,” and on a rather superficial examination of | his map. But very important details of his exploration of the Potomac are hidden in other portions of his history. Apparently they have been overlooked | heretofore, which is unfortunate, for they help to clear up the confusion and vagueness that have characterized most writings on this period of the Po- tomac’s history. These new facts—new only in the sense that they have been overlooked by more recent historians—indicate that Smith visited the shores of the Potomac in December, 1607. In that fact may be found a partial explana- tion of the determination of Smith in June, 1608, to ‘‘discover’ to detract from the importance of the first voyage on the river, which be- gan on June 10 of that year, when the | mouth of the river may be said to have been formally and certainly dis- covered. These newly considered facts also seem to prove conclusively that Smith sailed up the Potomac as far as the site of Washington, a question muc] debated on little evidence for many years past. The recorded history of the Poto- Smith, the man who discovered, first | mac really begins with the capture described and first mapped the Poto- mac River, on whose banks today of Smith by the Indians about the mrddle of December, 1607, at the be- passages in Books 1I and V of | | the river . ! again, although it can scarcely be said P — Mayp of the lower _Po’comé.c Rivey, distrivution of Indiaw showing i ’ implements uwca,rinegt,. ginning of the first Winter of the Jamestown colonists in the New World. He was captured in Virginia while exploring the headwaters of the Chickahominy River, a tributary of the James. The Indians held him captive until January s, 1608, and it was on this occasion that Poca- hontas saved his life by taking his head in her arms when Powhatan’s braves were about to beat his brains out with clubs. Prior to this romantic eplsode, the Indians led thelr captive from one | river | an whether he saw the main river or viewed it from one of the inlets, is not certain from the passage quoted; and he mentions this trip nowhere else in his works. But the village of Onaw- manient furnishes a clue. From its location on his map and its spelling, Onawmanient has been iden- tified with Nomini, the name of a small bay and a creek on the Virginia side of the Potomac, about 30 miles from its mouth. Smith probably ask- ed the Indians for the names of the tribes, villages and rivers he visited and then wrote them down, as they sounded to him, in the English lan- guage. Many of the names have been retained in the original spelling; oth- have been slizhtly changed or con- tracted, svllables being dropped off at | the beginning or end, or at both ends. The word O anient is one of the most interesting examples on rec- ord of this sort of contraction. The word was probably pronounced in the first instance with an accent on the second syllable, “naw,” and on the next to last syliable Then in the course of time the first and last sylla- bles were lost or dropped for the sake .(‘con\flnrnrp and the ward became awmani,” spelled today “Nomint.” iven if Smith did not paddle out in Indian canoe on the waters of the main river at this point, or visit its shores, he very likely obtained a view of its €al expanse from the shores of tinuni between Christmas and New Year's day in 1607. It is evident from Smith's det rmination later to explore the Potomac that the made a deep impression on him | at that time. | { - 57 EY (o s V4 | by Indians making, arrowheads awodl stowe haichets on site of Washington before Discoveyy, Srom Plasier group macle by American Buveau of Ethnoloqy village to another to show him off to their neighbors They had in- tended to kill him immediately, but he aroused their curiosity by show- ing them a small compass and telling them the world was round. They marveled still more when he sent several of them to Jamestown with “a paper that could speak,” and had certain articles enumerated in his note sent to him. Such a wonderful being was well worth exhibiting to neighboring tribe: Capt. Smith, writing in the third person in his history, says: “They led him to the Youthtanunds, the Mattapanients, the Pyankatanks, the Nantaughtacunds and the Onaw- manients upon the rivers Rapa- hanock and Patawomek; over all those rivers and back agafne by divers other severell Nations, to the Kings habitation at ~Pamaunkee, where they entertained him with most strange and fearful conjura- tions.” “As if neare led to hell, Amongst the Devils to dwell.” | * X Xk Xk SINCE it was about January 5 that they arrived at the seat of the | Powhatan, head chief of all the Vir-| ginia tribes, on what is now the York River, it was probably about Christ. mas or between then and New Year's | north as | cause of the | River, | south, he mak day that Smith first saw the Potomac River. Whether he crossed it, { During his captivity Smith had a long talk with the Powhatan, who was chieftain of the