TOBACCO.
After the death of Pocahontas, John Rolfe came back to Virginia alone to resume the work which he had begun there as early as 1610. Perhaps he continued his work with tobacco which had already resulted in a plant that could compete in taste and quality with that which had given the Spanish a monopoly of the tobacco market.
Monument to Pocahontas, by William Ordway Partridge, near the entrance to Jamestown National Historic Site.
In the first years of the settlement every effort had been made to find products in the New World that would assure financial success for the settlers and the company. Pitch, tar, timber, sassafras, cedar, and other natural products were sent in the returning ships. Attempts to produce glass on a paying scale proved futile, as did early efforts to make silk, using the native mulberry trees growing in abundance. The glass furnaces fell into disuse, and rats ate the silkworms. The native tobacco plant, found growing wild was “... not of the best kind ... [but was] poore and weake, and of a byting tast ...” and held little promise.
About 1610-11, the seed of a different species of the plant was imported from Trinidad, then famous for the quality of its tobacco. Later some came from Venezuela. These were planted and a process of selection and crossbreeding began which resulted in the commercially valuable Virginia leaf. John Rolfe, a smoker himself, has been credited as the pioneer English colonist in this experimentation.
In addition to the improvement of the plant, Rolfe was one of the first regularly to grow tobacco for export and as such was the father of the Virginia tobacco trade and industry. The first experimental shipment of the newly developed Virginia leaf came about 1613, and because of its pleasant taste it was well received in some quarters. Production was slow for several years. Dale restricted its cultivation until basic commodities, such as corn, were well advanced. In the 1615-16 period only 2,300 pounds reached London from Virginia. Capt. George Yeardley, the next to govern, gave the new crop his whole-hearted support, with the result that in 1617 exports reached the 20,000 pound total, and by 1619 this had been more than doubled. Thus, a new trade and industry were born in the colony, which proved to be the economic salvation of Virginia, and provided a means for making slavery profitable. Tobacco and slavery together led to the development of important characteristics of the whole social, political, and economic structure of the Old South. One of the immediate effects of tobacco culture in Virginia was the impetus it gave to the expansion of the area of settlement and to the number of settlers coming to Virginia.
Tobacco cultivation as practiced at Jamestown. (A conjectural painting by Sidney E. King.)