Great Epochs in American History, Volume 2
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Title: Great Epochs in American History, Volume 2
Editor: Francis W. Halsey
Release date: June 11, 2005 [eBook #16038]
Most recently updated: December 11, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT EPOCHS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, VOLUME 2 ***
Produced by Carel Lyn Miske and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
GREAT EPOCHS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
DESCRIBED BY FAMOUS WRITERS
FROM COLUMBUS TO WILSON
Edited, with Introductions and Explanatory Notes
By FRANCIS W. HALSEY
_Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"; Associate Editor
of "The Best of the World's Classics"; author of "The Old New York
Frontier"; Editor of "Seeing Europe With Famous Authors"_
IN TEN VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
VOL. II
THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES: 1562--1733
Current Literature Publishing Company
New York
COPYRIGHT, 1912 AND 1916, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[_Printed in the United States of America_]
[Transcriber's Note: This text retains original spellings. Also,
superscripted abbreviations or contractions are indicated by the
use of a caret (^), such as w^th (with).]
INTRODUCTION
(_The Planting of the First Colonies_)
After the discoverers and explorers of the sixteenth century came
(chiefly in the seventeenth) the founders of settlements that grew
into States--French Huguenots in Florida and Carolina; Spaniards in
St. Augustine; English Protestants in Virginia and Massachusetts;
Dutch and English in New York; Swedes in New Jersey and Delaware;
Catholic English in Maryland; Quaker English and Germans in
Pennsylvania; Germans and Scotch-Irish in Carolina; French Catholics
in Louisiana; Oglethorpe's debtors in Georgia.
To some of these came disastrous failures--to the Huguenots and
Spaniards in Florida, to the English in Roanoke, Cuttyhunk and
Kennebee. Others who survived had stern and precarious first
years--the English in Jamestown and Plymouth, the Dutch in New York,
the French in New Orleans. Chief among leaders stand John Smith,
Bradford, Penn, Bienville and Oglethorpe, and chief among settlements,
Jamestown, Plymouth, New York, Massachusetts Bay, Wilmington,
Philadelphia, New Orleans and Savannah. The several movements, in
their failures as in their successes, were distributed over a century
and three-quarters, but since the coming of Columbus a much longer
period had elapsed. From the discovery to the arrival of Oglethorpe
lie 240 years, or a hundred years more than the period that separates
our day from the years when America gained her independence from
England.
Each center of settlement had been inspired by an impulse separate
from that of others. Alike as some of them were, in having as a moving
cause a desire to escape from persecution, religious or political, or
otherwise to better conditions, they were divided by years, if not by
generations, in time; the settlers came from lands isolated and remote
from one another; they were different as to race, form of government,
and religious and political ideals, and, once communities had been
founded, each expanded on lines of its own and knew little of its
neighbors.
The Spaniards who founded St. Augustine continued long to live there,
but of social and political growth in Spanish Florida there was none.
Spain, in those eventful European years, was fully absorbed elsewhere
in Continental wars which taxed all her strength, especially that
furious war, waged for forty years against Holland, and from which
Spain retired ultimately in failure. In those years also was
overthrown Philip's Armada, an event in which the scepter of
maritime-empire passed from Spain to England.
Of the French settlements the chief was New Orleans, French from the
beginning, and so to remain in racial preponderance, religious
beliefs, and political ideals, for a century and a half after
Bienville founded it--so, in fact, it still remains in our day. But
elsewhere the French gave to the United States no permanent
settlements. Numbers of them came to Florida, only to perish by the
sword; others in large numbers settled in South Carolina, only to
become merged with other races, among whom the English, with their
speech and their laws, became supreme.
On Manhattan Island and in the valleys of the Hudson and lower Mohawk
settled the Dutch a few years after the English at Jamestown. They
erected forts on Manhattan Island and at Albany, Hartford and near
Philadelphia; they partitioned vast tracts of fertile lands among
favorite patroons; they built up a successful trade in furs with the
Indians--and sent the profits home. Real settlements they did not
found--at least, not settlements that were infused with the spirit of
local enterprise, or animated by vital ambitions looking to growth in
population and industry. After forty years of prosperity in trade they
had failed to become a settled and well-ordered colonial state,
looking bravely forward to permanence, expansion and eventual
statehood. The first free school in America is credited to their
initiative, and they were tolerant of other religions than their own,
but they planted no other seeds from which a great State could grow.
As Coligny before him had sought to plant in Florida a colony of
French Huguenots, so Raleigh, who had served under that great captain
in the religious wars of the Continent, sought to found in Virginia a
Protestant state. Much private wealth and many of his best years were
given by Raleigh to the furtherance of a noble ambition, but all to
futile immediate results. Raleigh's work, however, like all good work
nobly done, was not lost. Out of his failure at Roanoke came English
successes in later years--John Smith at Jamestown, the Pilgrims at
Plymouth.
Oldest of permanent English settlements in America is Jamestown, but
the English failures at Cuttyhunk and Kennebec antedate it by a few
years, and the failure at Roanoke by a quarter of a century. At
Jamestown, ten years after the arrival of the first settlers, a
legislative assembly was organized--a minature parliament, modeled
after the English House of Commons, and the first legislative body the
new world ever knew. Here, too, in Jamestown began negro slavery in
the United States, and in the same, or the next, year. Thus
legislative freedom and human slavery had their beginning in America
at the same time and in the same place.
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, next among the English settlements,
followed in due time the failure of Gosnold at Cuttyhunk and the
description of New England John Smith wrote and printed in 1614 after
a voyage of exploration along her coast. After several years Plymouth
contained only about 300 souls, but the Bay colony, founded ten years
later, increased rapidly. By 1634 nearly 4,000 of Winthrop's followers
had arrived, many of them college graduates. From this great parent
colony went forth Roger Williams to Rhode Island, Hooker to Hartford,
Davenport to New Haven, so that by the middle of the seventeenth
century five English colonies had been planted within the borders of
New England.
Long after all these came the Maryland and Pennsylvania settlements,
founded by Lord Baltimore and William Penn as lords proprietor, owners
of vast tracts of land and possessing privileges more extensive than
ever before were bestowed on British subjects. In the new century
arrived Oglethorpe, with his insolvent debtors, soon to find Spaniards
from St. Augustine hostile to his enterprise. But Oglethorpe was a
soldier as well as a colonizer; he had served in Continental wars,
and, after laying siege to St. Augustine further aggressions from that
source ceased.
Thus at last, in the New World, the English race, their flag, their
language and their laws, had displaced the Spaniards in that
world-important contest for dominion and power, of which the second
issue was soon to be fought out on many bloody fields with France.
F.W.H.
CONTENTS
VOL. II--THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES
INTRODUCTION. By the Editor
THE FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ
(1562-1565):
I. The Account by John A. Doyle
II. Mendoza's Account
SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S VIRGINIA COLONIES (1584-1587):
I. The Account by John A. Doyle
II. The Return of the Colonists with Sir Francis Drake. By Ralph
Lane
III. The Birth of Virginia Dare. By John White
BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD'S DISCOVERY OF CAPE COD (1602):
I. By Gabriel Archer, One of Gosnold's Companions
II. Gosnold's Own Account
THE FOUNDING OF JAMESTOWN (1607). By Captain John Smith
THE FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (1819). By John Twine, its
Secretary
THE ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA:
I. In the West Indies (1518). By Sir Arthur Helps
II. Its Beginnings in the United States (1620). By John A. Doyle
NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIM FATHERS LANDED (1614). By Captain John
Smith
THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE "MAYFLOWER" (1620). By Governor William
Bradford
THE FIRST NEW YORK SETTLEMENTS (1623-1628). By Nicolas Jean de
Wassenaer
THE SWEDES AND DUTCH IN NEW JERSEY (1627). By Israel Acrelius
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY (1627-1631). By
Governor Thomas Dudley
HOW THE BAY COLONY DIFFERED FROM PLYMOUTH. By John G. Palfrey
LORD BALTIMORE IN MARYLAND (1633). By Contemporary Writers
ROGER WILLIAMS IN RHODE ISLAND (1636). By Nathaniel Morton
THE FOUNDING OF CONNECTICUT (1633-1636). By Alexander Johnston
WITCHCRAFT IN NEW ENGLAND (1647-1696). By John G. Palfrey
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF NEW YORK (1664). By John H. Brodhead
BACON'S REBELLION IN VIRGINIA (1676). By an Anonymous Writer
KING PHILIP'S WAR (1676). By William Hubbarrd
THE FOUNDING OF PENNSYLVANIA:
I. Penn's Account of the Colony (1684)
II. Penn's Treaty with the Indians (1683). His Own Account
III. The Reality of Penn's Treaty. By George E. Ellis
THE CHARTER OAK AFFAIR IN CONNECTICUT (1682). By Alexander Johnston
THE COLONIZATION OF LOUISIANA (1699). By Charles E.T. Gayarré
OGELETHORPE IN GEORGIA (1733). By Joel Chandler Harris
THE PLANTING OF THE FIRST COLONIES
1562-1733
THE FOUNDING OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE MASSACRE BY MENENDEZ
(1562-1565)
I.
THE ACCOUNT BY JOHN A. DOYLE[1]
In 1562 the French Huguenot party, headed by Coligny, made another
attempt[2] to secure themselves a refuge in the New World. Two ships
set sail under the command of Jean Ribault, a brave and experienced
seaman, destined to play a memorable and tragic part in the history of
America. Ribault does not seem to have set out with any definite
scheme of colonization, but rather, like Amidas and Barlow, to have
contented himself with preliminary exploration. In April he landed on
the coast of Florida....
After he had laid the foundations of a fort, called in honor of the
king Charlefort, Ribault returned to France. He would seem to have
been unfortunate in his choice alike of colonists and of a commander.
The settlers lived on the charity of the Indians, sharing in their
festivities, wandering from village to village and wholly doing away
with any belief in their superior wisdom and power which might yet
have possest their savage neighbors....
France was torn asunder by civil war, and had no leisure to think of
an insignificant settlement beyond the Atlantic. No supplies came to
the settlers, and they could not live forever on the bounty of their
savage neighbors. The settlers decided to return home. To do this it
was needful to build a bark with their own hands from the scanty
resources which the wilderness offered. Whatever might have been the
failings of the settlers, they certainly showed no lack of energy or
of skill in concerting means for their departure. They felled the
trees to make planks, moss served for calking, and their shirts and
bedding for sails, while their Indian friends supplied cordage. When
their bark was finished they set sail. Unluckily in their impatience
to be gone, they did not reckon what supplies they would need. The
wind, at first favorable, soon turned against them, and famine stared
them in the face. Driven to the last resort of starving seamen, they
cast lots for a victim, and the lot, by a strange chance, fell upon
the very man whose punishment had been a chief count against De
Pierria. Life was supported by this hideous relief, till they came in
sight of the French coast. Even then their troubles were not over. An
English privateer bore down upon them and captured them. The miseries
of the prisoners seem, in some measure, to have touched their enemies.
A few of the weakest were landed on French soil. The rest ended their
wanderings in an English prison.
The needs of the abandonment of the colony did not reach France till
long after the event. Before its arrival a fleet was sent out to the
relief of the colony. Three ships were dispatched, the largest of a
hundred and twenty tons, the least of sixty tons, under the command of
René Laudonnière, a young Poitevin of good birth. On their outward
voyage they touched at Teneriffe and Dominica, and found ample
evidence at each place of the terror which the Spaniards had inspired
among the natives. In June the French reached the American shore south
of Port Royal. As before, their reception by the Indians was friendly.
Some further exploration failed to discover a more suitable site than
that which had first presented itself, and accordingly a wooden fort
was soon built with a timber palisade and bastions of earthen work.
Before long the newcomers found that their intercourse with the
Indians was attended with unlooked-for difficulties. There were three
tribes of importance, each under the command of a single chief, and
all more or less hostile to the other. In the South the power of the
chiefs seems to have been far more dreaded, and their influence over
the national policy more authoritative than among the tribes of New
England and Canada. Laudonnière, with questionable judgment, entangled
himself in these Indian feuds, and entered into an offensive alliance
with the first of these chiefs whom he encountered, Satouriona....
A new source of trouble, however, soon beset the unhappy colonists.
Their quarrels had left them no time for tilling the soil, and they
were wholly dependent on the Indians for food. The friendship of the
savages soon proved but a precarious means of support. The dissensions
in the French camp must have lowered the new-corners in the eyes of
their savage neighbors. They would only part with their supplies on
exorbitaut terms. Laudonnière himself throughout would have adopted
moderate and conciliatory measures, but his men at length became
impatient and seized one of the principal Indian chiefs as a hostage
for the good behavior of his countrymen. A skirmish ensued, in which
the French were victorious. It was clear, however, that the settlement
could not continue to depend on supplies extorted from the Indians at
the point of the sword. The settlers felt that they were wholly
forgotten by their friends in France, and they decided, tho with heavy
hearts, to forsake the country which they had suffered so much to
win....
Just, however, as all the preparations for departure were made, the
long-expected help came. Ribault arrived from France with a fleet of
seven vessels containing three hundred settlers and ample supplies.
This arrival was not a source of unmixed joy to Laudonnière. His
factious followers had sent home calumnious reports about him, and
Ribault brought out orders to send him home to stand his trial.
Ribault himself seems to have been easily persuaded of the falsity of
the charges, and prest Laudonnière to keep his command; but he, broken
in spirit and sick in body, declined to resume office.
All disputes soon disappeared in the face of a vast common misfortune.
Whatever internal symptoms of weakness might already display
themselves in the vast fabric of the Spanish empire, its rulers showed
as yet no lack of jealous watchfulness against any attempts to rival
her successes in America. The attempts of Cartier and Roberval[3] had
been watched, and the Spanish ambassador at Lisbon had proposed to the
King of Portugal to send out a joint armament to dispossess the
intruders. The king deemed the danger too remote to be worth an
expedition, and the Spaniards unwillingly acquiesced. An outpost of
fur traders in the ice-bound wilderness of Canada might seem to bring
little danger with it. But a settlement on the coast of Florida,
within some eight days' sail of Havana, with a harbor whence
privateers might waylay Spanish ships and even attack Spanish
colonies, was a rival not to be endured. Moreover, the colonists were
not only foreigners but Huguenots, and their heresy served at once as
a pretext and stimulus to Spanish zeal.
The man to whose lot it fell to support the monopoly of Spain against
French aggression was one who, if we may judge by his American career,
needed only a wider field to rival the genius and the atrocities of
Alva. Pedro de Menendez, when he had scarcely passed from boyhood, had
fought both against the French and the Turks, and had visited America
and returned laden with wealth. He then did good service in command of
the Spanish fleet in the French war, and his prompt cooperation with
the land force gave him a share in the glories of St. Quentin.[4] A
second voyage to America was even more profitable than the first, but
his misconduct there brought him into conflict with the Council of the
Indies, by whom he was imprisoned, and heavily fined. His previous
services, however, had gained him the favor of the court. Part of his
fine was remitted, and he was emboldened to ask not merely for pardon,
but for promotion. He proposed to revive the attempt of De Soto and to
extend the Spanish power over Florida. The expedition was to be at
Menendez's own cost; he was to take out five hundred colonists, and in
return to be made Governor of Florida for life and to enjoy certain
rights for free trade with the West Indies and with the mother
country....
The military genius of Menendez rose to the new demands made upon it.
He at once decided on a bold and comprehensive scheme which would
secure the whole coast from Port Royal to Chesapeake Bay, and would
ultimately give Spain exclusive possession of the South Seas and the
Newfoundland fisheries. The Spanish captain had a mind which could at
once conceive a wide scheme and labor at the execution of details. So
resolutely were operations carried on that by June, 1565, Menendez
sailed from Cadiz with thirty-four vessels and four thousand six
hundred men. After a stormy voyage he reached the mouth of the St.
John's river. Ribault's party was about to land, and some of the
smaller vessels had crossed the harbor, while others yet stood out to
sea. Menendez hailed the latter, and after some parley told them that
be had come there with orders from the king of Spain to kill all
intruders that might be found on the coast. The French being too few
to fight, fled. Menendez did not for the present attack the
settlement, but sailed southward till he reached a harbor which be
named St. Augustine. There the Spaniards disembarked and threw up a
fortification destined to grow into the town of St. Augustine, the
first permanent Spanish settlement north of the Gulf of Mexico.
Various attempts had been made, and with various motives. The
slave-hunter, the gold-seeker, the explorer had each tried his
fortunes in Florida, and each failed. The difficulties which had
baffled them all were at length overcome by the spirit of religious
hatred.
Meanwhile a council of war was sitting at the French settlement,
Charlefort. Ribault, contrary to the wishes of Laudonnière and the
rest, decided to anticipate the Spaniards by an attack from the sea. A
few sick men were left with Laudonnière to garrison the fort; all the
rest went on board. Just as everything was ready for the attack, a
gale sprang up, and the fleet of Ribault, instead of bearing down on
St. Augustine, was straggling in confusion off an unknown and perilous
coast. Menendez, relieved from immediate fear for his own settlement,
determined on a bold stroke. Like Ribault, he bore down the opposition
of a cautious majority, and with five hundred picked men marched
overland through thirty miles of swamp and jungle against the French
fort. Thus each commander was exposing his own settlement in order to
menace his enemies.
In judging, however, of the relative prudence of the two plans, it
must be remembered that an attack by land is far more under control,
and far less liable to be disarranged by unforeseen chances than one
by sea. At first it seemed as if each expedition was destined to the
same fate. The weather was as unfavorable to the Spanish by land as to
the French by sea. At one time a mutiny was threatened, but Menendez
succeeded in inspiring his men with something of his own enthusiasm,
and they persevered. Led by a French deserter, they approached the
unprotected settlement. So stormy was the night that the sentinels had
left the walls. The fort was stormed; Laudonnière and a few others
escaped to the shore and were picked up by one of Ribault's vessels
returning from its unsuccessful expedition. The rest, to the number of
one hundred and forty, were slain in the attack or taken prisoners.
The women and children were spared, the men were hung on trees with an
inscription pinned to their breasts: "Not as to Frenchmen, but as to
Lutherans."
The fate of Ribault's party was equally wretched. All were
shipwrecked, but most apparently succeeded in landing alive. Then
began a scene of deliberate butchery, aggravated, if the French
accounts may be believed, by the most shameless treachery. As the
scattered bands of shipwrecked men wandered through the forest,
seeking to return to Fort Caroline, they were mercilessly entrapped by
friendly words, if not by explicit promises of safety. Some escaped to
the Indians, a few were at last spared by the contemptuous mercy of
the foes. Those of the survivors who profest themselves converts were
pardoned, the rest were sent to the galleys. Ribault himself was among
the murdered. If we may believe the story current in France, his head,
sawn in four parts, was set up over the corners of the fort of St.
Augustine, while a piece of his beard was sent as a trophy to the king
of Spain....
Dominic de Gourgues had already known as a prisoner of war the horrors
of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain.
Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved,
the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings
of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring
than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds
of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned by eighty sailors
and a hundred men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver
on the coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With these
paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement which had
already destroyed a force of twenty times his number, and which might
have been strengthened in the interval....
Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues, with a
hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies, marched
against the enemy. In spite of the hostility of the Indians the
Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution against a sudden attack.
Menendez himself had left the colony. The Spanish force was divided
between three forts, and no proper precautions were taken for keeping
up the communications between them. Each was successively seized, the
garrison slain or made prisoners, and as each fort fell those in the
next could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger.
Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De
Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would have counted for
little against men with firearms and behind walls. But after the
downfall of the first fort a panic seemed to seize the Spaniards, and
the French achieved an almost bloodless victory. After the death of
Ribault and his followers nothing could be looked for but merciless
retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not the
perfidy, of his enemies. The very details of Menendez's act were
imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung bore the
inscription: "Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and
murderers." Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored under the walls of
Rochelle, and that noble city, where civil and religious freedom found
a home In their darkest hour, received him with the honor he deserved.
[1] From Doyle's "English Colonies in America." By permission of
the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.
[2] Coligny's first attempt was made in 1555, when two shiploads of
Huguenot immigrants (290 persons), under Villegagnon, were sent to
Brazil. This settlement was soon destroyed by the Portuguese.
