History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia Part 5

CHAPTER VI.

The Indians of Virginia--Their Form and Features--Mode of wearing their Hair--Clothing--Ornaments--Manner of Living-- Diet--Towns and Cabins--Arms and Implements--Religion-- Medicine--The Seasons--Hunting--Sham-fights--Music--Indian Character.

THE mounds--monuments of a primitive race, found scattered over many parts of North America, especially in the valley of the Mississippi--have long attracted the attention of men curious in such speculations. These heir-looms of dim, oblivious centuries, seem to whisper mysteriously of a shadowy race, populous, nomadic, not altogether uncivilized, idolatrous, wors.h.i.+pping "in high places." The Anglo-Saxon ploughshare is busy in obliterating these memorials, but many yet survive, and many, perhaps, remain yet to be discovered.

Whether they were the work of the progenitors of the Indians, or of a race long since extinct, is a question for such as have taste and leisure for such abstruse inquiries. The general absence of written language and of architectural remains, indicates a low grade of civilization, and yet the relics that have been disinterred, and the enormous extent of some of their earth-works, would argue a degree of art, and of collective industry, to which the Indians are entire strangers. We may, at the least, conclude that either they, in the lapse of ages, have greatly degenerated, or that the mound-makers were a distinct and superior race. Some of these mounds are found in Virginia.

The most remarkable of these is the Mammoth Mound, in the County of Marshall. Mr. Jefferson[85:A] was of opinion that there is nothing extant in Virginia deserving the name of an Indian monument, as he would not dignify with that name their stone arrow-points, tomahawks, pipes, and rude images. Of labor on a large scale there is no remain, unless it be the barrows, or mounds, of which many are found all over this country.

They are of different sizes; some of them constructed of earth, and some of loose stones. That they were repositories of the dead is obvious, but on what occasion they were constructed is a matter of doubt. Mr. Jefferson opened one of them near Monticello, and found it filled with human bones. The Mammoth Mound in Marshall County is 69 feet high, 900 in circ.u.mference at the base; in shape the frustrum of a cone, with a flat top 50 feet in diameter. An oak standing on the top has been estimated to be five hundred years old. In the interior have been discovered vaults, with pieces of timber, human skeletons, ivory beads, and other ivory ornaments, sea-sh.e.l.ls, copper bracelets around the wrists of skeletons, with laminated mica, and a stone with hieroglyphic characters inscribed on it, in the opinion of some, of African origin.

The whole ma.s.s of the mound is studded with blue spots, supposed to have been occasioned by deposites of the remains of human bodies consumed by fire. Seven lesser mounds are connected with the main one by low entrenchments. Some rude towers of stone, greatly dilapidated, are also found in the neighborhood. Porcelain beads are picked up, and a stone idol has been found, as also tubes of lead, blue steat.i.te, syphon-like, drilled, twelve inches long, and finely polished.

The places of habitation of the Indians may yet be identified along the banks of rivers, by the deposites of sh.e.l.ls of oysters and muscles, which they subsisted upon, as also of ashes and charred wood, arrow-points, fragments of pottery, pipes, tomahawks, mortars, etc.

Vestiges may be traced of their moving back their cabins when urged by the acc.u.mulation of sh.e.l.ls and ashes. Standing on such a spot one's fancy may almost repeople it with the shadowy forms of the aborigines, and imagine the flames of the council-fire projecting its red glare upon the face of the York or the James, and hear their wild cries mingling with the dash of waves and the roar of the forest. Here they rejoice over their victories, plan new enterprises of blood, and celebrate the war-dance by the rude music of the drum and the rattle, commingled with their own discordant yells.

The Indians of Virginia were tall, erect, and well-proportioned, with prominent cheek-bones; eyes dark and brilliant, with an animal expression, and a sort of squint; their hair dark and straight. The chiefs were distinguished by a long pendant lock. The Indians had little or no beard, and the women served as barbers, eradicating the beard, and grating away the hair with two sh.e.l.ls. Like all savages, they were fond of toys and tawdry ornaments. The princ.i.p.al garment was a mantle, in winter dressed with the fur in, in summer with it out; but the common sort had scarce anything to hide their nakedness, save gra.s.s or leaves, and in summer they all went nearly naked. The females always wore a cincture around the middle. Some covered themselves with a mantle of curiously interwoven turkey feathers, pretty and comfortable. The greater part went barefoot; some wore moccasins, a rude sandal of buckskin. Some of the women tattooed their skins with grotesque figures.

