Captain John Smith - What did He Find in America?

Monrovians - Unite!  Know your History and Traditions.

The traditions and values of the Native Americans whom the European settlers first came into contact with are sometimes glorified by modern writers.  While there is no doubt that the pre-European civilizations on the North American continent had many long traditions, the suggestion is often implied (and sometimes stated outright) that all civilizations are of equal value.  Before accepting this premise, consider the human sacrifice practiced by the Native Americans in Virginia, as described by Captain John Smith.  Are you willing to agree that a culture that practices an annual sacrifice of children is equal in value to all others?

Captain John Smith wrote a Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles in 1624, covering the period from 1584 through 1624.  A digital version with updated spelling that makes for easier reading and searching has been created by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as part of its digital library Documenting the American South.  The scanned version of the book can be found on Google Books, here.
     In the Second Book, Smith describes the land and the people within 60 miles of Jamestown.

     Of their religion, he writes:

There is yet in Virginia no place discovered to be so Savage, in which they have not a Religion, Deer, and Bow, and Arrows. All things that are able to do them hurt beyond their prevention, they adore with their kind of divine worship; as the fire, water, lightning, thunder, our Ordnance, pieces, horses, etc. But their chief God they worship is the Devil. Him they call Okee, and serve him more of fear than love.

 Their Temples.

        In every Territory of a Werowance is a Temple and a Priest, two or three or more. Their principal Temple or place of superstition is at Vttamussack, at Pamavnkee, near unto which is a house, Temple, or place of Powhatans.
        Upon the top of certain red sandy hills in the woods, there are three great houses filled with images of their Kings, and Devils, and Tombs of their Predecessors. Those houses are near sixty foot in length built arbour-wise, after their building. This place they count so holy as that but the Priests and Kings dare come into them; nor the Salvages dare not go up the river in boats by it, but they solemnly cast some piece of copper, white beads, or Pocones into the river, for fear their Okee should be offended and revenged of them.

Thus, Fear was the first their Gods begot;

Till fear began, their Gods were not.

Sacrifices to the water.

        They have also certain Altar stones they call Parocorances, but these stand from their Temples, some by their houses, others in the woods and wildernesses, where they have had any extraordinary accident, or encounter. And as you travel, at those stones they will tell you the cause why they were there erected, which from age to age they instruct their children, as their best records of antiquities. Upon these they offer blood, Deer suet, and Tobacco. This they do when they return from the Wars, from hunting, and upon many other occasions. They have also another superstition that they use in storms, when the waters are rough in the Rivers and Sea coasts. Their Conjurers run to the water sides, or passing in their boats, after many hellish outcries and invocations, they cast Tobacco, Copper, Pocones, or such trash into the water, to pacify that God whom they think to be very angry in those storms. Before their dinners and suppers the better sort will take the first bit, and cast it in the fire, which is all the grace they are known to use.

 Their solemn Sacrifices of children, which they call Black-boyes.

        In some part of the Country they have yearly a sacrifice of children.  Such a one was at Quiyoughcohanock some ten miles from James Town, and thus performed.
     Fifteen of the properest young boys, between ten and fifteen years of age they painted white. Having brought them forth, the people spent the fore noon in dancing and singing about them with Rattles. In the afternoon they put those children to the root of a tree. By them all the men stood in a guard, every one having a Bastinado in his hand, made of reeds bound together. This made a lane between them all along, through which there were appointed five young men to fetch these children: so every one of the five went through the guard to fetch a child each after other by turns, the guard fiercely beating them with their Bastinadoes, and they patiently enduring and receiving all defending the children with their naked bodies from the unmerciful blows, that pay them soundly, though the children escape.
     All this while the women weep and cry out very passionately, providing mats, skins, moss, and dry wood, as things fitting their children's funerals. After the children were thus passed the guard, the guard tore down the trees, branches and boughs, with such violence that they rent the body, and made wreaths for their heads, or bedecked their hair with the leaves.
     What else was done with the children, was not seen, but they were all cast on a heap, in a valley as dead, where they made a great feast for all the company.
     The Werowance being demanded the meaning of this sacrifice, answered that the children were not all dead, but that the Okee or Devil did suck the blood from their left breast, who chanced to be his by lot, till they were dead, but the rest were kept in the wilderness by the young men till nine months were expired, during which time they must not converse with any, and of these were made their Priests and Conjurers. This sacrifice they held to be so necessary, that if they should omit it, their Okee or Devil, and all their other Quiyoughcosughes, which are their other Gods, would let them have no Deer, Turkeys, Corn, nor fish, and yet besides, he would make a great slaughter amongst them.