Menendez's expedition of 1565 followed the earlier Spanish
expeditions by Ponce de Leon, Narvaez and De Soto. It sailed from
Cadiz and comprized eleven ships. Twenty-three other vessels
followed, the entire company numbering 2,646 persons. The aim
of Menendez was to begin a permanent settlement in Florida. On
arrival he found a colony of French Huguenots already in
possession, having been there three years. A conflict was
inevitable, and one which forms a most melancholy chapter in the
early history of American colonization. Menendez hanged Huguenots,
"not as Frenchmen, but as heretics," while Gourgues hanged
Spaniards "not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers and
murderers." After the conflicts closed the Spaniards maintained
themselves in St. Augustine until 1586, when St. Augustine was
completely destroyed by Sir Francis Drake. Two years later the
Armada of Spain was overthrown in the English Channel, largely as
the work of Drake.
[3] In the valley of the St. Lawrence as described in Volume I.
[4] St. Quentin is a town in northeastern France, near which on
August 10, 1557, the army of Philip II, Spain, won a great victory
over the combined armies of France and England.
II
MENDOZA'S ACCOUNT OF THE MASSACRE[1]
We saw two islands, called the Bahama Islands. The shoals which lie
between them are so extensive that the billows are felt far out at
sea. The general gave orders to take soundings. The ship purchased at
Porto Rico got aground that day in two and a half fathoms of water. At
first we feared she might stay there; but she soon got off and came to
us. Our galley, one of the best chips afloat, found herself all day in
the same position, when suddenly her keel struck three times violently
against the bottom. The sailors gave themselves up for lost, and the
water commenced to pour into her hold. But, as we had a mission to
fulfil for Jesus Christ and His blessed mother, two heavy waves, which
struck her abaft, set her afloat again, and soon after we found her in
deep water, and at midnight we entered the Bahama Channel.
On Saturday, the 25th, the captain-general (Menendez) came to visit
our vessel and get the ordnance for disembarkment at Florida. This
ordnance consisted of two rampart pieces, of two sorts of culverins,
of very small caliber, powder and balls; and he also took two soldiers
to take care of the pieces. Having armed his vessel, he stopt and made
us an address, in which he instructed us what we had to do on arrival
at the place where the French were anchored. I will not dwell on this
subject, on which there was a good deal said for and against, although
the opinion of the general finally prevailed. There were two thousand
(hundred) Frenchmen in the seaport into which we were to force an
entrance. I made some opposition to the plans, and begged the general
to consider that he had the care of a thousand souls, for which he
must give a good account....
On Tuesday, the 4th, we took a northerly course, keeping all the time
close to the coast. On Wednesday, the 5th, two hours before sunset, we
saw four French ships at the mouth of a river.[2] When we were two
leagues from them the first galley joined the rest of the fleet, which
was composed of four other vessels. The general concerted a plan with
the captains and pilots, and ordered the flag-ship, the _San Pelayo_,
and a _chaloupe_ to attack the French flag-ship, the _Trinity_, while
the first galley and another _chaloupe_ would attack the French
galley, both of which vessels were very large and powerful. All the
ships of our fleet put themselves in good position; the troops were in
the best of spirits, and full of confidence in the great talents of
the captain-general. They followed the galley; but, as our general is
a very clever and artful officer, he did not fire, nor seek to make
any attack on the enemy. He went straight to the French galley, and
cast anchor about eight paces from her. The other vessels went to the
windward, and very near the enemy. During the maneuvers, which lasted
until about two hours after sunset, not a word was said on either
side. Never in my life have I known such stillness. Our general
inquired of the French galley, which was the vessel nearest his,
"Whence does this fleet come?" They answered, "From France." "What are
you doing here?" said the Adelantado. "This is the territory of King
Philip II. I order you to leave directly; for I neither know who you
are nor what you want here."
The French commander then replied, "I am bringing soldiers and
supplies to the fort of the King of France." He then asked the name of
the general of our fleet, and was told, "Pedro Menendez de Aviles,
Captain-general of the King of Spain, who have come to hang all
Lutherans I find here." Our general then asked him the name of his
commander, and he replied, "Lord Gasto." While this parleying was
going on, a long-boat was sent from the galley to the flag-ship. The
person charged with this errand managed to do it so secretly that we
could not hear what was said; but we understood the reply of the
French to be, "I am the admiral," which made us think he wished to
surrender, as they were in so small a force. Scarcely had the French
made this reply, when they slipped their cables, spread their sails,
and passed through our midst. Our admiral, seeing this, followed the
French commander, and called upon him to lower his sails, in the name
of King Philip, to which he received an impertinent answer. Immediatly
our admiral gave an order to discharge a small culverin, the ball from
which struck the vessel amidship, and I thought she was going to
founder. We gave chase, and some time after he again called on them to
lower their sails. "I would sooner die first than surrender!" replied
the French commander. The order was given to fire a second shot, which
carried off five or six men; but, as these miserable devils are very
good sailors, they maneuvered so well that we could not take one of
them; and, notwithstanding all the guns we fired at them, we did not
sink one of their ships. We only got possession of one of their large
boats, which was of great service to us afterward. During the whole
night our flag-ship (the _San Pelayo_) and the galley chased the
French flag-ship (_Trinity_) and galley....
The next morning, being fully persuaded that the storm had made a
wreck of our galley, or that, at least, she had been driven a hundred
leagues out to sea, we decided that so soon as daylight came we would
weigh anchor, and withdraw in good order, to a river (Seloy) which was
below the French colony, and there disembark, and construct a fort,
which we would defend until assistance came to us.
On Thursday, just as day appeared, we sailed toward the vessel at
anchor, passed very close to her, and would certainly have captured
her, when we saw another vessel appear on the open sea, which we
thought was one of ours. At the same moment, however, we thought we
recognized the French admiral's ship. We perceived the ship on the
open sea: it was the French galley of which we had been in pursuit.
Finding ourselves between these two vessels, we decided to direct our
course toward the galley, for the sake of deceiving them and
preventing them from attacking us, so as not to give them any time to
wait. This bold maneuver having succeeded, we sought the river Seloy
and port, of which I have spoken, where we had the good fortune to
find our galley, and another vessel which had planned the same thing
we had. Two companies of infantry now disembarked: that of Captain
Andres Soyez Patino, and that of Captain Juan de San Vincente, who is
a very distinguished gentleman. They were well received by the
Indians, who gave them a large house belonging to a chief, and
situated near the shore of a river. Immediately Captain Patino and
Captain San Vincente, both men of talent and energy, ordered an
intrenchment to be built around this house, with a slope of earth and
fascines, these being the only means of defense possible in that
country, where stones are nowhere to be found. Up to to-day we have
disembarked twenty-four pieces of bronze guns of different calibers,
of which the least weighed fifteen hundred weight. Our fort is at a
distance of about fifteen leagues from that of the enemy (Fort
Carolin). The energy and talents of those two brave captains, joined
to the efforts of their brave soldiers, who had no tools with which to
work the earth, accomplished the construction of this fortress of
defence; and, when the general disembarked he was quite surprized with
what had been done.
On Saturday, the 8th, the general landed with many banners spread, to
the sound of trumpets and salutes of artillery. As I had gone ashore
the evening before, I took a cross and went to meet him, singing the
hymn _Te Deum laudamus_. The general marched up to the cross, followed
by all who accompanied him, and there they all kneeled and embraced
the cross. A large number of Indians watched these proceedings and
imitated all they saw done. The same day the general took formal
possession of the country in the name of his Majesty, and all the
captains took the oath of allegiance to him, as their general and
governor of the country....
Our general was very bold in all military matters, and a great enemy
of the French. He immediately assembled his captains and planned an
expedition to attack the French settlement and fort on the river with
five hundred men; and, in spite of the opinion of a majority of them,
and of my judgment and of another priest, he ordered his plan to be
carried out. Accordingly, on Monday, September 17, he set out with
five hundred men, well provided with fire-arms and pikes, each soldier
carrying with him a sack of bread and supply of wine for the journey.
They also took with them two Indian chiefs, who were the implacable
enemies of the French, to serve as guides....
I have previously stated that our brave captain-general set out on the
17th of September with five hundred arquebusiers and pikemen, under
the guidance of two Indian chiefs, who showed them the route to the
enemy's fort. They marched the whole distance until Tuesday evening,
the 17th of September, 1565, when they arrived within a quarter of a
league of the enemy's fort (Carolin), where they remained all night up
to their waists in water. When daylight came, Captains Lopez, Patino,
and Martin Ochoa had already been to examine the fort, but, when they
went to attack the fort, a greater part of the soldiers were so
confused they scarcely knew what they were about.
On Thursday morning our good captain-general, accompanied by his
son-in-law, Don Pedro de Valdes, and Captain Patino, went to inspect
the fort. He showed so much vivacity that he did not seem to have
suffered by any of the hardships to which he had been exposed, and,
seeing him march off so brisk, the others took courage, and without
exception followed his example. It appears the enemy did not perceive
their approach until the very moment of the attack, as it was very
early in the morning and had rained in torrents. The greater part of
the soldiers of the fort were still in bed. Some arose in their
shirts, and others, quite naked, begged for quarter; but, in spite of
that, more than one hundred and forty were killed. A great Lutheran
cosmographer and magician was found among the dead. The rest,
numbering about three hundred, scaled the walls, and either took
refuge in the forest or on their ships floating in the river, laden
with treasures, so that in an hour's time the fort was in our
possession, without our having lost a single man, or even had one
wounded. There were six vessels on the river at the time. They took
one brig, and an unfinished galley and another vessel, which had been
just discharged of a load of rich merchandise, and sunk. These vessels
were placed at the entrance to the bar to blockade the harbor, as they
expected we would come by sea. Another, laden with wine and
merchandise, was near the port. She refused to surrender, and spread
her sails, when they fired on her from the fort, and sunk her in a
spot where neither the vessel nor cargo will be lost.
The taking of this fort gained us many valuable objects, namely, two
hundred pikes, a hundred and twenty helmets, a quantity of arquebuses
and shields, a quantity of clothing, linen, fine cloths, two hundred
tons of flour, a good many barrels of biscuit, two hundred bushels of
wheat, three horses, four asses, and two she-asses, hogs, tallow,
books, furnace, flour-mill, and many other things of little value. But
the greatest advantage of this victory is certainly the triumph which
our Lord has granted us, and which will be the means of the holy
Gospel being introduced into this country, a thing necessary to
prevent the loss of many souls....
When we had reached the sea, we went about three leagues along the
coast in search of our comrades. It was about ten o'clock at night
when we met them, and there was a mutual rejoicing at having found
each other. Not far off we saw the camp fires of our enemies, and our
general ordered two of our soldiers to go and reconnoiter them,
concealing themselves in the bushes, and to observe well the ground
where they were encamped, so as to know what could be done. About two
o'clock the men returned, saying that the enemy was on the other side
of the river, and that we could not get at them. Immediately the
general ordered two soldiers and four sailors to return to where we
bad left the boats, and bring them down the river, so that we might
pass over to where the enemy was. Then he marched his troops forward
to the river, and we arrived before daylight. We concealed ourselves
in a hollow between the sandhills, with the Indians who were with us;
and, when it became light, we saw a great many of the enemy go down to
the river to get shell-fish for food. Soon after we saw a flag
hoisted, as a war-signal.
Our general, who was observing all that, enlightened by the Holy
Spirit, said to us, "I intend to change these clothes for those of a
sailor, and take a Frenchman with me (one of those whom we had brought
with us from Spain), and we will go and talk with these Frenchmen.
Perhaps they are without supplies, and would be glad to surrender
without fighting." He had scarcely finished speaking before he put his
plan into execution. As soon as he had called to them, one of them
swam toward and spoke to him; told him of their having been
shipwrecked, and the distress they were in; that they had not eaten
bread for eight or ten days; and, what is more, stated that all, or at
least the greater part of them, were Lutherans. Immediately the
general sent him back to his countrymen, to say they must surrender,
and give up their arms, or he would put them all to death. A French
gentleman, who was a sergeant, brought back the reply that they would
surrender on condition their lives should be spared. After having
parleyed a long time, our brave captain-general answered "that he
would make no promises, that they must surrender unconditionally, and
lay down their arms, because, if he spared their lives, he wanted them
to be grateful for it, and, if they were put to death, that there
should be no cause for complaint." Seeing that there was nothing else
left for them to do, the sergeant returned to the camp; and soon after
he brought all their arms and flags, and gave them up to the general,
and surrendered unconditionally. Finding they were all Lutherans, the
captain-general ordered them all to be put to death; but, as I was a
priest, and had bowels of mercy, I begged him to grant me the favor of
sparing those whom we might find to be Christians. He granted it; and
I made investigations, and found ten or twelve of the men Roman
Catholics, whom we brought back. All the others were executed, because
they were Lutherans and enemies of our Holy Catholic faith. All this
took place on Saturday (St. Michael's Day), September 29, 1565.[3]
[1] Francisco Lopez de Mendoza was the chaplain of the expedition.
His account is printed in "Old South Leaflets."
[2] These ships, commanded by Ribault,--seven in number, with 500
men besides families of artizans on board,--had arrived at the
mouth of the St. John's River on August 29, 1565. The four left
outside, as seen by Menendez, were at the time disembarking their
passengers.
[3] When the French Government learned of this massacre, the event
did not arouse any particular interest. Indeed, the colony seems
not to have had any special protection from the home authorities.
Had the contrary been the case, it would have been easily possible
for the French to have built up a flourishing colony in America
nearly half a century before the English were ever established in
the new world.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S VIRGINIA COLONIES
(1584-1587)
I
THE ACCOUNT BY JOHN A. DOYLE[1]
The task in which Gilbert[2] had failed was to be undertaken by one
better qualified to carry it out. If any Englishman in that age seemed
to be marked out as the founder of a colonial empire, it was Raleigh.
Like Gilbert, he had studied books; like Drake, he could rule men. The
pupil of Coligny, the friend of Spenser, traveler-soldier, scholar,
courtier, statesman, Raleigh with all his varied graces and powers
rises before us, the type and personification of the age in which he
lived. The associations of his youth, and the training of his early
manhood, fitted him to sympathize with the aims of his half-brother
Gilbert, and there is little reason to doubt that Raleigh had a share
in his undertaking and his failure.
In 1584 he obtained a patent precisely similar to Gilbert's. His first
step showed the thoughtful and well-planned system on which he began
his task. Two ships were sent out, not with any idea of settlement,
but to examine and report upon the country. Their commanders were
Arthur Barlow and Philip Amidas. To the former we owe the extant
record of the voyage: the name of the latter would suggest that he was
a foreigner. Whether by chance or design, they took a more southerly
course than any of their predecessors....
Coasting along for about a hundred and twenty miles the voyagers
reached an inlet and with some difficulty entered. They solemnly took
possession of the land in the Queen's name, and then delivered it over
to Raleigh according to his patent. They soon discovered that the land
upon which they had touched was an island about twenty miles long and
not above six broad, named, as they afterward learned, Roanoke.
Beyond, separating them from the mainland, lay an enclosed sea,
studded with more than a hundred fertile and well-wooded islets....
Barlow and Amidas returned to England in the middle of September. With
them they brought two of the savages, named Wanchese and Manteo. A
probable tradition tells us that the Queen herself named the country
Virginia, and that Raleigh's knighthood was the reward and
acknowledgement of his success. On the strength of this report Raleigh
at once made preparations for a settlement. A fleet of seven ships was
provided for the conveyance of a hundred and eight settlers. The fleet
was under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, who was to establish
the settlement and leave it under the charge of Ralph Lane....
On the 20th of June the fleet reached the coast of Florida, and three
days later narrowly escaped being cast away off Cape Fear. In a few
days more they anchored at Wococon, an island near Roanoke. In
entering the harbor the largest ship, the _Tiger_, struck a sand-bar,
and was nearly lost, either through the clumsiness or treachery of the
pilot, Simon Fernando, a Portuguese. On the 11th of July Grenville,
with forty others, including Lane, Amidas, and the chief men of the
expedition, crossed over to the mainland. Taking northerly direction,
they explored the coast as far as Secotan, an Indian town some sixty
miles mouth of Roanoke, where they were hospitably received by the
savages. It is melancholy, after the bright picture of the intercourse
between the natives and the English drawn by Barlow, to have to record
hostilities, in which by far the greater share of blame lay with our
countrymen. On the voyage back to Roanoke a silver cup was stolen from
the English at one of the Indian villages. In revenge the English put
the inhabitants to flight, burnt the village and destroyed the crops.
On the 3d of August one ship sailed home, and on the 25th Grenville
left the colony, followed, as it would seem, during the course of the
next month by the rest of the fleet[3]....
The site of the settlement was at the northeast corner of the island
of Roanoke, whence the settlers could command the strait. There, even
now, choked by vines and underwood, and here and there broken by the
crumbling remains of an earthen bastion, may be traced the outlines of
the ditch which enclosed the camp, some forty yards square, the home
of the first English settlers in the New World....
If the failure of his colony was likely to deter Raleigh from further
efforts, this was more than outweighed by the good report of the
country given both by Lane and Heriot. Accordingly, in the very next
year, Raleigh put out another and a larger expedition under the
leadership of John White. The constitution of White's expedition would
seem to show that it was designed to be more a colony, properly
speaking, than Lane's settlement at Roanoke. A government was formed
by Raleigh, consisting of White and twelve others, incorporated as the
governor and assistants of the city of Raleigh. Of the hundred and
fifty settlers seventeen were women, of whom seven seem to have been
unmarried. The emigrants evidently did not go as mere explorers or
adventurers; they were to be the seed of a commonwealth....
On the 2d of July the fleet reached Haterask, the port at which
Grenville had landed on his last voyage. There White took fifty men
ashore to search for the fifteen whom Grenville had left there. They
found nothing but the bones of one man, slain, as they afterward
learned, by the Indians. The rest had disappeared, and it was not till
some time afterward that their countrymen learned any tidings of their
fate. Ignorant, no doubt, of the altered feelings of the natives,
Grenvile's men had lived carelessly, and kept no watch. Pemissapan's
warriors had seized the opportunity to revenge the death of their
chief, and had sent a party of thirty men against the English
settlement. Two of the chief men were sent forward to demand a parley
with two of the English. The latter fell into the trap, and sent out
two of their number. One of these was instantly seized and killed,
whereupon the other fled. The thirty Indians then rushed out and fired
the house, in which the English settlers took refuge. The English,
thus dislodged, forced their way out, losing one man in the skirmish,
and at last, after being sorely prest by the arrows of their enemies,
and by their skill in fighting behind covert, they reached the boat
and escaped to Haterask. After this neither Indians nor English ever
heard of them again....
A more hopeful omen might be drawn from the birth of a child five days
later, the first born to English parents in the New World. Her father,
Ananias Dare, was one of the twelve assistants, and her mother,
Eleanor, was the daughter of John White. Each event, the birth of
Virginia Dare, the baptism and ennobling of Manteo, was trivial in
itself, yet when brought together, the contrast gives a solemn
meaning. It seemed as if within five days the settlement of Roanoke
had seen an old world pass away, a new world born.
In August White wished to send home two of the assistants to represent
the state of the colony, but, for some reason, none of them were
willing to go. The wish of the colony generally seemed to be that
White himself should undertake the mission. After some demur, chiefly
on the ground that his own private interests required his presence in
the settlement, White assented, and on the 27th of August he
sailed....
Soon after White's return Raleigh fitted out a fleet under the command
of Grenville. Before that fleet could sail Raleigh and Grenville were
called off to a task even more pressing than the relief of the
Virginia plantation. Yet, notwithstanding the prospect of a Spanish
invasion, White persuaded Raleigh to send out two small vessels, with
which White himself sailed from Bideford on the 25th of April, 1588.
The sailors, however, fell into the snare so often fatal to the
explorers of that age. In the words of a later writer, whose vigorous
language seemed to have been borrowed from some contemporary
chronicler, the captains, "being more intent on a gainful voyage than
the relief of the colony, ran in chase of prizes; till at last one of
them, meeting two ships of war, was, after a bloody fight, overcome,
boarded and rifled. In this maimed, ransacked, and ragged condition
she returned to England in a month's time; and in about three weeks
after the other also returned, having perhaps tasted of the same fare,
at least without performing her intended voyage, to the distress, and,
as it proved, the utter destruction of the colony of Virginia, and to
the great displeasure of their patron at home."