They adorned the ear with pendants of copper, or a small living snake, yellow or green, or a dead rat, and the head with a bird's wing, a feather, the rattle of a rattlesnake, or the hand of an enemy. They stained the head and shoulder red with the juice of the pucc.o.o.n.

The red men dwelt for the most part on the banks of rivers. They spent the time in fis.h.i.+ng, hunting, war, or indolence, despising domestic labor, and a.s.signing it to the women. These made mats, baskets, pottery, hollowed out stone-mortars, pounded the corn in them, made bread, cooked, planted corn, gathered it, carried burdens, etc. Infants were inured to hards.h.i.+p and exposure. The Indians kindled a fire quickly "by chafing a dry pointed stick in a hole of a little square piece of wood, which, taking fire, sets fire to moss, leaves, or any such dry thing."

They subsisted upon fish, game, the natural fruits of the earth, and corn, which they planted. The tuckahoe-root, during the summer, was an important article of diet in marshy places. Their cookery was not less rude than their other habits, yet _pone_ and _hominy_ have been borrowed from them, as also, it is said, the mode of _barbecuing_ meat. _Pone_, according to the historian Beverley, is derived "not from the Latin panis, but from oppone," an Indian word; according to Smith, _ponap_ signifies meal-dumplings. The natives did not refuse to eat grubs, snakes, and the insect locust. Their bread was sometimes made of wild oats, or the seed of the sunflower, but mostly of corn. Their salt was only such as could be procured from ashes. They were fond of roasting ears of corn, and they welcomed the crop with the festival of the green-corn dance. From walnuts and hickory-nuts, pounded in a mortar, they expressed a liquid called pawcohiccora. The hickory-tree is indigenous in America. Beverley has fallen into a curious mistake in saying that the peach-tree is a native of this country. Indian-corn and tobacco, although called indigenous, appear to have grown only when cultivated. They are never found of wild spontaneous growth. In their journeys the Indians were in the habit of providing themselves with rockahominy, or corn parched and reduced to a powder.

They dwelt in towns, the cabins being constructed of saplings bent over at the top and tied together, and thatched with reeds, or covered with mats or bark, the smoke escaping through an aperture at the apex. The door, if any, consisted of a pendant mat. They sate on the ground, the better sort on matchcoats or mats. Their fortifications consisted of palisades ten or twelve feet high, sometimes encompa.s.sing an entire town, sometimes a part. Within these enclosures they preserved, with pious care, their idols and relics, and the remains of their chiefs. In hunting and war they used the bow and arrow--the bow usually of locust, the arrow of reed, or a wand. The Indian notched his arrow with a beaver's tooth set in a stick, which he used in the place of a file. The arrow was winged with a turkey-feather, fastened with a sort of glue extracted from the velvet horns of the deer. The arrow was headed with an arrow-point of stone, often made of white quartz, and exquisitely formed, some barbed, some with a serrate edge. These are yet to be found in every part of the country. For knives the red men made use of sharpened reeds, or sh.e.l.ls, or stone; and for hatchets, tomahawks of stone, sharpened at one end or both. Those sharpened only at one end, at the other were either curved to a tapering point, or spheroidally rounded off, so as to serve the purpose of a hammer for breaking or pounding. In the middle a circular indenture was made, to secure the tomahawk to the handle. They soon, however, procured iron hatchets from the English. Trees the Indians felled by fire; canoes were made by dint of burning and sc.r.a.ping with sh.e.l.ls and tomahawks. Some of their canoes were not less than forty or fifty feet long. Canoe is a West Indian word, the Powhatan word is quintan, or aquintan.[89:A] The women manufactured a thread, or string of bark, or of a kind of gra.s.s called pemminaw, or of the sinews of the deer. A large pipe, adorned with the wings of a bird, or with beads, was the symbol of friends.h.i.+p, called the pipe of peace. A war-chief was styled werowance, and a war-council, matchacomoco. In war, like all savages, they relied mainly on surprise, treachery, and ambuscade; in the open field they were timid; and their cruelty, as usual, was proportionate to their cowardice.

The Virginia Indians were of course idolatrous, and their chief idol, called Okee, represented the spirit of evil, to appease whom they burnt sacrifices. They were greatly under the influence and control of their priests and conjurors, who wore a grotesque dress, performed a variety of divinations, conjurations, and enchantments, called powwowings, after the manner of wizards, and by their superior cunning and shrewdness, and some scanty knowledge of medicine, contrived to render themselves objects of veneration, and to live upon the labor of others. The superst.i.tion of the savages was commensurate with their ignorance. Near the falls of the James River, about a mile back from the river, there were some impressions on a rock like the footsteps of a giant, being about five feet apart, which the Indians averred to be the footprints of their G.o.d. They submitted with Spartan fort.i.tude to cruel tortures imposed by their idolatry, especially in the mysterious and horrid ordeal of huskanawing. The avowed object of this ordeal was to obliterate forever from the memory of the youths subjected to it all recollection of their previous lives. The house in which they kept the Okee was called Quioccasan, and was surrounded by posts, with human faces rudely carved and painted on them. Altars on which sacrifices were offered, were held in great veneration.

