If anyone in American history has the honor of being called the discoverer of New England, it is Captain John Smith. That’s right—John Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown, the savior of the infant colony of the Virginia Company, the friend of Pocahontas; Smith the braggart, the conqueror, the fighter, the mariner, the one never to give up, never to give in. Captain John Smith was the most important founder and discoverer of New England.
Smith’s Description of New England and Map of New England, published in 1616, based on a short voyage along the coast in the summer of 1614, stirred interest in England to colonize the land. He christened the northeastern coast based on his voyage from Maine to Cape Cod. Smith’s designation, New England, is 400 years old.
Smith did not found a colony, but he wanted to, and wrote book after book describing, offering his services, promoting the land and its resources. Not a gifted writer, nevertheless his many accounts of New England, based on experiences and observations, inspired by his own interest and England’s interest, made his writing passionate, witty, forceful—and people such as the Puritans of England took notice. The Pilgrims of the Mayflower in 1620 used Smith’s Description and Map to make their way to America. John Winthrop, who led the Puritans to Massachusetts in 1630, knew Smith’s work. And so did many others.
Smith had taken the time in his Description of New England to propose new, English names to replace the indigenous names of rivers, bays, islands, and points along the coast. The young Prince Charles took a liking to Smith and his names, and many were changed. The great river flowing between Boston and Cambridge, for example, named for the prince, was proposed by Smith.
Smith trained himself to be a mariner, though he was a landsman by birth and occupation. He learned how to navigate barks, pinnaces, and shallops, and sailed a small shallop, accompanied by eight other sailors, from Monhegan Island south to Cape Cod. He explored Penobscot Bay, sailing into the mouth of the river; he explored the many indentations of the Maine coast—the rivers, bays, islands, peninsulas. He explored the Kennebec River to the fall line. He made note of the Piscataqua River, and explored the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine, naming them for himself—Smith’s Isles.
Smith explored the mouth of the Merrimack River, and Plum Island, as well as Cape Ann, and what became Gloucester. He saw Salem Harbor and explored Boston Harbor long before Massachusetts Bay was changed and filled in, creating South Boston and East Boston, and the land presently occupied by Logan International Airport. Smith sailed along the coast of Massachusetts, declaring this area to be the paradise of New England. He entered Plymouth Harbor, and had a run-in with the local Patuxet Indians; although blood was shed, the English and Indians quickly befriended each other. Smith sailed along Cape Cod, naming the peninsula for the King, Cape James, though sailors would have none of it, and retained the name given the long sandy cape by Smith’s friend Bartholomew Gosnold.
Smith appears to have had a guide on his voyage along the coast: a Patuxet Indian who had spent time in England named Tisquantum—today people call him Squanto. Tisquantum accompanied Smith on the promise that the Englishman would allow him to remain in his native land in return for his services as a guide and interpreter. Tisquantum fulfilled his half of the bargain, and so did Smith, leaving Tisquantum at Cape Cod.
Smith returned to England at the end of August, 1614, and quickly tried to get the backing of wealthy merchants to ship out again with the intention of founding a fishing colony. But on the way, in the spring of 1615, he was halted by French pirates, and made a prisoner aboard a French corsair. During his captivity he penned the Description of New England. The indefatigable Smith contrived to escape, almost drowned in a storm, but washed up on a French beach near the Charente River and the city of Rochelle. He made his way back to England, and had his Description and Map of New England published.
Ill-fortune and happenstance guaranteed that Smith would never return aboard a ship spying the islands and bold cliffs of America in the distance. But in his mind, vicariously, Smith returned again and again to wander the sandy shores, fish the bays and rivers, meet and trade with the indigenous peoples, and spy the inland peaks. A keen observer of humans and nature and ad hoc scientist—a geographer, historian, cartographer, ethnographer, mineralogist, zoologist, botanist—Smith was the first historian of New England.
New England, of course, was inhabited when Smith sailed the coast; Algonquian people had resided in the region for thousands of years. Smith was a discoverer only for the English, who in possessing what was not their’s sought to name it, map it, describe it, settle it, conquer it. Smith was a conqueror and colonizer for the English, and a commissioner as well: he believed fully that it was the responsibility of the English—of all Christians—to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus of Nazareth, as recorded in the New Testament, to make disciples of all nations. John Smith realized that it was problematic what right the English had to possess and rename the indigenous lands of America, but he believed that, ultimately, it was God’s will that the English, and John Smith, bring Christianity to these people of New England.
My new book, published by University Press of New England, The Sea Mark: Captain John Smith’s Voyage to New England, is a full narrative account of Smith’s experiences in and about New England.
The American Plutarch 