BEGINNINGS OF A COMMONWEALTH.

Of late years there has been some discussion as to which of the flowers or plants indigenous to the New World might most properly be selected as a national emblem for the United States of America, and many persons have expressed a preference for that most beautiful of cereals, Indian corn. Certainly it would be difficult to overrate the historic importance of this plant. Of the part which it played in aboriginal America I have elsewhere treated.[80] To the first English settlers it was of vital consequence. But for Indian corn the company of Pilgrims at Plymouth would have succumbed to famine, like so many other such little colonies. The settlers at Jamestown depended upon corn from the outset, and when the supply stopped the Starving Time came quickly. We can thus appreciate the value to the Pilgrims of the alliance with Massasoit, and to the Virginians of the amicable relations for some time maintained with The Powhatan. We are also furnished with the means of estimating the true importance of John Smith and his work in the first struggle of English civilization with the wilderness. Whether we suppose that Smith in his writings unduly exalts his own work or not, one thing is clear. It is impossible to read his narrative without recognizing the hand of a man supremely competent to deal with barbarians. No such character as that which shines out through his pages could ever have been invented. To create such a man by an effort of imagination would have been far more difficult than to be such a man. One of the first of Englishmen to deal with Indians, he had no previous experience to aid him; yet nowhere have the red men been more faithfully portrayed than in his pages, and one cannot fail to note this unrivalled keenness of observation, which combined with rare sagacity and coolness to make him always say and do the right things at the right times. These qualities kept the Indians from hostility and made them purveyors to the needs of the little struggling colony.

Besides these qualities Smith had others which marked him out as a natural leader of men. His impulsiveness and plain speaking, as well as his rigid enforcement of discipline, made him some bitter enemies, but his comrades in general spoke of him in terms of strong admiration and devotion. His nature was essentially noble, and his own words bear witness to it, as in the following exhortation: "Seeing we are not born for ourselves, but each to help other, and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds and our bad, by faith in Christ's merits, is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or to hell; seeing honour is our lives' ambition, and our ambition after death to have an honourable memory of our life; and seeing by no means we would be abated of the dignities and glories of our predecessors, let us imitate their virtues to be worthily their successors." So wrote the man of whom Thomas Fuller quaintly said that he had "a prince's heart in a beggar's purse," and to whom one of his comrades, a survivor of the Starving Time, afterward paid this touching tribute: "Thus we lost him that in all our proceedings made justice his first guide, ... ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and indignity more than any dangers; that never allowed more for himself than his soldiers with him; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose loss our deaths."[81]

It is, indeed, in all probability true that losing Smith was the chief cause of the horrors of the Starving Time. The colony was not ill supplied when he left it, in October, 1609, for the stock of hogs had increased to about 600, and the Third Supply had brought sheep and goats as well as horses. All this advantage had been destroyed by the active hostility of the Indians, which was due to the outrageous conduct of white ruffians whom Smith would have restrained or punished. But for this man's superb courage and resourcefulness, one can hardly believe that the colony would have lasted until 1609. More likely it would have perished in one of the earlier seasons of sore trial. It would have succumbed like Lane's colony, and White's, and Popham's; one more would have been added to the sickening list of failures, and the hopes built upon Virginia in England would have been sadly dashed. The utmost ingenuity on the part of Smith's detractors can never do away with the fact that his personal qualities did more than anything else to prevent such a direful calamity; and for this reason he will always remain a great and commanding figure in American history.

The arrival of Lord Delaware in June, 1610, was the prelude to a new state of things. The pathetic scene in which that high-minded nobleman knelt in prayer upon the shore at Jamestown heralded the end of the chaos through which Smith had steered the colony. But the change was not effected all in a moment. The evils were too deep-seated for that. There had been three principal sources of weakness: first, the lack of a strong government with unquestioned authority; secondly, the system of communism in labour and property; thirdly, the low character of the emigrants. This last statement does not apply to the earlier settlers so much as to those who began to come in 1609. The earliest companies were mainly composed of respectable persons, but as the need for greater numbers grew imperative, inducements were held out which attracted a much lower grade of people. Neither this evil nor the evils flowing from communism were remedied during Lord Delaware's brief rule, but the first evil was entirely removed. In such a rude settlement a system by which a council elected its president annually, and could depose him at any time, was sure to breed faction and strife; strong government had been attained only when the strong man Smith was left virtually alone by the death or departure of the other councillors. Now there was no council, but instead of it a governor appointed in London and clothed with despotic power. Lord Delaware was a man of strict integrity, kind and humane, with a talent for command, and he was obeyed. His first act on that memorable June Sunday, after a sermon had been preached and his commission read, was to make a speech to the settlers, in which, to cite his own words, "I did lay some blames on them for many vanities and their idleness, earnestly wishing that I might no more find it so, lest I should be compelled to draw the sword of justice to cut off such delinquents, which I had much rather draw in their defence to protect from enemies."[82] Happily he was not called upon to draw it except against the Indians, to whom he administered some wholesome doses of chastisement. The colonists were kept at work, new fortifications were erected and dismantled houses put in repair. The little church assumed a comfortable and dignified appearance, with its cedar pews and walnut altar, its tall pulpit and baptismal font. The governor was extremely fond of flowers and at all services would have the church decorated with the bright and fragrant wild growth of the neighbourhood. At such times he always appeared in the full dignity of velvet and lace, attended by a body-guard of spearmen in scarlet cloaks. A full-toned bell was hung in its place, and daily it notified the little industrial army when to begin and when to leave off the work of the day.