The diseases of the Indians were not numerous; their remedies few and simple, their physic consisting mainly of the bark and roots of trees.

Sweating was a favorite remedy, and every town was provided with a sweat-house. The patient, issuing from the heated atmosphere, plunged himself in cold water, after the manner of the Russian bath.

The Indians celebrated certain festivals by pastimes, games, and songs.

The year they divided into five seasons, Cattapeak, the budding time of spring; Messinough, roasting ear time; Cohattayough, summer; Taquitock, the fall of the leaf; and Popanow, winter, sometimes called Cohonk, after the cry of the migratory wild-geese. Engaged from their childhood in fis.h.i.+ng and hunting, they became expert and familiar with the haunts of game and fish. The luggage of hunting parties was carried by the women. Deer were taken by surrounding them, and kindling fires enclosing them in a circle, till they were killed; sometimes they were driven into the water, and there captured. The Indian, hunting alone, would stalk behind the skin of a deer. Game being abundant in the mountain country, hunting parties repaired to the heads of the rivers at the proper season, and this probably engendered the continual hostilities that existed between the Powhatans of the tide-water region and the Monacans, on the upper waters of the James, and the Mannahoacks, at the head of the Rappahannock. The savages were in the habit of exercising themselves in sham-fights. Upon the first discharge of arrows they burst forth in horrid shrieks and the war-whoop, so that as many infernal h.e.l.l-hounds could not have been more terrific. "All their actions, cries, and gestures, in charging and retreating," says Captain Smith, "were so strained to the height of their quality and nature, that the strangeness thereof made it seem very delightful." For their music they used a thick cane, on which they piped as on a recorder. They had also a rude sort of drum, and rattles of gourds or pumpkins. The chast.i.ty of their women was not held in much value, but wives were careful not to be suspected without the consent of their husbands.

The Indians were hospitable, in their manners exhibiting that imperturbable equanimity and uniform self-possession and repose which distinguish the refined society of a high civilization. Extremes meet.

Yet the Indians were in everything wayward and inconstant, unless where restrained by fear; cunning, quick of apprehension, and ingenious; some were brave; most of them timorous and cautious; all savage. Not ungrateful for benefits, they seldom forgave an injury. They rarely stole from each other, lest their conjurors should reveal the offence, and they should be punished.[91:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[85:A] Notes on Va., 104, ed. 1853.

[89:A] Strachey's Virginia Britannica.

[91:A] Smith, ii. 129, 137; Beverley, B. iii.; Drake's Book of the Indians; Thatcher's Lives of the Indians; Bancroft's History of U. S., vol. iii. cap. xxii.

CHAPTER VII.

1609-1614.

Condition of the Colony at the time of Smith's Departure-- a.s.saults of Indians--"The Starving Time"--The Sea-Venture-- Situation of the English on the Island of Bermuda--They Embark for Virginia--Arrive at Jamestown--Jamestown abandoned-- Colonists meet Lord Delaware's Fleet--Return to Jamestown-- Delaware's Discipline--The Church at Jamestown--Sir George Somers--Delaware returns to England--Percy, Governor--New Charter--Sir Thomas Dale, Governor--Martial Laws--Henrico Founded--Plantations and Hundreds settled--Argall makes Pocahontas a Prisoner--Dale's expedition up York River--Rolfe visits Powhatan--Dale returns to Jamestown--Rolfe marries Pocahontas--The Chickahominies enter into Treaty of Peace-- Community of Goods abolished--Argall's Expeditions against the French in Acadia--Captures Fort at New Amsterdam.

