Martial law had already been established in Virginia by Dale; Argall came over invested with powers to make the government still more arbitrary and despotic, and bent upon acquiring gain by all possible means of extortion and oppression. He decreed that goods should be sold at an advance of twenty-five per cent., and tobacco rated at the Procrustean value of three shillings—the penalty for rating it either higher or lower being three years slavery to the colony; that there should be no trade or intercourse with the Indians, and that none of them should be taught the use of fire-arms; the penalty for violating which ordinance was death to teacher and learner. Yet it has been contended by some, that the use of fire-arms by the savages hastened their extermination, because they thus became dependent on the whites for arms and ammunition; when their guns came to be out of order they became useless to them, for they wanted the skill to repair them; and, lastly, fire-arms in their hands when effective, were employed by hostile tribes in mutual destruction.
"The white faith of history cannot show
That e'er a musket yet could beat a bow."[127:A]
Argall also issued edicts that no one should hunt deer or hogs without his leave; that no man should fire a gun before a new supply of ammunition, except in self-defence, on pain of a year's slavery; absence from church on Sundays or holidays, was punished by confinement for the night and one week's slavery to the colony; for the second offence the offender should be a slave for a month; and for the third, for a year and a day. Several of these regulations were highly judicious, but the penalties of some of them were excessive and barbarous, and the vigorous enforcement of these, and his oppressive proceedings, rendered Argall odious to the colony, and a report of his tyranny and extortions having reached England, Sir Thomas Smith, Alderman Johnson, deputy treasurer, Sir Lionel Cranfield, and others of the council, addressed a letter dated August 23, 1618, to him, in which they recapitulated a series of charges against him of dishonesty, corruption, and oppression. At the same time a letter, of the same purport, was written to Lord Delaware, and he was told, that such was the indignation felt by the stockholders in the Virginia Company against Argall that they could hardly be restrained from going to the king, although on a distant progress, and procuring his majesty's command for recalling him as a malefactor. The letter contained further instructions to Lord Delaware to seize upon all the goods and property in Argall's possession. These letters, by Lord Delaware's death, fell into Argall's hands, and finding his sand running low, he determined to make the best of his remaining time, and so he multiplied his exactions, and grew more tyrannical than ever. The case of Edward Brewster was a remarkable instance of this. A person of good repute in the colony, he had the management of Lord Delaware's estate. Argall, without any rightful authority, removed the servants from his lordship's land, and employed them on his own. Brewster endeavored to make them return, and upon this being flatly refused by one of them, threatened him with the consequences of his contumacy. Brewster was immediately arrested by Argall's order, charged with sedition and mutiny, and condemned to death by a court-martial. The members of the court, however, and some of the clergy, shocked at such a conviction, interceded earnestly for his pardon, and Argall reluctantly granted it on condition that Brewster should depart from Virginia, with an oath never to return, and never to say or do anything to the disparagement of the deputy governor. Brewster, nevertheless, upon his return to England, discarding the obligation of an oath extorted under duress, appealed to the Company against the tyranny of the deputy governor, and the inhuman sentence was reversed. John Rolfe, a friend of Argall, made light of the affair.[128:A]
During this year, 1618, a ship called the Treasurer was sent out from England by Lord Rich, who had now become Earl of Warwick, a person of great note afterwards in the civil wars, and commander of the fleet against the king. This ship was manned with recruits from the colony, and dispatched on a semi-piratical cruise in the West Indies, where she committed some depredations on the Spanish possessions.
Upon receiving intelligence of the death of Lord Delaware, the Virginia Company appointed Captain George Yeardley, who was knighted upon this occasion, Governor and Captain-General of Virginia. Before his arrival in the colony Argall embarked for England, in a vessel laden with his effects, and being a relation of Sir Thomas Smith, and a partner in trade of the profligate Earl of Warwick, he escaped with impunity. In 1620 Argall commanded a ship-of-war in an expedition fitted out against the Algerines, and in 1623 was knighted by King James. Argall's character has been variously represented; he appears to have been an expert mariner of talents, courage, enterprise, and energy, but selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous, arbitrary and cruel.
In April, 1618, Powhatan died, being upwards of seventy years of age. He was, perhaps, so called from one of his places of residence;[129:A] he was also sometimes styled Ottaniack, and sometimes Mamanatowick,[129:B] but his proper name was Wahunsonacock. The country subject to him was called Powhatan, as was likewise the chief river, and his subjects were called Powhatans. His hereditary domain consisted only of Powhatan, Arrohattox, Appamatuck, Youghtanund, Pamunkey, and Matapony, together with Werowocomoco and Kiskiack. All the rest were his conquests, and they consisted of the country on the James River and its branches, from its mouth to the falls, and thence across the country to the north, nearly as high as the falls of all the great rivers over the Potomac, as far as to the Patuxent in Maryland. Some nations on the Eastern Shore also owned subjection to this mighty werowance. In each of his several hereditary dominions he had houses built like arbors, thirty or forty feet long, and whenever he was about to visit one of these, it was supplied beforehand with provision for his entertainment. The English first met with him at a place of his own name, (which it still retains,) a short distance below the falls of James River, where now stands the picturesque City of Richmond.[129:C] His favorite residence was Werowocomoco, on the east bank of what is now known as Timberneck Bay, on York River, in the County of Gloucester; but in his latter years, disrelishing the increasing proximity of the English, he withdrew himself to Orapakes, a hunting-town in the "desert," as it was called, more properly the wilderness, between the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey. It is not improbable that he died and was buried there, for a mile from Orapakes, in the midst of the woods, he had a house where he kept his treasure of furs, copper, pearl, and beads, "which he storeth up against the time of his death and burial."[130:A] This place is about twelve miles northeast from Richmond.
At the time of the first settlement of the colony, Powhatan was usually attended, especially when asleep, by a body-guard of fifty tall warriors; he afterwards augmented the number to about two hundred. He had as many wives as he pleased, and when tired of any one of them, he bestowed her on some favorite. In the year 1608, by treachery, he surprised the Payanketanks, his own subjects, while asleep in their cabins, massacred twenty-four men, and made prisoners their werowance with the women and children, who were reduced to slavery. Captain Smith, himself a prisoner, saw at Werowocomoco the scalps of the slain suspended on a line between two trees. Powhatan caused certain malefactors to be bound hand and foot, then a great quantity of burning coals to be collected from a number of fires, and raked round in the form of a cock-pit, and the victims of his barbarity thrown in the midst and burnt to death.[130:B] He was not entirely destitute of some better qualities; in him some touches of princely magnanimity are curiously blended with huckstering cunning, and the tenderness of a doating father with the cruelty of an unrelenting despot.
Powhatan was succeeded by his second brother, Opitchapan, sometimes called Itopatin, or Oeatan, who, upon his accession, again changed his name to Sasawpen; as Opechancanough, upon the like occasion, changed his to Mangopeomen. Opitchapan being decrepid in body and inert in mind, was in a short time practically superseded in the government by his younger, bolder, and more ambitious brother, the famous Opechancanough; though for a time he was content to be styled the Werowance of Chickahominy. Both renewed the assurances of continued friendship with the English.