Discipline was rigidly maintained, but the old danger of famine was not yet fully overcome. The difficulty was foreseen immediately after Delaware's arrival, and the veteran Somers at once sailed with the two pinnaces for the Bermudas, intending to bring back a cargo of salted pork and live hogs for breeding. His consort was commanded by Samuel Argall, a young kinsman of Sir Thomas Smith, the treasurer of the London Company. The two ships were parted by bad weather, and Somers, soon after landing at Bermuda, fell sick and died, with his last breath commanding his men to fulfil their errand and go back to Virginia. But they, disgusted with the wilderness and thinking only of themselves, went straight to England, taking with them the old knight's body embalmed. As for young Argall, the stress of weather drove him to Cape Cod, where he caught many fish; then cruising along the coast he reached Chesapeake Bay and went up the Potomac River, where he found a friend in the head sachem of the Potomac tribe and bought as much corn as his ship could carry. With these welcome supplies Argall reached Jamestown in September, and then Newport took the ships back to England, carrying with him Sir Thomas Gates to make a report of all that had happened and to urge the Company to fresh exertions. The winter of 1610-11 was a hard one, though not to be compared with the Starving Time of the year before. There were about 150 deaths, and Lord Delaware, becoming too ill to discharge his duties, sailed for England in March, 1611, intending to send Gates immediately back to Virginia. George Percy, who had commanded the colony through the Starving Time, was again left in charge.

Meanwhile the Company had been bestirring itself. A survey of the subscription list for that winter shows that English pluck was getting aroused; the colony must be set upon its feet. The list of craftsmen desired for Virginia is curious and interesting: millwrights, iron founders, makers of edge tools, colliers, woodcutters, ship-wrights, fishermen, husbandmen, gardeners, bricklayers, lime-burners, blacksmiths, shoemakers, coopers, turners, gunmakers, wheelwrights, masons, millers, bakers, and brewers figure on the list with many others. But there must have been difficulty in getting enough of such respectable workmen together in due season for Newport's return trip; for when that mariner started in March, 1611, with three ships and 300 passengers, it was a more shiftless and graceless set of ne'er-do-weels than had ever been sent out before. One lesson, however, had been learned; and victuals enough were taken to last the whole colony for a year. Gates, the deputy-governor, was not ready to go, and his place was supplied by Sir Thomas Dale, who for the purpose was appointed High Marshal of Virginia. Under that designation this remarkable man ruled the colony for the next five years, though his superior, Gates, was there with him for a small part of the time. Lord Delaware, whose tenure of office as governor was for life, remained during those five years in England. If the Company erred in sending out scapegraces for settlers, it did its best to repair the error in sending such a man as Dale to govern them. Hard-headed, indomitable, bristling with energy, full of shrewd common-sense, Sir Thomas Dale was always equal to the occasion, and under his masterful guidance Virginia came out from the valley of the shadow of death. He was a soldier who had seen some of the hardest fighting in the Netherlands, and had afterward been attached to the suite of Henry, Prince of Wales. He was connected by marriage with Sir Walter Raleigh and with the Berkeleys.

