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007 - Chapter 7 · Chronicles of America Volume 05 - Pioneers of the Old South

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  Speaker 1: Chapter seven of Pioneers of the Old South by Mary Johnston.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter seven,
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  Speaker 1: Young Virginia. The choice of Sir Edwin Sandees as Treasurer
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  Speaker 1: of the Virginia Company in sixteen nineteen marks a turning
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  Speaker 1: point in the history of both Company and colony. At
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  Speaker 1: a moment when James the First was aiming at absolute
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  Speaker 1: monarchy and was menacing Parliament, Sandy's and his party, the
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  Speaker 1: liberals of the day, turned the sessions of the Company
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  Speaker 1: into a parliament where momentous questions of state and colonial
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  Speaker 1: policy were freely debated. The liberal spirit of Sandy's cast
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  Speaker 1: a beam of light II across the Atlantic. When Governor
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  Speaker 1: Yardley stepped ashore at Jamestown in mid April, he brought
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  Speaker 1: with him as the first fruits of the new regime,
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  Speaker 1: no less a boon than the grant of a representative assembly.
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  Speaker 1: There were to be in Virginia subject to the Company,
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  Speaker 1: subject in its turn to the Crown, to supreme councils,
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  Speaker 1: one of which was to consist of the Governor and
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  Speaker 1: his councilors chosen by the Company in England. The other
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  Speaker 1: was to be elected by the colonists to representatives or
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  Speaker 1: burgesses from each distinct settlement. Council and House of Burgesses
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  Speaker 1: were to constitute the upper and lower houses of the
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  Speaker 1: General Assembly. The whole had power to legislate upon Virginian
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  Speaker 1: affairs within the bounds of the colony, but the Governor
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  Speaker 1: in Virginia and the Company in England must approve its acts.
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  Speaker 1: A mighty hope in small was here hedged about with
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  Speaker 1: provisions curtailed and limited. Here, nevertheless, was an acorn out
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  Speaker 1: of which, by natural growth and some mutation, was to
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  Speaker 1: become popular government wide and deep. The planting of this
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  Speaker 1: small seat of freedom here in sixteen nineteen, upon the
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  Speaker 1: banks of the James in Virginia, is an event of
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  Speaker 1: prime importance. On the thirtieth of July sixteen nineteen, there
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  Speaker 1: was convened in the Log Church in Jamestown, the first
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  Speaker 1: true parliament or legislative assembly in America. Twenty two burgesses
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  Speaker 1: sat had on head in the body of the church,
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  Speaker 1: with the Governor and the council in the best seats.
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  Speaker 1: Master John Pory, the speaker, faced the assembly. Clerk and
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  Speaker 1: Sergeant at arms were at hand. Master Buck, the Jamestown Minister,
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  Speaker 1: made the solemn opening prayer. The political divisions of this
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  Speaker 1: Virginia were cities, plantations, and hundreds. The English population, numbering
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  Speaker 1: now at least one thousand souls, burroughs sending burgesses were
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  Speaker 1: James City, Charles City, the City of henrykis Kika, Tan
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  Speaker 1: Smith's hundred, blur Deer hundred, Martin's hundred, Martin Brandon, Ward's Plantation,
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  Speaker 1: Lawns Plantation, and Argall's Gift. This first assembly attended to
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  Speaker 1: Indian questions, agriculture and religion. Most notable is this year
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  Speaker 1: sixteen nineteen, a year rot of gold and iron. John
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  Speaker 1: rolf Back in Virginia, though without his Indian princess, who
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  Speaker 1: now lies in English Earth, jots down and makes no
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  Speaker 1: comment upon what he has written about. The Last of
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  Speaker 1: August came in a dutch Man of that sold us
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  Speaker 1: twenty niggers. No European state of that day. Fewer individuals
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  Speaker 1: disapproved of the African slave trade. That dark continent may
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  Speaker 1: general hunting ground England, Spain, France, the Netherlands captured, bought
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  Speaker 1: and soul slaves. Englishmen in Virginia bought without qualm, as
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  Speaker 1: Englishmen in England bought without qualm. The cargo of the
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  Speaker 1: Dutch ship was a commonplace. The only novelty was that
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  Speaker 1: it was the first shipload of Africans brought to English America.
