The Jamestown Experiment (24 page)

The Chickahominies responded to the peace by aligning themselves closer with the English. “These people, hearing of our concluded peace with Powhatan…sent two of their men unto us, and two fat bucks for [a] present for our king.” Dale and Argall then sailed to their town and discussed the terms of an alliance. The Chickahominies, who would be henceforth known as Tassantasses, or Englishmen, submitted to the authority of King James and his governors. The eight chief men who ruled the Chickahominies assented to receive a “red coat, or livery” from the king annually and a picture of King James “engraven in copper, with a chain of copper to hang it about his neck.” They also agreed not to launch offensive operations against the colonists and to furnish warriors in case of a Spanish invasion. Dale demanded a tribute of a thousand bushels of corn as a symbol of “their obedience to His Majesty and to his deputy there.”
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In return, the Indians would receive iron tomahawks and would continue to enjoy “their own liberties, freedoms, and laws, and to be governed as formerly by eight of their chiefest men.” The English promised to “defend and keep them from the fury and danger of Powhatan, which thing they most feared, but even from all other enemies domestic or foreign.” The two peoples concluded their pact with an exchange of gifts.
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With the peace established with the Powhatans and the submission of the Chickahominies, Dale attempted to press his advantage with Wahunsonacock and sent Indian interpreter Thomas Savage and Ralph Hamor to meet with the chief. Hamor left an extensive record of the colony under the leadership of Dale and soon after returned to England, where he could speak intelligently about Wahunsonacock and the Powhatans after being among them. Savage and Hamor delivered a message from Dale asking for another of the werowance’s daughters in marriage.

Hamor informed Wahunsonacock that Dale (and the other colonists) had resolved to “dwell in your country so long as he liveth.” Therefore, Dale sought to unite the two peoples in a “natural union…of perpetual friendship” by binding them through marriage. The chief declined the offer, telling the ambassadors that his other daughter was already pledged to a husband and “I hold it not a brotherly part of your king [Dale] to desire to bereave me of two of my children at once.” Still, he told them that Dale need not fear “any injury from me or any under my subjection.” Too many had been killed on both sides, and he hoped that “by my occasion there shall never be more.” He added, “I am now old and would gladly end my days in peace.” Conceding that the English were too powerful to drive from the land, he stated, “If the English offer me injury, my country is large enough; I will remove myself farther from you.” Earlier, when the English were weak, Wahunsonacock dominated the relationship by denying them food to starve them out and surrounding their forts, killing scores of them with impunity. Now, the aggressive expansion of the English forced the aging werowance to withdraw.
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On June 12, 1616, Thomas Dale landed at Plymouth aboard Samuel Argall’s
Treasurer.
He had “settled to his thinking all things in good order” and chose George Yeardley to serve as deputy governor in his
absence.
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Other passengers on the ship included John Rolfe and Pocahontas, along with their son, Thomas. Pocahontas was accompanied by other Powhatans, including ten female attendants and Uttamatomakkin (or Tomocomo), a priest whom Wahunsonacock sent to “observe and bring news of our king and country to his nation.”
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The prisoners who had been seized from the Spanish vessel, Don Diego de Molina and pilot Francis Lembry, were also carried to England.

Pocahontas and the other Powhatans traveled to London and resided at an inn near St. Paul’s Cathedral to finalize their conversion to Christianity. Moreover, they were conspicuous in the city and immediately attracted attention as exotic natives from the Americas. The Virginia Company used the Powhatans as a marketing tool to promote excitement about the Virginia colony and its native peoples, as voyagers had done since the time of Martin Frobisher and other gentlemen adventurers.

As the daughter of Wahunsonacock, the wife of Englishman Rolfe, and an example of the possibility of Indian conversion, Pocahontas was a great sensation among the fashionable elite in the capital. She attended “plays, balls, and other public entertainments” dressed in English clothing as a symbol of her celebrated conversion to England’s civilized ways, which trumped interest in the exotic. She was even a guest of the king and queen at a masque presented by playwright Ben Jonson and architect Inigo Jones.
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That fall, Pocahontas was reunited with her friend John Smith when she and Rolfe moved to Brentford, west of London. Smith was “preparing to set sail for New England” for the second time that year. In the spring, he had organized two fishing trips to New England for cod. While he was sailing the unexplored regions of the New World, he charted the New England coastline and rivers, which provided invaluable information for another English colonization project less
than a decade later. The restless gentleman adventurer continued to search for profit in the New World to advance his personal interest and the imperial interest of the nation.
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Smith and Pocahontas had an uncomfortable meeting initially, after a seven-year separation in which she feared that he had died. After seeing him, she “turned about” without a word and went off for a few hours. They finally spoke to each other in an awkward exchange. Pocahontas insisted on calling him “father,” just as Smith had used the term with her father when he was a stranger in Virginia. But he would not permit her to do so “because she was a king’s daughter.”
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The two parted after their uncomfortable reunion. Pocahontas died of tuberculosis only a few months later, in March 1617.