Dale was a true English mastiff, faithful and kind but formidable when aroused, and capable of showing at times some traits of the old wolf. The modern excess of pity misdirected, which tries to save the vilest murderers from the gallows, would have been to him incomprehensible. To the upright he was a friend and helper; toward depraved offenders he was merciless, and among those over whom he was called to rule there were many such. John Smith judiciously criticised the policy of the Company in sending out such people; for, he says, "when neither the fear of God, nor shame, nor displeasure of their friends could rule them [in England], there is small hope ever to bring one in twenty of them ever to be good [in Virginia], Notwithstanding I confess divers amongst them had better minds and grew much more industrious than was expected; yet ten good workmen would have done more substantial work in a day than ten of them in a week."[83] It was not against those who had better minds that Dale's heavy hand was directed; it was reserved for the incorrigible and crushed them. When he reached Jamestown, in May, 1611, he found that the two brief months of Percy's mild rule had already begun to bear ill fruit; men were playing at bowls in working hours, quite oblivious of planting and hoeing.

To meet the occasion, a searching code of laws had already been sanctioned by the Company. In this code several capital crimes were specified. Among them were failure to attend the church services, or blaspheming God's name, or speaking "against the known articles of the Christian faith." Any man who should "unworthily demean himself "toward a clergyman, or fail to "hold him in all reverent regard," was to be thrice publicly whipped, and after each whipping was to make public acknowledgment of the heinousness of his crime and the justice of the punishment. Not only to speak evil of the king, but even to vilify the London Company, was a treasonable offence, to be punished with death. Other capital offences were unlicensed trading with the Indians, the malicious uprooting of a crop, or the slaughter of cattle or poultry without the High Marshal's permission. For remissness in the daily work various penalties were assigned, and could be inflicted at the discretion of a court-martial. One of the first results of this strict discipline was a conspiracy to overthrow and perhaps murder Dale. The principal leader was that Jeffrey Abbot whom we have seen accompanying Smith on his last journey to Werowocomoco. The plot was detected, and Abbot and five other ringleaders were put to death in what the narrator calls a "cruel and unusual" manner, using the same adjectives which happen to occur in our Federal Constitution in its prohibition of barbarous punishments. It seems clear that at least one of the offenders was broken on the wheel, after the French fashion; and on some other occasion a lawbreaker "had a bodkin thrust through his tongue and was chained to a tree till he perished." But these were rare and extreme cases; the ordinary capital punishments were simply hanging and shooting, and they were summarily employed. Ralph Hamor, however, one of the most intelligent and fair-minded of contemporary chroniclers, declares that Dale's severity was less than the occasion demanded, and that he could not have been more lenient without imperilling the existence of the colony.[84] So the "Apostle of Virginia," the noble Alexander Whitaker, seems to have thought, for he held the High Marshal in great esteem. "Sir Thomas Dale," said he, "is a man of great knowledge in divinity, and of a good conscience in all things, both which be rare in a martial man." In his leisure moments the stern soldier liked nothing so well as to sit and discuss abstruse points of theology with this excellent clergyman.

But Dale was something more than a strong ruler and merciless judge. With statesmanlike insight he struck at one of the deepest roots of the evils which had afflicted the colony. Nothing had done so much to discourage steady labour and to foster idleness and mischief as the communism which had prevailed from the beginning. This compulsory system of throwing all the earnings into a common stock had just suited the lazy ones. Your true communist is the man who likes to live on the fruits of other people's labour. If you look for him in these days you are pretty sure to find him in a lager beer saloon, talking over schemes for rebuilding the universe. In the early days of Virginia the creature's nature was the same, and about one fifth of the population was thus called upon to support the whole. Under such circumstances it is wonderful that the colony survived until Dale could come and put an end to the system. It would not have done so, had not Smith and Delaware been able more or less to compel the laggards to work under penalties. Dale's strong common-sense taught him that to put men under the influence of the natural incentives to labour was better than to drive them to it by whipping them and slitting their ears. Only thus could the character of the colonists be permanently improved and the need for harsh punishments relaxed. So the worthy Dale took it upon himself to reform the whole system. The colonist, from being a member of an industrial army, was at once transformed into a small landed proprietor, with three acres to cultivate for his own use and behoof, on condition of paying a tax of six bushels of corn into the public treasury, which in that primitive time was the public granary. Though the change was but partially accomplished in Dale's time, the effect was magical. Industry and thrift soon began to prevail, crimes and disorders diminished, gallows and whipping-post found less to do, and the gaunt wolf of famine never again thrust his head within the door.

