A Captain Smith Hotspot

      Capt. John Smith first visited the Rappahannock on foot in December 1607, as a captive taken to be viewed by members of the Rappahannock Tribe to see if they could identify him as the European captain who had killed their chief several years before. (Lucky for Smith, the perpetrator was much taller.) In July 1608, returning from his first exploratory voyage, he stopped at the river’s southern mouth, now Stingray Point, and stabbed a stingray, which reciprocated by sticking a painful barb into his arm. Smith thought he was a goner, but he recovered soon enough to dine on the creature.
      During his August 1608 exploration, rounding Windmill Point from the north, he spent time with the Moraughtacunds, whose chief had recently made off with three of the Rappahannock chief’s wives, a less-than-friendly gesture. Subsequently, the Rappahannocks, after a seemingly benign first encounter and an exchange of hostages, launched the first of two major attacks on Smith’s party. One Rappahannock hostage was killed, but a member of Smith’s crew who had been taken managed to escape. Undaunted, roughly 55 miles upriver at Fones Cliffs, the Rappahannocks again ambushed Smith’s barge, which was protected by strategically placed shields and drove the attackers off with gunfire.
      A little farther on, the expedition suffered the only fatality of Smith’s exploratory voyages on the Chesapeake when one crew member, Richard Featherstone, succumbed to illness, probably malaria. On the way to the Rappahannock River’s fall line, Smith encountered several friendly native tribes but then came under attack from prescient visiting inland tribes who’d heard he had come to “take their world from them.” One of the attacking warriors was taken captive, and his wounds were treated aboard Smith’s ship. He later helped Smith to forge relationships with local tribes and to learn what those tribes knew about lands and waters farther west.
     Traveling back down the river, Smith showed his mettle as a diplomat, helping the Moraughtacunds forge a peace with the Rappahannocks, and he headed back to Jamestown loaded with promises of corn.