It is evident that the fleet of three vessels which took out to Virginia the first adventurers took also some horses and mares with them; for the governor and council, who went out the next year, in reporting the condition of the colonists to the home company, under date of July 7, 1610, use this language:
“Our people, together with the Indians, had, the last winter, destroyed and killed up all our hogs, inasmuch as of five or six hundred, as it is supposed, there was not above one sow that we can hear of left alive, not a hen or a chick in the fort, and our horses and mares they had eaten with the first.”
From a letter written by M. Gabriel Archer, who arrived in Virginia August 31, 1609, we gather the following facts:
“From Woolwich, the fifteenth day of May, 1609, seven sail weighed anchor and came to Plymouth the twentieth day, where George Somers, with two small vessels, consorted with us. There we took into The Blessing, being the ship wherein I went, six mares and two horses, and the fleet layed in some necessaries belonging to the action; in which business we spent time till the 2d of June, and then set sail to sea, but crossed by South West winds, we put into Falmouth, and there stayed until the 8th of June, then gate out.”
Now, as The Blessing was probably about the average size of the rest of the fleet, I think it is reasonable to conclude that each of the other vessels took some horses also. In a report of a voyage to Virginia, dated November 13, 1611, we find the following statement: “They have brought to this colony one hundred cows, two hundred pigs, one hundred goats, and seventeen horses and mares.” In 1614 the Virginians made a raid on Port Royal, in what was then called New France, and carried off to Virginia, among other captures, a number of horses, mares and colts. A second raid in the same quarter seems to have resulted in carrying off wheat, horses, clothing, working tools, etc.
Mr. Harmor, writing in 1614, in his “True Discourse on the Present State of Virginia,” says: “The colony is already furnished with two hundred neat cattle, infinite hogs in herds all over the woods, some mares, horses and colts, poultry, great store, etc.”
In 1894, in the Public Records Office in London, I found that the Virginia Company had sent out four mares, February, 1619, on The Falcon. And further, I found a kind of summary of what the company had done in the past toward populating and supplying the colonists with live stock. It is stated that they had sent twelve ships, taking out one thousand two hundred and sixty-one persons, making the total number in Virginia at that date about two thousand four hundred. The exportations include five hundred cattle, with some horses and goats, and an infinite number of swine. In 1620 the company ordered twenty mares to be sent over, at a cost, delivered, of fifteen pounds each. From the price of horses in England at that day, I would infer that somebody was making money out of the colonists.
In a little work published in London, 1646, entitled “A Perfect Description of Virginia,” the author says that “There are in Virginia, of an excellent raise (race), about two hundred horses and mares.” It is evident that this statement is a mere estimate, and I am disposed to think it a very wild estimate from what follows in a very few years. It is true that horses do not propagate and increase as fast as any other variety of domestic animals, but under the circumstances every effort would be made to increase the stock, and from what follows, I think my criticism will be sustained.
In the legislation of the colony we find no mention of horses, till the year 1657, when the exportation of mares was prohibited. Eleven years after this (1668) this restriction was removed and the exportation of both mares and horses permitted. The very next year, 1669, the importation of more horses was prohibited by legislative enactment. From this it would seem that there were already too many horses in the colony, or possibly some horse breeder had begun to realize that there were better horses in some of the other colonies that were finding a market in Virginia, and they thus sought “protection” for their own stock.
This prohibition could not have been aimed at the mother country, for the prices obtained would not justify the cost and risk of a sea voyage. We must, therefore, conclude that it was intended to shut out the New England colonies, which were already shipping horses to all the settlements on the seaboard, as well as to some of the West India Islands. In this we see at what an early date commenced the interchange of commodities among the colonies. As early as 1647 the Dutch authorities at New Amsterdam authorized Isaac Allerton to sell twenty or twenty-five horses to Virginia.