CAPTAIN SMITH, upon embarking for England, left at Jamestown three s.h.i.+ps, seven boats, a sufficient stock of provision, four hundred and ninety odd settlers, twenty pieces of cannon, three hundred muskets, with other guns, pikes, swords, and ammunition, and one hundred soldiers acquainted with the Indian language, and the nature of the country.[92:A] The settlers were, for the most part, poor gentlemen, serving-men, libertines; and with such materials the wonder is, not that the settlement was r.e.t.a.r.ded by many disasters, but that it was effected at all. Lord Bacon says: "It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the sc.u.m of people, wicked, condemned men, with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation, for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy and do mischief; spend victuals and be quickly weary."[92:B] Immediately upon Smith's departure the Indians renewed their attacks. Percy, the Earl of Northumberland's brother, for a time administered the government; but it soon fell into the hands of the seditious malecontents. Provisions growing scarce, West and Ratcliffe embarked in small vessels to procure corn. Ratcliffe, inveigled by Powhatan, was slain with thirty of his companions, two only escaping, of whom one, a boy, Henry Spilman, a young gentleman well descended, was rescued by Pocahontas, and he afterwards lived for many years among the Patawomekes, acquired their language, and often proved serviceable as an interpreter for his countrymen. He was slain by the savages, on the banks of the Potomac, in 1622. The loss of Captain Smith was soon felt by the colonists: they were now continually exposed to the arrow and the tomahawk; the common store was consumed by the commanders and the savages; swords and guns were bartered with the Indians for food; and within six months after Smith's departure the number of English in Virginia was reduced from five hundred to sixty men, women, and children. These found themselves in a starving condition, subsisting on roots, herbs, acorns, walnuts, berries, and fish. Starch became an article of diet, and even dogs, cats, rats, snakes, toadstools, and the skins of horses. The body of an Indian was disinterred and eaten; nay, at last, the colonists preyed on the dead bodies of each other. It was even alleged that a husband murdered his wife for a cannibal repast; upon his trial, however, it appeared that the cannibalism was feigned, to palliate the murder. He was put to death--being burned according to law. This was long afterwards remembered as "the starving time." Sir Thomas Smith, treasurer of the Virginia Company, was bitterly denounced by the sufferers for neglecting to send out the necessary supplies. The happiest day that many of them expected ever to see, was when the Indians had killed a mare, the people wis.h.i.+ng, while the carca.s.s was boiling, "that Sir Thomas was upon her back in the kettle." It seemed to them as if the Earl of Salisbury's threat of abandoning the colony to its fate, was now to be actually carried into effect; but it is to be recollected that a large portion of ample supplies, that had been sent out from England for the colony, had been lost by storm and s.h.i.+pwreck.

It has before been mentioned, that toward the end of July, 1609, in a violent tempest, the Sea-Venture, with Newport, Gates, and Somers, and one hundred and fifty souls, had been separated from the rest of the fleet. Racked by the fury of the sea, she sprang a leak, and the water soon rose in her hold above two tiers of hogsheads that stood over the ballast, and the crew had to stand up to their waists in the water, and bail out with buckets, baricos, and kettles. They continued bailing and pumping for three days and nights without intermission, yet the water appeared rather to gain upon them than decrease; so that all hands, being at length utterly exhausted, came to the desperate resolution to shut down the hatches and resign themselves to their fate; and some having "good and comfortable waters fetched them, and drank to one another as taking their last farewell." During all this time the aged Sir George Somers, sitting upon the quarter-deck, scarce taking time to eat or sleep, bearing the helm so as to keep the s.h.i.+p as upright as possible, but for which she must have foundered,--at last descried land.

At this time many of the unhappy crew were asleep, and when the voice of Sir George was heard announcing "land," it seemed as if it was a voice from heaven, and they hurried up above the hatches to look for what they could scarcely credit. On finding the intelligence true, and that they were, indeed, in sight of land,--although it was a coast that all men usually tried to avoid,--yet they now spread all sail to reach it. Soon the s.h.i.+p struck upon a rock, till a surge of the sea dashed her off from thence, and so from one to another till, at length, fortunately, she lodged (July twenty-eighth) upright between two rocks, as if she was laid up in a natural dry-dock. Till this, at every lurch they had expected instant death; but now, all at once, the storm gave place to a calm, and the billows, which at each successive dash had threatened destruction, were stilled; and, quickly taking to their boats, they reached the sh.o.r.e, distant upwards of a league, without the loss of a single man out of upwards of one hundred and fifty. Their joy at an escape so unexpected and almost miraculous, arose to the pitch of amazement. Yet their escape was not more wonderful in their eyes than their preservation after they had landed on the island; for the Spaniards had always looked upon it as more frightful than purgatory itself; and all seamen had reckoned it no better than an enchanted den of Furies and devils--the most dangerous, desolate, and forlorn place in the whole world; instead of which it turned out to be healthful, fertile, and charming.

