6 - Inconstancy: coming to Indians through Troilus and Cressida

Summary

They are inconstant in everie thing, but what feare constraineth them to keepe. Craftie, timerous, quicke of apprehension and very ingenuous. Some are of disposition fearefull, some bold, most cautelous, all Savage. Generally covetous of copper, beads, and such like trash. They are soone moved to anger, and so malitious, that they seldome forget an injury: they seldome steale one from another, least their conjurers should reveale it, and so they be pursued and punished. That they are thus feared is certaine, but that any can reveale their offences by conjuration I am doubtful. Their women are carefull not to bee suspected of dishonesty without the leaue of their husbands.

John Smith, in A Map of Virginia (1612)

PANDARUS: Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it. I'll be the witness. Here I hold your hand, here my cousin's. If ever you prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to bring you together… let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between Pandars! Say, ‘Amen’.

William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (1602, 1609)

In putting his name to A Map of Virginia, Smith presents himself as a veteran of the Jamestown enterprise offering the knowledge of his experience. He means not only to promote the colony but to advocate a specific approach in dealing with indigenous people. Descriptions of Indians such as the one Smith endorses are not disinterested observations but purposeful productions of a culture's knowledge of other subjects. They remind us that, as readers of colonial narratives, we have no access to Indians, even when they are presented as speaking subjects, except through the interpretive framework encoded by the narratives.