Raleigh had now spent forty thousand pounds on the colonization of
Virginia, with absolutely no return. In March, 1589, he made an
assignment, granting to Sir Thomas Smith, White and others the
privilege of trading in Virginia, while he proved at the same time
that he had not lost his interest in the undertaking by a gift of a
hundred pounds for the conversion of the natives. The unhappy
colonists gained nothing by the change. For a whole year no relief was
sent. When, at length, White sailed with three ships, he or his
followers imitated the folly of their predecessors, and preferred
buccaneering among the Spaniards in the West Indies to conveying
immediate relief to the colonists. On their arrival nothing was to be
seen of the settlers. After some search the name Croaton was seen
carved on a post, according to an arrangement made with White before
his departure, by which the settlers were thus to indicate the course
they had taken. Remnants of their goods were found, but no trace of
the settlers themselves. Years afterward, when Virginia had been at
length settled by Englishmen, a faint tradition found its way among
them of a band of white captives, who, after being for years kept by
the Indians in laborious slavery, were at length massacred. Such were
the only tidings of Raleigh's colonists that ever reached the ears of
their countrymen. White, with his three ships, returned, and the
colonization of Virginia was for a time at an end. Even Raleigh's
indomitable spirit gave way, and he seems henceforth to have abandoned
all hope of a plantation. Yet he did not, till after fifteen years of
disappointment and failure, give up the search for his lost settlers.
Before he died the great work of his life had been accomplished, but
by other hands. In spite of the intrigues of the Spanish court and the
scoffs of playwrights, Virginia had been settled and had become a
flourishing colony. A ship had sailed into London laden with Virginia
goods, and an Indian princess,[4] the wife of an Englishman, had been
received at court, and had for a season furnished wonder and amusement
to the fashionable world.
[1] From Doyle's "English Colonies in America." By permission of
the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.
[2] Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a half-brother of Raleigh, is here
referred to. In 1578 he had obtained royal permission to found a
colony in America, but his expedition, after starting, turned back,
a failure. In 1588 he again set out, landing at St. John's,
Newfoundland, where he established the first English colony in
North America. On returning home his ship was lost in a storm off
the Azores.
[3] See in the next chapter an account of Lane's return with Drake.
[4] Pocahontas, married to John Rolfe, went to England with Rolfe
and there died about a year later. She left a son who returned to
Virginia, where he left descendants, among whom was the famous John
Randolph of Roanoke. John Smith's account of the saving of his life
by Pocahontas is printed in Volume I of "The Best of the World's
Classics."
II
THE RETURN OF THE COLONISTS WITH SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
(1586)
BY RALPH LANE[1]
This fell out the first of June, 1586, and the eight of the same came
advertisement to me from captaine Stafford, lying at my lord Admirals
Island, that he had discovered a great fleet of three and twentie
sailes: but whether they were friends or foes, he could not yet
discerne. He advised me to stand upon as good guard as I could.
The ninth of the sayd moneth he himselfe came unto me, having that
night before, and that same day travelled by land twenty miles: and I
must truely report of him from the first to the last; hee was the
gentleman that never spared labour or perill either by land or water,
faire weather or foule, to performe any service committed unto him.
He brought me a letter from the Generall Sir Francis Drake, with a
most bountifull and honourable offer for the supply of our necessities
to the performance of the action wee were entred into; and that not
only of victuals, munition, and clothing, but also of barks,
pinnesses, and boats; they also by him to be victualled, manned and
furnished to my contentation.
The tenth day he arrived in the road of our bad harborow: and comming
there to an anker, the eleventh day I came to him, whom I found in
deeds most honourably to performe that which in writing and message he
had most curteously offered, he having aforehand propounded the matter
of all the captaines of his fleet, and got their liking and consent
thereto.
With such thanks unto him and his captaines for his care both of us
and of our action, not as the matter deserved, but as I could both for
my company and myselfe, I (being aforehand prepared what I would
desire) craved at his hands that it would please him to take with him
into England a number of weake and unfit men for any good action,
which I would deliver to him; and in place of them to supply me of his
company with oare-men, artificers, and others.
That he would leave us so much shipping and victuall, as about August
then next following would cary me and all my company into England,
when we had discovered somewhat, that for lacke of needfull provision
in time left with us as yet remained undone.
That it woulde please him withall to leave some sufficient Masters not
onely to cary us into England, when time should be, but also to search
the coast for some better harborow, if there were any, and especially
to helpe us to some small boats and oare-men. Also for a supply of
calievers, hand weapons, match and lead, tooles, apparell, and such
like.
He having received these my requests, according to his usuall
commendable maner of government (as it was told me) calling his
captains to counsell; the resolution was that I should send such of my
officers of my company as I used in such matters, with their notes, to
goe aboord with him; which were the Master of the victuals, the Keeper
of the store, and the Vicetreasurer: to whom he appointed forthwith
for me _The Francis_, being a very proper barke of 70 tun, and tooke
present order for bringing of victual aboord her for 100 men for foure
moneths, with all my other demands whatsoever, to the uttermost.
And further, he appointed for me two pinnesses, and foure small boats:
and that which was to performe all his former liberality toward us,
was that he had gotten the full assents of two of as sufficient
experimented Masters as were any in his fleet, by judgment of them
that knew them, with very sufficient gings to tary with me, and to
employ themselves most earnestly in the action, as I should appoint
them, untill the terme which I promised of our returne into England
againe. The names of one of those Masters was Abraham Kendall, the
other Griffith Herne.
While these things were in hand, the provision aforesaid being
brought, and in bringing aboord, my sayd Masters being also gone
aboord, my sayd barks having accepted of their charge, and mine owne
officers, with others in like sort of my company with them (all which
was dispatched by the sayd Generall the 12 of the sayde moneth) the 13
of the same there arose such an unwoonted storme, and continued foure
dayes, that had like to have driven all on shore, if the Lord had not
held his holy hand over them, and the Generall very providently
foreseene the woorst himselfe, then about my dispatch putting himselfe
aboord: but in the end having driven sundry of the fleet to put to Sea
the _Francis_ also with all my provisions, my two Masters, and my
company aboord, she was seene to be free from the same, and to put
cleere to Sea.
This storme having continued from the 13 to the 16 of the moneth, and
thus my barke put away as aforesayd, the Generall comming ashore made
a new proffer unto me; which was a ship of 170 tunne, called The barke
_Bonner_, with a sufficient Master and guide to tary with me the time
appointed, and victualled sufficiently to cary me and my company into
England, with all provisions as before: but he tolde me that he would
not for any thing undertake to have her brought into our harbour, and
therefore he was to leave her in the road, and to leave the care of
the rest unto my selfe, and advised me to consider with my company of
our case, and to deliver presently unto him in writing what I would
require him to doe for us; which being within his power, he did assure
me as well for his Captaines as for himselfe, shoulde be most
willingly performed.
Heereupon calling such Captaines and gentlemen of my company as then
were at hand, who were all as privy as my selfe to the Generals offer;
their whole request was to me, that considering the case that we stood
in, the weaknesse of our company, the small number of the same, the
carying away of our first appointed barke, with those two speciall
Masters, with our principall provisions in the same, by the very hand
of God as it seemed, stretched out to take us from thence; considering
also, that his second offer, though most honourable of his part, yet
of ours not to be taken, insomuch as there was no possibility for her
with any safety to be brought into the harbour: seeing furthermore,
our hope for supply with Sir Richard Greenville, so undoubtedly
promised us before Easter, not yet come, neither then likely to come
this yeere, considering the doings in England for Flanders, and also
for America, that therefore I would resolve my selfe with my company
to goe into England in that fleet, and accordingly to make request to
the Generall in all our names, that he would be pleased to give us
present passage with him. Which request of ours by my selfe delivered
unto him, hee most readily assented unto: and so he sending
immediately his pinnesses unto our Island for the fetching away of a
few that there were left with our baggage, the weather was so
boisterous, and the pinnesses so often on ground, that the most of all
we had, with all our Cards, Books and writings were by the Sailers
cast overboard, the greater number of the fleet being much agrieved
with their long and dangereus abode in that miserable road.
From whence the Generall in the name of the Almighty, weying his
ankers (having bestowed us among his fleet) for the reliefe of whom
hee had in that storme susteined more perill of wracke then in all his
former most honourable actions against the Spanyards, with praises
unto God for all, set saile the nineteenth of June 1596, and arrived
in Portsmouth the seven and twentieth of July the same yeere.
[1] Ralph Lane went out to Virginia in 1585 with the ships
dispatched in that year by Raleigh and commanded by Sir Richard
Grenville, the company numbering one hundred householders. After
landing at Roanoke, Grenville returned to England for supplies,
leaving the colony in charge of Lane. Lane has left an important
account of the experiences and sufferings of the colonists during
the absence of Grenville, whose return was delayed. Drake,
meanwhile coming up from St. Augustine, which he had just
destroyed, put in at Roanoke in 1586, and the whole company
returned to England with him. Grenville afterward arrived in
Roanoke, finding no one there. He then returned to England, leaving
on the island fifteen men. In the following year Raleigh sent out
to Roanoke John White. When White arrived he found that these men
had all been massacred by the Indians. Other expeditions were sent
out later, but none was able to establish any colony at Roanoke.
Lane's account is printed In "Old South Leaflets."
III
THE BIRTH OF VIRGINIA DARE[1]
(1587)
BY JOHN WHITE
The two and twentieth day of July we came safely to Cape Hatteras,
where our ship and pinnace anchored. The Governor went aboard the
pinnace accompanied by forty of his best men, intending to pass up to
Roanoke. He hoped to find those fifteen Englishmen whom Sir Richard
Grenville had left there the year before. With these he meant to have
a conference concerning the state of the country and the savages,
intending then to return to the fleet and pass along the coast to the
Bay of Chesapeake. Here we intended to make our settlement and fort
according to the charge given us among other directions in writing
under the hand of Sir Walter Raleigh. We passed to Roanoke and the
same night at sunset went ashore on the island, in the place where our
fifteen men were left. But we found none of them, nor any sign that
they had been there, saving only that we found the bones of one of
them, whom the savages had slain long before.
The Governor with several of his company walked the next day to the
north end of the island, where Master Ralph Lane, with his men the
year before, had built his fort with sundry dwelling houses. We hoped
to find some signs here, or some certain knowledge of our fifteen men.
When we came thither we found the fort razed, but all the houses
standing unhurt, saving that the lower rooms of them, and of the fort
also, were overgrown with melons of different sorts, and deer were in
rooms feeding on those melons. So we returned to our company without
the hope of ever seeing any of the fifteen men living.
The same day an order was given that every man should be employed in
remodelling those houses which we found standing, and in making more
cottages.
On the eighteenth a daughter was born in Roanoke to Eleanor, the
daughter of the Governor and the wife of Ananias Dare. This baby was
christened on the Sunday following, and because this child was the
first Christian born in Virginia she was named Virginia Dare.
By this time our shipmasters had unloaded the goods and victuals of
the planters and taken wood and fresh water, and were newly calking
and trimming their vessels for their return to England. The settlers
also prepared their letters and news to send back to England.
[1] Virginia Dare was the first child of English parentage born in
America. Her father was Ananias Dare. She was named Virginia after
the colony which had already received the name in compliment to
Queen Elizabeth.
BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD'S DISCOVERY OF CAPE COD[1]
(1602)
I
BY GABRIEL ARCHER, ONE OF HIS COMPANIONS
The said captain [Gosnold] did set sail from Falmouth the day and year
above written accompanied with thirty-two persons, whereof eight
mariners and sailors, twelve purposing upon the discovery to return
with the ship for England, the rest remain there for population. The
fourteenth of April following, we had sight of Saint Mary's, an island
of the Azores....
The fifteenth day of May we had again sight of the land, which made
ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason of a large sound that
appeared westward between it and the main, for coming to the west end
thereof, we did perceive a large opening, we called it Shoal Hope.
Near this cape we came to anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we took
great store of codfish, for which we altered the name, and called it
Cape Cod.[2] Here we saw sculls of herring, mackerel, and other small
fish, in great abundance. This is a low sandy shoal, but without
danger, also we came to anchor again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the
land in the latitude of 42 degrees. This cape is well near a mile
broad, and lieth north-east by east. The captain went here ashore and
found the ground to be full of pease, strawberries, whortleberries,
&c., as then unripe, the sand also by the shore somewhat deep, the
firewood there by us taken in was of cypress, birch, witch-hazel and
beech. A young Indian came here to the captain, armed with his bow and
arrows, and had certain plates of copper hanging at his ears; he
showed a willingness to help us in our occasions.
The sixteenth, we trended the coast southerly, which was all champaign
and full of grass, but the island somewhat woody. Twelve leagues from
Cape Cod, we descried a point with some breach, a good distance off,
and keeping our luff to double it, we came on the sudden into shoal
water, yet well quitted ourselves thereof. This breach we called
Tucker's Terror, upon his exprest fear. The point we named Point Care;
having passed it we bore up again with the land, and in the night came
with it anchoring in eight fathoms, the ground good.
The seventeenth, appeared many breaches round about us, so as we
continued that day without remove. The eighteenth, being fair we sent
forth the boat, to sound over a breach, that in our course lay of
another point, by us called Gilbert's Point, who returned us four,
five, six, and seven fathoms over. Also, a discovery of divers islands
which after proved to be hills and hammocks, distinct within the land.
This day there came unto the ship's side divers canoes, the Indians
apparelled as aforesaid, with tobacco and pipes steeled with copper,
skins, artificial strings and other trifles to barter; one had hanging
about his neck a plate of rich copper, in length a foot, in breadth
half a foot for a breastplate, the ears of all the rest had pendants
of copper. Also, one of them had his face painted over, and head stuck
with feathers in manner of a turkey-cock's train. These are more
timorous than those of the Savage Rock, yet very thievish.
The nineteenth, we passed over the breach of Gilbert's Point in four
or five fathoms, and anchored a league or somewhat more beyond it;
between the last two points are two leagues, the interim, along shoal
water, the latitude here is 41 degrees two third parts.
The twentieth, by the ship's side, we there killed penguins, and saw
many sculls of fish. The coast from Gilbert's Point to the supposed
isles lieth east and by south. Here also we discovered two inlets
which might promise fresh water, inwardly whereof we perceived much
smoke, as though some population had there been. This coast is very
full of people, for that as we trended the same savages still run
along the shore, as men much admiring at us.
The one-and-twentieth, we went coasting from Gilbert's Point to the
supposed isles, in ten, nine, eight, seven, and six fathoms, close
aboard the shore, and that depth lieth a league off. A little from the
supposed isles, appeared unto us an opening, with which we stood,
judging it to be the end which Captain Gosnold descried from Cape Cod,
and as he thought to extend some thirty or more miles in length, and
finding there but three fathoms a league off, we omitted to make
further discovery of the same, calling it Shoal Hope.
From this opening the main lieth southwest, which coasting along we
saw a disinhabited island, which so afterward appeared unto us: we
bore with it, and named it Martha's Vineyard; from Shoal Hope it is
eight leagues in circuit, the island is five miles, and hath 41
degrees and one quarter of latitude. The place most pleasant; for the
two-and-twentieth, we went ashore, and found It full of wood, vines,
gooseberry bushes, whortleberries, raspberries, eglantines, &c. Here
we had cranes, stearnes, shoulers, geese, and divers other birds which
there at that time upon the cliffs being sandy with some rocky stones,
did breed and had young. In this place we saw deer: here we rode in
eight fathoms near the shore where we took great store of cod,--as
before at Cape Cod, but much better.
The three-and-twentieth we weighed, and toward night came to anchor at
the northwest part of this island, where the next morning offered unto
us fast running thirteen savages apparelled as aforesaid, and armed
with bows and arrows without any fear. They brought tobacco,
deer-skins, and some sodden fish. These offered themselves unto us in
great familiarity, who seemed to be well-conditioned. They came more
rich in copper than any before. This island is sound, and hath no
danger about it.
The four-and-twentieth, we set sail and doubled the Cape of another
island next unto it, which we called Dover Cliff, and then came into a
fair sound[3], where we rode all night; the next morning we sent off
one boat to discover another cape, that lay between us and the main,
from which were a ledge of rocks a mile into the sea, but all above
water, and without danger; we went about them, and came to anchor in
eight fathoms, a quarter of a mile from the shore, in one of the
stateliest sounds that ever I was in. This called we Gosnold's Hope;
the north bank whereof is the main, which stretcheth east and west.
This island Captain Gosnold called Elizabeth's isle, where we
determined our abode; the distance between every one of these islands
is, viz, from Martha's Vineyard to Dover Cliff, half a league over the
sound, thence to Elizabeth's isle[4], one league distant. From
Elizabeth's island unto the main is four leagues. On the north side,
near adjoining unto the island Elizabeth, is an islet in compass half
a mile, full of cedars, by me called Hill's Hap, to the northward of
which, in the mouth of an opening on the main, appeareth another the
like, that I called Hap's Hill, for that I hope much hap may be
expected from it.
The eight-and-twentieth we entered counsel about our abode and
plantation, which was concluded to be in the west part of Elizabeth's
island. The north-east thereof running from out our ken. The south and
north standeth in an equal parallel....
The one-and-thirtieth, Captain Gosnold, desirous to see the main
because of the distance, he set sail over; where coming to anchor,
went ashore with certain of his company, and immediately there
presented unto him men, women, and children, who, with all courteous
kindness entertained him, giving him certain skins of wild beasts,
which may be rich furs, tobacco, turtles, hemp, artificial strings
colored, chains, and such like things as at the instant they had about
them. These are a fair-conditioned people. On all the sea-coast along
we found mussel shells that in color did represent mother-of-pearl,
but not having means to dredge, could not apprehend further knowledge
thereof. This main is the goodliest continent that ever we saw,
promising more by far than we any way did expect; for it is
replenished with fair fields, and in them fragrant flowers, also
meadows, and hedged in with stately groves, being furnished also with
pleasant brooks, and beautified with two main rivers that (as we
judge) may haply become good harbors, and conduct us to the hopes men
so greedily do thirst after....
The first of June we employed ourselves in getting sassafras, and the
building of our fort. The second, third, and fourth, we wrought hard
to make ready our house for the provision to be had ashore to sustain
us till our ship's return. This day from the main came to our ship's
side a canoe, with their lord or chief commander, for that they made
little stay only pointing to the sun, as in sign that the next day he
would come and visit us, which he did accordingly.
The fifth, we continued our labor, when there came unto us ashore from
the main fifty savages, stout and lusty men with their bows and
arrows; amongst them there seemed to be one of authority, because the
rest made an inclining respect unto him. The ship was at their coming
a league off, and Captain Gosnold aboard, and so likewise Captain
Gilbert, who almost never went ashore, the company with me only eight
persons. These Indians in hasty manner came toward us, so as we
thought fit to make a stand at an angle between the sea and a fresh
water; I moved myself toward him seven or eight steps, and clapt my
hands first on the sides of mine head, then on my breast, and after
presented my musket with a threatening countenance, thereby to signify
unto them, either a choice of peace or war, whereupon he using me with
mine own signs of peace, I stept forth and embraced him; his company
then all sat down in manner like greyhounds upon their heels, with
whom my company fell a bartering. By this time Captain Gosnold was
come with twelve men more from aboard, and to show the savage seignior
that he was our Captain, we received him in a guard, which he passing
through, saluted the seignior with ceremonies of our salutations,
whereat he nothing moved or altered himself. Our Captain gave him a
straw hat and a pair of knives; the hat awhile he wore, but the knives
he beheld with great marveling, being very bright and sharp; this our
courtesy made them all in love with us....
The eighth we divided the victuals, namely, the ship's store for
England, and that of the planters, which by Captain Gilbert's
allowance could be but six weeks for six months, whereby there fell
out controversy, the rather, for that some seemed secretly to
understand of a purpose Captain Gilbert had not to return with supply
of the issue, those goods should make by him to be carried home.
Besides, there wanted not ambitious conceits in the minds of some
wrangling and ill-disposed persons who overthrew the stay there at
that time, which upon consultation thereof had, about five days after
was fully resolved all for England again. There came in this interim
aboard unto us, that stayed all night, an Indian, whom we used kindly,
and the next day sent ashore; he showed himself the most sober of all
the rest, we held him sent as a spy. In the morning, he filched away
our pothooks, thinking he had not done any ill therein; being ashore
we bid him strike fire, which with an emerald stone (such as the
glaziers use to cut glass) he did. I take it to be the very same that
in Latin is called _smiris_, for striking therewith upon touch-wood
that of purpose he had, by means of a mineral stone used therein,
sparkles proceeded and forthwith kindled with making of flame. The
ninth, we continued working on our storehouse, for as yet remained in
us a desired resolution of making stay. The tenth, Captain Gosnold
fell down with the ship to the little islet of cedars, called Hill's
Hap, to take in cedar wood, leaving me and nine more in the fort, only
with three meals meat, upon promise to return the next day....