The Bermudas are a cl.u.s.ter of islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean, at the distance of six hundred miles from the American Continent, extending, in crescent form, from east to west; in length, twenty miles; in breadth, two and a half. On the coast of the princ.i.p.al of these islands, Bermuda, the Sea-Venture was wrecked; and, on landing, the English found, instead of those gloomy horrors with which a superst.i.tious fancy had invested it, a terrestrial paradise blessed with all the charms of exquisite scenery, luxuriant vegetation, and a voluptuous atmosphere, which have since been celebrated in the verse of a modern poet. Here they remained for nearly a year. Fish, fowl, turtle, and wild hogs supplied the English with abundant food; the palmetto leaf furnished a cover for their cabins. They had daily morning and evening prayers, and on Sunday divine service was performed and two sermons preached by the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bucke. He was a graduate of Oxford, and received the appointment of chaplain to the Virginia expedition upon the recommendation of Dr. Ravis, Bishop of London. Mr.

Bucke was the second minister sent out from England to Virginia, being successor to Rev. Robert Hunt. The company of the Sea-Venture were summoned to wors.h.i.+p by the sound of the church-going bell, and the roll was called, and absentees were duly punished. The clergyman performed the ceremony of marriage once during the sojourn on the island, the parties being Sir George Somers' cook and a maid-servant, (of one Mrs.

Mary Horton,) named Elizabeth Persons. The communion was once celebrated. The infant child of one John Rolfe--a daughter, born on the island--was christened, February eleventh, by the name of Bermuda, Captain Newport, the Rev. Mr. Bucke, and Mrs. Horton being witnesses. It would seem from this, that John Rolfe was a widower when he afterwards married Pocahontas. Another infant, born on the island, a boy, was christened by the name of Bermudas. Six of the company, including the wife of Sir Thomas Gates, died there. Living in the midst of peace and plenty in this sequestered and delightful place of abode, after escaping from the yawning perils of the deep, many of the English lost all desire ever to leave the island, and some were even mutinously determined to remain there. Gates, however, having decked the long-boat of the Sea-Venture with the hatches, dispatched the mate, Master Raven, an expert mariner, with eight men, to Virginia for succor; but the boat was never more heard of. Discord and insubordination found a place among the exiles of the Bermudas; and even the leaders, Gates and Somers, lived for awhile asunder. At length, while Somers was engaged in surveying the islands, Gates completed a vessel of about eighty tons, constructed somewhat after the manner of Robinson Crusoe, partly from the timber of the Sea-Venture, and the rest of cedar. A small bark was also built under the direction of Sir George Somers, of cedar, without the use of any iron, save a bolt in her keel. These two vessels were named, the one the "Patience," the other the "Deliverance." Finally, on the 10th day of May, 1610, after the lapse of nine months spent on the island, and nearly a year since their departure from England, harmony being restored, and the leaders reconciled, they embarked in these cedar vessels for Virginia.

The name of Sir Thomas West, afterwards Lord la Ware, or De la War, or Delaware, appears in the commission appointed in the year of James the First, for inquiring into the case of all such persons as should be found openly opposing the doctrines of the Church of England. Such was the spirit of that age, by which standard the men of that age ought to be judged. Lord Delaware was, nevertheless, distinguished for his virtues and his generous devotion to the welfare of the infant colony of Virginia--a man of approved courage, temper, and experience. The Rev.

William Crashaw, father of the poet of that name, at the period of Lord Delaware's appointment to the place of Governor of Virginia, was preacher at the Temple; and he delivered a sermon before his lords.h.i.+p, and others of his majesty's council for the Colony of Virginia, and the rest of the adventurers or stockholders in that plantation, upon occasion of his lords.h.i.+p's embarkation for Virginia, on the 21st day of February, 1609-10. The text was from Daniel, xii. 3: "They that turn many to righteousness shall s.h.i.+ne as the stars forever and ever." This sermon was printed by William Welby, and sold in Paul's Churchyard, at the sign of the Swan, 1610, and is the first missionary sermon preached in England to any of her sons embarking for Virginia. Crashaw, in this discourse, urges it warmly upon his countrymen to aid the enterprise of planting the colony; rejects, with indignant scorn, the more sordid motives of mere lucre, and appeals to loftier principles, and the more elevated motives of Christian beneficence. But although he rejects motives of mere profit, he tells his auditors that if they will pursue their object, animated by these enlarged views, they will probably find the plantation eventually a source of pecuniary profit, the soil being good, the commodities numerous and necessary for England, the distance not great, and the voyage easy, so that G.o.d's blessing was alone wanting to make it gainful. In his peroration, the preacher, apostrophizing Lord Delaware, excites his generous emulation by a personal appeal, reminding him of the gallant exploit of his ancestor, Sir Roger la Warr, who, a.s.sisted by John de Pelham, captured the King of France at the battle of Poictiers. In memory of which exploit, Sir Roger la Warr--Lord la Warr according to Froissart--had the crampet or chape of his sword for a badge of that honor. Crashaw bitterly denounces the Papists, and the Brownists, and factious separatists, and exhorts the Virginia Company not to suffer such to have any place in the new colony. Rome and Geneva were the Scylla and Charybdis of the Church of England.[97:A] Lord Delaware sailed in February for Virginia.

