Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 Part 2

Picture by Lafitau, 1724.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The earliest picture of Maize.

Copied from Leonhard Fuchs 1542.]

And Reverend William Simmonds states in regard to this same starving time of the winter of 1609-10:

as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheepe, horse, or what lived; our commanders and officers did daily consume them: some small proportions (sometimes) we tasted, till all was devoured.

Thus after three years they had nothing of a material nature to show for their efforts. Their most valuable achievement had been their acquired knowledge of the Indians' methods of farming. To make a bad situation worse the Indians began to make trouble. Lord De La Warr speaks of their "late injuries and murthering of our men." It was not until 1611 that real farming got under way at Jamestown. Then corn planting and fence building began in earnest.

GOVERNOR DALE TAKES CHARGE

Sir Thomas Dale with "three s.h.i.+ps, men, and cattell (100 kine, 200 swine)" arrived in Virginia May 10, 1611. Dale had seen military service in the Old World and was a severe and strict disciplinarian.

The surviving colonists received a jolt in their manner of living.

From habits of indolence into which they had fallen, owing to the hot climate and lack of food, after the departure of Captain John Smith, they were with little ceremony put to work. "His first care therefore was to imploy all hands in the setting of corne at the two forts at Kecoughtan, Henry and Charles," wrote Ralph Hamor "and about the end of May wee had an indifferent crop of good corne." This corn was planted near what is now Hampton where Strachey says, "so much ground is there cleared and open; enough with little labour alreddy prepared to receive corne or make viniards of two or three thowsand acres."

With corn planting completed, two palisaded forts were built for the protection of a few men left to care for the crops. They made another planting across Chesapeake Bay on the Virginia Cape. They had learned the hard way that clearing the heavily timbered land at Jamestown was hopeless for immediate results. Dale then returned to Jamestown "where the most companie were, and their daily and usual works, bowling in the streets." This game was interrupted and the men put to work felling timber, repairing their houses and providing pointed pickets for fencing a new town, which Dale proposed to build, eighty miles above Jamestown.

HENRICO SETTLED

In August, 1611, Sir Thomas Gates arrived with "six tall s.h.i.+ps with three hundred men, and one hundred kine and other cattel." Gates thoroughly approved of Dale's plans and policies and let him select about three hundred of the best workers in the colony to build at Henrico, now Farrar's Island, at Dutch Gap.

Within ten or twelve daies he had invironed it with a pale, and in honour of our n.o.ble Prince _Henry_, called it _Henrico_. The next worke he did, was building at each corner of the towne a high commanding watch-house, a church, and store-houses: which finished, hee began to thinke upon convenient houses for himselfe and men, which, with all possible speed hee could, he effected to the great content of his companie, and all the colonie.

This towne is situated upon a necke of a plaine rising land, three parts invironed with the maine river, the necke of land well impaled, makes it like an ile; it hath three streets of well framed houses, a handsome church, and the foundation of a better laid (to bee built of bricke), besides store-houses, watch-houses, and such like. Upon the verge of the river there are five houses, within live the honester sort of people, as farmers in England, and they keepe continuall centinell for the townes securitie.

About two miles from the towne, into the maine, is another pale, neere two miles in length, from river to river, guarded with severall commanders, with a good quant.i.tie, of corne-ground impailed, sufficiently secured to maintaine more than I suppose will come this three yeeres.

APPOMATTOX LANDS SEIZED

The Appomattox Indians, at the time of the Jamestown settlement, were located on a neck of land lying between the James and Appomattox Rivers. Dale wanted this land. It was cleared, fertile, and easy to fence, so we are told:

About Christmas following in this same year 1611 in regard of the injury done us ... without the losse of any except some few salvages tooke it and their corne.

This newly acquired land he named New Bermudas and he divided it into several tracts known as "hundreds." The term hundred was a relic of the feudal system. It meant a political subdivision smaller than a county. It appears to have been Dale's intention that these hundreds or group plantations, often referred to as "particular plantations,"

should include the land that could be worked conveniently by the farmers from their homes in a village or a town. This plan was not popular. As has been previously stated the colonial pioneers much preferred to live on the land they tilled. The term "hundred" lost its significance.

