The southern, or London Company, were the first to commence the work of colonization with energy. On the 19th of December, 1606, they dispatched an expedition of three vessels, commanded by Captain Newport, comprising a number of people of rank and distinction. Among these was Captain John Smith, whose admirable qualities were afterward so conspicuously and usefully displayed. The expedition met with such delays and difficulties that it was at one time on the point of returning to England. At length, however, they descried an unknown cape, and soon afterward entered Chesapeake Bay, where the beauty and fertility of the shores even surpassed their expectations.[302] On first landing, they met the determined hostility of the savages, but when the fleet proceeded to Cape Comfort, they there received a more friendly reception, and were invited ashore. The Indians spread their simple stores of dainties before the strangers, smoked with them the calumet of peace, and entertained them with songs and dances. As the expedition moved higher up the bay, where no English had been before seen, it met with a still more cordial welcome.
Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement established in America, although it has not since risen to very great importance. The site was chosen by this expedition about forty miles above the entrance, upon the banks of James River, where the emigrants at once proceeded to establish themselves. They suffered great distress from the commencement on account of the bad quality of the provisions, furnished under contract by Sir Thomas Smith, one of the leading members of the company. Disease soon followed want, and in a short time fifty of the settlers died. Under these difficult circumstances, the energy and ability of Captain John Smith pointed him out as the only person to command, and by the consent of all he was invested with absolute authority. He arranged the internal affairs of the colony as he best could, and then set out to collect supplies in the neighboring country. The Indians met him with derision, and refused to trade with him; he therefore, urged by necessity, drove them away, and took possession of a village well stocked with provisions. The Indians soon returned in force and attacked him furiously, but were easily repulsed. After their defeat they opened a friendly intercourse, and furnished the required supplies. Smith made several further excursions. On returning to the colony, he found that a conspiracy had been formed among his turbulent followers to break up the settlement and sail for England; this he managed to suppress, and soon again started to explore the country. In this expedition he rashly exposed himself unprotected to the assaults of the Indians, and was taken prisoner after a most gallant attempt at escape. He was led about in triumph for some time from village to village, and at length sentenced to die. His head was laid upon a stone, and the executioner stood over him with a club, awaiting the signal to slay, when Pocahontas, daughter of the Indian chief, implored her father's mercy for the white man. He was inexorable, and ordered the execution to proceed; but the generous girl laid her head upon that of the intended victim, and vowed that the death blow should strike her first. The savage chief moved by his daughter's devotion, spared the prisoner's life.[303] Smith was soon afterward escorted in safety to Jamestown, and given up on a small ransom being paid to the Indians.[304] [1608.]
Smith found, on his arrival, that the colonists were fitting out a pinnace to return to England. He, with ready decision, declared that the preparations should be discontinued immediately, or he would sink the little vessel. His prompt determination was successful, and the people agreed to remain. Through the generous kindness of Pocahontas, supplies of provisions were furnished to the settlement, till the arrival of a vessel from England, replenished its stores. Soon after his happy escape from the hands of the savages, Smith again started fearlessly upon an expedition to explore the remainder of Chesapeake Bay. He sailed in a small barge, accompanied only by twelve men, and with this slender force completed a voyage of 3000 miles along an unknown coast, among a fierce and generally hostile people, and depending on accident and his own ingenuity for supplies. During several years Pocahontas continued to visit the English, but her father was still hostile, and once endeavored to surprise Smith and slay him in the woods; but again the generous Indian girl saved his life at the hazard of her own: in a dark night she ran for many miles through the forest, evading the vigilance of her fierce countrymen, and warned him of the threatened danger. An open war now ensued between the English and the Indians, and was continued with great mutual injury, till a worthy gentleman named Thomas Rolfe, deeply interested by the person and character of Pocahontas, made her his wife; a treaty was then concluded with the Indian chief, which was henceforth religiously observed. [1613.]
The colony[305] meanwhile proceeded with varied fortunes. The emigrants had been very badly selected for their task: "poor gentlemen, tradesmen, serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a commonwealth than either to begin or maintain one." These men were tempted into the undertaking by hopes of sudden wealth, and were altogether disinclined to even the slight labor of tilling that exuberant soil, when only a subsistence was to be their reward. In 1619 James commenced the system of transporting malefactors, by sending 100 "dissolute persons" to Virginia. These men were used as laborers, or rather slaves, but tended seriously to lower the character of the voluntary emigration.[306] In 1625 only 1800 convicts remained alive out of 9000 who had been transported at a cost of £15,000.[308] The contracted and arbitrary system of the exclusive company was felt as a great evil in the colony.[309] This body was at length superseded by the forfeiture of its charter, and the crown assumed the direction of affairs. Many years of alternate anarchy and tyranny followed. During the rebellion of Bacon in 1676, the most remarkable event in this early period of Virginian history, English troops were first introduced into the American colonies. Sir William Berkeley, who was appointed governor in 1642, visited the insurrectionists with a terrible vengeance, when the death of the leader, Bacon, left them defenseless. "The old fool," said Charles II. (with truth), "has taken away more lives in that naked country than I for the murder of my father." But, though the complaints of the oppressed were heard in England with impartiality, and Berkeley was hunted to death by public opinion on his return there to defend himself, the permanent results of Bacon's rebellion were disastrous to Virginia: all the measures of reform which had been attempted during its brief success were held void, and every restrictive feature that had been introduced into legislation by the detested governor was perpetuated.