Gates and Somers, after leaving the Bermudas in May, in fourteen days reached Jamestown, where they found only sixty miserable colonists surviving. Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-Governor, landing on the twenty-fourth of May, caused the church-bell to be rung; and such as were able repaired thither, and the Rev. Mr. Bucke delivered an earnest and sorrowful prayer upon their finding so unexpectedly all things so full of misery and misgovernment. At the conclusion of the religious service the new commission of Gates was read; Percy, the acting president, scarcely able to stand, surrendered up the former charter and his commission. The palisades of the fort were found torn down; the ports open; the gates distorted from the hinges; the houses of those who had died, broken up and burned for firewood, and their store of provision exhausted. Gates reluctantly resolved to abandon the plantation, and to return to England by way of Newfoundland, where he expected to receive succor from English fis.h.i.+ng vessels. June seventh, they buried their ordnance and armor at the gate of the fort, and, at the beat of drum, embarked in four pinnaces. Some of the people were, with difficulty, restrained from setting fire to the town; but Sir Thomas Gates, with a select party, remained on sh.o.r.e until the others had embarked, and he was the last man that stepped into the boat. They fired a farewell volley; but not a tear was shed at their departure from a spot a.s.sociated with so much misery. How often is the hour of despair but the deeper darkness that immediately precedes the dawn! At noon they reached Hog Island, and on the next morning, while anch.o.r.ed off Mulberry Island, they were met by a long-boat with dispatches from Lord Delaware, who had arrived with three vessels, after a voyage of three months and a half from England.[98:A] Upon this intelligence Gates, with his company, returned up the river to Jamestown on the same day. Lord Delaware arrived there with his three vessels on the ninth, and on the morning of the following day (Sunday) he landed at the south gate of the fort, and although the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, with his company, were drawn up to meet him, he fell on his knees, and remained for some time in silent prayer. After this he repaired to the church, and heard a sermon delivered by the Rev. Mr. Bucke. A council was then called, and the governor delivered an address to the colonists. The hand of a superintending and benignant Providence was plainly manifested in all these circ.u.mstances. The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates rescued the colony from the jaws of famine; his prudence preserved the fort at Jamestown, which the unhappy colonists, upon abandoning the place, wished to destroy, so as to cut off all possibility of a return; had their return been longer delayed, the savages might have destroyed the fort; had they set sail sooner, they would probably have missed Lord Delaware's fleet, as they had intended to sail by way of Newfoundland, in a direction contrary to that by which Lord Delaware approached.[99:A]