Ralph Hamor described the operations at New Bermudas in the following:

In the nether hundred he [Dale] first began to plant, for there is the most corne-ground and with a pale of two miles cut over from river to river, whereby we have secured eight English miles in compa.s.se.... Rochdale, by a crosse pale wel nigh foure miles long, is also planted with houses along the pale, in which hundred our hogs and cattell have twentie miles circuit to graze in securely.

Outstanding were the accomplishments of this taskmaster, Governor Dale, in one year, with men many of whom were unaccustomed to manual labor. While some were engaged in fence building and the construction of houses, others were employed in getting out clapboards. Still others were gathering pitch and tar from the pine trees and burning logs to make soap-ashes. The London Company had incurred heavy expense in the settlement and was asking for something in return.

Products from the forests were all that were available. It is no wonder that the colonists complained bitterly about their hards.h.i.+ps in their letters to the folks back home.

It was not Gov. Dale's purpose to develop an agricultural colony.

Surplus from food products would not pay the cost of s.h.i.+pment across the ocean. His plantings of corn were purely for local consumption.

He limited the number engaged in farming, and to each of those so engaged, he allotted three acres of corn land. These farmers were not allowed to devote their entire time to crop-raising. The livestock as we have seen was allowed to run at large in the fenced ranges. In a letter dated June 14, 1614, Gov. Dale reported that he had set the colonists to the task of "husbanding our corne securely, whereof wee have above five-hundred acres set, and G.o.d be praised in more forwardness than any of the Indians that I have seen or heard of this yeare."

When Capt. Argall, as deputy governor superseded Dale in May, 1617, George Yeardley having been acting governor from April 11, 1616, he reported that the colony had about four hundred people but not over 200 fit for husbandry and tillage. As for livestock, they had 128 cattle, 88 goats, and a large number of hogs. As to cattle there were about "fortie bulls and oxen but they wanted men to bring them to labour and irons for the ploughs and harnesse for the cattell." They had tried again to grow some small grains.

Thirtie or fortie acres wee had sowne with one plough, but it stood so long on the ground before it was reaped it was most shaken.

This was a pitiful showing for the ten years that had elapsed since Capt. Newport established the colony. It had been a decade of frustration and heart-breaking disappointments, a decade of gruelling toil and misery. No blame should be attached to the colonists. They were thrust into a situation for which they were woefully unprepared.

Virginia was destined to develop agriculturally. Attempts to suppress that industry only served to prolong the colony's troubles. There were no natural resources except the forests in the tidewater region; no Indian trade of any great value; no gems to be picked up at will; no minerals to be exploited. When the situation seemed most hopeless, the culture of a crop new to English farming completely changed their mental and pecuniary outlook. Despair changed to violent optimism.

John Rolfe is generally credited with having been, in 1612, the first Virginia planter to engage in the growing of tobacco. Governor Dale at the time frowned on its culture and ruled that two of each man's allotment of three acres of land should be seeded to corn. Hence the change in governors.h.i.+p was a momentous event.

CHANGE IN POLICY

When Sir Thomas Dale left, in 1616, George Yeardley took over the management of the colony as Acting Governor. He lost no time in putting an end to the restrictions on tobacco culture. The next year, 1617, saw a remarkable transformation in the colonists' way of life.

Inertia gave way to frantic activity. "The market-place and streets and all other spare places were set with the crop and the colonie dispersed all about planting tobacco." Nor is this surprising.

Tobacco alone promised them surcease from poverty and want. Hope for a bountiful harvest spurred them on as it has spurred farmers in all generations.

TOBACCO IN ENGLAND

Many fantastic tales have been written about the introduction of the use of tobacco in England. Some of the most authentic historical items follow: The Spaniards found the natives in the West Indies using the plant both for chewing and smoking. They took seed to Europe where its use soon spread to other countries around the Mediterranean Sea.

