1620, 1621.] NEGRO SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA.

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admitted the introduction of perpetual servitude. The commerce of Virginia had been at first monopolized by the company; but as its management for the benefit of the corporation led to frequent dissensions, it was, in 1620, laid open to free competition. In the month of August of that year,‚— more than a century after the last vestiges of hereditary slavery had disappeared from English society and the English constitution, and six years after the commons of France had petitioned for the emancipation of every serf in every fief, a Dutch manof-war entered James River, and landed twenty negroes for sale. This is, indeed, the sad epoch of the introduction of negro slavery into the English colonies; but the traffic would have been checked in its infancy, had its profits remained with the Dutch. Thirty years after this first importation of Africans, the increase had been so inconsiderable, that to one black, Virginia contained fifty whites; and, at a later period, after seventy years of its colonial existence, the number of its negro slaves was proportionably much less than in several of the free states at the time of the war of independence. Had no other form of servitude been known in Virginia, than such as had been tolerated in Europe, every difficulty would have been promptly obviated by the benevolent spirit of colonial legislation. But a new problem in the history of man was now to be solved. For the first time, the Ethiopian and Caucasian races were to meet together in nearly equal numbers beneath a temperate zone. Who could foretell the issue?

Wyatt found the evil of negro slavery already engrafted on the social system, when, in 1621, he arrived in Virginia with the memorable ordinance on which the fabric of colonial liberty was to rest. Justice was established on the basis of the laws of England, and an amnesty of ancient feuds proclaimed. As Puritanism had appeared in Virginia, "needless novelties" in the forms of worship were prohibited. The order to search for minerals betrays the lingering hope of finding gold; while the injunction to promote certain manufactures

88

WYATT'S ADMINISTRATION.

[1621.

was ineffectual, because labor could otherwise be more profitably employed.

The business of the first session under the written constitution, held in November and December, 1621, related chiefly to domestic industry; and the culture of silk engaged the attention of the assembly. But silkworms could not be cared for where every comfort of household existence required to be created. Vinedressers had also been set to work under the terrors of martial law; and the toil was equally in vain. In a new country under the temperate zone, corn and cattle will be raised, rather than silk or wine.

The first culture of cotton in the United States deserves commemoration. This year the seeds were planted as an experiment; and their "plentiful coming up" was, at that early day, a subject of interest in America and England.

Nor did the benevolence of the company neglect to establish places of education, and provide for the support of religious worship. The bishop of London collected and paid a thousand pounds towards a university, which, like the several churches of the colony, was liberally endowed with domains.

Between the Indians and the English there had been quarrels, but no wars. From the first landing of colonists in Virginia, the power of the natives was despised; their strongest weapons were such arrows as they could shape without iron, such hatchets as could be made from stone; and an English mastiff was to them a terrible adversary. Nor were their numbers considerable. The whole territory of the clans which listened to Powhatán as their leader or their conqueror, comprehended about eight thousand square miles, thirty clans, and hardly twenty-four hundred warriors; so that, in a region most favorable to Indian life, the population amounted to less than one inhabitant to a square mile. The natives, naked and feeble compared with the Europeans, were no where concentrated in considerable villages, but dwelt dispersed in hamlets, with from forty to sixty

1622.] NUMBER AND POWER OF THE ABORIGINES.

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in each company. Few places had more than two hundred; and many had less. It was also unusual for any large portion of these tribes to be assembled together. The tale of an ambuscade of three or four thousand is perhaps an error for three or four hundred, or is an extravagant fiction. Smith once met a party that seemed to amount to seven hundred; and, so complete was the superiority conferred by the use of fire-arms, that with fifteen men he was able to withstand them all. The savages were therefore regarded with contempt or compassion. No uniform care had been taken to conciliate their good will; although their condition had been improved by some of the arts of civilized life. When Wyatt arrived, the natives expressed a fear lest his intentions should be hostile: he assured them of his wish to preserve inviolable peace; and the emigrants had no use for fire-arms, except against a deer or a fowl. The old law, which made death the penalty for teaching the Indians to use a musket, was forgotten; and they were employed as fowlers and huntsmen. The plantations of the English were extended, in unsuspecting confidence, along the James River, and towards the Potomac, wherever rich grounds invited to the culture of tobacco.

Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, remained, after the marriage of his daughter, the firm friend of the English. He died in 1618; and his younger brother Iwas heir to his influence. The desire of self-preservation, the necessity of self-defence, seemed to demand an active resistance: to preserve their dwelling-places, the natives must exterminate the English; and, powerless in open battle, timid, and therefore treacherous, they could not hope to accomplish their end, except by surprise. The attack was prepared with impenetrable secrecy. To the very last hour the Indians preserved the language of friendship; they borrowed the boats of the English to attend their own assemblies, and, on the morning of the massacre, were in the houses and at the tables of those whose death they were plotting.

90

A MASSACRE AND AN INDIAN WAR.

[1622.

Sooner," said they, "shall the sky fall, than peace be violated on our part.” At length, on the twenty-second of March, 1622, at mid-day, at one and the same instant of time, the Indians fell upon an unsuspecting population, which was scattered through distant villages, extending one hundred and forty miles, on both sides of the river. The onset was so sudden, that the blow was not discerned till it fell. None were spared: children and women, as well as men; the missionary, who had cherished the natives with untiring gentleness; the liberal benefactors, from whom they had received daily kindnesses, all were murdered with indiscriminate barbarity, and every aggravation of cruelty. The savages fell upon the dead bodies, as if it had been possible to commit on them a fresh murder.

In one hour, three hundred and forty-seven persons were cut off. Yet the carnage was not universal; and Virginia was saved from so disastrous a grave. The night before the execution of the conspiracy, it was revealed by a converted Indian to an Englishman whom he wished to rescue; Jamestown and the nearest settlements were well prepared against an attack; and the savages fled precipitately from the appearance of wakeful resistance. Thus the larger part of the colony was saved. A year after the massacre, there still remained two thousand five hundred men; the total number of the emigrants had exceeded four thousand. The immediate consequences of this massacre were disastrous. Public works were abandoned; and the settlements were reduced from eighty plantations to less than eight. Sickness prevailed among the dispirited colonists, now crowded into narrow quarters; some returned to England. But plans of industry were eventually succeeded by schemes of revenge; and a war of extermination ensued. There were in the colony much loss and much sorrow, but never any serious apprehensions of discomfiture from the Indians. The midnight surprise, the ambuscade by day, might be feared; the Indians promptly fled on the least indications of watchfulness and

1623.]

THE LONDON COMPANY.

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resistance. There were not wanting advocates for the entire subjection of those whom lenity could not win; and the example of Spanish cruelties was cited with applause. Besides, a natural instinct had led the Indians to select for their villages the pleasantest places, along the purest streams, and near the soil that was most easily cultivated. Their rights of property were no longer much respected; their open fields and villages were now appropriated by the colonists, who could plead the laws of war in defence of their covetousness. In July, 1623, the inhabitants of the several settlements, in parties, under commissioned officers, fell upon the adjoining savages; and a law of the general assembly commanded, that in the next summer the attack should be repeated. Even six years later, it was sternly enacted, that no peace should be concluded with the Indians

Meantime, a change was preparing in the relations of the colony with the parent state. The Virginia colony had been unsuccessful. A settlement had been made; but only after a vast expenditure of money, and a great sacrifice of human life. Angry factions distract unsuccessful institutions; and the London company was now rent by two parties, which were growing more and more imbittered. The contests were not so much the wranglings of disappointed merchants, as the struggle of political leaders. The meetings of the company, which now consisted of a thousand adventurers, of whom two hundred or more usually appeared at the quarter courts, were the scenes where the patriots, who in parliament advocated the cause of liberty, triumphantly opposed the decrees of the privy council on subjects connected with the rights of Virginia. The unsuccessful party could hope for success only by establishing the supremacy of the royal prerogative; and the monarch, dissatisfied at having intrusted to others the control of the colony, desired to recover the influence of which he was deprived by a charter of his own concession. Besides, he disliked the freedom of debate in "the Virginia courts," which were "but a seminary to a seditious parliament."