Lord Delaware, Governor and Captain-General, was accompanied by Sir Ferdinand Waynman, Master of the Horse, who died shortly afterwards; Captain Holcroft; Captain Lawson; and other gentlemen. Lord Delaware was the first executive officer of Virginia with the t.i.tle of Governor; and the t.i.tles of Governor and Captain-General were ever after given to the colonial chief magistrates of Virginia. Under Lord Delaware's discreet and energetic management, discipline and industry were speedily restored, the hours of labor being set from six o'clock in the morning to ten, and from two to four in the afternoon. The store of provisions that he had brought over with him was sufficient to supply four hundred men for twelve months. He gave orders for repairing the church. Its length was sixty feet, and its breadth twenty-four, and it was to have a chancel of cedar and a communion-table of black-walnut, and the pews of cedar, with handsome wide windows, to shut and open according to the weather, made of the same wood; as also a pulpit with a font hewed out hollow like a canoe, with two bells at the west end. The building was so constructed as to be very light within; and the Lord Governor and Captain-General caused it to be kept pa.s.sing sweet, and trimmed up with divers flowers. There was also a s.e.xton belonging to it. Every Sunday there were two sermons delivered, and every Thursday one--there being two preachers who took their weekly turns. In the morning of every day, at the ringing of the bell at ten o'clock, the people attended prayers; and also again at four in the afternoon, before supper. On Sunday, when the Governor went to church, he was accompanied by the councillors, officers, and all the gentlemen, with a guard of halberdiers in his lords.h.i.+p's livery, handsome red cloaks, to the number of fifty on each side, and behind him. In the church his lords.h.i.+p had his seat in the choir, in a green velvet chair, with a cloth, and also a velvet cus.h.i.+on laid on the table before him on which he knelt. The council and officers sate on each side of him, and when he returned to his house he was escorted back in the same manner. The newly appointed council consisted of Sir Thomas Gates, whose t.i.tle was changed from that of Lieutenant-Governor to that of Lieutenant-General; Sir George Somers, Admiral; Captain George Percy; Sir Ferdinando Wayman, Master of the Ordnance; Captain Newport, Vice-Admiral; and Mr. Strachey, Secretary and Recorder. Strachey, who appears to have been a scholar, published an interesting account of the colony at this period. Some of the houses at Jamestown were covered with boards; some with Indian mats. They were comfortable, and securely protected from the savages by the forts. Lord Delaware was a generous friend of the colony; but it was as yet quite too poor and too much in its infancy to maintain the state suitable to him and his splendid retinue. The fas.h.i.+ons of a court were preposterous in a wilderness. On the ninth of June, Sir George Somers was dispatched, in compliance with his own suggestion, in his cedar vessel to the Bermudas, accompanied by Argall in another vessel, to procure further supplies for the colony. Captain Argall, in consequence of adverse winds and heavy fogs, returned to Jamestown. Sir George Somers, after much difficulty, reached his destination, where he shortly after died, at a spot on which the town of St. George commemorates his name. The islands themselves received the designation of his surname, and were afterwards called the Summer Islands. It is said that the Bermudas were at first named in England "Virginiola," but shortly after the "Summer Islands,"

partly in allusion to their temperature, and partly in honor of Sir George.[102:A] It was remarked of him that he was "a lamb upon land; a lion at sea." As his life had been divided between the Old World and the New, so after his death his remains were buried, part at Bermuda, part at Whitchurch, Dorsets.h.i.+re, in England.

Lord Delaware dispatched Captain Argall to the Potomac for corn, which he succeeded in procuring by the aid of the youthful prisoner, Henry Spilman. His lords.h.i.+p erected two forts, called Henry and Charles, after the king's sons. These forts were built on a level tract bordering Southampton River, and it was intended that settlers arriving from England should first land there, to refresh themselves after the confinement of the voyage. Sir Thomas Gates, who had before sent his daughters back to England, now returned there himself, in order to render to the council an account of all that had happened. Captain Percy was dispatched with a party to chastise the Paspaheghs, for some depredations; they fled before the English, who burnt their cabins, captured their queen and her children, and shortly after barbarously slew them. Lord Delaware, visiting the falls with a party of soldiers, was attacked by the Indians, who killed some of his men.

His lords.h.i.+p having suffered much sickness, and finding himself in a state of extreme debility, embarked,[103:A] in company of Dr. Bohun and Captain Argall, and about fifty others, for the Island of Mevis, in the West Indies. Contrary winds drove them to the north, and having put in at the mouth of a large river, then called Chickohocki, it hence derived its name of the Delaware.

Lord Delaware upon leaving the colony, committed the charge of it to Captain George Percy, an honorable and resolute gentleman, but in infirm health, and deficient in energy. The number of colonists was at this period about two hundred; the stock of provisions sufficient for ten months, and the Indians peaceable and friendly. Before Lord Delaware reached England, the Virginia Council, discouraged by so many disasters and disappointments, were at a loss to decide whether they should use any further efforts to sustain the ill-fated colony, or should abandon the enterprise, and recall the settlers from Virginia. But Sir Thomas Gates made so strenuous an appeal in favor of sustaining the plantation, that Sir Thomas Dale was dispatched with three vessels, cattle, hogs, and other supplies. The t.i.tle given to Dale was that of High Marshal of Virginia, indicative of the martial authority with which he was invested. He was a military man, and had served in the Low Countries, and he brought over with him an extraordinary code of "laws divine, moral, and martial," compiled by William Strachey, secretary of the colony, for Sir Thomas Smith, from the military laws observed during the wars in the Low Countries. This code was sent over by Sir Thomas Smith, treasurer or governor of the Virginia Company, without the company's sanction, as it has been alleged; but since the company in no way interposed its authority in contravention to the new code, their sanction of it may be presumed. Several of these laws were barbarous, inhuman, written in blood.