The first Englishman to report on the addiction of the American Indians to the use of tobacco appears to have been John Sparke who wrote the account of the voyage of Sir John Hawkins who, in the course of his travels, spent some months, in 1565, with an ill-fated French colony in Florida. Sparke reported "The Floridians when they travell, have a kinde of herbe dried, who with a cane and an earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together, doe sucke thorow the cane the smoke thereof, which smoke satisfieth their hunger, and therewith they live foure or five dayes without meat or drinke, and this the Frenchmen used for this purpose." It is quite likely that the sailors under Hawkins command acquired the habit and took some of the "dried herbs" back to England.

Sir Walter Raleigh is often credited with the introduction of the use of tobacco in England. While he may not have been responsible for its introduction, he apparently played an important role in the spread of the tobacco habit among the English aristocracy. Raleigh's interest in tobacco was no doubt aroused by the report of his protege, the famous sixteenth century mathematician, Thomas Hariot. Hariot spent a year, June, 1585-June, 1586, with the Raleigh Colony on Roanoke Island. On his return to England he reported on the Indians' farming operations in Eastern North Carolina. For tobacco he wrote in part "We ourselves, during the time we were there, used to sucke it after their manner, as also since our returne, and have found many rare and wonderful experiments of the virtues thereof, of which the relation would require a volume by itselfe: the use of it by so many, of late, men and women of great calling, as els, and some physicians also, is sufficient witnesse."

Raleigh later made a voyage to the Island of Trinidad and the Orinoco River in South America from whence had come the most desirable sorts.

Spain and Portugal monopolized the European tobacco trade with these mild varieties since the tobacco grown by the Virginia Indians had a sharp, biting taste. Plantings of these better sorts were made in England. A violent controversy was soon raging. King James I who detested Raleigh and all his activities, issued a _Counter Blaste_ against tobacco. This was a most bitter tirade as the following quotation shows:

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

Since the days of King James, millions of words have been written condemning the use of the "tawny weed."

The opposition of King James to tobacco led to the imposition of taxes on its import into England: that from Spain and Portugal was 2d a pound; that from Virginia 6s. 10d. In spite of all this array of evidence as to the detrimental effects of tobacco on the human body its consumption has steadily increased and spread over the entire world. Colossal fortunes have been made in its processing and trade.

No product of the soil with the exception of grains used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages has ever returned such bounteous revenues to the United States government. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1954 there was paid into the treasury of the United States, the gigantic sum of $1,580,299,000 from taxes on various tobacco products. Of this vast total, Virginia tobacco manufacturers that year contributed 356,867,000 dollars. Munic.i.p.al and other local taxes are not included in these figures.

Tobacco culture in America was a highly profitable enterprise for England. The colonists produced and sold the raw product. Very little tobacco is used in the raw state. Before tobacco is ready for the market it must be processed into the various forms demanded by the trade. It was estimated that one man engaged in tobacco growing in Virginia kept three Englishmen employed, that is, sailors engaged in transportation, processors and tradesmen. The English government also derived considerable revenue on the surplus tobacco products resold on the European market.

TOBACCO BECAME MONEY

One of the needs of the colony was a medium of exchange: something that could be used for money. As the balance of trade was heavily in favor of the Mother Country, there was no opportunity for an acc.u.mulation of English money in America. So tobacco became acceptable for goods, services, and the payment of debts. Salaries were fixed in pounds of tobacco.

FLUCTUATING PRICES

The value placed on tobacco in England varied with the supply and demand. With the introduction of Negroes in 1619, and the greatly increased immigration from England, the acreage devoted to the culture of tobacco expanded rapidly. The first serious effects of over-production occurred in 1630, when the price fell from three s.h.i.+llings, six pence to one penny a pound. This calamity proved to be a blessing in disguise. The next year, a boat of "18 tons burden,"