The thirteenth, began some of our company that before vowed to stay,
to make revolt: whereupon the planters diminishing, all was given
over. The fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth, we spent in getting
sassafras and fire-wood of cedar, leaving house and little fort, by
ten men in nineteen days sufficient made to harbor twenty persons at
least with their necessary provisions.
The seventeenth, we set sail, doubling the rocks of Elizabeth's
island, and passing by Dover Cliff, came to anchor at Martha's
Vineyard, being five leagues distant from our fort, where we went
ashore, and had young cranes, herneshowes, and geese, which now were
grown to pretty bigness.
The eighteenth, we set sail and bore for England, cutting off our
shallop, that was well able to land five and twenty men or more, a
boat very necessary for the like occasions. The winds do range most
commonly upon this coast in the summer time, westerly. In our homeward
course we observed the foresaid floating weeds to continue till we
came within two hundred leagues of Europe. The three-and-twentieth of
July we came to anchor before Exmouth.[5]
[1] Gosnold sailed from Falmouth, England, in 1602, Raleigh being
interested in the expedition. He reached the New England coast in
May of the same year, and discovered Cape Cod, to which, because of
the abundance of codfish in neighboring waters he gave the name it
bears. He afterward discovered Martha's Vineyard, and on the
neighboring island of Cuttyhunk founded a settlement called
Elizabeth, the first ever made in New England by Englishmen. This
settlement lasted only a few weeks, the settlers returning to
England.
[2] The entire group of islands, of which Cuttyhunk is one, are now
known as the Elizabeth Islands. The township which these islands
comprize bears Gosnold's name. Gosnold became active afterward in
promoting the expedition which In 1607 resulted in the settlement
of Jamestown. The report of the expedition to Cape Cod, from which
this account is taken, is known as "The Relation of Captain
Gosnold's Voyage." It was "delivered by Gabriel Archer, a gentleman
in the said voyage." Archer's account is printed in "Old South
Leaflets."
[3] Vineyard Sound.
[4] Now Cuttyhunk, the westermost of the chain of islands called
the Elizabeth Islands, which separate Buzzard's Bay from Vineyard
Sound.
[5] From Exmouth the ship sailed for Portsmouth, her real
destination.
II
GOSNOLD'S OWN ACCOUNT[1]
I was in good hope that my occasions would have allowed me so much
liberty, as to have come unto you before this time; otherwise I would
have written more at large concerning the country from whence we
lately came, than I did: but not well remembering what I have already
written (though I am assured that there is nothing set down
disagreeing with the truth), I thought it fittest not to go about to
add anything in writing, but rather to leave the report of the rest
till I come myself; which now I hope shall be shortly, and so soon as
with conveniency I may. In the mean time, notwithstanding whereas you
seem not to be satisfied by that which I have already written,
concerning some especial matters; I have here briefly (and as well as
I can) added these few lines for your further satisfaction....
We cannot gather, by anything we could observe in the people, or by
any trial we had thereof ourselves, but that it is as healthful a
climate as any can be. The inhabitants there, as I wrote before, being
of tall stature, comely proportion, strong, active, and some of good
years, and as it should seem very healthful, are sufficient proof of
the healthfulness of the place. First, for ourselves (thanks be to
God) we had not a man sick two days together in all our voyage;
whereas others that went out with us, or about that time on other
voyages (especially such as went upon reprisal,) were most of them
infected with sickness, whereof they lost some of their men, and
brought home a many sick, returning notwithstanding long before us.
But Verazzano, and others (as I take it, you may read in the Book of
Discoveries), do more particularly entreat of the age of the people in
that coast.
The sassafras which we brought we had upon the islands; where though
we had little disturbance, and reasonable plenty; yet for that the
greatest part of our people were employed about the fitting of our
house, and such like affairs, and a few (and those but easy laborers)
undertook this work, the rather because we were informed before our
going forth, that a ton was sufficient to cloy England, and further,
for that we had resolved upon our return, and taken view of our
victual, we judged it then needful to use expedition; which afterward
we had more certain proof of; for when we came to an anchor before
Portsmouth, which was some four days after we made the land, we had
not one cake of bread, nor any drink, but a little vinegar left: for
these and other reasons we returned no otherwise laden than you have
heard. And thus much I hope shall suffice till I can myself come to
give you further notice, which though it be not so soon as I could
have wished, yet I hope it shall be in convenient time.
[1] From a letter to his father, dated September 1, 1602.
THE FOUNDING OF JAMESTOWN
(1607)
I
BY CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH[1]
Captaine Bartholomew Gosnoll, one of the first movers of this
plantation, having many yeares solicited many of his friends, but
found small assistants; at last prevailed with some Gentlemen, as
Captaine Iohn Smith, Master Edward-maria Wingfield, Master Robert
Hunt, and divers others, who depended a yeare vpon his proiects, but
nothing could be effected, till by their great charge and industrie,
it came to be apprehended by certaine of the Nobilitie, Gentry, and
Marchants, so that his Maiestie by his letters patents, gaue
commission for establishing Councels, to direct here; and to governe,
and to execute there. To effect this, was spent another yeare, and by
that, three ships were provided, one of 100 Tuns, another of 40, and a
Pinnace of 20. The transportation of the company was committed to
Captaine Christopher Newport, a Marriner well practised for the
Westerne parts of America. But their orders for government were put in
a box, not to be opened, nor the governours knowne vntill they arrived
in Virginia.... On the 19 of December, 1606, we set sayle from
Blackwell, but by vnprosperous winds, were kept six weekes in the
sight of England; all which time, Master Hunt our Preacher, was so
weake and sicke, that few expected his recovery.
We watered at the Canaries, we traded with the Salvages at Dominica;
three weekes we spent in refreshing our selues amongst these
west-India Isles; in Gwardalupa we found a bath so hot, as in it we
boyled Porck as well as over the fire. And a little Isle called
Monica, we tooke from the bushes with our hands, neare two hogsheads
full of Birds in three or foure houres. In Mevis, Mona, and the Virgin
Isles, we spent some time; where, with a lothsome beast like a
Crocodil, called a Gwayn, Tortoises, Pellicans, Parrots, and fishes,
we daily feasted.
Gone from thence in search of Virginia, the company was not a little
discomforted, seeing the Marrinershad 3 dayes passed their reckoning
and found no land; so that Captaine Ratliffe (Captaine of the Pinnace)
rather desired to beare vp the helms to returns for England, then make
further search. But God the guider of all good actions, forcing them
by an extreame storme to hull all night, did driue them by his
providence to their desired Port, beyond all their expectations; for
never any of them had seene that coast.
The first land they made they called Cape Henry; where thirtie of them
recreating themselues on shore, were assaulted by fiue Salvages, who
hurt two of the English very dangerously.
That night was the box opened, and the orders read, in which
Bartholomew Gosnoll, Iohn Smith, Edward Wingfield, Christopher
Newport, Iohn Ratliffe, Iohn Martin, and George Kendall, were named to
be the Councell, and to choose a President amongst them for a year,
who with the Councell should governs. Matters of moment were to be
examined by a Iury, but determined by the maior part of the Councell,
in which the President had two voyces.
Untill the 13 of May they sought a place to plant in; then the
Councell was sworne, Master Wingfield was chosen President, and an
Oration made, why Captain Smith was not admitted of the Councell as
the rest.
Now falleth every man to works, the Councell contriue the Fort, the
rest cut downe trees to make place to pitch their Tents; some provide
clapbord to relade the ships, some make gardens, some nets, &c. The
Salvages often visited vs kindly. The Presidents overweening iealousie
would admit no exercise at armes, or fortification but the boughs of
trees cast together in the forms of a halfe moons by the extraordinary
paines and diligence of Captaine Kendall.
Newport, Smith, and twentie others, were sent to discover the head of
the river: by divers small habitations they passed, in six dayes they
arrived at a Towns called Powhatan, consisting of some twelue houses,
pleasantly seated on a hill; before it three fertile Iles, about it
many of their cornefields, the place is very pleasant, and strong by
nature, of this place the Prince is called Powhatan, and his people
Powhatans. To this place the river is navigable: but higher within a
myle, by reason of the Rocks and Isles, there is not passage for a
small Boat, this they call the Falles[2]. The people in all parts
kindly intreated them, till being returned within twentie myles of
Iames towns, they gaue iust cause of iealousie: but had God not
blessed the discoverers otherwise than those at the Fort, there had
then beene an end of that plantation; for at the Fort, where they
arrived the next day, they found 17 men hurt, and a boy slaine by the
Salvages, and had it not chanced a crosse barre shot from the Ships
strooke downe a bough from a tree amongst them, that caused them to
retire, our men had all beene slams, being securely all at works, and
their armes in dry fats.
Herevpon the President was contented the Fort should be pallisadoed,
the Ordnance mounted, his men armed and exercised: for many were the
assaults, and ambuscadoes of the Salvages, and our men by their
disorderly stragling were often hurt, when the Salvages by the
nimblenesse of their heels well escaped.
What toyle we had, with so small a power to guard our workemen adayes,
watch all night, resist our enemies, and effect our businesse, to
relade the ships, cut downe trees, and prepare the ground to plant our
Corne, &c. I referre to the Readers consideration. Six weekes being
spent in this manner, Captaine Newport (who was hired onely for our
transportation) was to returne with the ships....
Being thus left to our fortunes, it fortuned that within ten days
scarce ten amongst vs could either goe, or well stand, such extreame
weaknes and moknes oppressed vs. And thereat none need marvaile, if
they consider the cause and reason, which was this.
Whilst the ships stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a
daily proportion of Bisket, which the sailers would pilfer to sell,
giue, or exchange with vs, for money, Saxefras, furres, or loue. But
when they departed, there remained neither taverne, beere house, nor
place of reliefe, but the common Kettell. Had we beene as free from
all sinnes as gluttony, and drunkennesse, we might haue beene
canonized for Saints; But our President would never haue beene
admitted, for ingrossing to his private, Oatmeale, Sacks, Oyle,
_Aquavitoe_, Beefs, Egges, or what not, but the Kettell; that indeed
he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was halfe a pint of
wheat, and as much barley boyled with water for a man a day, and this
having fryed some 6 weekes in the ships hold, contained as many wormes
as graines; so that we might trudy call it rather so much bran than
corns, our drinks was water, our lodgings Castles in the ayre.
With this lodging and dyet, our extreame toils in bearing and planting
Pallisadoes, so strained and bruised vs, and our continuall labour in
the extremitie of the heat had so weakened vs, as were cause
sufficient to haue made vs as miserable in our natiue Countrey, or any
other place in the world.
From May, to September, those that escaped, lined vpon Sturgeon, and
Sea-crabs, fiftie in this time we buried, the rest seeing the
Presidents projects to escape these miseries in our Pinnace by flight
(who all this time had neither felt want nor sicknes) so moved our
dead spirits, as we deposed him; and established Ratcliffe in his
place, (Gosnoll being dead) Kendall deposed. Smith newly recovered,
Martin and Ratcliffe was by his care preserved and relieued, and the
most of the souldiers recovered with the skilfull diligence of Master
Thomas Wotton our Chirurgian generall.
But now was all our provision spent, the Sturgeon gone, all helps
abandoned, each houre expecting the fury of the Salvages; when God the
patron of all good indevours, in that desperate extremitie so changed
the hearts of the Salvages, that they brought such plenty of their
fruits, and provision, as no man wanted....
The new President, and Martin, being little beloved, of weake
iudgement in dangers, and lesse industrie in peace, committed the
managing of all things abroad to Captaine Smith: who by his owne
example, good words, and faire promises, set some to mow, others to
binde thatch, some to build houses, others to thatch them, himselfe
alwayes bearing the greatest tasks for his owns share, so that in
short time, he provided most of them lodgings, neglecting any for
himselfe.
This done, seeing the Salvages superfluitie beginne to decrease (with
some of his workmen) shipped himselfe in the Shallop to search the
Country for trade. The want of the language, knowledge to mannage his
boat without sailes, the want of a sufficient power (knowing the
multitude of the Salvages), apparell for his men, and other
necessaries, were infinite impediments.
Being but six or seauen in company he went downe the river to
Kecoughtan: where at first they scorned him, as a famished man; and
would in derision offer him a handfull of Corne, a peece of bread, for
their swords and muskets, and such like proportions also for their
apparell. But seeing by trade and courtesie there was nothing to be
had, he made bold to try such conclusions as necessitie inforced,
though contrary to his Commission: Let fly his muskets, ran his boat
on shore; whereat they all fled into the woods.
So marching towards their houses, they might see great heapes of
corne: much adoe he had to restraine his hungry souldiers from present
taking of it, expecting as it hapned that the Salvages would assault
them, as not long after they did with a most hydeous noyse. Sixtie or
seaventie of them, some blacke, some red, some white, some
party-coloured, came in a square order, singing and dauncing out of
the woods, with their Okee (which was an Idoll made of skinnes,
stuffed with mosse, all painted and hung with chaines and copper)
borne before them: and in this manner, being well armed with Clubs,
Targets, Bowes and Arrowes, they charged the English, that so kindly
receiued them with their muskets loaden with Pistoll shot, that downe
fell their God, and divers lay sprauling on the ground; the rest fled
againe to the woods, and ere long sent one of their Quiyoughkasoucks
to offer peace, and redeeme their Okee.
Smith told them, if onely six of them would come vnarmed and loade his
boat, he would not only be their friend, but restore them their Okee,
and gins them Beads, Copper, and Hatchets besides: which on both sides
was to their contents performed: and then they brought him Venison,
Turkies, wild foule, bread, and what they had; singing and dauncing in
signs of friendship till they departed.
In his returns he discovered the Towne and Country of Warraskoyack.
Thus God vnboundlesse by his power,
Made them thus kind, would vs deuour.
Smith perceiving (notwithstanding their late miserie) not any regarded
but from hand to mouth: (the company being well recovered) caused the
Pinnace to be provided with things fitting to get provision for the
years following; but in the interim he made 3, or 4, iournies and
discovered the people of Chickahamania: yet what he carefully provided
the rest carelesly spent.
Wingfield and Kendall liuing in disgrace, seeing all things at randome
in the absence of Smith, the companies dislike of their Presidents
weaknes, and their small loue to Martins never mending sicknes,
strengthened themselues with the sailers and other confederates, to
regaine their former credit and authority, or at least such meanes
abord the Pinnace, (being fitted to saile as Smith had appointed for
trade) to alter her course and to goe for England.
Smith vnexpectedly returning had the plot discovered to him, much
trouble he had to prevent it, till with store of sakre and musket shot
he forced them stay or sinke in the riuer: which action cost the life
of captaine Kendall.
These brawles are so disgustful, as some will say they were better
forgotten, yet all men of good iudgement will conclude it were better
their basenes should be manifest to the world, then the busines beare
the scorne and shame of their excused disorders.
The President and captaine Archer not long after intended also to haue
abandoned the country, which project also was curbed, and suppressed
by Smith. The Spaniard never more greedily desired gold than he
victuall; nor his souldiers more to abandon the Country, then he to
keepe it. But finding plentis of Corns in the riuer of Chickahamania,
where hundreds of Salvages in diuers places stood with baskets
expecting his comming.
And now the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with
swans, geese, duckes, and cranes, that we daily feasted with good
bread. Virginia pease, pumpions, and putchamins, fish, fowls, and
diverse sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could eate them: so that
none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired to goe for England.
But our Comoedies never endured long without a Tragedie; some idle
exceptions being muttered against Captaine Smith, for not discovering
the head of Chickahamania river, and taxed by the Councell, to be slow
in so worthy an attempt. The next voyage hee proceeded so farre that
with much labour by cutting of trees insunder he made his passage; but
when his Barge could passe no farther, he left her in a broad bay out
of danger of shot, commanding none should goe a shore till his
returne; himselfe with two English and two Salvages went vp higher in
a Canowe; but hee was not long absent, but his men went a shore, whose
want of government gaue both occasion and opportunity to the Salvages
to surprise one George Cassen, whom they slew, and much failed not to
have cut of the boat and all the rest.
Smith, little dreaming of that accident, being got to the marshes at
the rivers head, twentie myles in the desert, had his two men slaine
(as is supposed) sleping by the Canowe, whilst himselfe by fowling
sought them victuall: who finding he was beset with 200 Salvages, two
of them hee slew still defending himselfe with the ayd of a Salvage
his guid, whom he bound to his arme with his garters, and vsed him as
a buckler, yet he was shot in his thikh a little, and had many arrowes
that stucke in his cloathes but no great hurt, till at last they tooke
him prisoner.
When this newes came to Iames towne, much was their sorrow for his
losse, fewe expecting what ensued. Sixe or seuen weekes those
Barbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphes and coniurations
they made of him, yet hee so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as he not
onely diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his owns
libertie, and got himselfe and his company such estimation amongst
them, that those Salvages admired him more than their owns
Quiyouckosucks.
At last they brought him to Meronocomoco, where was Powhatan their
Emperor. Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood
wondering at him, as he had beene a monster; till Powhatan and his
trayne had put themselues in their greatest braveries. Before a fire
vpon a seat like a bedsted, he sat covered with a great robe, made of
Rarowcun skinnes, and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did
sit a young wench of 15 or 18 yeares, and along on each side the
house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with all their
heads and shoulders painted red: many of their heads bedecked with the
white downe of Birds; but every one with something: and a great chayne
of white beads about their necks.
At his entrance before the king, all the people gaue a great shout.
The Queene of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his
hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, in stead of a
Towell to ry them: having feasted him after their best barbarous
manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion
was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as
could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his
head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines,
Pocohontas, the King's dearest daughter, when no intreaty could
prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laide her owne vpon his to
saue him from death: whereat the Emperour was contented he should liue
to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper; for they
thought him aswell of all occupations as themselues. For the King
himselfe will make his owne robes, shooes, bowes, arrowes, pots;
plant, hunt, or doe any thing so well as the rest.
They say he bore a pleasant shew,
But sure his heart was sad.
For who can pleasant be, and rest,
That lives in fears and dreads:
And having life suspected, doth
It still suspected lead.
Two dayes after, Powhatan having disguised himselfe in the most
fearefullest manner he could, caused Captain Smith to be brought forth
to a great house in the woods, and there vpon a mat by the fire to be
left alone. Not long after from behinde a mat that divided the house,
was made the most dolefullsst noyse he ever heard; then Powhatan more
like a devill than a man, with some two hundred more as blacke as
himselfe, came vnto him and told him now they were friends, and
presently he should goe to Iames towns, to send him two great gunnes,
and a gryndstone, for which he would giue him the Country of
Capabowosick, and for ever esteeme him as his sonne Nantaquoud.
So to Iames towne with 12 guides Powhatan sent him. That night they
quartered in the woods, he still expecting (as he had done all this
long time of his imprisonment) every houre to be put to one death or
other: for all their feasting. But almightie God (by his divine
providence) had mollified the hearts of those sterne Barbarians with
compassion. The next morning betimes they came to the Fort, where
Smith having vsed the Salvages with what kindnesss he could, he shewed
Rawhunt, Powhatans trusty servant, two demi-Culverings and a millstone
to carry Powhatan: they found them somewhat too heavie; but when they
did see him discharge them, being loaded with stones, among the boughs
of a great tree loaded with Isiekles the yce and branches came so
tumbling downe, that the poore Salvages ran away halfa dead with
feare. But at last we regained some conference with them, and gaue
them such toyes; and sent to Powhatan, his women, and children such
presents, as gaue them in generall full content.
Now in Iames Towne they were all in combustion, the strongest
preparing once more to run away with the Pinnace; which with the
hazzard of his life, with Sakre falcon and musket shot, Smith forced
now the third time to stay or sinke.
Some no better than they should be, had plotted with the President,
the next day to haue put him to death by the Leviticall law, for the
liues of Robinson and Emry; pretending the fault was his that had led
them to their ends; but he quickly tooke such order with such Lawyers,
that he layd them by the heeles till he sent some of them prisoners
for England.