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  Speaker 1: Here by the same waters were the beginnings of popular
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  Speaker 1: government and the young upas tree of slavery. A contradiction
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  Speaker 1: in terms was set to resolve itself, a riddle for
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  Speaker 1: unborn generations of Americans. Presently, there happened another importation. Virginia
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  Speaker 1: under the new management had strongly revived. Ships bringing colonists
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  Speaker 1: were coming in. Hamlets were building, fields were being planted
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  Speaker 1: up and down were to be found churches. A college
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  Speaker 1: at Henriichis was projected so that Indian in children might
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  Speaker 1: be taught and converted from heatheness. Yet was the population
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  Speaker 1: almost wholly a doublet and breeches wearing population. The children
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  Speaker 1: for whom the school was building were Indian children. The
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  Speaker 1: men sailing to Virginia dreamed of a few years there
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  Speaker 1: and gathered wealth, and then returned to England. Apparently it
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  Speaker 1: was the new Treasurer, Sir Edwin Sandys, who first grasped
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  Speaker 1: the essential principle of successful colonization. Virginia must be home
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  Speaker 1: to those we send wife and children. Made home. Sandy's
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  Speaker 1: gathered ninety women, poor maidens and widows, young, handsome and chase,
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  Speaker 1: who were willing to emigrate, and in Virginia become wives
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  Speaker 1: of settlers. They sailed Their passage money was paid by
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  Speaker 1: the men of their choice. They married, and home life
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  Speaker 1: began in Virginia. In due course of time appeared fair
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  Speaker 1: haired children, blue or gray of eye, with d all
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  Speaker 1: England behind them. Yet native born Virginians from the cradle
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  Speaker 1: colonists in number sailed now from England. Most ranks of
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  Speaker 1: society and most professions were represented. Many brought education means
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  Speaker 1: independent position. Other honest men, chiefly young men with little
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  Speaker 1: in the purse, came over under indentures, bound for a
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  Speaker 1: specified term of years to settlers of larger means. These
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  Speaker 1: indentured men are numerous, and when they have worked out
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  Speaker 1: their indebtedness, they will take up land of their own.
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  Speaker 1: An old suggestion of Dales now for the first time
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  Speaker 1: bore fruit over the protest of the country party in
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  Speaker 1: the company. There began to be sent each year out
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  Speaker 1: of the King's jails a number, though not at any
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  Speaker 1: time a large number of men under conviction for various crimes.
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  Speaker 1: This practice continued, or at intervals was resumed, but its
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  Speaker 1: consequences were not so dire, Perhaps as we might imagine,
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  Speaker 1: the penal laws were exequably brutal, and in the dragnet
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  Speaker 1: of the law might be found many merely unfortunate, many
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  Speaker 1: perhaps finer than the law. Virginia thus was founded and established,
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  Speaker 1: and English people moved through her forests, crossed in boats,
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  Speaker 1: her shining waters, trod the lanes of hamlets builded of wood.
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  Speaker 1: But after English fashions, climate surrounding nature differed from Old England,
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  Speaker 1: and these and circumstance would work for variation. But the
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  Speaker 1: stock was Middlesex, Surrey, Devon and all the other shires
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  Speaker 1: of England. Scotchmen came also Welshmen, and perhaps as early
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  Speaker 1: as this a few Irish, and there were de la Wars,
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  Speaker 1: handful of Poles and Germans, and several French vine dressers.
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  Speaker 1: Political and economic life was taking form. That huge, luxurious,
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  Speaker 1: thick leaved, yellow flowered crop alike, comforting and extravagant. That
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  Speaker 1: tobacco that was in much to mold manners and customs
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  Speaker 1: and ways of looking at things, was beginning to grow abundantly.
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  Speaker 1: In sixteen twenty forty thousand pounds of tobacco went from
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  Speaker 1: Virginia to England. Two years later it went sixty thousand pounds.
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  Speaker 1: The best sold it to shillings the pound, the inferior
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  Speaker 1: for eighteen pence. The Virginians dropped all thought of sassafras
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  Speaker 1: and clavert tobacco only had any flavor of gallconda. At
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  Speaker 1: this time, the rich soil, composed of layer on layer
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  Speaker 1: of the decay of forests that had lived from old time,
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  Speaker 1: was incredibly fertile, as fast as trees could be felled
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  Speaker 1: and dragged away. And when the tobacco fields must have laborers,
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  Speaker 1: nor did these need to be especially intelligent, bring in
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  Speaker 1: indentured men to work. Presently, dream that ships English as
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  Speaker 1: well as Dutch might oftener load in Africa and sell
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  Speaker 1: in Virginia to furnish the dark fields with dark workers.
