EARLY SETTLEMENT AND THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 43Early English attempts to settle the Chesapeake were
risky affairs. The failures at Roanoke, followed by the
desperation at Jamestown, chastened investors and
dampened the enthusiasm of potential emigrants.
One of the leaders of the Jamestown colony, Captain
John Smith, returned to England in 1609 with a mixed
record of success, and for a time actually distanced
himself from the entire enterprise in Virginia.
Yet the commercial lure of the New World
remained. In 1614 Smith joined a whaling voyage
in search of gold and copper mines along the
northeastern coast of America. While the sailors found
neither mines nor whales, the experience convinced
Smith of the potential for settlement in what was then
referred to by some as “North Virginia,” the region
stretching from the Hudson River to Penobscot Bay.
More specifically, he wondered whether he could
market this forbidding and frozen coast as a hospitable
emigrant destination and a worthwhile investment.
Back home in England, Smith began to brand
the region in familiar and inviting terms. There was
already a New Spain and a New France, so Smith
designated this “New England.” He then asked the
heir to the throne, Prince Charles, to propose English
place names to replace the indigenous ones. Through
naming and mapping, Smith took the first step in
creating a regional identity that endures to this day,
woven through not just the geography of New
England but also its cultural landscapes.
Smith’s map announced that regional coherence.
His portrait looms over a coastline dotted with English
names, depicting an established and known landscape
when in fact no English settlements existed at all. Of
these names, the Charles River and Cape Ann(a) were
among the few that endured, a reminder of just how
fragile this venture really was. An English flotilla at
right suggests that the emigration is underway, while
the absence of natives frames the land as vacant. Along
with Smith’s large portrait and the royal coat of arms,
the map conveys settlement as a sure bet. His map
invited Englishmen to see this land as an extension of
their own and one that they could similarly own.
Smith wrote a pamphlet to accompany the map
that similarly extolled the commercial potential of
THE INVENTION OF NEW ENGLAND
John Smith, “New England,” 1616 “New England”: fish and game would sustain the
colonists, and ideal growing conditions welcomed
those with energy but little money. Smith rushed
his pamphlet and map to print by June 1616 to
capitalize on the unexpected visit of Pocahontas
to England. The map and the pamphlet circulated
widely, advertising the colony as both a destination
and an investment. A year later, a smallpox epidemic,
most likely introduced by European traders or
fishermen, ravaged the local tribes. Though natives
in New England numbered as many as 100,000
when the Puritans arrived, smallpox vastly reduced
the population along the coast. Some subsequent
migrants even read this plague as providential, a gift
from God designed to clear the way for the English.
In 1620 King James issued a patent for settlement
in this “New England,” confirming the name that
Smith had coined. The same year, a group of religious
separatists living in Leiden petitioned to settle further
south, along the Hudson River. Blown off course, they
landed in Plymouth, at the lower left edge of the map.
There they made their home and paved the way for
thousands more who arrived in the “Great Migration”
of Puritans from 1630 to 1642. John Winthrop was
among the first of these, and for the next twelve
years he served as governor of the Massachusetts
Bay colony. In that time over 12,000 traveled across
the Atlantic to settle in Winthrop’s “city upon a hill,”
driven less by Smith’s vision of commercial profit
than by the hope of exercising religious freedom and
escaping the repression that had worsened under
King James’ successor, Charles.
The Puritan plan was ambitious: to establish a
“Christian commonwealth” that would purify the
Church of England and set an example for Englishmen
back home. The Puritans’ sense of themselves as
a chosen people determined the structure and
organization of the colony, which suppressed
dissent, limited voting rights, and disapproved of
extravagance. In many ways New England life was
rigid, but because most of these emigrants came
as families their numbers grew quickly. Though the
adoption of tobacco made Virginia a wealthier colony,
New England’s prosperity was more evenly distributed
among a much larger population. The growth of both
of these colonies would have profound consequences
for the indigenous peoples.