England in America, 1580-1652 Part 5

The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates relieved the immediate distress, and he a.s.serted order by the publication of the code of martial law drawn up in England.[25] Then he held a consultation with Somers, Newport, and Percy, and decided to abandon the settlement. As the provisions brought from the Bermudas were only sufficient to last the company sixteen days longer, he prepared to go to Newfoundland, where, as it was the fis.h.i.+ng season, he hoped to get further supplies which might enable them to reach England.[26] Accordingly, he sent the pinnace _Virginia_ to Fort Algernourne to take on the guard; and then embarked (June 7, 1610) the whole party at Jamestown in the two cedar vessels built in the Bermudas. Darkness fell upon them at Hog Island, and the next morning at Mulberry Island they met the _Virginia_ returning up the river, bearing a letter from Lord Delaware announcing his arrival at Point Comfort, and commanding him to take his s.h.i.+ps and company back to Jamestown; which order Gates obeyed, landing at Jamestown that very night.[27]

It seems that the reports which reached the council of the company in England in December, of the disappearance of Sir Thomas Gates and the ill condition of things at Jamestown, threw such a coldness over the enterprise that they had great difficulty in fitting out the new fleet. Nevertheless, March 2, 1610, Lord Delaware left Cowes with three s.h.i.+ps and one hundred and fifty emigrants, chiefly soldiers and mechanics, with only enough "knights and gentlemen of quality" to furnish the necessary leaders.h.i.+p.[28]

He arrived at Point Comfort June 6; and, following Gates up the river, reached Jamestown June 10. His first work was to cleanse and restore the settlement, after which he sent Robert Tindall to Cape Charles to fish, and Argall and Somers to the Bermuda Islands for a supply of hog meat. Argall missed his way and went north to the fis.h.i.+ng banks of Newfoundland, while Somers died in the Bermudas.

Delaware next proceeded to settle matters with the Indians. The policy of the company had been to treat them justly, and after the first summer the settlers bought Jamestown Island from the Paspaheghs for some copper,[29] and during his presidency Captain Smith purchased the territory at the Falls.[30] For their late proceedings the Indians had incurred the penalties of confiscation, but Lord Delaware did not like harsh measures and sent to Powhatan to propose peace. His reply was that ere he would consider any accommodation Lord Delaware must send him a coach and three horses and consent to confine the English wholly to their island territory.[31] Lord Delaware at once ordered Gates to attack and drive Powhatan's son Pochins and his Indians from Kecoughtan; and when this was done he erected two forts at the mouth of Hampton River, called Charles and Henry, about a musket-shot distance from Fort Algernourne.

No precautions, however, could prevent the diseases incident to the climate, and during the summer no less than one hundred and fifty persons perished of fever. In the fall Delaware concentrated the settlers, now reduced to less than two hundred, at Jamestown and Algernourne fort. Wis.h.i.+ng to carry out his instructions, he sent an expedition to the falls of James River to search for gold-mines; but, like its predecessor, it proved a failure, and many of the men were killed by the Indians.[32] Delaware himself fell sick, and by the spring was so reduced that he found it necessary to leave the colony.

When he departed, March 28, 1611, the storehouse contained only enough supplies to last the people three months at short allowance; and probably another "Starving Time" was prevented only by the arrival of Sir Thomas Dale, May 10, 1611.[33]

From this time till the death of Lord Delaware in 1618 the government was administered by a succession of deputy governors, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Thomas Dale, Captain George Yardley, and Captain Samuel Argall. For five years--1611-1616--of this period the ruling spirit was Sir Thomas Dale, who had acquired a great reputation in the army of the Netherlands as a disciplinarian. His policy in Virginia seemed to have been the advancement of the company's profit at the expense of the settlers, whom he pretended to regard as so abandoned that they needed the extreme of martial law. In 1611 he restored the settlements at forts Charles and Henry; in 1613 he founded Bermuda Hundred and Bermuda City (otherwise called Charles Hundred and Charles City, now City Point), and in 1614 he established a salt factory at Smith Island near Cape Charles.[34]

In laboring at these works the men were treated like galley-slaves and given a diet "that hogs refused to eat." As a consequence some of them ran away, and Dale set the Indians to catch them, and when they were brought back he burned several of them at the stake. Some attempted to go to England in a barge, and for their temerity were shot to death, hanged, or broken on the wheel. Although for the most part the men in the colony at this time were old soldiers, mechanics, and workmen, accustomed to labor, we are told that among those who perished through Dale's cruelty were many young men "of Auncyent Houses and born to estates of 1000 by the year,"[35] persons doubtless attracted to Virginia by the mere love of adventure, but included by Dale in the common slavery. Even the strenuous Captain John Smith testified concerning Jeffrey Abbott, a veteran of the wars in Ireland and the Netherlands, but put to death by Dale for mutiny, that "he never saw in Virginia a more sufficient soldier, (one) less turbulent, a better wit, (one) more hardy or industrious, nor any more forward to cut them off that sought to abandon the country or wrong the colony."[36]

To better purpose Dale's strong hand was felt among the Indians along the James and York rivers, whom he visited with heavy punishments. The result was that Powhatan's appet.i.te for war speedily diminished; and when Captain Argall, in April, 1613, by a shrewd trick got possession of Pocahontas, he offered peace, which was confirmed in April, 1614, by the marriage of Pocahontas to a leading planter named John Rolfe.

The ceremony is believed to have been performed at Jamestown by Rev.

Richard Buck, who came with Gates in 1610, and it was witnessed by several of Powhatan's kindred.[37]

Dale reached out beyond the territory of the London Company, and hearing that the French had made settlements in North Virginia, he sent Captain Samuel Argall in July, 1613, to remove them. Argall reached Mount Desert Island, captured the settlement, and carried some of the French to Jamestown, where as soon as Dale saw them he spoke of "nothing but ropes" and of gallows and hanging "every one of them." To make the work complete, Argall was sent out on a second expedition, and this time he reduced the French settlements at Port Royal and St.

