Captain John Smith, the hero and historian of early Virginia, informs us that at one time "the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks and cranes that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia pease, pumpions (pumpkins) and putchamins (a wild plum), fish, fowl and diverse sorts of wild beasts so fat as we could eat them." He might have added, "And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness," but at first were ready to divide with them their ample store, for on one occasion when Smith undertook an exploring tour into the interior late in the season a violent storm obliged him and his men to keep Christmas among the savages. "And we were never more merry," he relates, "nor fed on more plenty of good oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowl and good bread, nor ever had better fires in England."
The mention of oysters here is the first account of this palatable bivalve we have found in history. They also graced the first Thanksgiving dinner, as will be seen in another chapter. But it might be asked, why is it, since Virginia was a land of such great abundance of food, we read so much of famine and "the starving time" among the colonists at Jamestown? Simply because the men sent over by King James were for the most part so idle, improvident and utterly worthless that they would have literally starved to death "with stewed pigeons flying into their mouths." Shortly after the settlement at Jamestown Captains Smith and Newport, accompanied by twenty-three others, sailed up the James river to its falls. A few miles below where Richmond now stands, near what is known as Mayo's plantation, they visited an Indian village of a dozen houses called Powhatan. Here they met and were entertained by the leading chief, or werowance, of the Powhatan confederacy, who, strange to say, was also called Powhatan. Indeed, the English understanding but little of the Indian language, and hearing this name often mentioned, and always with awe or reverence, by turns regarded it as the name of a river, of the country, of the people, of a town and of their head sachem.
But little is known of this, the first interview between Captain Smith and company and the great sagamore and his people, but it is recorded that the English were kindly and hospitably received, as they usually were, and feasted on fruit, fish and vegetables, as well as roast deer and cakes.