Among the first settlers in Virginia, gold was the great object, it was every where eagerly sought, but in vain. Several ships were loaded with a sort of yellow clay, and sent to England under the belief that it contained the most precious of metals, but it was found to be utterly worthless. The colonists next turned their attention to the cultivation of tobacco.[310] This speedily became so profitable that it was pursued even to the exclusion of all other industry.
There yet remains to be told one terrible incident in the earlier story of Virginia, an incident that resulted in the total destruction of the Indian race. The successor to the father of Pocahontas had conceived a deadly enmity against the English: this was embittered from day to day, as he saw the hated white men multiplying and spreading over the hunting grounds of his fathers. Then a fierce determination took possession of his savage heart. For years he matured his plans, and watched the favorable moment to crush every living stranger at a blow. He took all his people into counsel, and such was their fidelity, and so deep the wile of the Indian chief, that, during four years of preparation, no warning reached the intended victims. To the last fatal moment, a studied semblance of cordial friendship was observed; some Englishmen, who had lost their way in the woods were kindly and carefully guided back again.
One Friday morning (March 22d, 1622) the Indians came to the town in great numbers, bearing presents, and finding their way into every house. Suddenly the fierce shout of the savages broke the peaceful silence, and the death-shriek of their victims followed. In little more than a minute, three hundred and forty-seven, of all ages and sexes, were struck down in this horrid massacre. The warning of an Indian converted to Christianity saved Jamestown. The surviving English assembled there, and began a war of extermination against the savages. By united force, superior arms, and, it must be added, by treachery as black as that of their enemies, the white men soon swept away the Indian race forever from the Virginian, soil.[311]
As has been before mentioned, the northern part of Virginia was bestowed by royal grant upon a Merchant Company of Plymouth, and other southern and western sea-ports. The first effort to take possession of the new territory was feeble and disastrous. Twenty-nine Englishmen and two Indians were sent out in a little bark of only fifty-five tons burden [1606]; they were taken by the Spaniards off the coast of Hispaniola, who treated them with great cruelty. Some time after this ill-fated expedition had failed, another colony of 100 men, led by Captains Popham and Gilbert, settled on the River Sagadahock, and built a fort called by them St. George. [1607.] They abandoned the settlement, however, the following year, and returned to England. The next project of British North American colonization was set on foot by Captain John Smith, already so highly distinguished in transatlantic history. [1614.] After much difficulty, he effected the equipment of two vessels, and sailed for the Virginian shore; but, although successful as a trading speculation, the only permanent fruits of the voyage was a map of the coast, which he presented to Charles I. The king, always interested in maritime affairs, listened favorably to Smith's accounts of the New World, but proved either unable or unwilling to render him any useful assistance. The next year this brave adventurer again crossed the seas in a small vessel containing only sixteen emigrants. The little expedition was captured by the French, and the leader, with great difficulty, effected his return to England.
Meanwhile, a man named Hunt, who had been left in charge of one of the ships in Smith's first expedition, committed an outrage upon the natives that led to deplorable results [1616]; he inveigled thirty of them on board, carried them suddenly away, and sold them into slavery. The savages rose against the next English party that landed upon their coast, and killed and wounded several in revenge. Captain Dormer, a prudent and conciliatory person, with one of the betrayed natives, was sent by the company to explain to the furious Indians that Hunt's crime was the act of an individual, and not of the nation: this commission was well and wisely executed. For about two years Dormer frequently repeated his visits with advantage to his employers, but finally was attacked by strange savages and wounded fatally.
But still, through all these difficulties and disasters, adventurers pressed on to the fertile Western desert, allured by liberal grants of land from the chartered companies. The undefined limits of these concessions led to constant and mischievous quarrels among the settlers, often attended with violence and bloodshed; from these causes the early progress of the colony was very slow. One hundred and twenty years after England had discovered North America, she only possessed a few scattered fishing huts along the shore. But events were now at hand which at once stamped a peculiar character upon the colonization of this part of the New World,[312] and which were destined to exercise an influence upon the human race of an importance even yet incalculable.