Now ever once in foure or fiue dayes, Pocahontas with her attendants,
brought him so much provision, that saved many of their liues, that
els for all this had starved with hunger....
Thus you may see what difficulties still crossed any good indevour;
and the good successe of the businesse being thus oft brought to the
very period of destruction; yet you see by what strange means God hath
still delivered it.
Now whether it had beane better for Captaine Smith, to haue concluded
with any of those severall proiects, to haue abandoned the Countrey,
with some ten or twelue of them, who were called the better sort, and
haue left Master Hunt our Preacher, Master Anthony Gosnoll, a most
honest, worthy, and industrious Gentleman, Master Thomas Wotton and
some 27 others of his Countrymen to the fury of the Salvages, famine,
and all manner of mischiefes, and inconveniences, (for they were but
fortie in all to keepe possession of this large Country;) or starue
himselfe with them for company, for want of lodging: or but
adventuring abroad to make them provision, or by his opposition to
preserve the action, and saue all their liues; I leaue to the censure
of all honest men to consider.
[1] From Smith's "General History of Virginia." Edward Arbor has
contended that, had not John Smith "strove, fought and endured as
he did the present United States of America might never have come
into existence." Spaniards and French alike had failed in their
attempts at colonization and so had the repeated expeditions sent
out by Sir Walter Raleigh. Smith carried the Jamestown settlement
through its difficulties.--Smith, the "self-denying, energetic, so
full of resources, and so trained in dealing with the savage
races." Had Jamestown failed the Pilgrim fathers "would not have
gone to New England." Smith was not the sole author of the "History
of Virginia." Others contributed to the work.
[2] Richmond.
THE FIRST AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
(1619)
BY JOHN TWINE, ITS SECRETARY[1]
A reporte of the manner of proceedings in the General assembly
convented at James citty in Virginia, July 30, 1619, consisting of the
Gouvernor, the Counsell of Estate and two Burgesses elected out of
eache Incorporation and Plantation, and being dissolved the 4th of
August next ensuing.
First. Sir George Yeardley, Knight Governor & Captaine general of
Virginia, sente his sumons all over the Country, as well to invite
those of the Counsell of Estate that were absente as also for the
election of Burgesses....
The most convenient place we could finde to sitt in was the Quire of
the Churche Where Sir George Yeardley, the Governour, being sett down
in his accustomed place, those of the Counsel of Estate sate nexte him
on both handes, excepte onely the Secretary then appointed Speaker,
who sate right before him, John Twine, clerke of the General assembly,
being placed nexte the Speaker, and Thomas Pierse, the Sergeant,
standing at the barre, to be ready for any Service the Assembly should
comaund him. But forasmuch as men's affaires doe little prosper where
God's service is neglected, all the Burgesses tooke their places in
the Quire till a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the Minister, that it
would please God to guide and sanctifie all our proceedings to his
owne glory and the good of this Plantation. Prayer being ended, to the
intente that as we had begun at God Almighty, so we might proceed w^th
awful and due respecte towards the Lieutenant, our most gratious and
dread Soveraigne, all the Burgesses were intreatted to retyre
themselves into the body of the Churche, w^ch being done, before they
were fully admitted, they were called in order and by name, and so
every man (none staggering at it) tooke the oathe of Supremacy, and
then entred the Assembly....
These obstacles removed, the Speaker, who a long time had bene
extreame sickly and therefore not able to passe through long
harrangues, delivered in briefe to the whole assembly the occasions of
their meeting. Which done, he read unto them the comission for
establishing the Counsell of Estate and the general Assembly, wherein
their duties were described to the life.
Having thus prepared them, he read over unto them the greate Charter,
or comission of priviledges, orders and lawes, sent by Sir George
Yeardly out of Englande. Which for the more ease of the Committies,
having divided into fower books, he read the former two the same
forenoon for expeditious sake, a second time over and so they were
referred to the perusall of twoe Comitties, w^ch did reciprocally
consider of either, and accordingly brought in their opinions. But
some men may here objecte to what ende we should presume to referre
that to the examination of the Comitties w^ch the Counsell and Company
in Enggland had already resolved to be perfect, and did expecte
nothing but our assente thereunto? To this we answere that we did it
not to the ende to correcte or controll anything therein contained,
but onely in case we should finde ought not perfectly squaring wth the
state of this Colony or any lawe w^ch did presse or binde too harde,
that we might by waye of humble petition, seeke to have it redressed,
especially because this great Charter is to binde us and our heyers
for ever....
After dinner the Governor and those that were not of the Comitties
sate a seconde time, while the said Comitties were employed in the
perusall of those twoe bookes. And whereas the Speaker had propounded
fower severall objects for the Assembly to consider on: namely, first,
the great charter of orders, lawes, and priviledges; Secondly, which
of the instructions given by the Counsel in England to my lo: la:
warre, Captain Argall or Sir George Yeardley, might conveniently putt
on the habite of lawes; Thirdly, what lawes might issue out of the
private conceipte of any of the Burgesses, or any other of the Colony;
and lastly, what petitions were fitt to be sente home for England. It
pleased the Governour for expedition sake to have the second objecte
of the fower to be examined & prepared by himselfe and the
Non-Comitties. Wherein after having spente some three howers
conference, the twoe Committies brought in their opinions concerning
the twoe former bookes, (the second of which beginneth at these words
of the Charter: And forasmuche as our intente is to establish one
equall and uniforme kinde of government over all Virginia &c.,) w^ch
the whole Assembly, because it was late, deffered to treatt of till
the next morning....
There remaining no farther scruple in the mindes of the Assembly,
touching the said great Charter of lawes, orders and priviledges, the
Speaker putt the same to the question, and so it had both the general
assent and the applause of the whole assembly, who, as they professed
themselves in the first place most submissivily thankfull to almighty
god, therefore so they commaunded the Speaker to returne (as nowe he
doth) their due and humble thankes to the Treasurer, Counsell and
company for so many priviledges and favours as well in their owne
names as in the names of the whole Colony whom they represented.
This being dispatched we fell once more debating of suche instructions
given by the Counsell in England to several Governo^rs--as might be
converted into lawes, the last whereof was the Establishment of the
price of Tobacco, namely, of the best at 3d and the second at 18d the
pounde,...
Here begin the lawes drawen out of the Instructions given by his
Mat^ies Counsell of Virginia in England to my lo: la warre, Captain
Argall and Sir George Yeardley, knight. By this present Generall
Assembly be it enacted, that no injury or oppression be wrought by the
Englishe against the Indians whereby the present peace might be
disturbed and antient quarrells might be revived. And farther be it
ordained that the Chicohomini are not to be excepted out of this lawe;
untill either that suche order come out of Englande, or that they doe
provoke us by some newe injury.
Against Idleness, Gaming, drunkeness & excesse in apparell the
Assembly hath enacted as followeth:
First, in detestation of Idlenes be it enacted, that if any men be
founde to live as an Idler or renagate, though a freedman, it shal be
lawfull for that Incorporation or Plantation to w^ch he belongeth to
appoint him a M^r to serve for wages, till he shewe apparent signes of
amendment.
Against gaming at dice & Cardes be it ordained by this present
assembly that the winner or winners shall lose all his or their
winninges and both winners and loosers shall forfaicte ten shillings a
man, one ten shillings whereof to go to the discoverer, and the rest
to charitable & pious uses in the Incorporation where the faulte is
comitted.
Against drunkenness be it also decreed that if any private person be
found culpable thereof, for the first time he is to be reprooved
privately by the Minister, the second time publiquely, the thirde time
to lye in boltes 12 howers in the house of the Provost Marshall & to
paye his fee, and if he still continue in that vice, to undergo suche
severe punishment as the Governor and Counsell of Estate shall thinke
fitt to be inflicted on him. But if any officer offende in this crime,
the first time he shall receive a reprooff from the Governour, the
second time he shall openly be reprooved in the churche by the
minister, and the third time he shall first be comitted and then
degraded. Provided it be understood that the Governor hath alwayes
power to restore him when he shall, in his discretion thinke fitte.
Against excesse in apparell that every man be cessed in the churche
for all publique contributions, if he be unmarried according to his
owne apparrell, if he be married according to his owne and his wives,
or either of their apparrell....
Be it enacted by this present assembly that for laying a surer
foundation of the conversion of the Indians to Christian Religion,
eache towne, citty, Borrough, and particular plantation do obtaine
unto themselves by just means a certaine number of the natives'
children to be educated by them in the true religion and civile course
of life--of w^ch children the most towardly boyes in witt & graces of
nature to be brought up by them in the first elements of litterature,
so to be fitted for the Colledge intended for them that from thence
they may be sente to that worke of conversion.
As touching the business of planting come this present Assembly doth
ordaine that yeare by yeare all & every householder and householders
have in store for every servant he or they shall keep, and also for
his or their owne persons, whether they have any Servants or no, one
spare barrell of come, to be delivered out yearly, either upon sale or
exchange as need shall require. For the neglecte of w^ch duty he
shalbe subject to the censure of the Governr and Counsell of Estate.
Provided always that the first yeare of every newe man this lawe shall
not be of force....
All ministers shall duely read divine service, and exercise their
ministerial function according to the Ecclesiastical lawes and orders
of the churche of Englande, and every Sunday in the afternoon shall
Catechize suche as are not yet ripe to come to the Com. And whosoever
shalbe found negligent or faulty in this kinde shalbe subject to the
censure of the Governor and Counsell.
All persons whatsoever upon the Sabaoth daye shall frequente divine
service and sermons both forenoon and afternoon, and all suche as
beare arms shall bring their pieces, swordes, poulder and shotte. And
every one that shall transgresse this lawe shall forfaicte three
shillings a time to the ues of the churche, all lawful and necessary
impediments excepted. But if a servant in this case shall wilfully
neglecte his M^r's he shall suffer bodily punishmente.
No maide or woman servant, either now resident in the Colonie or
hereafter to come, shall contract herselfe in marriage w^th_out either
the consente of her parents, or of her M^r or M^ris, or of the
magistrat and minister of the place both together. And whatsoever
minister shall marry or contracte any suche persons w^th_out some of
the foresaid consentes shalbe subjecte to the severe censure of the
Governr and Counsell of Estate...
In sume Sir George Yeardley, the Governor prorogued the said General
Assembly till the firste of Marche, which is to fall out this present
yeare of 1619, and in the mean season dissolved the same.
[1] This account is taken from the official report of the assembly,
of which Twine was clerk. It is printed in the "Colonial Records of
Virginia," and in Hart's "American History Told by Contemporaries."
THE ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN AMERICA
I
IN THE WEST INDIES
(1518)
BY SIR ARTHUR HELPS[1]
The outline of Las Casas'[2] scheme was as follows: The King was to
give to every laborer willing to emigrate to Española his living
during the journey from his place of abode to Seville, at the rate of
half a real a day throughout the journey, for great and small, child
and parent. At Seville the emigrants were to be lodged in the Casa de
la Contratacion (the India House), and were to have from eleven to
thirteen maravedis a day. From thence they were to have a free passage
to Epañola, and to be provided with food for a year. And if the
climate "should try them so much" that at the expiration of this year
they should not be able to work for themselves, the King was to
continue to maintain them; but this extra maintenance was to be put
down to the account of the emigrants, as a loan which they were to
repay. The King was to give them lands--his own lands--furnish them
with plowshares and spades, and provide medicines for them. Lastly,
whatever rights and profits accrued from their holdings were to become
hereditary. This was certainly a most liberal plan of emigration. And,
in addition, there were other privileges held out as inducements to
these laborers.
In connection with the above scheme, Las Casas, unfortunately for his
reputation in after-ages, added another provision, namely, that each
Spanish resident in the island should have license to import a dozen
negro slaves. The origin of this suggestion was, as he informs us,
that the colonists had told him that, if license were given them to
import a dozen negro slaves each, they, the colonists, would then set
free the Indians. And so, recollecting that statement of the
colonists, he added this provision. Las Casas, writing his history in
his old age, thus frankly owns his error:
"This advice, that license should be given to bring negro slaves to
these lands, the _cleriqo_ Casas first gave, not considering the
injustice with which the Portuguese take them and make them slaves;
which advice, after he had apprehended the nature of the thing, he
would not have given for all he had in the world. For he always held
that they had been made slaves unjustly and tyrannically; for the
same reason holds good of them as of the Indians."
The above confession is delicately and truthfully worded--"not
considering"; he does not say, not being aware of; but though it was a
matter known to him, his moral sense was not watchful, as it were,
about it. We must be careful not to press the admissions of a generous
mind too far, or to exaggerate the importance of the suggestion of Las
Casas. It would be quite erroneous to look upon this suggestion as
being the introduction of negro slavery. From the earliest times of
the discovery of America, negroes had been sent there. But what is of
more significance, and what it is strange that Las Casas was not aware
of, or did not mention, the Hieronymite Fathers had also come to the
conclusion that negroes must be introduced into the West Indies.
Writing in January, 1518, when the fathers could not have known what
was passing in Spain in relation to this subject, they recommended
licenses to be given to the inhabitants of Española, or to other
persons, to bring negroes there. From the tenor of their letter it
appears that they had before recommended the same thing. Zuazo, the
judge of residencia, and the legal colleague of Las Casas, wrote to
the same effect. He, however, suggested that the negroes should be
placed in settlements and married. Fray. Bernardino de Manzanedo, the
Hieronymite father, sent over to counteract Las Casas, gave the same
advice as his brethren about the introduction of negroes. He added a
proviso, which does not appear in their letter--perhaps it did exist
in one of the earlier ones--that there should be as many women as men
sent over, or more.
The suggestion of Las Casas was approved of by the Chancellor; and,
indeed, it is probable there was hardly a man of that time who would
have seen further than the excellent clerigo did. Las Casas was asked
what number of negroes would suffice? He replied that he did not know;
upon which a letter was sent to the officers of the India House at
Seville to ascertain the fit number in their opinion. They said that
four thousand at present would suffice, being one thousand for each of
the islands, Española, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. Somebody now
suggested to the Governor, De Bresa, a Fleming of much influence and a
member of the council, that he should ask for this license to be given
to him. De Bresa accordingly asked the King for it, who granted his
request; and the Fleming sold this license to certain Genoese
merchants for twenty-five thousand ducats, having obtained from the
King a pledge that for eight years he should give no other license of
this kind.
The consequence of this monopoly enjoyed by the Genoese merchants was
that negroes were sold at a great price, of which there are frequent
complaints. Both Las Casas and Pasamonte--rarely found in
accord--suggested to the King that it would be better to pay the
twenty-five thousand ducats and resume the license, or to abridge its
term. Figueroa, writing to the Emperor from Sonto Domingo, says:
"Negroes are very much in request; none have come for about a year. It
would have been better to have given De Bresa the customs
duties--_i.e._, the duties that had been usually paid on the
importation of slaves--than to have placed a prohibition." I have
scarcely a doubt that the immediate effect of the measure adopted in
consequence of the clerigo's suggestion was greatly to check that
importation of negro slaves which otherwise, had the license been
general, would have been very abundant.
Before quitting this part of the subject, something must be said for
Las Casas which he does not allege for himself. This suggestion of his
about the negroes was not an isolated one. Had all his suggestions
been carried out, and the Indians thereby been preserved, as I firmly
believe they might have been, these negroes might have remained a very
insignificant number in the general population. By the destruction of
Indians a void in the laborious part of the community was being
constantly created, which had to be filled up by the labor of negroes.
The negroes could bear the labor in the mines much better than the
Indians; and any man who perceived that a race, of whose Christian
virtues and capabilities he thought highly, were fading away by reason
of being subjected to labor which their natures were incompetent to
endure, and which they were most unjustly condemned to, might prefer
the misery of the smaller number of another race treated with equal
injustice, but more capable of enduring it. I do not say that Las
Casas considered all these things; but, at any rate, in estimating his
conduct, we must recollect that we look at the matter centuries after
it occurred, and see all the extent of the evil arising from
circumstances which no man could then be expected to foresee, and
which were inconsistent with the rest of the clerigo's plans for the
preservation of the Indians.
I suspect that the wisest among us would very likely have erred with
him; and I am not sure that, taking all his plans together, and taking
for granted, as he did then, that his influence at court was to last,
his suggestion about the negroes was an impolite one.
[1] Helps was an English writer who is best known for his social
essays entitled "Friends in Council." He was the author of several
works on America, including "The Spanish Conquest in America."
[2] Las Casas was a Dominican, born in Spain, who came to the West
Indies in 1502 and devoted himself to protecting the Indians
against slavery at the hands of their conquerors. In 1544 he was
made a Mexican bishop.
II
ITS BEGINNINGS IN THE UNITED STATES
(1620)
BY JOHN A. DOYLE[1]
The economical success which had attended the introduction of negroes
into the West Indies made it almost certain that the American colonies
would betake themselves to the same resource. The first introduction
of negroes is commonly placed in the year 1620, when a Dutch ship
landed twenty of them for sale at Jamestown. For some years their
numbers increased but slowly. In 1649 Virginia contained only three
hundred. By 1661 they had increased to two thousand, while the
indented servants were four times that number. Twenty-two years later,
if we may trust Culpepper's statement, the number of white servants
was nearly doubled, while that of the negroes had only increased by
one-half. Of their numbers and proportions in Maryland and North
Carolina we have no definite evidence. In South Carolina negro slavery
seems to have been almost from the outset the prevalent form of
industry.
As early as 1708 we are told that three-fifths of the population were
blacks. This alteration in the relative numbers of white servants and
black slaves was accelerated by a change which had come over the
commercial policy of the English Government. In 1662 the Royal African
Company was incorporated. At the head of it was the Duke of York, and
the King himself was a large shareholder. The chief profit of this
company was derived from the exportation of negroes from Guinea to the
plantations. The King and his brother henceforth had a direct interest
in limiting the supply of indented servants, and it is not unlikely
that this explains why Jeffreys for once deviated into the paths of
humanity and justice....
Had negro slavery never existed, had the natural resources of the
Southern colonies favored the growth of a free yeomanry, the system of
indenture would have been admirably fitted to establish a population
of small proprietors, trained in habits of industry and in a competent
knowledge of agriculture. The social and industrial life of the
colonies forbade this. A peasant proprietary can only exist under
severe restraints as to increase, or where there is urban life to take
off the surplus population for trades and handicrafts. The Southern
colonies fulfilled neither of these conditions. When the servant was
out of his indentures there was no place for him. He could not become
a shopkeeper or craftsman or a free agricultural laborer, for none of
these callings existed. Moreover, the very same conditions of soil and
climate which enabled slavery to exist, made it possible for the
freeman to procure a scanty livelihood, without any habits of settled
industry. Thus the liberated servant became an idler, socially
corrupt, and often politically dangerous. He furnished that class
justly described by a Virginian of that day as "a foeculum of beings
called overseers, a most abject, unprincipled race." He was the
forerunner, and possibly in some degree the progenitor, of that class
who did so much to intensify the evils of slavery, the "mean whites"
of later times....
When once negro slavery was firmly established, any rival form of
industry was doomed. For it is an economical law of slavery, that
where it exists it must exist without a rival. It can only succeed
where it is a predominant form of labor. The utility of the slave is
that of a machine. When once he has been trained to any special kind
of industry, no attempts to enlarge his sphere of activity can be
attended with profit. The time given to the new acquisition is so much
waste, and his mental incapacity and absence of any moral interest in
his work almost necessarily limits him to a single task. Thus, as we
have seen, the many attempts to develop varied forms of production in
the Southern colonies all failed. Maryland and Virginia grew only
tobacco. South Carolina grew mainly rice. Moreover, the spectacle of
the free laborer working on the same soil and at the same task, would
be fatal to that resignation, and that complete moral and intellectual
subjection, which alone can make slave labor possible. Thus the
cheaper and more efficient system obtained the mastery so completely
that by the beginning of the eighteenth century slave and negro had
become well-nigh synonymous terms.
[1] From Doyle's "English Colonies in America." By permission of
the publishers, Henry Holt & Co.
NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIM FATHERS LANDED
(1614)
BY CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH[1]
In the moneth of Aprill, 1614, with two Ships from London, of a few
Marchants, I chanced to arriue in New-England, a parte of Ameryca, at
the Ile of Monahiggan, in 43-1/2 of northerly latitude: our plot was
there to take Whales and make tryalls of a Myne of Gold and Copper. If
those failed, Fish and Furres was then our refuge, to make our selues
sauers howsoeuer: we found this Whale fishing a costly conclusion: we
saw many, and spent much time in chasing them; but could not kill any:
They beeing a kinde of Iubartes, and not the Whale that yeeldes Finnes
and Oyle as wee expected. For our Golde, it was rather the Masters
deuice to get a voyage that proiected it, then any knowledge hee had
at all of any such matter. Fish & Furres was now our guard: & by our
late arriual, and long lingring about the Whale, the prime of both
those seasons were past ere wee perceiued it; we thinking that their
seasons serued at all times: but wee found it otherwise; for, by the
midst of Iune, the fishing failed.
Yet in Iuly and August some was taken, but not sufficient to defray so
great a charge as our stay required. Of dry fish we made about 40000.
of Cor fish about 7000.
Whilest the sailers fished, my selfe with eight or nine others of them
might best bee spared; Ranging the coast in a small boat, wee got for
trifles neer 1100 Beuer skinnes, 100 Martins, and neer as many Otters;
and the most of them within the distance of twenty leagues. We ranged
the Coast both East and West much furder; but Eastwards our
commodities were not esteemed, they were so neare the French who
affords them better: and right against vs in the Main was a Ship of
Sir Frances Popphames, that had there such acquaintance, hauing many
years vsed onely that porte, that the most parte there was had by him.
And 40 leagues westwards were two French Ships, that had made there a
great voyage by trade, during the time wee tryed those conclusions,
not knowing the Coast, nor Saluages habitation. With these Furres, the
Traine, and Corfish I returned for England in the Bark: where within
six monthes after our departure from the Downes, we safe arriued back.
The best of this fish was solde for fiue pound the hundreth, the rest
by ill vsage betwixt three pound and fifty shillings. The other Ship
staied to fit herselfe for Spaine with the dry fish which was sould,
by the Sailers reporte that returned, at forty ryalls the quintall,
each hundred weighing two quintalls and a halfe.
New England is that part of America in the Ocean Sea opposite to Noua
Albyon in the South Sea; discouered by the most memorable Sir Francis
Drake in his voyage about the worlde. In regarde whereto this is
stiled New England, beeing in the same latitude. New France, off it,
is Northward: Southwardes is Virginia, and all the adioyning
Continent, with New Grenada, New Spain, New Andolosia and the West
Indies. Now because I haue beene so oft asked such strange questions,
of the goodnesse and greatnesse of those spatious Tracts of land, how
they can bee thus long vnknown, or not possessed by the Spaniard, and
many such like demands; I intreat your pardons, if I chance to be too
plaine, or tedious in relating my knowledge for plaine mens
satisfaction.
That part wee call New England is betwixt the degrees of 41. and 45:
but that parte this discourse speaketh of, stretcheth but from
Penobscot to Cape Cod, some 75 leagues by a right line distant each
from other: within which bounds I haue scene at least 40. seuerall
habitations vpon the Sea Coast, and sounded about 25 excellent good
Harbours; In many whereof there is ancorage for 500 sayle of ships of
any burthen; in some of them for 5000: And more than 200 Iles
ouergrowne with good timber, of diuers sorts of wood, which doe make
so many harbours as requireth a longer time then I had, to be well
discouered....
And surely by reason of those sandy cliffes and cliffes of rocks, both
which we saw so planted with Gardens and Corne fields, and so well
inhabited with a goodly, strong and well proportioned people, besides
the greatnesse of the Timber growing on them, the greatnesse of the
fish and the moderate temper of the ayre (for of twentie fiue, not any
was sicke, but two that were many yeares diseased before they went,
notwithstanding our bad lodging and accidentall diet) who can but
approue this a most excellent place, both for health & fertility? And
of all the foure parts of the world that I haue yet seene not
inhabited, could I haue but meanes to transport a Colonie, I would
rather liue here than any where: and if it did not maintaine it selfe,
were wee but once indifferently well fitted, let vs starue.
The maine Staple, from hence to bee extracted for the present to
produce the rest, is fish; which howeuer it may seeme a mean and a
base commoditie: yet who will but truely take the pains and consider
the sequell, I thinke will allow it well worth the labour....
First, the ground is so fertill, that questionless it is capable of
producing any Grain, Fruits, or Seeds you will sow or plant, growing
in the Regions afore named: But it may be, not euery kinde to that
perfection of delicacy; or some tender plants may miscarie, because
the Summer is not so hot, and the winter is more colde in those parts
wee haue yet tryed neere the Sea side, then we finde in the same
height in Europe or Asia; Yet I made a Garden vpon the top of a Rockie
Ile in 43-1/2, 4 leagues from the Main, in May, that grew so well, as
it serued vs for sallets in Iune and Iuly. All sorts of cattell may
here be bred and fed in the Iles, or Peninsulaes, securely for
nothing. In the Interim till they encrease if need be (obseruing the
seasons) I durst vndertake to haue corne enough from the Saluages for
300 men, for a few trifles; and if they should bee vntoward (as it is
most certaine they are) thirty or forty good men will be sufficient to
bring them all in subjection, and make this prouision; if they
vnderstand what they doe: 200 whereof may nine monethes in the yeare
be imployed in making marchandable fish, till the rest prouide other
necessaries, fit to furnish vs with other commodities....
But, to retumne a little more to the particulars of this Countrey,
which I intermingle thus with my proiects and reasons, not being so
sufficiently yet acquainted in those parts, to write fully the estate
of the Sea, the Ayre, the Land, the Fruites, the Rocks, the People,
the Gouernment, Religions, Territories, and Limitations, Friends, and
Foes: but, as I gathered from the niggardly relations in a broken
language to my vnderstanding, during the time I ranged those Countries
&c. The most Northern part I was at, was the Bay of Penobscot, which
is East and West, North and South, more than ten leagues; but such
were my occasions, I was constrained to be satisfied of them I found
in the Bay, that the Riuer ranne farre vp into the Land, and was well
inhabited with many people, but they were from their habitations,
either fishing among the Iles, or hunting the Lakes and Woods, for
Deer and Beuers. The Bay is full of great Ilands, of one, two, six,
eight, or ten miles in length, which diuides it into many faire and
excellent good harbours. On the East of it, are the Tarrantines, their
mortall enemies, where inhabit the French, as they report that line
with those people, as one nation or family. And Northwest of
Pennobscot is Mecaddacut, at the foot of a high mountaine, a kinde of
fortresse against the Tarrantines adioyning to the high mountaines of
Pennobscot, against whose feet doth beat the Sea.
But ouer all the Land, Iles, or other impediments, you may well see
them sixteene or eighteene leagues from their situation. Segocket is
the next; then Nufconcus, Pemmaquid, and Sagadahock. Vp this Riuer
where was the Westerne plantation are Aumuckcawgen, Kinnebeck, and
diuers others, where there is planted some corne fields. Along this
Riuer 40 or 50 miles, I saw nothing but great high cliffes of barren
Rocks, ouergrowne with wood: but where the Saluages dwelt there the
ground is exceeding fat & fertill. Westward of this Riuer, is the
Countrey of Aucocisco, in the bottome of a large deepe Bay, full of
runny great Iles, which diuides it into many good harbours. Sowocotuck
is the next, in the edge of a large sandy Bay, which bath many Rocks
and Iles, but few good harbours, but for Barks, I yet know. But all
this Coast to Pennobscot, and as farre I could see Eastward of it is
nothing but such high craggy Cliffy Rocks & stony Iles that I wondered
such great trees could growe vpon so hard foundations. It is a
Countrie rather to affright, then delight one. And how to describe a
more plaine spectacle of desolation or more barren I knowe not. Yet
the Sea there is the strangest fish-pond I euer saw; and those barren
Iles so furnished with good woods, springs, fruits, fish, and foule,
that it makes mee thinke though the Coast be rockie, and thus
affrightable; the Values, Plaines, and interior parts, may well
(notwithstanding) be verie fertile.
But there is no kingdome so fertile bath not some part barren: and New
England is great enough, to make many Kingdomes and Countries, were it
all inhabited. As you passe the Coast still Westward, Accominticus and
Passataquack are two conuenient harbors for small barks; and a good
Countrie, within their craggie cliffs. Angoam is the next; This place
might content a right curious iudgement: but there are many sands at
the entrance of the harbor: and the worst is, it is inbayed too farre
from the deepe Sea. Heere are many rising hilles, and on their tops
and descents many come fields, and delightfull groues. On the East, is
an Ile of two or three leagues in length; the one halfe, plaine morish
grasse fit for pasture, with many faire high groues of mulberrie trees
gardens: and there is also Okes, Pines, and other woods to make this
place an excellent habitation, beeing a good and safe harbor.
Naimkeek though it be more rockie ground (for Angoam is sandie) not
much inferior; neither for the harbor, nor any thing I could perceiue,
but the multitude of people. From hence doth stretch into the sea the
faire headland Tragabigzanda, fronted with three lies called the three
Turks heads: to the North of this, doth enter a great Bay, where wee
founde some habitations and corne fields: they report a great
Riuer[2], and at least thirtie habitations, doo possesse this
Countrie. But because the French had got their Trade, I had no leasure
to discouer it.
The Iles of Mattahunts are on the West side of this Bay, where are
many Iles, and questionlesse good harbors: and then the Countrie of
the Massachusets, which is the Paradise of all those parts: for, heere
are many lies all planted with corne; groues, mulberries, saluage
gardens, and good harbors: the Coast is for the most part, high clayie
sandie cliffs. The Sea Coast as you passe, shewes you all along large
corne fields, and great troupes of well proportioned people: but the
French hauing remained heere neere sixe weekes, left nothing, for vs
to take occasion to examine the inhabitants relations, viz, if there
be neer three thousand people vpon these Iles; and that the Riuer doth
pearce many daies iourneies the intralles of that Countrey. We found
the people in those parts verie kinde; but in their furie no lesse
valiant. For, vpon a quarrell wee had with one of them, hee onely with
three others crossed the harbor of Quonahassit to certaine rocks
whereby wee must passe; and there let flie their arrowes for our shot,
till we were out of danger.
Then come you to Accomack, an excellent good harbor, good land; and no
want of any thing, but industrious people. After much kindnesse, vpon
a small occasion, wee fought also with fortie or fiftie of those:
though some were hurt, and some slaine; yet within an houre after they
became friendes. Cape Cod is the next presents it selfe; which is
onely a headland of high hils of sand, ouergrowne with shrubbie pines,
hurts, and such trash; but an excellent harbor for all weathers. This
Cape is made by the maine Sea on the one side, and a great Bay on the
other in forme of a sickle: on it doth inhabit the people of Pawmet:
and in the bottome of the Bay, the people of Chawum.
[1] From Smith's "Description of New England," published in London
in 1616. Smith's exploration of New England was made after he had
become separated from the Jamestown colony, of which in 1608, he
had been president. He went there under an engagement with London
merchants to fish for cod, barter for furs and explore the country
for settlement. It was he who at the request of Prince Charles
named the country New England.
[2] Probably the Merrimac.
THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE "MAYFLOWER"
(1620)
BY GOVERNOR WILLIAM BRADFORD[1]
Sept^r: 6. These troubls being blowne over, and now all being compacte
togeather in one shipe, they put to sea againe with a prosperus winde,
which continued diverce days togeather, which was some incouragemente
unto them; yet according to y^e usuall maner many were afflicted with
sea-sicknes....
After they had injoyed faire winds and weather for a season, they were
incountred many times with crosse winds, and mette with many feirce
stormes, with which y^e shipe was shroudly shaken, and her upper works
made very leakie; and one of the maine beames in y^e midd ships was
bowed & craked, which put them in some fear that y^e shipe could not
be able to performe y^e vioage. So some of y^e cheefe of y^e company,
perceiving y^e mariners to feare y^e suffisiencie of y^e shipe, as
appeared by their mutterings, they entred into serious consulltation
with y^e m^r. & other officers of y^e ship, to consider in time of y^e
danger; and rather to returne then to cast them selves into a
desperate & inevitable perill. And truly ther was great distraction &
differance of opinion amongst y^e mariners themselves; faine would
they doe what could be done for their wages sake, (being now halfe the
seas over,) and on y^e other hand they were loath to hazard their
lives too desperatly. But in examening of all opinions, the m^r. &
others affirmed they knew y^e ship to be stronge & firme under water;
and for the buckling of y^e maine beame, ther was a great iron scrue
y^e passengers brought out of Holland, which would raise y^e beame
into his place; y^e which being done, the carpenter & m^r. affirmed
that with a post put under it, set firme in y^e lower deck, &
otherways bounde, he would make it sufficiente.
And as for y^e decks & uper workes they would calke them as well as
they could, and though with y^e workeing of y^e ship they would not
longe keepe stanch, yet ther would otherwise be no great danger, if
they did not overpress her with sails. So they comited them selves to
y^e will of God, & resolved to proseede. In sundrie of these stormes
the winds were so feirce, & y^e seas so high, as they could not beare
a knote of saile, but were forced to hull, for diverce days togither.
And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storme, a
lustie yonge man (called John Rowland) coming upon some occasion above
y^e grattings, was, with a seele of y^e shipe throwne into [y^e] sea;
but it pleased God y^t he caught hould of y^e tope-saile halliards,
which hunge over board, & rane out at length; y^et he held his hould
(though he was sundrie fadomes under water) till he was hald up by y^e
same rope to y^e brime of y^e water, and then with a boat hooke &
other means got into y^e shipe againe, & his life saved; and though he
was something ill with it, y^et he lived many years after, and became
a profitable member both in church & comone wealthe. In all this siage
ther died but one of y^e passengers, which was William Butten, a
youth, servant to Samuel Fuller, when they drew near y^e coast....
But to omite other things, (that I may be breefe,) after longe beating
at sea they fell with that land which is called Cape Cod; the which
being made & certainly knowne to be it, they were not a little
joyfull. After some deliberation had amongst them selves & with y^e
m^r. of y^e ship, they tacked aboute and resolved to stande for y^e
southward (y^e wind & weather being faire) to find some place aboute
Hudsons river for their habitation. But after they had sailed y^t
course aboute half y^e day, they fell amongst deangerous shoulds and
roring breakers, and they were so farr intangled ther with as they
conceived them selves in great danger; & y^e wind shrinking upon them
withall, they resolved to bear up againe for the Cape, and thought
them selves hapy to gett out of those dangers before night overtooke
them, as by Gods providence they did. And y^e next day they gott into
y^e Cape-harbor wher they ridd in saftie.[2] A word or too by y^e way
of this cape; it was thus first named by Capten Gosnole & his company,
An^o: 1602, and after by Capten Smith was caled Cape James; but it
retains y^e former name amongst sea-men. Also y^t pointe which first
shewed those dangerous shoulds unto them, they called Point Care, &
Tuckers Terrour; but y^t French & Dutch to this day call it Malabarr,
by reason of those perilous shoulds, and y^e losses they have suffered
their.
Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell
upon their knees & blessed y^e God of heaven, who had brought them
over y^e vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all y^e periles
& miseries thereof, againe to set their feete on y^e firme and stable
earth, their proper elemente. And no marvell if they were thus
joyefull, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles
on y^e coast of his owne Italy; as he affirmed, that he had rather
remaine twentie years on his way by land, then pass by sea to any
place in a short time; so tedious & dreadfull was y^e same unto
him....
But hear I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amased at
this poore peoples presente condition; and so I thinke will the reader
too, when he well considers yo same. Being thus passed y^e vast ocean,
and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembred
by y^t which wente before), they had now no friends to well come them,
nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses
or much less townes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure. It is
recorded in scripture as a mercie to y^e apostle & his shipwraked
company, y^t the barbarians shewed them no smale kindnes in refreshing
them, but these savage barbarians, when they mette with them (as after
will appeare) were readier to fill their sids full of arrows then
otherwise. And for y^e season it was winter, and they that know y^e
winters of y^t cuntrie know them to be sharp & violent, & subjecte to
cruell & feirce stormes, deangerous to travill to known places, much
more to serch an unknown coast. Besids, what could they see but a
hidious & desolate wildernes, full of wild beasts & willd men? and
what multituds ther might be of them they knew not. Nether could they,
as it were, goe up to y^e tope of Pisgah, to vew from this willdernes
a more goodly cuntrie to feed their hops; for which way soever they
turnd their eys (save upward to y^e heavens) they could have little
solace or content in respecte of any outward objects.
For sumer being done, all things stand upon them with a wetherbeaten
face; and y^e whole countrie, full of woods & thickets, represented a
wild & savage view. If they looked behind them, ther was y^e mighty
ocean which they had passed, and was now as a maine barr & goulfe to
seperate them from all y^e civil parts of y^e world. If it be said
they had a ship to sucour them, it is trew; but what heard they daly
from y^e m^r. & company? but y^e with speede they should looke out a
place with their shallop, wher they would be at some near distance;
for y^e season was shuch as he would not stirr from thence till a safe
harbor was discovered by them wher they would be, and he might goe
without danger; and that victells consumed apace, but he must & would
keepe sufficient for them selves & their returne. Yea, it was muttered
by some, that if they gott not a place in time, they would turne them
& their goods ashore & leave them.
Let it also be considred what weake hopes of supply & succoure they
left behinde them, y^e might bear up their minds in this sade
condition and trialls they were under; and they could not but be very
smale. It is true, indeed, y^e affections & love of their brethren at
Leyden was cordiall & entire towards them, but they had litle power to
help them, or them selves; and how y^e case stode between them & y^e
marchants at their coming away, hath allready been declared. What
could now sustaine them but y^e spirite of God & his grace?...
Being thus arrived at Cape-Codd y^e 11. of November, and necessitie
calling them to looke out a place for habitation, (as well as the
maisters & mariners importunitie,) they having brought a large shalop
with them out of England, stowed in quarters in y^e ship, they now
gott her out & sett their carpenters to worke to trime her up; but
being much brused & shatered in y^e shipe w^th foule weather, they saw
she would be longe in mending. Whereupon a few of them tendered them
selves to goe by land and discovere those nearest places, whilst y^e
shallop was in mending; and y^e rather because as they wente into y^t
harbor ther seemed to be an opening some 2. or 3. leagues of, which
y^e maister judged to be a river. It was conceived ther might be some
danger in y^e attempte yet seeing them resolute, they were permited to
goe, being 16. of them well armed, under y^e conduct of Captain
Standish, having shuch instructions given them as was thought meete.
They sett forth y^e 15. of Nove^br: and when they had marched aboute
y^e space of a mile by y^e sea side, they espied 5. or 6. persons with
a dogg coming towards them, who were salvages; but they fled from
them, & rane up into y^e woods, and y^e English followed them, partly
to see if they could speake with them, and partly to discover if ther
might not be more of them lying in ambush. But y^e Indeans seeing them
selyes thus followed, they again forsooke the woods, & rane away on
y^e sands as hard as they could, so as they could not come near them,
but followed them by y^e tracte of their feet sundrie miles, and saw
that they had come the same way. So, night coming on, they made their
randevous & set out ther sentinels, and rested in quiete y^e night,
and the next morning followed their tracte till they had headed a
great creeke, & so left the sands, & turned an other way into y^e
woods. But they still followed them by guess, hopeing to find their
dwellings; but they soone lost both them & them selves, falling into
shuch thickets as were ready to tear their cloaths & armore in peeces,
but were most distressed for wante of drinke.
But at length they found water & refreshed them selves, being y^e
first New-England water they drunke of, and was now in thir great
thirste as pleasante unto them as wine or bear had been in for-times.
Afterwards they directed their course to come to y^e other shore, for
they knew it was a necke of land they were to crosse over, and so at
length gott to y^e sea-side, and marched to this supposed river, & by
y^e way found a pond of clear fresh water, and shortly after a good
quantitie of clear ground wher y^e Indeans had formerly set corne, and
some of their graves. And proceeding furder they saw new-stuble wher
corne had been set y^e same year, also they found wher latly a house
had been, wher some planks and a great ketle was remaining, and heaps
of sand newly padled with their hands, which they, digging up, found
in them diverce faire Indean baskets filled with corne, and some in
eares, faire and good, of diverce collours, which seemed to them a
very goodly sight, (haveing never seen any shuch before).
