THE USE AND ABUSE OF
SMITH’S GENERALL HISTORIE IN
JOHN BARTH’S THE SOT-WEED FACTOR

John Barth’s demythologizing treatment of Pocahontas’ storybook rescue of John Smith in The Sot-Weed Factor has drawn quite a bit of critical response—the most noteworthy coming from Barth’s friend and former colleague at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Leslie Fiedler, in his book The Return of the Vanishing American. But the greater part of Barth’s indebtedness to Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624) has been overlooked in the criticism. When the two accounts of Colonial America are examined carefully, it becomes apparent that Smith and Pocahontas are just two of seven Sot-Weed characters whose origins can be traced back to the Generall Historie. To note that is not to question Fiedler’ s basic contention that Barth, in The Sot-Weed Factor, has set out to portray "an anti-stereotype of our beginnings in Virginia."¹ But I do mean to imply that, since The Sot-Weed Factor is mock-epic in spirit and since scope is of such great concern in any epic, serious or comic, it is imperative that the reader’s understanding of Barth’s adaptations of his source material be as comprehensive as possible.

The principal way in which Barth’s reader comes to learn of the characters borrowed from Smith’s "trumpeting Historie"² is through a pair of documents that appear at somewhat irregular intervals throughout The Sot-Weed Factor. They are the fictional Captain John Smith’s Secret Historie, the contents of which are supposedly too confidential to have been catalogued in the adventurer’s Generall Historie, and the Privie Journall of one of Smith’s companions, Sir Henry Burlingame I. The Privie Journall, as the first word of its title suggests, is scatological in nature and purports to contain additional materials suppressed from Smith’s Generall Historie. Not only do Smith and Pocahontas fall prey to Barth’s iconoclastic wit in the Historie/Journall, but so do Werowance (or King) Powhatan, Pocahontas’ father; Opechancanough (Opecancanough in Barth), Powhatan’ s brother; the "Laughing King of Accomack," whom Barth denominates Debedeavon; and Kiptopeke (whose name becomes Hicktopeake in The Sot-Weed Factor), the brother of Accomack’s "Laughing King."³ The Indian guide who leads Smith and his men into Opechancanough’s ambush in the

Generall Historie also appears in The Sot-Weed Factor; if he does not suffer the Barthian indignities which befall the aforementioned characters, it is only because the brief episode involving the guide is used to libel Smith further.

Truth, in any absolute sense, is not a primary issue, for in Barth’s own words, "a novelist, like a Soviet historian, regards truth as just more or less relevant raw material and manipulates it always with ulterior motive."⁸ The Sot-Weed Factor does not contain an authorial attempt to depict life in Colonial America directly or realistically. According to Barth, his fiction embodies "a representation of a distortion; not a representation of life itself, but a representation of

a representation of life."⁹ Barth’s real world is the representative world, the world of fiction, and one of the naked truths he reveals in dealing irreverently with materials culled from the Generall Historie is that using received stories—a direction his writing has been taking with increased regularity—can be good, iconoclastic fun. "Attacked with a long face," remarks Barth, "the historical muse is likely to give birth to costume romances, adult westerns, tiresome allegories, and ponderous mythologizings, but she responds to a light-hearted approach."¹⁰ In The Sot-Weed Factor, Barth transforms Pocahontas, whom Young (p. 415) labels "the archetypal sacrifice to respectability in America—the victim of what has been from the beginning our overwhelming anxiety to housebreak all things in nature," into Pocahontas, the victim of Smith’s penis, monstrously extended and expanded by a secret eggplant ritual, his "weapon of the Gods!" (SWF, p. 733).

Unlike Smith’s Pocahontas, a girl of about thirteen at the time of the adventurer’s salvation, Barth’s squaw is a more worldly sixteen, though like her counterpart she is "a reallie striking Salvage maid" (SWF, p. 151)." Presumably her age has been altered for two reasons: it makes her a more believably active and attractive sexual partner in the minds of Barth’s twentieth-century audience, and it underscores the fact that her hymen must indeed be made of stern stuff. The name Pocahontas, we are told, signifies, in the language of Powhatan, "the smalle one, or she of the smallnesse and impenetrabilitie, and this, it seem’d, referr’d not to the maidens stature, wch was in sooth but slight, nor to her mind, wch one cd penetrate with passing ease. Rather it reflected, albeit grosslie, a singular physickal short-coming in the childe, to witt: her privitie was that nice, and the tympanum therein so surpassing stowt, as to render it infrangible" (pp. 153-54)." This is a problem for the girl, who is rapidly becoming, by Indian standards, an old maid, and she is out to remedy the situation. When Smith arrives, she casts "amorous glances" at him (p. 151) and flips through "the lewd booke" the adventurer presents to her "over & over againe . . . each time laughing alowd at what she sawe" (p. 152). At the feast that follows, Pocahontas fixes her gaze on Smith "with everie indecent promise in her eyes. She was on everie side of him at once, fetching this & carrying that, all her movements exaggerated, and none befitting any save a Drury Lane vestall" (p. 153). Since it is out of passion rather than pity that she prevents her father’s warriors from clubbing out Smith’s brains after the couple’s erotic stares have aroused the Emperor’s ire, it is not surprising to learn that she accepts her father’s pronouncement that

the Englishman will rid her of her hymen or die, "with greate joye, maugre its nature" (p. 154).