Croix River.[38] On his return voyage to Virginia he is said to have stopped at the Hudson River, where, finding a Dutch trading-post consisting of four houses on Manhattan Island, he forced the Dutch governor likewise to submit by a "letter sent and recorded" in Virginia. Probably in one of these voyages the Delaware River was also visited, when the "atturnment of the Indian kings" was made to the king of England.[39] It appears to have received its present name from Argall in 1610.[40]

Towards the end of his stay in Virginia, Dale seemed to realize that some change must be made in the colony, and he accordingly abolished the common store and made every man dependent on his own labor. But the exactions he imposed upon the settlers in return made it certain that he did not desire their benefit so much as to save expense to his masters in England. The "Farmers," as he called a small number to whom he gave three acres of land to be cultivated in their own way, had to pay two and a half barrels of corn per acre and give thirty days'

public service in every year; while the "Laborers," const.i.tuting the majority of the colony, had to slave eleven months, and were allowed only one month to raise corn to keep themselves supplied for a year.

The inhabitants of Bermuda Hundred counted themselves more fortunate than the rest because they were promised their freedom in three years and were given one month in the year and one day in the week, from May till harvest-time, "to get their sustenance," though of this small indulgence they were deprived of nearly half by Dale. Yet even this slender appeal to private interest was accompanied with marked improvement, and in 1614 Ralph Hamor, Jr., Dale's secretary of state, wrote, "When our people were fed out of the common store and labored jointly in the manuring of ground and planting corn, ... the most honest of them, in a general business, would not take so much faithful and true pains in a week as now he will do in a day."[41]

These were really dark days for Virginia, and Gondomar, the Spanish minister, wrote to Philip III. that "here in London this colony Virginia is in such bad repute that not a human being can be found to go there in any way whatever."[42] Some spies of King Philip were captured in Virginia, and Dale was much concerned lest the Spaniards would attack the settlement, but the Spanish king and his council thought that it would die of its own weakness, and took no hostile measure.[43] In England the company was so discouraged that many withdrew their subscriptions, and in 1615 a lottery was tried as a last resort to raise money.[44]

When Dale left Virginia (May, 1616) the people were very glad to get rid of him, and not more than three hundred and fifty-one persons--men, women, and children--survived altogether.[45] Within a very short time the cabins which he erected were ready to fall and the palisades could not keep out hogs. A tract of land called the "company's garden" yielded the company 300 annually, but this was a meagre return for the enormous suffering and sacrifice of life.[46]

Dale took Pocahontas with him to England, and Lady Delaware presented her at court, and her portrait engraved by the distinguished artist Simon de Pa.s.se was a popular curiosity.[47] While in England she met Captain John Smith, and when Smith saluted her as a princess Pocahontas insisted on calling him father and having him call her his child.[48]

It was at this juncture that in the cultivation of tobacco, called "the weed" by King James, a new hope for Virginia was found. Hamor says that John Rolfe began to plant tobacco in 1612 and his example was soon followed generally. Dale frowned upon the new occupation, and in 1616 commanded that no farmer should plant tobacco until he had put down two acres of his three-acre farm in corn.[49] After Dale's departure Captain George Yardley, who acted as deputy governor for a year, was not so exacting. At Jamestown, in the spring of 1617, the market-place and even the narrow margin of the streets were set with tobacco. It was hard, indeed, to suppress a plant which brought per pound in the London market sometimes as much as $12 in present money.

Yardley's government lasted one year, and the colony "lived in peace and best plentye that ever it had till that time."[50]

[Footnote 1: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 114, 130.]

[Footnote 2: Hotten, _Emigrants to America_, 245; Brown, _First Republic_, 114.]

[Footnote 3: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 121.]

[Footnote 4: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 23, 125, 442, 449, 460.]

[Footnote 5: _Breife Declaration_.]

[Footnote 6: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 133-147, 154.]

[Footnote 7: _Breife Declaration_.]

[Footnote 8: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 159; Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 343.]

[Footnote 9: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 250-321.]

[Footnote 10: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 228.]

[Footnote 11: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 80-98; Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 206-224.]

[Footnote 12: _True and Sincere Declaration_, in Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 345.]

[Footnote 13: Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, IV., 1734-1754; _Plain Description of the Barmudas_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. iii.); Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 346, 347.]

[Footnote 14: Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, IV., 1749.]

[Footnote 15: _Breife Declaration_; Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 404-406.]

[Footnote 16: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 330-332.]

[Footnote 17: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 480-485; Archer's letter, in Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 331-332; Ratcliffe's letter, ibid., 334-335; Brown, _First Republic_, 94-97.]

[Footnote 18: Brown, _First Republic_, 92.]

[Footnote 19: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 364.]

[Footnote 20: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 497.]

[Footnote 21: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 483-488.]

[Footnote 22: _True Declaration_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 23: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 498.]

[Footnote 24: _Breife Declaration_; Percy, _Trewe Relacyon_, quoted by Brown, _First Republic_, 94, and by Eggleston, _Beginners of a Nation_, 39; _The Tragical Relation_, in Neill, _Virginia Company_, 407-411; _True Declaration_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 25: _Laws Divine, Morall and Martiall_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. ii.).]

[Footnote 26: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 401-415.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid., 407.]

[Footnote 28: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 400-415; Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, IV., 1734-1756; _True Declaration_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 29: _True Declaration_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 30: Spelman, in Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 483-488.]

[Footnote 31: Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, IV., 1756.]

[Footnote 32: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 490.]

[Footnote 33: _Breife Declaration_.]