The month of November being spente in these affairs, & much foule
weather falling in, the 6. of Desem^r: they sente out their shallop
againe with 10. of their principall men, & some sea men, upon further
discovery, intending to circulator that deepe bay of Cape-Codd. The
weather was very could, & it frose so hard as y^e sprea of y^e sea
lighting on their coats, they were as if they had been glased; yet
that night betimes they gott downe into y^e botome of y^e bay, and as
they dine nere y^e shore they saw some 10. or 12. Indeans very busie
aboute some thing. They landed about a league or 2. from them, and had
much flats. Being landed, it grew late, and they made themselves a
barricade with loggs & bowes as well as they could in y^e time, & set
out their sentenill & betooke them to rest, and saw y^e smoake of y^e
fire y^e savages made y^t night.
When morning was come they devided their company, some to coast alonge
y^e shore in y^e boate, and the rest marched throw y^e woods to see
y^e land, if any fit place might be for their dwelling. They came also
to y^e place whom they saw the Indeans y^e night before, & found they
had been cuting up a great fish like a grampus, being some 2. inches
thike of fate like a hogg, some peeces wher of they had left by y^e
way; and y^e shallop found 2. more of these fishes dead on y^e sands,
thing usuall after storms in y^t place, by reason of y^e great flats
of sand that lye of. So they ranged up and doune all y^t day, but
found no people, nor any place they liked. When y^e sune grue low,
they hasted out of y^e woods to meete with their shallop, to whom them
made signes to come to them into a creeke hardby, which they did at
high-water; of which they were very glad, for they had not seen each
other all y^t day, since y^e morning.
So they made them a barricado (as usually they did every night) with
loggs, staks, & thike pine bowes, y^e height of a man, leaving it open
to leeward, partly to shelter them from y^e could & wind (making their
fire in y^e midle, & lying round aboute it), and partly to defend them
from any sudden assaults of y^e savags, if they should surround them.
So being very weary, they betooke them to rest. But about midnight
they heard a hideous & great crie, and their sentinall caled, "Arme,
arme"; so they bestired them & stood to their armes, & shote of a
cupple of moskets, and then the noys seased. They concluded it was a
companie of wolves, or such like willd beasts; for one of y^e sea men
tould them he had often heard shuch a noyse in New-found land. So they
rested till about 5. of y^e clock in the morning; for y^e tide, & ther
purposs to goe from thence, made them be stiring betimes. So after
praier they prepared for breakfast, and it being day dawning, it was
thought best to be carring things downe to y^e boate. But some said it
was not best to carrie y^e armes downe, others said they would be the
readier, for they had laped them up in their coats from y^e dew.
But some 3. or 4. would not cary theirs till they wente them selves,
yet as it fell out, y^e water being not high enough, they layed them
downe on y^e banke side, & came up to breakfast. But presently, all on
y^e sudain, they heard a great & strange crie, which they knew to be
the same voyces they heard in y^e night, though they varied their
notes, and & one of their company being abroad came runing in, &
cried, "Men, Indeans, Indeans"; and wth all, their arowes came flying
amongst them. Their men rane with all speed to recover their armes, as
by y^e good providence of God they did. In y^e mean time, of those
that were ther ready, two muskets were discharged at them, & 2. more
stood ready in y^e entrance of ther randevoue, but were comanded not
to shoote till they could take full aime at them; & y^e other 2.
charged againe with all speed, for ther were only 4. had armes ther, &
defended y^e baricado which was first assalted. The crie of y^e
Indeans was dreadfull, espetially when they saw ther men rune out of
y^e randevoue towourds y^e shallop, to recover their armes, the
Indeans wheeling aboute upon them. But some runing out with coats of
malle on, & cutlasses in their hands, they soone got their armes, &
let flye amongst them, and quickly stopped their violence.
Yet ther was a lustie man, and no less valiante, stood behind a tree
within halfe a musket shot, and let his arrows flie at them. He was
seen shoot 3. arrowes, which were all avoyded. He stood 3. shot of a
musket, till one taking full aime at him, and made y^e barke or
splinters of y^e tree fly about his ears, after which he gave an
extraordinary shrike, and away they wente all of them. They left some
to keep y^e shalope, and followed them aboute a quarter of a mile, and
shouted once or twise, and shot of 2. or 3. peces, & so returned. This
they did, that they might conceive that they were not affrade of them
or any way discouraged. Thus it pleased God to vanquish their enimies,
and give them deliverance; and by his spetiall providence so to
dispose that not any one of them were either hurte, or hitt, though
their arrows came close by them, & on every side them, and sundry of
their coats which hunge up in y^e barricado, were shot throw & throw.
Afterwards they gave God sollamme thanks & praise for their
deliverance, & gathered up a bundle of their arrows, & sente them into
England afterward by y^e m^r. of y^e ship, and called that place y^e
first encounter.
From hence they departed, and costed all along, but discerned no place
likly for harbor & therfore hasted to a place that their pillote, (one
M^r. Coppin who had bine in y^e cuntrie before) did assure them was a
good harbor, which he had been in, and they might fetch it before
night; of which they were glad, for it begane to be foule weather.
After some houres sailing, it begane to snow & raine, & about y^e
midle of y afternoone, y^e wind increased, & y^e sea became very
rough, and they broake their rudder, & it was as much as 2. men could
doe to steere her with a cupple of oares. But their pillott bad them
be of good cheere, for he saw y^e harbor; but y^e storme increasing, &
night drawing on, they bore what saile they could to gett in, while
they could see. But herwith they broake their mast in 3 peeces, &
their saill fell over herd, in a very grown sea, so as they had like
to have been cast away; yet by Gods mercie they recovered themselves,
& having y^e floud with them, struck into y^e harbore. But when it
came too, y^e pillott was deceived in y^e place, and said, y^e Lord be
merciful unto them, for his eys never saw y^t place before; & he & the
m^r. mate would have rune her ashore, in a cove full of breakers,
before y^e winde. But a lusty seaman which steered, bad those which
rowed, if they were men, about with her, or ells they were all cast
away; the which they did with speed. So he bid them be of good cheere
& row lustly, for ther was a faire sound before them, & he doubted not
but they should find one place or other wher they might ride in
saftie.
And though it was very darke, and rained sore, yet in y^e end they
gott under y^e lee of a smalle iland, and remained ther all y^t night
saftie. But they knew not this to be an iland till morning, but were
devided into their minds; some would keepe y^e boate for fear they
might be amongst y^e Indians; others were so weake and could, they
could not endure, but got ashore, & with much adoe got fire, (all
things being so wett,) and y^e rest were glad to come to them; for
after midnight y^e wind shifted to the north-west, & it frose hard.
But though this had been a day & night of much trouble & danger unto
them, yet God gave them a morning of comforte and refreshing (as
usually he doth to his children), for y^e next day was a faire
sunshinig day, and they found them selvs to be on an iland secure from
y^e Indeans, wher they might drie their stufe, fixe their peeces, &
rest them selves, and gave God thanks for his mercies, in their
manifould deliverances. And this being the last day of y^e weeke, they
prepared ther to keepe y^e Sabath. On Munday they sounded y^e harbor,
and founde it fitt for shipping; and marched into y^e land, & found
diverse cornfields, & little runing brooks, a placed (as they
supposed) fitt for situation; at least it was y^e best they could
find, and y^e season, & their presente necessitie, made them glad to
accept of it. So they returned to their shipp againe with this news to
y^e rest of their people, which did much comforte their harts.
On y^e 15. of Desem^r. they wayed anchor to goe to y^e place they had
discovered, & came within 2. leagues of it, but were faine to bear up
againe; but y^e 16. day y^e winde came faire, and they arrived safe in
this harbor.[3] And afterwards took better view of y^e place, and
resolved wher to pitch their dwelling; and y^e 25. day begane to
erecte y^e first house for comone use to receive them and their goods.
I shall a litle returne backe and begine with a combination made by
them before they came ashore, being y^e first foundation of their
governmente in this place; occasioned partly by y^e discontented and
mutinous speeches that some of the strangers amongst them had let fall
from them in y^e ship--That when they came ashore they would use their
own libertie; for none had power to comand them, the patente they had
being for Virginia, and not for New-england, which belonged to an
other Government, with which y^e Virginia Company had nothing to doe.
And partly that shuch an acte by them done (this their condition
considered) might be as firme as any patent, and in some respects more
sure. The forme was as followeth:
"In y^e name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwriten, the loyall
subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by y^e Grace of
God, of Great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland king, defender of y^e faith,
&c., having undertaken, for y^e glorie of God, and advancemente of y^e
Christian faith, and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant
y^e first colonie in y^e Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these
presents solemnly & mutualy in y^e presence of God, and one of
another, covenant & combine our selves together into a civill body
politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of y^e
ends aforesaid; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame
such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices,
from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for y^e
generall good of y^e Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission
and obedience. In witness wherof we have hereunder subscribed our
names at Cape-Codd y^e 11. of November, in y^e year of England, Franc,
& Ireland y^e eighteenth, and of Scotland y^e fiftie fourth. An^o:
Dom. 1620."
[1] William Bradford had already been a leading member of a little
dissenting congregation in England, when, in 1608, it fled from
England to Holland, and in 1620 settled at Plymouth, Mass. A year
after the arrival at Plymouth Bradford was elected Governor of the
Colony, and, with the exception of two short intervals, held this
office until his death nearly forty years afterward.
Bradford's "History of Plymouth" is a classic in New England
historical literature--the foundation-stone, in fact, of the
history of New England. A curious item in the survival of the
manuscript is that, at the time of the evacuation of Boston by the
British, during the Revolution, it disappeared mysteriously, to be
discovered eighty years afterward in the palace of the Bishop of
London. More than forty years after this discovery, the manuscript
was restored by the diocese of London to the commonwealth of
Massachusetts, which now preserves it in the State Library in
Boston.
[2] Now known as Provincetown, where a lofty monument on a hilt
back of the harbor, dedicated in 1910, commemorates the landing
there of the Pilgrim Fathers. While the Mayflower lay in this
harbor, Paregrine White was born, the first child of English
parentage born in New England.
[3] The landing at Plymouth was effected on December 21.
THE FIRST NEW YORK SETTLEMENTS
(1623-1628)
BY NICHOLAS JEAN DE WASSENAER[1]
We treated in our preceding discourse of the discovery of some rivers
in Virginia; the studious reader will learn how affairs proceeded. The
West India Company being chartered to navigate these rivers, did not
neglect so to do, but equipped in the spring [of 1623] a vessel of 130
lasts, called the _New Netherland_ whereof Cornelis Jacobs of Hoorn
was skipper, with 30 families, mostly Walloons, to plant a colony
there. They sailed in the beginning of March, and directing their
course by the Canary Islands, steered towards the wild coast, and
gained the westwind which luckily (took) them in the beginning of May
into the river called, first Rio de Montagnes, now the river
Mauritius, lying in 40-1/2 degrees. He found a Frenchman lying in the
mouth of the river, who would erect the arms of the King of France
there; but the Hollanders would not permit him, opposing it by
commission from the Lords States General and the directors of the West
India Company; and in order not to be frustrated therein, with the
assistance of those of the _Mackerel_ which lay above, they caused a
yacht of 2 guns to be manned, and convoyed the Frenchman out of the
river, who would do the same thing in the south river, but he was also
prevented by the settlers there. This being done, the ship sailed up
to the Maykans, 44 miles, near which they built and completed a fort
named "Orange," with 4 bastions, on an island, by them called Castle
Island....
Respecting these colonies, they have already a prosperous beginning;
and the hope is that they will not fall through provided they be
zealously sustained, not only in that place but in the South river.
For their increase and prosperous advancement, it is highly necessary
that those sent out be first of all well provided with means both of
support and defense, and that being freemen, they be settled there on
a free tenure; that all they work for and gain be theirs to dispose of
and to sell it according to their pleasure; that whoever is placed
over them as commander act as their father not as their executioner,
leading them with a gentle hand; for whoever rules them as a friend
and associate will be beloved by them, as he who will order them as a
superior will subvert and nullify everything; yea, they will excite
against him the neighbouring provinces to which they will fly. `Tis
better to rule by love and friendship than by force....
As the country is well adapted for agriculture and the raising of
every thing that is produced here, the aforesaid Lords resolved to
take advantage of the circumstances, and to provide the place with
many necessaries, through the Honble. Pieter Evertsen Hulst, who
undertook to ship thither, at his risk, whatever was requisite, to
wit: one hundred and three head of cattle; stallions, mares, steers
and cows, for breeding and multiplying, besides all the hogs and sheep
that might be thought expedient to send thither; and to distribute
these in two ships of one hundred and forty lasts, in such a manner
that they should be well foddered and attended to....
In company with these, goes a fast sailing vessel at the risk of the
directors. In these aforesaid vessels also go six complete families
with some freemen, so that forty five newcomers or inhabitants are
taken out, to remain there. The natives of New Netherland are very
well disposed so long as no injury is done them. But if any wrong be
committed against them they think it long till they be revenged....
They are a wicked, bad people, very fierce in arms. Their dogs are
small. When the Honble. Lebrecht van Twenhuyzen, once a skipper, had
given them a big dog, and it was presented to them on ship-board, they
were very much afraid of it; calling it, also a Sachem of dogs, being
the biggest. The dog, tied with a rope on board, was very furious
against them, they being clad like beasts with skins, for he thought
they were game; but when they gave him some of their bread made of
Indian corn, which grows there, he learned to distinguish them, that
they were men.
The Colony was planted at this time, on the Manhates where a Fort was
staked out by Master Kryn Frederyeke, an engineer. It will be of large
dimensions....
The government over the people of New Netherland continued on the 15th
of August of this year in the aforesaid Minuit, successor to Verhulst,
who went thither from Holand on 9th January, Anno, 1626, and took up
his residence in the midst of a nation called Manhates, building a
fort there, to be called Amsterdam, having four points and faced
outside entirely with stone, as the walls of sand fall down, and are
now more compact.
The population consists of two hundred and seventy souls, including
men, women, and children. They remained as yet without the Fort, in no
fear, as the natives live peaceably with them. They are situate three
miles from the Sea, on the river by us called Mauritius, by others,
Rio de Montagne....
After the Right Honble Lords Directors of the Privileged West India
Company in the United Netherlands, had provided for the defence of New
Netherland and put everything there in good order, they taking into
consideration the advantages of said place, the favorable nature of
the air, and soil, and that considerable trade and goods and many
commodities may be obtained from thence, sent some persons, of their
own accord, thither with all sorts of cattle and implements necessary
for agriculture, so that in the year 1628 there already resided on the
island of the Manhates, two hundred and seventy souls, men, women, and
children, under Governor Minuit, Verhulst's successor, living there in
peace with the natives. But as the land, in many places being full of
weeds and wild productions, could not be properly cultivated in
consequence of the scantiness of the population, the said Lords
Directors of the West India Company, the better to people their lands,
& to bring the country to produce more abundantly, resolved to grant
divers privileges, freedoms, and exemptions to all patroons, masters
or individuals who should plant any colonies and cattle in New
Netherland, and they accordingly have constituted and published in
print (certain) exemptions, to afford better encouragement and infuse
greater zeal into whomsoever should be inclined to reside and plant
his colonie in New Netherland.
[1] From Wassenaer's "Description of the first settlement of New
Netherland." Printed in Hart's "American History Told by
Contemporaries." Wassenaer was a Dutchman, and wrote
contemporaneously with the events he describes. After Hudson's
discovery of the Hudson River, Dutch ships were sent over to
Manhattan Island to establish an agency for the collection of furs.
Rude cabins were pitched and lived in at the southern end of the
island but these did not constitute a permanent settlement; they
were a mere trading-post. The trade became so profitable, however,
that something more permanent was desired, and in 1623 the West
India Company dispatched ships with thirty families as the nucleus
of a colony to be established near the present site of Albany. Not
until two years later was it decided that the headquarters of the
colony should be on Manhattan Island. Two ships were then sent out
to establish there a permanent and more extensive settlement.
THE SWEDES AND DUTCH IN NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE
(1627)
BY ISRAEL ACRELIUS[1]
After that the magnanimous Genoese Christopher Columbus, had, at the
expense of Ferdinand, King of Spain, in the year 1492, discovered the
Western hemisphere, and the illustrious Florentine, Americus
Vespucius, sent out by King Emanuel of Portugal, in the year 1502, to
make a further exploration of its coasts, had had the good fortune to
give the country his name, the European powers have, from time to
time, sought to promote their several interests there. Our Swedes and
Goths were the less backward in such expeditions, as they had always
been the first therein. They had already, in the year 996 after the
birth of Christ, visited America, had named it Vinland the Good, and
also Skrællings Land, and had called its inhabitants "the Skrællings
of Vinland." It is therefore evident that the Northmen had visited
some part of North America before the Spaniards and Portuguese went to
South America....
From that time until 1623, when the West India Company obtained its
charter, their trade with the Indians was conducted almost entirely on
shipboard, and they made no attempts to build any house or fortress
until 1629. Now, whether that was done with or without the permission
of England, the town of New Amsterdam was built and fortified, as also
the place Aurania, Orange, now called Albany, having since had three
general-governors, one after the other. But that was not yet enough.
They wished to extend their power to the river Delaware also, and
erected on its shores two or three small forts, which were, however,
soon after destroyed by the natives of the country.
It now came in order for Sweden also to take part in this enterprise.
William Usselinx,[2] a Hollander, born at Antwerp in Brabant,
presented himself to King Gustaf Adolph, and laid before him a
proposition for a Trading Company, to be established in Sweden, and to
extend its operations to Asia, Africa, and Magellan's Land (Terra
Magellanica), with the assurance that this would be a great source of
revenue to the kingdom. Full power was given him to carry out this
important project; and thereupon a contract of trade was drawn up, to
which the Company was to agree and subscribe it. Usselinx published
explanations of this contract, wherein he also particularly directed
attention to the country on the Delaware, its fertility, convenience,
and all its imaginable resources. To strengthen the matter, a charter
(octroy) was secured for the Company, and especially to Usselinx, who
was to receive a royalty of one thousandth upon all articles bought or
sold by the Company.
The powerful king, whose zeal for the honor of God was not less ardent
than for the welfare of his subjects, availed himself of this
opportunity to extend the doctrines of Christ among the heathen, as
well as to establish his own power in other parts of the world. To
this end he sent forth Letters Patent, dated at Stockholm on the 2d of
July, 1626, wherein all, both high and low, were invited to contribute
something to the Company, according to their means. The work was
completed in the Diet of the following year, 1627, when the estates of
the realm gave their assent, and confirmed the measure....
But when these arrangements were now in full progress, and duly
provided for, the German war and the king's death occurred, which
caused this important work to be laid aside. The Trading Company was
dissolved, its subscriptions nullified, and the whole project seemed
about to die with the king. But, just as it appeared to be at its end,
it received new life. Another Hollander by the name of Peter Menewe,
sometimes called Menuet,[3] made his appearance in Sweden.
As a good beginning, the first colony was sent off; and Peter Menewe
was placed over it, as being best acquainted in those regions. They
set sail from Götheborg, in a ship-of-war called the _Key of Colmar_,
followed by a smaller vessel bearing the name of the _Bird Griffin_,
both laden with people, provisions, ammunition, and merchandise,
suitable for traffic and gifts to the Indians. The ships successfully
reached their place of destination. The high expectations which our
emigrants had of that new land were well met by the first views which
they had of it. They made their first landing on the bay or entrance
to the river Poutaxat, which they called the river of New Sweden; and
the place where they landed they called Paradise Point.[4]
A purchase of land was immediately made from the Indians; and it was
determined that all the land on the western side of the river, from
the point called Cape Inlopen or Hinlopen,[5] up to the fall called
Santickan, and all the country inland, as much as was ceded, should
belong to the Swedish crown forever. Posts were driven into the ground
as landmarks, which were still seen in their places sixty years
afterward. A deed was drawn up for the land thus purchased. This was
written in Dutch, because no Swede was yet able to interpret the
language of the heathen. The Indians subscribed their hands and marks.
The writing was sent home to Sweden to be preserved in the royal
archives. Mans Kling was the surveyor. He laid out the land and made a
map of the whole river, with its tributaries, islands, and points,
which is still to be found in the royal archives in Sweden. Their
clergyman was Reorus Torkillus of East Gothland.
The first abode of the newly arrived emigrants was at a place called
by the Indians Hopokahacking. There, in the year 1638, Peter Menuet
built a fortress which he named Fort Christina, after the reigning
queen of Sweden.[6] The place, situated upon the west side of the
river, was probably chosen so as to be out of the way of the
Hollanders, who claimed the eastern side,--a measure of prudence,
until the arrival of a greater force from Sweden. The fort was built
upon an eligible site, not far from the mouth of the creek, so as to
secure them in the navigable water of the Maniquas, which was
afterward called Christina Kihl, or creek.
