The red men of Virginia were driven back, like hunted wolves, from their ancient haunts. While their fate cannot fail to excite commiseration, it may reasonably be concluded that the perpetual possession of this country by the aborigines would have been incompatible with the designs of Providence in promoting the welfare of mankind. A productive soil could make little return to a people so destitute of the art and of the implements of agriculture, and habitually indolent. Navigable rivers, the natural channels of commerce, would have failed in their purpose had they borne no freight but that of the rude canoe; primeval forests would have slept in gloomy inutility, where the axe was unknown; and the mineral and metallic treasures of the earth would have remained forever entombed. In Virginia, since the aboriginal population was only about one to the square mile, they could not be justly held occupants of the soil. However well-founded their title to those narrow portions which they actually occupied, yet it was found impossible to take possession of the open country, to which the savages had no just claim, without also exterminating them from those particular spots that rightfully belonged to them. This inevitable necessity actuated the pious Puritans of Plymouth as well as the less scrupulous settlers of Jamestown; and force was resorted to in all the Anglo-American settlements except in that effected, at a later day, by the gentle and sagacious Penn. The unrelenting hostility of the savages, their perfidy and vindictive implacability, made sanguinary measures necessary. In Virginia, the first settlers, a small company, in an unknown wilderness, were repeatedly assaulted, so that resistance and retaliation were demanded by the natural law of self-defence. Nor were these settlers voluntary immigrants; the bulk of them had been sent over, without regard to their choice, by the king or the Virginia Company. Nor did the king or the company authorize any injustice or cruelty to be exercised toward the natives; on the contrary, the colonists, however unfit, were enjoined to introduce the Christian religion among them, and to propitiate their good will by a humane and lenient treatment. Smith and his comrades, so far from being encouraged to maltreat the Indians, were often hampered in making a necessary self-defence, by a fear of offending an arbitrary government at home.
It has been remarked by Mr. Jefferson,[168:A] that it is not so general a truth, as has been supposed, that the lands of Virginia were taken from the natives by conquest, far the greater portion having been purchased by treaty. It may be objected, that the consideration was often inadequate; but a small consideration may have been sufficient to compensate for a title which, for the most part, had but little validity; besides, a larger compensation would oftentimes have been thrown away upon men so ignorant and indolent. Groping in the dim twilight of nature, and slaves of a gross idolatry, their lives were circumscribed within a narrow uniform circle of animal instincts and the necessities of a precarious subsistence. Cunning, bloody, and revengeful, engaged in frequent wars, they were strangers to that Arcadian innocence and the Elysian scenes of a golden age of which youthful poets so fondly dream. If an occasional exception occurs, it is but a solitary ray of light shooting across the surrounding gloom. Yet we cannot be insensible to the many injuries they have suffered, and cannot but regret that their race could not be united with our own. The Indian has long since disappeared from Virginia; his cry no longer echoes in the woods, nor is the dip of his paddle heard on the water. The exterminating wave still urges them onward to the setting sun, and their tribes are fading one by one forever from the map of existence. Geology shows that in the scale of animal life, left impressed on the earth's strata, the inferior species has still given place to the superior: so likewise is it with the races of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[166:A] Purchas, iv. 1840.
[168:A] Notes on Va., 102.