Six months after Dale's administration had begun, a fresh supply of settlers raised the whole number to nearly 800, and a good stock of cows, oxen, and goats was added to their resources. The colony now began to expand itself beyond the immediate neighbourhood of Jamestown. Already there was a small settlement at the river's mouth, near the site of Hampton. The want of a better site than Jamestown was freely admitted, and Dale selected the Dutch Gap peninsula. He built a palisade across the neck and blockhouses in suitable positions. The population of about 300 souls were accommodated with houses arranged in three streets, and there was a church and a storehouse. This new creation Dale called the City of Henricus, after his patron Prince Henry. A city, in any admissible sense of the word, it never became, but it left its name upon Henrico County. Afterward Dale founded other communities at Bermuda and Shirley Hundreds, and left his name upon the settlement known as Dale's Gift on the eastern peninsula near Cape Charles.

This expansion of the colony made it more than ever desirable to pacify the Indians, whose attitude had been hostile ever since Smith's departure. During all this time nothing had been seen of Pocahontas, whose visits to Jamestown had been so frequent, but that can hardly be called strange, since her tribe was on the war-path against the English. The chronicler Strachey says that in 1610, being about fifteen years old, she was married to a chieftain named Kocoum. Be that as it may, it is certain that in 1612 young Captain Argall found her staying with the Potomac tribe, whose chief he bribed with a copper kettle to connive at her abduction. She was inveigled on board Argall's ship and taken to Jamestown, to be held as a hostage for her father's good behaviour.[85] It is not clear what might have come of this, for The Powhatan's conduct was so unsatisfactory that Dale had about made up his mind to use fire and sword against him, when all at once the affair took an unexpected turn. Among the passengers on the ill-fated Sea Venture were John Rolfe and his wife, of Heacham, in Norfolk. During their stay on the Bermuda Islands, a daughter was born to them and christened Bermuda. Shortly after their arrival in Virginia, Mrs. Rolfe died, and now an affection sprang up between the widower and the captive Pocahontas. Whether the Indian husband of the latter (if Strachey is to be believed) was living or dead, would make little difference according to Indian notions; for among all the Indian tribes, when first studied by white men, marriage was a contract terminable at pleasure by either party. Scruples of a different sort troubled Rolfe, who hesitated about marrying a heathen unless he could make it the occasion of saving her soul from the Devil. This was easily achieved by converting her to Christianity and baptizing her with the Bible name Rebekah. Sir Thomas Dale improved the occasion to renew the old alliance with The Powhatan, who may have welcomed such an escape from a doubtful trial of arms; and the marriage was solemnized in April, 1614, in the church at Jamestown, in the presence of an amicable company of Indians and Englishmen. One could wish that more of the details connected with this affair had been observed and recorded for us, so that modern studies of Indian law and custom might be brought to bear upon them. How much weight this alliance may have had with the Indians, one can hardly say; but at all events they made little or no trouble for the next eight years.

Other foes than red men called for Dale's attention. In the neighbourhood of the Gulf of St. Lawrence the French were as busily at work as the English in Virginia. The 45th parallel, the northern limit of oldest Virginia, runs through the country now called Nova Scotia. At Port Royal, on the Bay of Fundy, a small French colony had been struggling against dire adversity ever since 1604, and more lately a party of French Jesuits had begun to make a settlement on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine. In one of his fishing excursions Captain Argall discovered this Jesuit settlement and promptly extinguished it, carrying his prisoners to Jamestown. Then Dale sent him back to patrol that northern coast, and presently Argall swooped upon Port Royal and burned it to the ground, carrying off the live-stock as booty and the inhabitants as prisoners. The French ambassador in London protested and received evasive answers until the affair was allowed to drop and Port Royal was rebuilt without further molestation by the English. These events were the first premonition of a mighty conflict, not to be fully entered upon till the days of Argall's grandchildren, and not to be finally decided until the days of their grandchildren, when Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham. We are told that on his way back to Jamestown the unceremonious Argall looked in at the Hudson River, and finding Hendrick Christiansen there with his colony of Dutch traders, ordered him under penalty of a broadside to haul down the flag of the Netherlands and run up the English ensign. The philosophic Dutchman quietly obeyed, but as soon as the ship was out of sight he replaced his own flag, consigning Captain Argall sotto voce to a much warmer place than the Hudson River.

