Now I have seen the savages. Ship’s mate Juet calls them that: savages, uncivilized people of the woods, fierce. In my journeys now I’ve seen icebears and walrus and maybe mermaids … although reports of these always follow extra grog rations for the crew. On the docks I’ve seen men like Pernomo—very gentle souls—from the warm Spice Indies. But now I’ve seen savages. Real ones . . . of the woodlands. Self-assured, fearless outlandish men in their own camps, sailing and paddling their own waters in vessels of their hands and design.
A few speak French. Francais! But that makes them no more French than they would be if they spoke English . . . or Dutch. I’m glad some speak French, for otherwise we’d have no idea what they want; no one of our crew speak their tongue.
What they want is clear–
—trade . . . their beaver pelts and info about gold, silver, and copper to trade for our beads, metal knives and hatchets, and red gowns. Of this latter, we carried none and had to use force to stop them from climbing our rigging to take our VOC flag. Juet says we must not trust them and keeps his knife always in his hand.
But Juet trusts no one and never has. In fact, I know he mistrusts me.
I watch these woodlands men eat from our table, drink our grog. I’ve shared finfish and shellfish with them and watched their group rules. I study how they watch us, study us. I suspect they have their own civilization and language—confound us that no one speaks it!. Of course, I write that here never to share with Juet, who even now is scheming treacherous business with the savages.
(Painting: retouched image of George Caleb Bingham’s The Storm, 1850)
[…] H&H . . . some of you might consider Henry Hudson just another Eurocentric explorer who, encountering any non-Euro group, would immediately assume his own cultural superiority. And maybe he was. But what if he was not. What if he was so obsessed with his quest for a shorter route to China–a civilization that produced stuff desired by the European consumer–that he was different, that he was willing to see the inhabitants of the beautiful inlet as peers? Given how things turned out for Hudson, he surely was at odds with much of the crew. Given how it turned out for the Algonquins, it was unfortunate that Eurocentrics dominated. Indulge Henry’s thoughts here. […]
ah!!! the plot thickens…
or, it never was thin.
Please Henry, tell us someting about the 25 of July. Juet says:
The fiue and twentieth, very faire weather and hot. In the morning wee manned our Scute with foure Muskets, and sixe men, and tooke one of their Shallops and brought it aboord. Then we manned our Boat & Scute with twelue men and Muskets, and two stone Pieces or Muderers, and draue the Sauages from their Houses, and took the spoyle of them, as they would haue done of vs. Then wee set sayle, and came down to the Harbours mouth, and rode there all night, because the winde blew right in, and the night grew mystie with much rayne till midnight. Then it fell calme, and the wind came off the Land at West North-west, and it began to cleere. The Compasse varyed 10.degrees North-west.
That’s because this 25th is the 400 anivesary of the wreck of the Sea Venture where sailed Marina, the Viola of Shakespeare in Love, and I intend to make a post about it, remembering your arrival to America.
o ye winds and sun, esp sun . . . bake us not! blow us not off course. for in three days hence, a trip to the headwaters of susquehanna we doth commence, or we’ll log several intents. 🙂