Part 2 (1/2)

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.