Whatever the value of Pocahontas and the other Powhatans to the company for the promotion of the colony, there was something of much greater profit to the long-term financial success of the colony aboard the ship that landed at Plymouth. Hundreds of ambitious gentlemen adventurers and common artisans had spent a challenging and often deadly decade fruitlessly seeking gold, the Northwest Passage, and local commodities of even marginal value to send home to frustrated investors. Perhaps the surprising thing was how much risk, bad news, and poor outcomes they had endured.

More importantly, the Virginia Company was finally altering the model of colonization. The decades-old military model, which stretched back to the time of the Elizabethan sea dogs, was giving way to a capitalist and entrepreneurial model that was in close harmony with the longings of English character and human nature. Imperial greatness would be achieved not by harsh discipline and tight organization, but rather by unleashing the energies of private individuals who were seeking wealth.

Chapter Sixteen

T
he Jamestown colony began to thrive in the late 1610s. It was not merely the discovery of a viable cash crop that could be sold in England that caused this change. Rather, the colony was fundamentally reoriented so that an entrepreneurial ethos provided the foundation for a valuable export crop such as tobacco. Investors had finally found a source of profit and a model on which to build a successful colony.

The
Treasurer
docked in England with cargoes in addition to John Rolfe and his wife, Pocahontas (also known as Lady Rebecca), and her attendants. The vessel also carried a commodity that would contribute more to the long-term success of the Jamestown colony than the exotic people who dazzled London’s social circles. Most of the crops delivered by the ship hardly stirred the imaginations of investors, and some of the goods, like hemp and flax, had brought only a pitiful return in England. But Rolfe had also brought a shipment of tobacco, which Thomas Dale believed was “exceeding good.”
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From 1616 to 1619, the Virginia Company introduced a number of fundamental changes that set the Jamestown colony on the path to success. The company had so far invested more than £50,000 with almost no return. Investors were pulling out or not making scheduled payments, and some were hauled into court to answer a growing number of lawsuits. The problem was that the colonists had not only failed to find great riches in the supposed land of gold, but they had failed to export almost anything of value.

The answer to the problem was to introduce an entrepreneurial element. The colonists had found a cash crop in tobacco. This would sate the nicotine cravings of Londoners who had become addicted to smoking ever since the Spanish discovered the weed in the New World. Even the king had attacked the habit in the pamphlet
Counter-Blast to Tobacco.
He derided tobacco as a “noxious, stinking weed” and smoking “so vile and stinking a custom.” Still, the demand was great, and the colonists were eager to supply tobacco to Londoners and profit from the vice. The potential profit for colonists from exporting tobacco trumped any objections raised by moralists, even the king.

Back in Jamestown, in 1612, Rolfe had “first took the pains to make trial” of some West Indian tobacco, which was much milder than the harsh Virginia plant. The result was astounding. “No country under the sun may, or doth, afford more pleasant, sweet, and strong tobacco than I have tasted there.” Unfortunately, they did not have “the knowledge to cure and make up.” There was little doubt that the crop would “return such tobacco…that even England shall acknowledge the goodness thereof.”
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In 1614, the colony exported a small shipment after several colonists made close observations of the previous year’s crop and successfully experimented with properly drying and curing the weed.
In 1616, although some denounced it as a mere “esteemed weed,” Rolfe promoted his high expectations for tobacco and wrote that it was “very commodious, which there thriveth so well that no doubt but after a little more trial and experience in the curing thereof it will compare with the best in the West Indies.”
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Rolfe wanted to regulate the planting of tobacco “lest the people, who generally are bent to covet after gain, especially having tasted of the sweets of their labors, should spend too much of their time and labor in planting tobacco.” Human nature coveted gain, and the Christian Englishmen sought to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. People began working diligently on their crops, because now they were allowed to keep the fruits of their labor. After all, tobacco was “known to them to be very vendible in England.”
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But they also needed to contribute to the food supplies of the colony, according to the military model of colonial governance. Therefore, Thomas Dale, who had agreed to stay in the colony and serve as governor after acting as marshal, required the colonists to “manure, set, and maintain for himself and every manservant two acres of ground with corn.” In addition, the farmers were required to contribute part of their annual food crop to the common storehouse “by which means the magazine shall yearly be sure to receive their rent of corn…and many others if need be.” If the farmers followed the regulations, they could “plant as much tobacco as they will.” If they did not, their tobacco would be “forfeit” and seized by the governor.
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Already, tobacco established itself as the “principal commodity the colony for the present yieldeth.” The company sent a supply ship with “clothing, household stuff, and such necessaries” that the settlers could purchase with their tobacco as a form of exchange.
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Meanwhile, changes were afoot in the colony to allow the settlers to keep other commodities resulting from their hard work. Thomas Dale noted that a number of farmers were “freed from all public works to set corn for themselves.” Moreover, every man was provided a sow and allowed to “keep her as his own for five years… so that he is to have all the male pigs every year to kill for his own provision.” The encouragement of private initiative yielded many benefits for the colony. The farmers “live most at ease, yet by their good endeavors bring yearly much plenty to the plantation.” Blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, and tanners could “work in their professions for the colony, and maintain themselves with food and apparel, having time limited them to till and manure their ground.”
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Dale was exaggerating the prosperity of the colonists and the ease of their lifestyle; food shortages still occurred, although they were generally alleviated by the introduction of private property. In 1614, when the seven-year terms of work expired for the original settlers who were servants, Dale allotted them small tracts of land. The enforcer of martial law in Virginia had taken the first halting steps towards private enterprise. In 1616, the year Dale left the colony, the dividend on the investments made in Gates’ expedition fell due, and the nearly bankrupt company decided to offer land in Virginia to pay investors and attract new colonists.

