Viatouch Teacher Articles
History

Traded!
by Samantha Bell

Imagine you had to take a trip all by yourself without your mom or your dad or your grandparents. The only people traveling with you were adults you didn't know, and you were going across the ocean to a different country. Now imagine that once you arrived, the adults sent you to live with a group of people who didn't even speak your language. Would you feel upset, nervous, or frightened? This is exactly what happened to a boy named Thomas Savage a long time ago.

In 1608, thirteen-year-old Thomas boarded the ship named the John and Francis that was sailing from England to the New World. During the three-month trip to America, Thomas worked as a cabin boy serving the captain of the ship, Christopher Newport. One hundred men sailed with him to Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement.

Besides the new settlers, the John and Francis also carried food and supplies for Jamestown. The first men had arrived in the spring of 1607, and by the time Thomas reached the New World the next year, the settlers were in terrible trouble. They had little food to eat, and the local Indian tribes were attacking them.

In December 1607, Captain John Smith, who had taken the leadership of the new settlement, was captured and nearly killed. His life was spared, Smith said, only because Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's daughter, begged her father to let him go. The relationship between Smith and Powhatan improved as they traded goods. When the John and Francis landed with supplies in January 1608, Smith took Thomas with him to visit the chief at the Indian village Werowocomoco.

During his stay with the Indians, Smith made an unusual trade with Powhatan — he traded Thomas! The chief gladly received Thomas into his tribe, giving Smith huge baskets of beans in return. Smith spent a week in the Indian village, dancing and resting, talking and trading. When it was time to leave, Powhatan offered him an Indian named Namontack to sail back to England in Thomas' place. Thomas was to learn the native ways and language, and Namontack would learn about the Englishmen.

Powhatan grew to love Thomas as a son during the two years Thomas lived with the tribe. When Powhatan allowed him to leave, Thomas joined the other settlers, and Powhatan missed him greatly.

While Thomas didn't return to Werowocomoco, he didn't return to England either. He became well-known as an interpreter and peacemaker between the Indian tribes and the colonists. John Pory, secretary of the Jamestown colony, wrote a description of Thomas that was later inscribed on a plaque at the Old Jamestown Church: "Gentleman and Ensign, the first white settler on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Hostage to Powhatan, 1608; his loyalty and fearlessness endeared him to the great king who treated him as a son. While he rendered invaluable aid to the colony as interpreter, greatly beloved by Debedeavon, The Laughing King of the Accawmackes, he was given a tract of nine thousand acres of land known as Savage's Neck. He obtained food for the starving colony at Jamestown through his friendship with the kindly Eastern Shore Indians."

Bibliography

Books

Fritz, Jean. Who's Saying What in Jamestown, Thomas Savage? New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007.

Price, David A. Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Sakurai, Gail. The Jamestown Colony. Connecticut: Children's Press, 1997.

Internet Sites

"History of Jamestown." The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities 2000. July 2007. http://www.apva.org/history.

"A History of Jamestown, Virginia." History Net 1996. July 2007. http://www.historian.org/local/jamstwnva.htm

Thomas Savage - Cabin Boy March 2005. July 2007. http://personal.ayrix.net/~savage1/articles/pow2.html

"Timeline." Virtual Jamestown 1998. July 2007. http://www.virtualjamestown.org/timeline2.html

"Virginia Records Timeline: 1553-1743." The Library of Congress: The Thomas Jefferson Papers. July 2007. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjvatm2.html

Samantha Bell is a homeschooling mother of four children. In the past she has worked as an after-school teacher and private tutor. Today she enjoys writing and creating art. You can view some of her work at www.art-made-easy.com.