Barth deflates the Pocahontas myth not only by substituting lust and sexual brutality for kindness and romance, but also by modifying certain elements of the Generall Historie account. A stone, for example, figures significantly in both chronicles: in the Generall Historie, it is to a stone that Smith is taken to have his brains clubbed out, only to be saved a moment later, whereas in The Sot-Weed Factor, Pocahontas is tethered to an altar stone and violated so aggressively that she nearly perishes. Smith’s altar of salvation becomes Pocahontas’ altar of sacrifice. Moreover, in Barth’s novel, it is not Pocahontas who ultimately effects Smith’s deliverance but Smith himself, by virtue of the fact that he rids the girl of her previously "infrangible tympanum." The fictional John Smith is, at best, a distant relative of the fortunate white man about whom we read in the Generall Historie. In The Sot-Weed Factor, the English adventurer is portrayed as a lustful schemer: he will not live to make hatchets, bells, beads, and copper for Pocahontas and her father, but to be pursued by the wistful Indian girl and her aubergine-bearing attendants.¹³

Powhatan, like his daughter, is libeled in The Sot-Weed Factor. In the second book of the Generall Historie, the Indian Emperor is described as "a tall well proportioned man, with a sower looke, his head somwhat gray, his beard so thinne, that it seemeth none at all, his age neare sixtie; of very able and hardy body to endure any

labour."¹⁴ Barth uses this passage in creating his demythologized portrait of Powhatan:

Sir Henry’s Journall continues in a similarly debunking fashion:

The passage contrasts markedly with Smith’s Generall Historie account: "He [Powhatan] hath as many women as he will, whereof when he lieth on his bed, one sitteth at his head, and another at his feet; but when he sitteth, one sitteth at his right hand and another at his left. As he is weary of his women, he bestoweth them on those that best deserue them at his hands."¹⁵

Barth’s character clearly differs from the Powhatan of the Generall Historie: Smith’s elderly savage becomes the novelist’s old lecher. In the Historie/Journall, the Emperor’s libidinous stares and divers caresses label him a sexual animal, as does his fondness for the peep show inside of Smith’s "wicked compass": " . . . he slapt his knees, and slaver’d copiouslie over his wrinkl’d lipps. A long time pass’d ere he cd remove his eye from the foul peephole, and then only to peer therein againe, and againe, each time hollowing with glee" (SWF, p. 152). It is Powhatan, moreover, who arranges the public deflowering of his daughter and who covets the secret responsible for Smith’s eggplant-enlarged "yard" (p. 733). The Englishman is allowed to depart in peace only after having instructed the

ancient Indian "in that mysterie, whereby he had so increas’d him selfe" (p. 733).

The way in which Smith diverts Opecancanough in The Sot-Weed Factor contrasts tellingly with the historical John Smith’s use of "a round Ivory double compass Dyall" to achieve the same result in the Generall Historie:

Barth also departs from his source when he allows Smith to turn the tables on his captor. The Englishman, upon being brought before Powhatan, tells the Emperor that Opecancanough is holding out on him, that he possesses a gift intended for Powhatan, namely the

compass. As a result, the King of Pamaunkee is birched and his lewd plaything taken from him.¹⁷

As has been mentioned above, the Indian guide in the Generall Historie who leads Smith and his men into Opechancanough’ s ambush, and who is subsequently used as a shield by Smith, appears in The Sot-Weed Factor as well. His presence, though fleeting, provides some interesting comedy. The guide, nameless in the source, is introduced to Barth’s reader as Ganelon: the name is meant to evoke, mock-epically, the traitor knight in The Song of Roland who bears so deep a grudge against his stepson Roland that he conspires with Marsilion, the Saracen King of Saragossa, to betray the rear-guard of the French army to the enemy. The historical John Smith, having fallen into Opechancanough’ s trap, battles on though "shot in his thigh a little" and with "many arrowes stucke in his cloathes but no great hurt." He uses his human shield to good advantage and keeps the attacking Indians a substantial distance away from him until, "being neere dead with cold," he is forced to throw away his arms.¹⁸ Barth’s Smith, on the other hand, cowers behind Ganelon until he catches his foot on the root of Cyprus tree, whereupon he falls backward off a bank "into the mud and ice" and is captured (SWF, p. 149).