In 1616 George Yeardley, who was already in Virginia, succeeded Sir Thomas Gates as deputy-governor, and Dale, who had affairs in Europe that needed attention, sailed for England. He had much reason to feel proud of what had been accomplished during his five years' rule. Strict order had been maintained and the Indians had been pacified, while the colony had trebled in numbers, and symptoms of prosperity were everywhere visible. In the ship which carried Dale to England went John Rolfe and his wife Pocahontas. Much ado was made over the Indian woman, who was presented at court by Lady Delaware and everywhere treated as a princess. There is a trustworthy tradition that King James was inclined to censure Rolfe for marrying into a royal family without consulting his own sovereign. In the English imagination The Powhatan figured as a sovereign; and when European feudal ideas were applied to the case it seemed as if in certain contingencies the infant son of Rolfe and Pocahontas might become "King of Virginia." The dusky princess was entertained with banquets and receptions, she was often seen at the theatre, and was watched with great curiosity by the people. It was then that "La Belle Sauvage" became a favourite name for London taverns. Her portrait, engraved by the celebrated artist, Simon Van Pass,[86] shows us a rather handsome and dignified young woman, with her neck encircled by the broad serrated collar or ruff characteristic of that period, an embroidered and jewelled cap on her head, and a fan in her hand. The inscription on the portrait gives her age as one-and-twenty, which would make her thirteen at the time when she rescued Captain Smith. While she was in England, she had an interview with Smith. He had made his exploring voyage on the New England coast two years before, when he changed the name of the country from North Virginia to New England. In 1615 he had started in the service of the Plymouth Company with an expedition for colonizing New England, but had been captured by French cruisers and carried to Rochelle. After his return from France he was making preparations for another voyage to New England, when he heard of Pocahontas and called on her. When he addressed her, as all did in England, as Lady Rebekah, she seemed hurt and turned away, covering her face with her hands. She insisted upon calling him Father and having him call her his child, as formerly in the wilderness. Then she added, "They did always tell us you were dead, and I knew not otherwise till I came to Plymouth."[87]

Early in 1617 Argall was appointed deputy-governor of Virginia and sailed in March to supersede Yeardley. Rolfe was made secretary of the colony and went in the same ship; but Pocahontas fell suddenly ill, and died before leaving Gravesend. She was buried in the parish church there. Her son, Thomas Rolfe, was left with an uncle in England, where he grew to manhood. Then he went to Virginia, to become the ancestor, not of a line of kings, but of the families of Murray, Fleming, Gay, Whittle, Robertson, Bolling, and Eldredge, as well as of the branch of Randolphs to which the famous John Randolph of Roanoke belonged.[88] One cannot leave the story of Pocahontas without recalling the curious experiences of a feathered chieftain in her party named Tomocomo, whom The Powhatan had instructed to make a report on the population of England. For this purpose he was equipped with a sheaf of sticks on which he was to make a notch for every white person he should meet. Plymouth must have kept poor Tomocomo busy enough, but on arriving in London he uttered an amazed grunt and threw his sticks away. He had also been instructed to observe carefully the king and queen and God, and report on their personal appearance. Tomocomo found it hard to believe that so puny a creature as James Stuart could be the chief of the white men, and he could not understand why he was not told where God lived and taken to see him.

When Argall arrived in Virginia, he found that a new industry, at which sundry experiments had been made under Dale, was acquiring large dimensions and fast becoming established. Of all the gifts that America has vouchsafed to the Old World, the most widely acceptable has been that which a Greek punster might have called "the Bacchic gift," t? a?????? d???a, tobacco. No other visible and tangible product of Columbus's discovery has been so universally diffused among all kinds and conditions of men, even to the remotest nooks and corners of the habitable earth. Its serene and placid charm has everywhere proved irresistible, although from the outset its use has been frowned upon with an acerbity such as no other affair of hygiene has ever called forth. The first recorded mention of tobacco is in Columbus's diary for November 20, 1492. The use of it was soon introduced into the Spanish peninsula, and about 1560 the French ambassador at Lisbon, Jean Nicot, sent some of the fragrant herb into France, where it was named in honour of him Nicotiana. It seems to have been first brought to England by Lane's returning colonists in 1586, and early in the seventeenth century it was becoming fashionable to smoke, in spite of the bull of Pope Urban VIII. and King James's "Counterblast to Tobacco." Every one will remember how that royal author characterized smoking as "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 horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." On Twelfth Night, 1614, a dramatic entertainment, got up by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn and called the Mask of Flowers, was performed before the king and queen at Whitehall. In it the old classic Silenus appears, jovial and corpulent, holding his goatskin wine-bag, and with him a novel companion, an American chieftain named Kawasha, dressed in an embroidered mantle cut like tobacco leaves, with a red cap trimmed with gold on his head, rings in his ears, a chain of glass beads around his neck, and a bow and arrows in his hand. These two strange worthies discuss the merits of wine and tobacco:—

Silenus.

Kawasha.

Silenus.

Kawasha.