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  Speaker 1: In Dale's time had begun the making over of land
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  Speaker 1: in fees simple. In Yardsley's time, every ancient colonist, that is,
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  Speaker 1: every man who would come to Virginia before sixteen sixteen,
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  Speaker 1: was given a goodly number of acres subject to a
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  Speaker 1: quick rent. Men of means and influence obtained great holdings ownership, rental, sale,
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  Speaker 1: and purchase of the land began in Virginia, much as
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  Speaker 1: in older times that had begun in England. Only here
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  Speaker 1: in America, where it seemed that the land could never
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  Speaker 1: be exhausted, individual holdings were often of great acreage. Thus
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  Speaker 1: arose the Virginia plan to In Yardsley's time, John Barkley
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  Speaker 1: established at Falling Creek the first iron works ever set
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  Speaker 1: up in English America. There were by this time in
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  Speaker 1: Virginia glass works, so when mill iron works due till
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  Speaker 1: the soil remained the chief industry, but the tobacco culture
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  Speaker 1: grew until it overshadowed the maize and wheat, the peas
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  Speaker 1: and beans. There were cattle and swine, not a few horses, poultry, pigeons,
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  Speaker 1: and peacocks. In sixteen twenty one, Yardley, desiring to be relieved,
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  Speaker 1: was succeeded by Sir Francis Wyatt. In October. The new
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  Speaker 1: governor came from England in the George, and with him
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  Speaker 1: a goodly company, among others, is found George Sandy's brother
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  Speaker 1: of Sir Edwin. This gentleman and scholar beneath Virginia's skies
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  Speaker 1: and with Virginia trees and blossoms about him translated The
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  Speaker 1: Metamorphoses of Obbed and the First Book of the Eneid,
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  Speaker 1: both of which were published in London in sixteen twenty six.
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  Speaker 1: He stands as the first purely literary man of the
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  Speaker 1: English New World. But vigorous enough literature, though the writers
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  Speaker 1: thereof regarded it as information only, had from the first
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  Speaker 1: years emanated from Virginia. Smith's True Relation, George Percy's Discourse,
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  Speaker 1: Straitchy's True Repertory of the Rack and Redemption of Sir
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  Speaker 1: Thomas Gates, and his History of Travail into Virginia, Britannia,
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  Speaker 1: Haymour's True Discourse, whittakeruzgov New's other letters and reports had
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  Speaker 1: already flowered all with something of the strengthened fragrance of
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  Speaker 1: Elizabethan and early Jacobean work. For some years there had
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  Speaker 1: seen peace with the Indians. Doubtless members of that one
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  Speaker 1: race may have marauded, and members of the others showed
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  Speaker 1: themselves high handed, impatient, and unjust, but the majority on
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  Speaker 1: each side appeared to have settled into a kind of amity.
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  Speaker 1: Indians came singly or in parties from their villages to
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  Speaker 1: the white men's settlements, where they traded corn and venison
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  Speaker 1: and what not for the magic things the white men owned.
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  Speaker 1: A number had obtained the white men's firearms, unwisely sold
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  Speaker 1: or given. The Red seemed reconciled to the whites presence
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  Speaker 1: in the land. The Indian village and the Indian tribal
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  Speaker 1: economy rested beside the English settlement, church and laws. Doubtless
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  Speaker 1: a fragment of the population of England, and a fragment
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  Speaker 1: of the English and Virginia saw in a pearly dream
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  Speaker 1: the Red Man, baptized, clothed, become Christian and English. At
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  Speaker 1: the least, it seemed that friendliness and peace might continue.
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  Speaker 1: In the spring of sixteen twenty two, a concerted Indian
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  Speaker 1: attack and massacre fell like a boat from the Blue,
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  Speaker 1: up and down the James and upon the Chesapeake everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: On the same day, Indians, bursting from the dark forest
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  Speaker 1: that was so close behind every cluster of log houses,
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  Speaker 1: attacked the colonists. Three hundred and forty seven englishmen, women
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  Speaker 1: and children were slain, but Jamestown and the plantations in
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  Speaker 1: its neighborhood were warned. In time, the English rallied gathered force,
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  Speaker 1: turned upon and beat back to the forest. The Indian
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  Speaker 1: who was now and for a long time to come,
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  Speaker 1: their open foe there fathered upon this horror not a
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  Speaker 1: day or a month, but years of organized retaliation and
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  Speaker 1: systematic carrying. In the end, the great majority of the
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  Speaker 1: Indians either fell or were pushed back toward the Upper
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  Speaker 1: Pa Monkey, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and westward upon the
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  Speaker 1: great shelf or terrace of the earth that climbed to
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  Speaker 1: the fabled mountains. And with this westward move there passed
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  Speaker 1: away that old vision of wholesale christianizing. End of Chapter
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  Speaker 1: seven