SIGN: Captain John Smith

 was the first European to lay eyes on what would become Harford County.  When Smith left Jamestown, VA, on July 24, 1608, on his second voyage to explore and map the Chesapeake Bay, he did so in an open boat, called a shallop, with twelve men. 

The first exploratory mission returned to Jamestown after Smith was injured by a stingray while fishing with his sword.  He named that place Stingray Island.The second venture was considerably more successful.  Having already mapped their route from Jamestown to the Patapsco River, the return trip went relatively smoothly.  However, most of the men became ill during the voyage.

According to Smith’s journal, when they were approached by 7 or 8 canoes of Massawomeks (a native people who lived in the southern/western part of the county), they hid the sick men under a tarpaulin and, “we put their hats upon stickes by the Barges side, and betwixt two hats a man with two peeces, to make us seeme many, . .”

The ruse worked and the Massawomeks fled, briefly.  By the next evening the two parties exchanged gifts and parted as friends.

The exploration continued, with Smith and his men either marking the trees with crosses or with a brass plaque with an, “X,” on it to signify that Englishmen had been there.  They mapped the Elk, Susquehanna, North East and Sassafrass Rivers, meeting with the native people as they went.

In most cases, according to Smith’s journal, they were able to mystify the natives either through the seeming magic that was guns, or by having one tribe believe the gifts from another tribe were taken by force. 

Smith was so charismatic a figure that the Tockwhoughs of the Sassafrass River were so taken with him that they, “were stroking their ceremonious hands about his necke for his Creation to be their Governor and Protector, promising their aydes, victuals, or what they had to be his, if he would stay with them, to defend and revenge them of the Massawomeks.”

Also enemies with the Massawomeks were the Susquehannocks.  Translators were sent to the Susquehannocks to invite them to visit, as Smith’s shallop was not able to travel any farther up the rocky Susquehanna River.  “Sixty of those gyant-like people came down with presents of venison, tobacco pipes three feet in length, baskets, targets, bowes and arrows,” Smith recalled in his journal.

In fact, Smith was so impressed by the Susquehannocks that there is a drawing of and a notation about them and their size on his map.

On the return trip to Jamestown, what is now called Bush River, was explored and named Willowbyes Flu, after Smiths’ home in England.  His parents rented a farm from Peregrine Bertie, the 13^th Baron of Willoughby de Eresby, and that was where Smith was born in January, 1580.

When the crew returned to Jamestown on September 7, 1608, they had traveled about 3000 miles.  The map Smith created of their travels was quite detailed,  with notations of the native peoples, the terrain, how far they explored with the terminus marked with an X, and the names of the rivers and islands which he had either learned from the native people or made up to suit himself.

Capt. Smith would later map and name New England in 1614-15 before being captured by pirates and escaping to England, where he died in 1631.

The Capt. Smith of the Pocahontas legend was just that.  By all accounts he was full of himself, given to over-blown accounts of the New World in order to entice more settlers to join in the enterprise of the Virginia Company of England, a near-despotic leader of the Virginia Colony as its president, and hostile towards neighboring tribes.  More than once he claims to have been unjustly accused of wrong-doing and was threatened with the gallows on numerous occasions, including on the ocean voyage to Virginia.

Be that as it may, his journals offer one of the very few first-hand accounts of what colonists found when they arrived.  The historical record he created has no equal as he was the first to see and write about what he discovered in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.  Perhaps the names of the native tribes would have been lost to the ages had he not set them down in his journal.

For whatever sort of man he may have been, the explorer left a legacy which has outlived his faults.

This sign was erected by the Maryland Historical Society.  It’s located on Rte. 40, in a small roadside park overlooking Otter Point Creek, just outside of Aberdeen.