The Capture Route
What it is
The so-called Capture Route is the route Smith was marched over eastern Virginia after being overtaken and captured by the hunting party of Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough.
Beginning on November 9, 1607, Smith made three trips in the shallop from Jamestown up the nearby Chickahominy River to trade for corn among the several settlements of the Chickahominy Indians.
Smith was marched across today’s counties of New Kent, Hanover, King William, King and Queen, Essex, Middlesex, Gloucester, and home through James City. This gave an Englishman a first look at Eastern Virginia’s beautiful, fertile, sometimes rolling interior, an aspect Smith would not have missed. Today’s residents of these counties often have little idea that Captain Smith walked through their countryside, swamps, and rivers. Here is Manquin in King William near marker 2.
On his fourth trip, on December 6, at the behest of the Council, he set out on an exploratory voyage to ascend the river to its source. At the head of tide, encumbered in swamp, he anchored the shallop and engaged two Indians to carry him and two Englishmen upstream by canoe. After twenty miles, he tells us, they were overtaken by the hunting party. His crewmen were slain, and he surrendered and was marched under heavy guard to a hunting camp six miles distant.
Smith’s Fate as a Captive
We determine he was captured in the vicinity of Bottoms Bridge and the camp was at Alexanders Corner, a rural junction in eastern Hanover County. Opechancanough was persuaded, apparently, to spare the life of his captive in order to deliver him to his brother, Powhatan.
In the age before mobile service, this entailed a 200-mile search, first north to the Pamunkey River, then across Pamunkey Neck to Walkerton, up the left bank of the Mattaponi River to a fording point, back over Pamunkey Neck and back to the hunting camp. The route is outlined by three crosses on Smith’s map, successively 2. Moncuin Creek, 3. Mattaponi, and 4. Pamunkey.
Openchancanough now marches his helpless captive down the right bank of the Pamunkey, crosses the river, and arrives at villages in the vicinity of West Point. From there, another party carries Smith north over the Dragon Run (cross 4) to the village of Tappahannock, to be arraigned for murder. Acquitted as the wrong Englishman, the march continues south to Werowocomoco to the presence, at last, of Powhatan sitting in state. Here Smith tells us he was to be executed clubbed to death but for the intercession of Pocahontas.
He was in a few days escorted unharmed to Jamestown, January 2, 1608.
Sources are Smith’s True Relation, The Proceedings, The General History, Third Book, and the Smith and Zuniga maps. A manuscript map dated 1644 of the Pamunkey River is helpful for a small portion of the route and clearly shows the channel of the river at the Pamunkeroy crossing point.
In 2006 Ed Haile created an illustrated pamphlet for a motor tour of the capture route for distribution by the Middle Peninsula Planning Commission.
Commentary on the Written Sources
Ed Haile takes Karen Kupperman and Connie Lapallo on a driving tour to see parts of Smith’s capture route. Here, Ed points to his own version of Smith’s map.
Insofar as the Capture Route involves the sites of four mapped crosses, the various sources require some evaluation.
The primary written sources are Smith’s own accounts, namely, A True Relation, and book three of The General History.
A True Relation was published in 1608 without his knowledge from a lengthy letter Smith addressed to a certain “kind sir.” The reading is choppy due to numerous editorial cuts. In fact, these are so many as to amount to censorship and it is impossible to say if what is left represents the author’s tone and essential content. Despite this, it is the fullest account, and written not long after events scholars give it the most weight.
Captain John Smith’s The Generall Historie (GH), published in 1624, expands on the material in A True Relation (TR) and sets a new tone. Many regard it as embellishment at best, revisionism and fabrication at worst, an attitude I daresay would have been shared by the vigorous editor/censor of TR. For example, after the initial account of being waylaid, Smith in TR never again says he thought his life was in danger. By contrast, in GH, it is a point he stresses to the end. It is easier, at this distance in time, to believe his suspicion that his execution had been deferred (GH) rather than reprieved altogether (implied by TR without explanation).
TR omits mention of the torture and murder of George Cassen and almost any mention of Pocahontas. However, two other colonists, William White and William Strachey, repeat the Cassen account. And Strachey indicates Pocahontas was at least at the fort very early. Apparently, then, the editorial policy in TR had been to cut deeply in order to remove “savage” and inflammatory passages in regard to native peoples while dealing with the fact of the month-long captivity. In GH, we assume the author speaks in his own full voice and restraint is removed.
However, he was writing long after events, he was now a writer with some circulation, and it was a time when the situation had actually reversed and the hard line toward Indians was in vogue in wake of the recent massacre of 1622. Hence, it is a case of opposing prejudices, the political correctness of 1608, as we see it, measured against the adventure writing of 1624.
Given a chance in later work, the tone of GH is very similar to that of the 1612 The Proceedings, suggesting that GH may have been worked up more from old notes than from bare memory. Hence, we have given the two sources equal weight as far as determining the route and the stopovers, and in that regard details of each are more complementary than contradictory.
We glean a few more details out of his 1612 joint publication of A Map of Virginia and The Proceedings of the Colony. From Strachey’s History of Travel and Spelman’s Relation of Virginia we get hints to the location of Orapaks/Rassawek, Smith’s two names for Opechancanough’s hunting camp.