When Samuel Argall arrived back in Jamestown as governor in 1617, he and his supporters received land grants to distribute among settlers who took advantage of the company’s and attracted the first significant group of immigrants in several years. Those who paid for the passage of servants would receive an additional “headright” of fifty acres. Observers noted that the settlers who owned their own property worked harder in a day than they previously did in a week when they contributed to the common store of food.

The most dramatic changes came with yet another revised charter that formalized the land policies of the company introduced over the previous few years. The “Great Charter” was part of the instructions given to the new governor, George Yeardley, in November 1618. The leaders of the company, particularly Thomas Smythe and Edwin Sandys, sought to establish a set of policies that would achieve the elusive profitability consistent with those originally envisioned as part of the entrepreneurial mission of the colony. If this was to be accomplished, real changes would have to be made. The ensuing reforms fundamentally shifted the colony away from a military form of organization to a model of free enterprise.

The greatest challenge to the failing company was how to attract settlers and investors to a colony with a disastrous reputation in England because of the deathly conditions, draconian set of laws, and pitiful economic returns. The company decided to offer the traditional guarantees of the common law—liberty and self-government—and greater opportunity for those seeking a new life.

Of greatest significance to drawing migrants to Jamestown was the opportunity of owning private property. The new charter stated that any settlers who helped colonize Jamestown before April 1616 would be granted one hundred acres of land “for their personal adventure” and another hundred acres for every share they held in the company. Any who came at the expense of the company would receive the same parcel of land. Colonists who adventured to Jamestown after that date received fifty acres of land. The company stated that the reason later settlers would receive a smaller grant was because the “former difficulties and dangers were in greatest part overcome, to the great ease and security of such as have been since that time transported thither.”
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The individual ownership of land gave the landless poor in England a great incentive to seek opportunity in the New World. The charter established the headright system, in which individuals
would receive an additional fifty acres by paying the cost of emigration for the poor, who would in turn be granted the same amount of land “for their personal adventure” when their term of servitude expired. Rather than struggling to make ends meet in England, settlers could achieve the dream of owning a plot of land to feed themselves and their families while growing a cash crop for export to England. It was a very attractive inducement to risk venturing to the American colony.
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The company recognized that the authoritarian character of the colony was highly objectionable and discouraged many potential settlers from going to Virginia. The company sought to quell this source of discontent and revised the martial law that had governed the colony for a set of laws that were consistent with English common law. “The rigor of martial law, wherewith before they were governed, is reduced within the limits prescribed by His Majesty, and the laudable form of justice and government used in this realm, established, and followed as near as may be.”
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The company instructed Yeardley to set up “a laudable form of government,” intended to attract settlers and create a better form of government with the first representative legislature in America. The company directed it to make “just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people.” It was more in accord with the traditional rights and liberties of Englishmen stretching back to the protections of the Magna Carta in 1215 as well as the perennial longings of human nature. In the late 1610s political liberty dovetailed nicely with economic liberty and was a necessary component to it in Jamestown.
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The company created a bicameral legislature to govern the colony with just laws. It was the first representative legislature in America and would protect the liberties of the people by separating the branches of government. The people no longer had to submit
to strict laws made by an executive and in which they had no voice in creating. One of the legislative houses was a council of state that would advise the governor in discharging his duties. The company would select its members. On the other hand, the free inhabitants of eleven towns, hundreds (subdivisions of an English county with land supporting one hundred families), and plantation settlements would choose two representatives in a body to be known as the House of Burgesses. The “liberty of a General Assembly being granted to them,” the free men would be able to “execute those things, as might best tend to their good.”
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The House of Burgesses was established to make laws for the “public weal” and good order of the colony’s affairs. It would convene once a year, unless extraordinary circumstances necessitated its being called into session more frequently. The governor had the authority to veto laws passed by the assembly, and the Virginia Company in London was still the governing authority of the colony and could approve laws made in distant Jamestown. The laws of the colonial government had to be in harmony with English common law.

The company believed that political stability would generate additional investment and settlers willing to move to Virginia for economic opportunities. But the company had a larger purpose in mind. It sought to protect the traditional principle upon which consensual government in England was founded: “Every man will more willingly obey laws to which he hath yielded his consent.”
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On July 30, 1619, the twenty-two burgesses assembled in the Anglican church at Jamestown and convened the first meeting of the general assembly. The members participated in a solemn prayer service and then took an oath of loyalty to the king of England. The first order of business the assembly took up was to agree to certain parliamentary procedures and accept its members.
It heard petitions for redress and various complaints. The assembly considered Indian relations and rededicated itself to the mandate to convert them to Christianity.