Peter Menuet made a good beginning for the settlement of the Swedish
colony in America. He guarded his little fort for over three years,
and the Hollanders neither attempted nor were able to overthrow it.
After some years of faithful service he died at Christina. In his
place followed Peter Hollendare, a native Swede, who did not remain at
the head of its affairs more than a year and a half. He returned home
to Sweden, and was a major at Skkepsholm, in Stockholm, in the year
1655.
The second emigration took place under Lieutenant Colonel John Printz,
who went out with the appointment of Governor of New Sweden. He had a
grant of four hundred six dollars for his traveling expenses, and one
thousand two hundred dollars silver as his annual salary. The Company
was invested with the exclusive privilege of importing tobacco into
Sweden, altho that article was even then regarded as unnecessary and
injurious, altho indispensable since the establishment of the bad
habit of its use. Upon the same occasion was also sent out Magister
John Campanius Holm, who was called by their excellencies the Royal
Council and Admiral Claes Flemming, to become the government chaplain,
and watch over the Swedish congregation.
The ship on which they sailed was called the _Fama_. It went from
Stockholm to Götheborg, and there took in its freight. Along with this
went two other ships of the line, the _Swan_ and the _Charitas_, laden
with people, and other necessaries. Under Governor Printz, ships came
to the colony in three distinct voyages. The first ship was the _Black
Cat_, with ammunition, and merchandise for the Indians. Next, the ship
_Swan_, on a second voyage, with emigrants, in the year 1647.
Afterward, two other ships, called the _Key_ and the _Lamp_. During
these times the clergymen, Mr. Lawrence Charles Lockenius and Mr.
Israel Holgh, were sent out to the colony....
The voyage to New Sweden was at that time quite long. The watery way
to the West was not yet well discovered, and, therefore, for fear of
the sand-banks off Newfoundland, they kept their course to the east
and south as far as to what were then called the Brazates. The ships
which went under the command of Governor Printz sailed along the coast
of Portugal, and down the coast of Africa, until they found the
eastern passage, then directly over to America, leaving the Canaries
high up to the north. They landed at Antigua, then continued their
voyage northward, past Virginia and Maryland, to Cape Hinlopen. Yet,
in view of the astonishingly long route which they took, the voyage
was quick enough in six months' time,--from Stockholm on August 16,
1642, to the new fort of Christina, in New Sweden, on February 15,
1643.
The Swedes who emigrated to America belonged partly to a trading
company, provided with a charter, who for their services, according to
their condition of agreement, were to receive pay and monthly wages; a
part of them also went on their own impulse to try their fortune. For
these it was free to settle and live in the country as long as they
pleased or to leave it, and they were therefore, by way of distinction
from the others, called freemen. At first, also, malefactors and
vicious people were sent over, who were used as slaves to labor upon
the fortifications. They were kept in chains and not allowed to have
intercourse with the other settlers; moreover, a separate place of
abode was assigned to them. The neighboring people and country were
dissatisfied that such wretches should come into the colony. It was
also, in fact, very objectionable in regard to the heathen, who might
be greatly offended by it. Whence it happened that, when such persons
came over in Governor Printz's time, it was not permitted that one of
them should set foot upon the shore, but they had all to be carried
back again, whereupon a great part of them died during the voyage or
perished in some other way. Afterward it was forbidden at home in
Sweden, under a penalty, to take for the American voyage any persons
of bad fame; nor was there ever any lack of good people for the
colony.
Governor Printz was now in a position to put the government upon a
safe footing to maintain the rights of the Swedes, and to put down the
attempts of the Hollanders. They had lately, before his arrival,
patched their little Fort Nassau. On this account he selected the
island of Tenaekong as his residence, which is sometimes also called
Tutaeaenung and Tenicko, about three Swedish miles from Fort
Christina. The convenient situation of the place suggested its
selection as also the location of Fort Nassau,[7] which lay some miles
over against it, to which he could thus command the passage by water.
The new fort, which was erected and provided with considerable
armament, was called New Götheborg. His place of residence, which he
adorned with orchards, gardens, a pleasure-house, etc., he named
Printz Hall. A handsome wooden church was also built at the same
place, which Magister Campanius consecrated, on the last great
prayer-day which was celebrated in New Sweden, on the 4th of
September, 1646. Upon that place also all the most prominent freemen
had their residences and plantations.
[1] From Acrelius's "History of New Sweden." Printed in "Old South
Leaflets." Acrelius from 1749 until 1756 was provost over Swedish
Congregations in America and pastor of their church at Christina,
now Wilmington, on the Delaware. His complete work is an exhaustive
one, and covers not only the early but the later years of Swedish
history on the Delaware. It has long been esteemed the best work we
have on the subject.
[2] Usselinx had proposed the formation of a company to trade in
foreign countries, including America, as early as 1604.
[3] Peter Minuit, the Governor of New Amsterdam, who purchased
Manhattan Island from the Indians for goods worth $24, is here
referred to.
[4] Paradise Point was near the present town of Lewes, in the State
of Delaware. The site is near where the Bay merges in the ocean.
[5] This name has been corrupted Into Henlopen. The cape was named
by Captain Cornelius May after a towu in Friesland. May's name was
given to the southern point of New Jersey now known as Cape May.
He visited Delaware Bay in or about 1614.
[6] Ft. Christina was within the limits of the present city of
Wilmington. The ancient Swedish church, built in 1698 and still
standing in Wilmington, marks the site of this, the original
settlement of Swedes in Delaware.
[7] Fort Nassau was on Delaware Bay at the mouth of Timber Creek,
below Gloucester Point, in New Jersey.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY
(1627-1631)
BY GOVERNOR THOMAS DUDLEY[1]
Touching the plantacon which wee here haue begun, it fell out thus
about the yeare 1627 some friends beeing togeather in Lincolnesheire,
fell into some discourse about New England and the plantinge of the
gospell there; and after some deliberation, we imparted our reasons by
l'res [letters] & messages to some in London & the west country where
it was likewise deliberately thought vppon [upon], and at length with
often negociation soe ripened that in the year 1628. wee procured a
patent from his Ma'tie for our planting between the Matachusetts Bay,
and Charles river on the South; and the River of Merimack on the North
and 3 miles on ether side of those Rivers & Bay, as allso for the
government of those who did or should inhabit within that compass and
the same year we sent Mr. John Endecott & some with him to beginne a
plantacon & to strengthen such as he should find there which wee sent
thether from Dorchester & some places adioyning [adjoining]; ffrom
whom the same year receivinge hopefull news.
The next year 1629 wee sent diverse shipps over w'th about 300 people,
and some Cowes, Goates & Horses many of which arrived safely. Theis
[these] by their too large comendacons [commendations] of the country,
and the comodities thereof, invited us soe strongly to goe on that Mr.
Wenthropp of Soffolke (who was well knowne in his own country & well
approved heere for his pyety, liberality, wisedome & gravity) comeinge
in to us, wee came to such resolution that in April 1630, wee sett
saile from Old England with 4 good shipps. And in May following 8 more
followed, 2 having gone before in February and March, and 2 more
following in June and August, besides another set out by a private
merchant. Theis 17 Shipps arrived all safe in New England, for the
increase of the plantacon here theis yeare 1630....
Our 4 shipps which sett out in April arrived here in June and July,
where wee found the colony in a sadd and unexpected condicon above 80
of them being dead the winter before and many of those alive weake and
sicke: all the corne & bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to
feed them a fortnight, insoemuch that the remainder of 180 servants
wee had the 2 years before sent over, comeinge to vs for victualls to
sustaine them wee found ourselves wholly unable to feed them by reason
that the p'visions [provisions] shipped for them were taken out of the
shipp they were put in, and they who were trusted to shipp them in
another failed us, and left them behind; whereupon necessity enforced
us to our extreme loss to giue them all libertie; who had cost us
about: 16 or 20 £s [sterling] a person furnishing and sending over.
But bearing theis things as wee might, wee beganne to consult of the
place of our sitting downe: ffor Salem where wee landed, pleased us
not. And to that purpose some were sent to the Bay[2] to search vpp
the rivers for a convenient place; who vppon their returne reported to
haue found a good place vppon Mistick; but some other of us seconding
theis to approoue [approve] or dislike of their judgment; we found a
place [that] liked vs better 3 leagues vp Charles river--And there
vppon vnshipped our goods into other vessels and with much cost and
labour brought them in July to Charles Towne; but there receiveing
advertisements by some of the late arived shipps from London and
Amsterdam of some Ffrench preparations against vs (many of our people
brought with vs beeing sick of ffeavers [fevers] & the scurvy and wee
thereby vnable to car[r]y vp our ordinance and baggage soe farr) wee
were forced to change counsaile and for our present shelter to plant
dispersedly, some at Charles Towne which standeth on the North Side of
the mouth of Charles River; some on the South Side thereof, which
place we named Boston (as wee intended to haue done the place wee
first resolved on) some of vs vppon Mistick, which wee named Meadford;
some of vs westward on Charles river, 4 miles from Charles Towne,
which place wee named Watertoune; others of vs 2 miles from Boston in
a place wee named Rocksbury, others vppon the river of Sawgus betweene
Salem and Charles Toune. And the westerne men 4 miles South from
Boston at a place wee named Dorchester.
This dispersion troubled some of vs, but helpe it wee could not,
wanting abillity to remove to any place fit to build a Toune vppon,
and the time too short to deliberate any longer least [lest] the
winter should surprize vs before wee had builded our houses.... of the
people who came over with vs from the time of their setting saile from
England in Aprill 1630. vntill December followinge there dyed by
estimacon about 200 at the least--Soe lowe hath the Lord brought vs!
Well, yet they who survived were not discouraged but bearing God's
corrections with humilitye and trusting in his mercies, and
considering how after a greater ebb hee had raised vpp our neighbours
at Plymouth we beganne againe in December to consult about a fitt
place to build a Toune [town] vppon, leavinge all thoughts of a fort,
because vppon any invasion wee were necessarily to loose our howses
when we should retire thereinto; soe after diverse meetings at Boston,
Rocksbury and Waterton on the 28th of December wee grew to this
resolution to bind all the Assistants Mr. Endicott & Mr. Sharpe
excepted, which last purposeth to returne by the next ships into
England to build howses at a place, a mile east from Waterton neere
Charles river,[3] the next Springe, and to winter there the next
yeare, that soe by our examples and by removeinge the ordinance and
munition thether, all who were able, might be drawne thether, and such
as shall come to vs hereafter to their advantage bee compelled soe to
doe; and soe if God would, a fortifyed Toune might there grow vpp, the
place fitting reasonably well thereto....
But now haueing some leasure to discourse of the motiues for other
mens comeinge to this place or their abstaining from it, after my
brief manner I say this--That if any come hether [hither] to plant for
worldly ends that canne live well at home hee co[m]mits an errour of
which hee will soon repent him. But if for spirittuall [ends] and that
noe particular obstacle hinder his removeall, he may finde here what
may well content him: vizt: materialls to build, fewell [fuel] to
burn, ground to plant, seas and rivers to ffish in, a pure ayer [air]
to breath[e] in, good water to drinke till wine or beare canne be
made, which togeather with the cowes, hoggs and goates brought hether
allready may suffice for food, for as for foule [fowl] and venison,
they are dainties here a well as in England. Ffor cloaths and beddinge
they must bring them with them till time and industry produce them
here. In a word, wee yett enioy [enjoy] little to bee envyed but
endure much to be pittyed in the sicknes & mortalitye of our people.
[1] From Dudley's letter to the Countess of London. Printed in
Hart's "Source Book of American History." Dudley came over with
Winthrop, and at one time was governor of the Colony.
[2] Boston Harbor is here referred to.
[3] The place was alterward called Newtown, and is now Cambridge.
HOW THE BAY COLONY DIFFERED FROM PLYMOUTH
BY JOHN G. PALFREY[1]
The emigration of the Englishmen who settled at Plymouth had been
prompted by religious dissent. In what manner Robinson, who was
capable of speculating on political tendencies, or Brewster, whose
early position had compelled him to observe them, had augured
concerning the prospect of public affairs in their native country, no
record tells; while the rustics of the Scrooby congregation, who fled
from a government which denied them liberty in their devotions, could
have had but little knowledge and no agency in the political sphere.
The case was widely different with the founders of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay. That settlement had its rise in a state of things
in England which associated religion and politics in an intimate
alliance....
Winthrop, then forty-two years old, was descended from a family of
good condition, long seated at Groton, in Suffolk, where he had a
property of six or seven hundred pounds a year, the equivalent of at
least two thousand pounds at the present day. His father was a lawyer
and magistrate. Commanding uncommon respect and confidence from an
early age, he had moved in the circles where the highest matters of
English policy were discust, by men who had been associates of
Whitgift, Bacon, Essex, and Cecil. Humphrey was "a gentleman of
special parts, of learning and activity, and a godly man"; in the home
of his father-in-law, Thomas, third earl of Lincoln, the head in that
day of the now ducal house of Newcastle, he had been the familiar
companion of the patriotic nobles.
Of the assistants, Isaac Johnson, esteemed the richest of the
emigrants, was another son-in-law of Lord Lincoln, and a landholder in
three counties. Sir Richard Saltonstall of Halifax, in Yorkshire, was
rich enough to be a bountiful contributor to the company's operations.
Thomas Dudley, with a company of volunteers which he had raised, had
served, thirty years before, under Henry IV of France; since which
time he had managed the estates of the Earl of Lincoln. He was old
enough to have lent a shrill voice to the huzzas at the defeat of the
armada, and his military services had indoctrinated him in the lore of
civil and religious freedom. Theophilus Eaton, an eminent London
merchant, was used to courts and had been minister of Charles I in
Denmark. Simon Bradstreet, the son of a Non-conformist minister in
Lincolnshire, and a grandson of "a Suffolk gentleman of a fine
estate," had studied at Emanuel College, Cambridge. William Vassall
was an opulent West India proprietor. "The principal planters of
Massachusetts," says the prejudiced Chalmers, "were English country
gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortunes; of enlarged understandings,
improved by liberal education; of extensive ambition, concealed under
the appearance of religious humility."
But it is not alone from what we know of the position, character, and
objects of those few members of the Massachusetts Company who were
proposing to emigrate at the early period now under our notice, that
we are to estimate the power and the purposes of that important
corporation. It had been rapidly brought into the form which it now
bore, by the political exigencies of the age. Its members had no less
in hand than a wide religious and political reform--whether to be
carried out in New England, or in Old England, or in both, it was for
circumstances, as they should unfold themselves, to determine. The
leading emigrants to Massachusetts were of that brotherhood of men
who, by force of social consideration as well as of the intelligence
and resolute patriotism, molded the public opinion and action of
England in the first half of the seventeenth century. While the large
part stayed at home to found, as it proved, the short-lived English
republic, and to introduce elements into the English Constitution
which had to wait another half-century for their secure reception,
another part devoted themselves at once to the erection of free
institutions in this distant wilderness.
In an important sense the associates of the Massachusetts Company were
builders of the British, as well as of the New England, commonwealth.
Some ten or twelve of them, including Cradock, the Governor, served in
the Long Parliament. Of the four commoners of that Parliament
distinguished by Lord Clarendon as first in influence, Vane had been
governor of the company, and Hampden, Pym, and Fiennes--all patentees
of Connecticut--if not members, were constantly consulted upon its
affairs. The latter statement is also true of the Earl of Warwick, the
Parliament's admiral, and of those excellent persons, Lord Say and
Sele and Lord Brooke, both of whom at one time proposed to emigrate.
The company's meetings placed Winthrop and his colleagues in relations
with numerous persons destined to act busy parts in the stirring times
that were approaching--with Brereton and Hewson, afterward two of the
Parliamentary major-generals; with Philip Nye, who helped Sir Henry
Vane to "cozen" the Scottish Presbyterian Commissioners in the
phraseology of the Solemn League and Covenant; with Samuel Vassall,
whose name shares with those of Hampden and Lord Say and Sele the
renown of the refusal to pay ship-money, and of courting the suit
which might ruin them or emancipate England; with John Venn, who, at
the head of six thousand citizens, beset the House of Lords during the
trial of Lord Strafford, and whom, with three other Londoners, King
Charles, after the battle of Edgehil, excluded from his offer of
pardon; with Owen Rowe, the "firebrand of the city"; with Thomas
Andrews, the lord mayor, who proclaimed the abolition of royalty....
He who well weighs the facts which have been presented in connection
with the principal emigration to Massachusetts, and other related
facts which will offer themselves to notice as we proceed, may find
himself conducted to the conclusion that when Winthrop and his
associates prepared to convey across the water a charter from the King
which, they hoped, would in their beginnings afford them some
protection both from himself and through him from the powers of
Continental Europe, they had conceived a project no less important
than that of laying, on this side of the Atlantic, the foundations of
a nation of Puritan Englishmen, foundations to be built upon as future
circumstances should decide or allow. It would not perhaps be pressing
the point too far to say that in view of the thick clouds that were
gathering over their home, they contemplated the possibility that the
time was near at hand when all that was best of what they left behind
would follow them to these shores; when a renovated England, secure in
freedom and pure in religion, would rise in North America; when a
transatlantic English empire would fulfil, in its beneficent order,
the dreams of English patriots and sages of earlier times....
The _Arbella_ arrived at Salem after a passage of nine weeks, and was
joined in a few days by three vessels which had sailed in her company.
The assistants, Ludlow and Rossiter, with a party from the west
country, had landed at Nantasket a fortnight before, and some of the
Leyden people, on their way to Plymouth, had reached Salem a little
earlier yet. Seven vessels from Southampton made their voyages three
or four weeks later. Seventeen in the whole came before winter,
bringing about a thousand passengers....
It is desirable to understand how this population, destined to be the
germ of a state, was constituted. Of members of the Massachusetts
Company, it cannot be ascertained that so many as twenty had come
over. That company, as has been explained, was one formed mainly for
the furtherance, not of any private interests, but of a great public
object. As a corporation, it had obtained the ownership of a large
American territory, on which it designed to place a colony which
should be a refuge for civil and religious freedom. By combined
counsels, it had arranged the method of ordering a settlement, and the
liberality of its members had provided the means of transporting those
who should compose it. This done, the greater portion were content to
remain and await the course of events at home, while a few of their
number embarked to attend to providing the asylum which very soon
might be needed by them all.
The reception of the newcomers was discouraging. More than a quarter
part of their predecessors at Salem had died during the previous
winter, and many of the survivors were ill or feeble. The faithful
Higginson was wasting with a hectic fever, which soon proved fatal.
There was a scarcity of all sorts of provisions, and not corn enough
for a fortnight's supply after the arrival of the fleet. "The
remainder of a hundred eighty servants," who, in the two preceding
years, had been conveyed over at heavy cost, were discharged from
their indentures, to escape the expense of their maintenance. Sickness
soon began to spread, and before the close of autumn had proved fatal
to two hundred of this year's emigration. Death aims at the "shining
mark" he is said to love. Lady Arbella Johnson, coming "from a
paradise of plenty and pleasure, which she enjoyed in the family of a
noble earldom, into a wilderness of wants," survived her arrival only
a month; and her husband, esteemed and beloved by the colonists, died
of grief a few weeks after. "He was a holy man and wise and died in
sweet peace."
[1] From Palfrey's "History of New England." By permission of and
by arrangement with the authorized publishers, Houghton, Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1873.
LORD BALTIMORE IN MARYLAND
(1633)
BY CONTEMPORARY WRITERS[1]
On Friday the 22 of November 1633, a small gale of winde comming
gently from the Northwest, weighed from the Cowes, in the Ile of
Wight, about ten in the morning; & (having stayed by the way twenty
dayes at the Barbada's, and fourtene dayes at St. Christophers, upon
some necessary occasions,) wee arrived at Point-Comfort in Virginia,
on the 24. of February following, the Lord be praised for it. At this
time one Captaine Claybourne was come from parts where wee intended to
plant, to Virginia, and from him wee vnderstood, that all the natiues
of these parts were in preparation of defence, by reason of a rumour
somebody had raised amongst them, of sixe ships that were come with a
power of Spanyards, whose meaning was to driue all the inhabitants out
of the Countrey.
On the 3. of March wee came into Chesapea
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