chieftain is depicted as a sexually appetitive creature who is extremely jealous of his brother’s relatively tranquil (if occasionally adulterated) marriage, since his own wife is an unmanageable nymphomaniac. Unlike the marriages between the Indians of Accomack which Smith describes in the Generall Historie ("In their mariages they observe a large distance, as well in affinitie as consanguinitie"),²⁰ the marital relationships between the Indians of Accomack in The Sot-Weed Factor are less than sacred. And whereas the historical Smith found Kiptopeke and his brother to be devoid of jealousy, their Barthian counterparts are very given to envy and very prone to delight in each other’s misfortunes—and wives.

Hicktopeake informs Smith that his brother’s wife is "a mowse, and lightlie fill’d," whom he has often "try’d" while his brother was off fishing (SWF, p. 257), whereas his own is a woman whose nymphomania has proved to be a source of frustration and humiliation for him—as well as the reason for his brother’s laughter. However, with the able assistance of the roguish John Smith, who serves as tutor to the unfortunate King and acts as his precursor, Hicktopeake is finally able to satisfy his wife, a "passing comelie Salvage" (p. 258), by making love to her anally.²¹ The Indian proves to be a talented sodomite: "So had he woo’d the Queene, he said, she wd [Pocahontas-like] be three days rysing from her bed, and costive the week" (p. 260). When Smith leaves Hicktopeake, the savage is planning to employ his newly learned trick on Debedeavon’s wife and, in so doing, usurp his brother’s title.

Undoubtedly, Barth’s adaptation of certain historical personages limned in Smith’s chronicle is of greater significance than is the novelist’s use of the Virginia Indian language glossary which appears in the second book of the Generall Historie, though his linguistic gleanings nonetheless demand some attention. From Smith’s glossary, Barth lifts the words with which he names four Indian characters who appear in the Historie/Journall and at least one who appears in the main body of the novel, as well as the appellation for Eben Cooke’s sister Anna when she temporarily becomes a squaw.²² Barth saves his reader a trip to Smith’s Generall Historie by accurately glossing the names of those who appear in the Historie/Journall—all of which are in some way debunking:

Kekataughtassapooekskunoughmass or "‘Ninetie Fish’" (SWF, p. 559), a name which is as overbloated as the Indian must have been after eating the prodigious amount of seafood which won him not only his name but also the title of Werowance (or King) of the Ahatchwhoops; Wepenter or "‘cookold [i.e., cuckold]’" (p. 559);

Pokatawertussan or "‘Fyre-bedd,"’ a name given the squaw for "‘the surpassing heate wherewith she did disport in matters of love"’ (p. 560); and Attonceaumoughhowgh or "‘Arrowe-targett,’" so called "‘for that he was no fatt, and withal an easie marke to hitt’" (p. 560). More purely descriptive are the names Barth gives the Tayac Chicamec’s eldest son and Anna Cooke. He calls the Indian Mattassinemarough or "‘Man of Copper’" (p. 572), which is the color of the half-breed’s skin. Anna assumes the name Yehawkangrenepo when she takes up residence with Cohunkowprets, the Tayac’s second son; although the name Yehawkangrenepo is not glossed in the novel, it means ‘housewife.’ It is probable, moreover, that the name Cohunkowprets is partially derived from Smith’s word list. The reader is told that Cohunkowprets means "‘Bill-o’the-Goose,"’ an appellation given him by his mother, who, "‘on first beholding his want of manliness, declared A goose hath pecked him; and farther, She would the goose had spared the son and dined upon the father’" (pp. S 72-73). Although the Virginia Indian words for "bill" and "goose" do not appear in Smith’s glossary, the word accowprets ‘sheares’ does. Presumably, it is Barth’s source for the name Cohunkowprets, since shears, like a goose bill, could be construed as an instrument of emasculation.²³

The way in which Barth deals with Smith’s chronicle is, in almost every instance, derisive in the extreme. The Indians about whom Smith writes in the Generall Historie (sometimes with tenderness) are thoroughly debunked in The Sot-Weed Factor, as is their seventeenth-century chronicler, whom Barth depicts as a vainglorious rogue and one of the most shameless myth-makers ever to have misled the members of his race. The characters derived from Smith’s history are outrageously sexual brutes who flirt, cavort, desire, and eagerly make love—and that in a number of positions. The sodomite’s embrace and the extramarital sacrifice of Pocahontas’ hymen on the altar stone combine with eggplants and writhings and neanderthal slaverings to reduce to absurdity the sentimental myths born out of the Generall Historie and propagated in our society for so many years.

TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

NOTES

    ¹The Return of the Vanishing American (New York: Stein and Day, 1968), p. 152.
   ²The Sot-Weed Factor, rev. ed. (Garden city, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), p. 151. All future citations from the novel will refer to this edition and will occur parenthetically in the text.
   ³The change from Kiptopeke to Hicktopeake was probably made in order to open the name up to a number of punning interpretations. The first element of the name, Hick—, suggests a rustic,

to hiccup (cf. the Ahatchwhoop tribe), and possibly a hickey. The second element, —topeake, may be construed to mean ‘to a climax’ or ‘two breasts.’
I have been unable to find a source for the name Debedeavon, although, when broken into elements, it spells "bed" backwards and forwards and —deavon is close to divan, another likely place on which to make love, as well as the Middle English "deven" (ModE "deave"), meaning to deafen or to confuse with noise, as would the King’s laughter.
   ⁴The Kenyon Review, 24 (1962), 392.
   ⁵John Smith, Travels and Works of John Smith, ed. Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1910), II, 400. Barth quotes a shorter version of this passage on p. 148 of The Sot-Weed Factor.
   ⁶"The Mother of Us All: Pocahontas Reconsidered," 396–97, 409–11.
   ⁷The Return of the Vanishing American, p. 152.
   ⁸"My Two Muses," The Johns Hopkins Magazine, 12 (Apr. 1961), 10. Later in the same article, Barth notes: "with my [writing] earplugs in, neither my daughter’s daydreams nor the decline of the West matters any more—except as grist for the mill" (p. 13).
   ⁹Alan Prince, "An Interview With John Barth," Prism (Sir George Williams University, Montreal, 1968), p. 54.
   ¹⁰"Muse, Spare Me," Book Week, 26 Sept. 1965, p. 29.
   ¹¹Pocahontas is described in Smith’s Map of Virginia (1612) as "the very Nomparell of . . . [Powbatan’s] Kingdome" (Travels and Works, I, 169).
   ¹²Interestingly enough, William Strachey, in his 1612 Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund [London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society (Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., No. 103), 1953], p. 113), observes that the name Pocahontas "may signifie Little-wanton."
   ¹³An even more debunking, if less overt, version of the Pocahontas anti-myth occurs in Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy. We are told, about a quarter of the way through the novel, that Peter Greene, the Archetypal white redneck/frontiersman, had "permitted" his young black ward Georgina to mate with Indians and that he had apparently had his life spared by a party of redskins "at her behest, but the story was vague" (Garden city, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966, p. 228). Quite a while later (pp. 424–25), the vagueness is cleared up: Greene-Smith offered Georgina-Pocahontas to the Indians for their sexual gratification in order to pacify them and rid them of their bloodthirstiness.
   ¹⁴Travels and Works, I, 375–76.
   ¹⁵Ibid., I, 376.
   ¹⁶Ibid., II, 396.
   ¹⁷Smith, by resurrecting "some bauble from his wicked pockett," is later able to bribe an Indian guard in Powbatan’s camp "to steale an egg-plant and floure from the common store near the Emperours howse" in order that the Englishman might brew the concoction which secures for him his freedom (SWF, p. 731).
   ¹⁸Travels and Works, II, 395-96. Sometimes Smith too demonstrates a certain flare for comedy.
   ¹⁹Ibid., II, 413 (cf. SWF, p. 256).
   ²⁰Travels and Works, II, 570.
   ²¹In this episode, as in the scene in which Pocahontas is ravished, Smith is shown to be more akin to "the scurvie Arabs," from whom he has leamed the sexual stunt he performs with Hicktopeake’s wife (SWF, p. 260), than the romantic adventurer he portrays himself as in the Generall Historie.
   ²²Barth sporadically employs a few other Virginia Indian words—e.g., copatone ‘sturgeon’ and pawpeconoughmass ‘pipe-fish’ (SWF, p. 563)—to achieve something of a local color effect. I have not deemed it worthwhile to mention all such borrowings. Similarly, Barth thrice drops the name of the early Virginia settler Dr. Walter Russell (SWF. pp. 254, 255, 256), but since the physician is not granted the status of a "character" in The Sot-Weed Factor, I have excluded him from my discussion.
   ²³Smith’s contemporary William Strachey, in the lengthy glossary appended to his Historie,

provides the Virginia Indian words for bill" (mehkewh) and "goose" (kahangoc or kahunge). "Bill-o’-the-Goose," then, would be rendered mehkewhkahangoc or inehkewhkahunge, neither of which terms even faintly resembles cohunkowprets. Even if one takes into account the fact that Smith and Strachey did not always transcribe the Virginia Indian they heard with complete accuracy or in exactly the same way (Strachey’s form of mattassinemarough, for example, is matassunimatewh), the situation remains unaltered.