“[Y]et hee so demeaned himselfe”

The distance and tension between imagined mastery and bare survival are perhaps nowhere more evident than in John Smith's accounts of his experiences at the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia. Through his writings, Smith attempted to translate his unique experience into socially sanctioned authority. Smith's inventiveness as a writer went beyond the coining of words. Although large portions of some of his books consist of compilations of the work of others in the mode of Hakluyt and Purchas, as an eyewitness participant in colonial schemes he was able to write himself into a larger national-historical narrative. Smith knew from the Roanoke accounts how quickly a colonial enterprise could collapse. Smith also seems to have learned from Lane that the taking of an indigenous leader had a powerful effect on the local population, as well as the reader. Smith's description vacillates between the propagandist's admiration for New World wealth and the conqueror's disdain for the "naked Salvage" who would wear it.