Samuel Argall - Under Lord de La Warr

Under Lord De La Warr

Argall arrived back at the Colony in the summer of 1610, when Royal Governor Thomas West reinforced the defences of the English against the sometimes hostile Native Americans in Virginia. Lord De La Warr, as West later became, became so ill that in the spring of 1611 he sailed home to England, and Sir Thomas Dale took his place as Deputy Governor in charge of the Virginia Colony. When he returned to England, Lord de la Warr wrote a book, The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, of the Colonie, Planted in Virginia, and remained nominally the Royal Governor until his death in 1618.

Serving under Dale, in March 1613, Captain Samuel Argall, who was looking for food for the settlement, sailed up the Potomac River. There, he traded with the Patawomecks, a Native American tribe. They lived at the village of Passapatanzy.

When two English colonists began trading with the Patawomecks, they discovered the presence of Pocahontas, the daughter of Wahunsonacock, Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. According to a book by Captain John Smith, she had been there for around three months. As soon as he heard this, Argall resolved to capture Pocahontas. Sending for the local chief, Japazaws, Argall told him he must bring her on board his ship, and suggested luring her with the present of a copper kettle.

With the help of Japazaws, they tricked Pocahontas into captivity. Their purpose, as they explained in a letter, was to ransom her for some English prisoners held by Chief Powhatan, along with various weapons and farming tools that the Powhatans had stolen. Powhatan returned the prisoners but failed to satisfy the colonists with the amount of weapons and tools he returned, and a long standoff ensued.

Argall also commanded the ship that took the Rolfes, Matachanna (Rebecca's half-sister) and her husband, Uttamatomakkin to England in 1616, as well as the ship that was in the Thames Estuary about to carry her home to Virginia when she suddenly died of malaria.