allied tribes on the Virginia of the Potomac as far n A8 Little Falls, or nearly that [.:n' »\fl»\ eral times in their convers: tion reference is made to the Poto- mac River and the tribe of Potomac Indians. The Powhatan described “a mighty nation, called Pocoughtronack, a flerce nation that did eat men and arred with the people of Mayaonoer and Pataromerke,” the latter name eing undoubted] another one of Smith’s many ways of spelling P: tawomek, now Potomac In his description of Virginia Smith ¥s that bevond the mountains, “from whence is the head of the river the savages report that enemies, the Massawo- live upon a salt walter lake, Smith thinks is some part of or an arm of the Pacific sid mortal Canada Ocean. These references explain more fully why Smith said in his speech to his discouraged crew on Chesapeake Bay, just before they found the mouth of the Potomac River, that he was not going to return until he found Pa- tawomek and the Massawomekes. He had apparently made up h mind t no exploration of that reg would be worth anything that d not result in knowledge of them importance which both the village of the Patawomekes *and their enemies the Massawomekes held {in the eves of the Powhatan and his fellow countrymen. It is now known that the Massawomekes were the Ir quois, whose headquarters were on the Great Lakes, Frxy (COMING now to Smith's discovery of the mouth of the Potomac River, we find that they sailed up the river's estuary for 30 miles and then were conducted by two savages up a “little baved creek” toward Onaw- manient, where they nearly had a | fatal encounter with the Indians, but finally succeeded in pacifying them. Thus the first place that Smith vis ited in the Potomac was Nomini Bay and Creek. Smith says they landed there and in the end were kindly used the natives. Tn his familiar account of his voy- age up the Potomac Smith gives no clue to the identity of the two In- dians who met him in canoes. But in his account of a second voyage of dis- covery on the Chesapeake, which be- e same year, after overy of the head of the bay and telling of the return to the mouth of the Rappghannock next to the Potomae on the this highly important statement “Here we encountered eur old friend Mosco, a lus age of Wigh cocomoco, upon the river Patawomek. We supposed him some French mans sonne, because he had a thicke black bush beard, and the savages seldom have any at all, of which he was not a little proud, to see so many of his countrymen “Wood and water would fetch s, and guide us any whether, nay, ause divers of his countrymen helpe us to toe against winde or tyde from place to place till we came to Pata- womek; there he rested till we returned from the head of the river, and occa- sioned our conduct to the mine we supposed Antimony.’ The second part of this statement undoubtedly refers to his voyage up the Potomac the month before, when he visited the village of Patawomek and the supposed Antimony mine. Reference to Mosco as an “old friend” clearly indicates that it was on that former vovage that they first met him. Historians have apparently overlooked the fact, hidden in this part of Smith's history, that he says explicitly that he visited the head of the Potomiac River—that is to say, the head of navigation. This seems to set- tle the controversy over his visit to the site of Washington by establish- ing the fact that he not only came that far, but probably went as far as a boat could go, namely, to the foot of Little Falls, about 3 miles above Georgetown Yet many writers have denled that there is any evidence that Smith as- cended as high as the site of Wash ington. Smith said, in his well known account of the voyage, that he went “as high as we could with the bote.” But skeptical writers have explained that as a_possible reference to a side trip up the Occoquon or some other small stream flowing into the main river. They could not have known of Mosco. But the evidence is cumulative in favor of the view that he came to the head of navigation. The Indian village highest up the river on the Maryland side, both on his map and in the list given in his history, is Na- cotchtanke. This name appears in his own works and other colonial writings variously as Nacastine, Ne- cost, Anacostine and finally we have it in the Latinized form—thanks to the good Jesuit fathers of Maryland-— as Anacostia. Modern students of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Smithsonjan Institution, have identi- fied Nacotchtanke with the present Anacostia, a part of the City of Wash- ington, lying on the eastern side of the Anacostia River, or Eastern Branch of the, Potomac. A ik TILL farther up the main river on the Virginia side Smith locates on his map the village of Namerough- quena, which must have been oppo- site Washington near the end of the Highway Bridge. Considerably above this last mentioned village, Smith has drawn, among representations of hills, (Continued on Second Page.) he