Arriving in Virginia in the month of May, 1611, Dale touched at Kiquotan, and set all hands there to planting corn. Reaching Jamestown on the tenth of May, he found the settlers busily engaged in their usual occupation, playing at bowls in the streets. He set them to work felling trees, repairing houses, and providing materials for enclosing the new town, which he proposed to build. To find a site for it he surveyed the Nansemond River and the James as far as the falls, and finally pitched upon a high ground, with steep banks, on the north side of the river, near Arrohattock, and about twelve miles below the falls of the river.

The site was on a peninsula, known as Farrar's Island, in Varina Neck.

Sir Thomas was prevented for a time from founding the new town by the disturbances that prevailed in the colony, and to restore order he enforced martial law with rigor. Eight of the colonists appear to have been convicted of treasonable plots and conspiracies, and executed by cruel and unusual modes, before midsummer. Among these was Jeffrey Abbot, who had served long in the army in Ireland and in the Netherlands; had been a sergeant of Captain John Smith's company in Virginia, who avers that he never knew there a better soldier or more loyal friend of the colony. It must be acknowledged that rigorous measures were necessary, and it was fortunate for the colony that the cruel and despotic code of laws, to which it was now subjected, was administered by so discreet and upright a governor as Dale.

Early in August, 1611, Sir Thomas Gates, commissioned to take charge of the government of the colony, came over with six vessels, three hundred men, and abundant supplies. He was accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Glover, an approved preacher in Bedford and Huntingdons.h.i.+re, a graduate of Cambridge, in easy circ.u.mstances, and somewhat advanced in years.

Arriving at Jamestown early in August, during the sickly season, he soon after died.

Dale, relieved from the cares of the chief post, cheerfully occupied a subordinate position, and now turned his attention to the establishment of new settlements on the banks of the James, at some distance above Jamestown. Furnished by Gates with three hundred and fifty men, he sailed up the river early in September, and on the spot selected before, he founded the town of Henrico, so called in honor of the heir-apparent, Prince Henry, eldest son of James the First. The peninsula on which it was built is formed by a remarkable bend, styled the "Dutch Gap," where the river, after sweeping a circuit of seven miles, returns within one hundred and twenty yards from the point of departure. The site commands an extensive and picturesque view of the winding river, which in this part of it is called the "Corkscrew." The fertile tract of land there produced tobacco nearly resembling the Spanish Varinas, and hence received the appellation of Varina, the name of a well-known plantation.

This was afterwards the residence of the Rev. William St.i.th, the best of our early historians, who dates the preface of his History of Virginia there, in 1746.

The peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the river, was impaled across the isthmus from water to water. There were three streets of well-framed houses, a handsome church of wood completed, and the foundation laid of a better one to be built of brick, besides store-houses, watch-houses, etc. Upon the river edge there were five houses, in which lived "the honester sort of people," as farmers in England, and they kept continual watch for the town's security. About two miles back from the town was a second palisade, near two miles in length, from river to river, guarded by several commanders, with a good quant.i.ty of corn-ground impaled, and sufficiently secured.

The breastwork thrown up by Sir Thomas Dale is still to be traced, and vestiges of the town are indicated by scattered bricks, showing the positions of the houses.[106:A] Burk[106:B] and Keith[106:C] have fallen into singular mistakes as to the situation of this town.

On the south side of the river a plantation was established, called Hope in Faith and c.o.xendale, with forts, named, respectively, Charity, Elizabeth, Patience, and Mount Malady, and a guest-house for sick people, on the spot where afterwards, in St.i.th's time, Jefferson's church stood. On the same side of the river the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, sometimes styled the "Apostle of Virginia," established his parsonage, a well-framed house and one hundred acres of land, called Rock Hall.[106:D]

The work of William Strachey, already referred to, ent.i.tled "The History of Travel into Virginia Britannia," etc., appears to have been written before 1616, and two ma.n.u.scripts of it exist, one in the British Museum, the other in the Ashmolean ma.n.u.scripts at Oxford.[106:E]

Sir Thomas Dale, when he came over to Virginia, was accompanied by Rev.

Alexander Whitaker, the son of Dr. William Whitaker, Master of St.

John's College, Cambridge, and also Regius Professor of Divinity there.

The doctor distinguished himself by his controversial writings against the Church of Rome, and took a leading part in framing and maintaining the Lambeth Articles, which were Calvinistic, and had they been established, might have gone far toward healing the divisions between the Church of England and the Presbyterians. Rev. Alexander Whitaker, when he reached Virginia, had been a graduate of Cambridge some five or six years, and had been seated in the North of England, where he was held in great esteem. He had property of his own and excellent prospects of promotion; but, animated by a missionary spirit, he came over to Virginia. The voyage is described as speedy and safe, "being scarce eight weeks long."