The country had to be won from its original owners step by step, not by one or many blows; the process of reclamation was by a steady pushing back of the aborigines, not by a conquest such as that of Norman over Saxon or even Englishman over Maori. There was no conquered race to become eventually amalgamated with its conquerors; the history of all the first period of settlement is the history of civilization driving barbarism before it as it marched on. But for such methods there was need of a somewhat peculiar and very strenuous civilization; the desired result was not to be won by any graces or abstractions, but by the prevailing of white stamina, bravery, and ingenuity over red cunning and tradition and honesty--of the axe over the tomahawk, of the rifle over the bow. It was the triumph of the knowledge rather than the principles belonging to a higher culture than that which was going down; it was Friar Bacon with his gunpowder, not Francis Bacon with his learning, who was fighting the battle of the white against the red, and was affecting the progress of the world.
In conditions arising from strife woman has but little place. She may indeed be present, and even be a part of the conditions which are inevitable in times of conquest; but she is there only as an accident, not as a requisite. The elimination of the influence of woman from the trend of present civilization would be fatal to all approach to any worthy goal; but in the time of the beginnings of our country's story woman was a hindrance rather than a help to progress, since by her presence and the consequent anxiety and by her weakness in physical prowess she enfeebled the fighting powers of the garrison or village. Even so, she had her part, and an honorable one, in the events which established white dominance in America; but it was one that was necessarily subordinate in the eyes of the chroniclers of those times, and so we hear but little of women in the flush of our country's dawn. It is not to be questioned that in the first colonies planted by England in the New World there were women--perhaps nearly as many as men. We are apt to forget, by the way, that Virginia was originally settled by the Spaniards under Menendez, the perpetrator of the terrible massacre in Florida by which his name is best remembered, and that the Latin races, both Spanish and French, long anticipated the English in colonization of our country. It is quite certain that in all these early Latin colonies there were women and that these bore no inconsiderable part in the events which were trending, though sometimes by devious paths, to the establishment of Caucasian empire in America; but their names are unknown to us and we are even ignorant of their place in the history of their time. The story of southern settlement, as far as this has any effect upon the present, begins for us with the settlement of Roanoke Island by Sir Walter Raleigh's ill-fated colony. The tale of its mysterious disappearance is too well known to call for recapitulation here; but before that sudden and final ending of its story we have chronicles which tell us that among these pioneer pilgrims were women, mostly wives of the men settlers, who bore their part in the burden and heat of the day,--and those days were toilsome and full of peril,--as well as their more active lords. Also to that lost colony belongs the honor of having reared the first alien child born on American soil, the forerunner of the race that was to make that soil its own,--Virginia Dare, the little maiden whose passing was as mysterious as her coming was ominous. The first of the enormous army of the conquering palefaces who were to overrun the land like locusts, she passed away into the mysterious silence of the woods as the standard bearer of the advance, leaving her name to be a shadowy record for all future ages and the very embodiment of the spirit of romance that was in the story of the subjugation of America. Had she lived the normal life of the woman pioneer, her memory would have lacked something of romance; but her unknown fate, and her position in the van of the great coming nation of Americans, keep her in remembrance.
Jamestown was founded on May 13, 1607, and with its foundation began the real era of English rule in America. We know but little of the place of woman in the first days of the colony, and it is not until 1608 that we find any record of female influence or even presence. At this time, Captain Newport, who had brought from England the first fleet and in whose honor Newport News--originally Newport Ness--was named, made his reappearance with a number of fresh settlers, among them being Mistress Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras by name, who was shortly afterward wedded to Master John Laydon and thus won for herself fame as the first woman of English blood to be married on American soil. By this time, Jamestown had grown to have a population of more than five hundred souls, of whom not more than two hundred were fighting men; so that the proportion of women and children must have been far larger than might be supposed by those looking at the circumstances of colonization and existence. It must have taken a stout heart in a woman's breast to face the unknown dangers of the unknown world; and soon the women of the infant colony had need for all their bravery. There is no doubt that the women played a noble part in the terrible days that followed the Indian siege of Jamestown--the days which were afterward known as the "Starving Time." Not more than sixty of the original five hundred souls remained at the end of that period; and its record presents the probably unique account of women of the higher civilizations descending to the horrors of cannibalism, the "common kettel" at last containing the bodies of Indians and even of kinsmen. Indeed, there was one foul deed of that time wherein a woman was directly concerned, though as victim, not principal: a colonist killed his wife and had eaten part of the body before he was discovered. He was burned alive; but those who punished him for his crime looked fearfully forward to the day when their own temptations might become too strong. At last came succor; and there seems to be for us assurance of the temper and mettle of the women of that time when we find that of the sixty survivors a fair proportion was of the weaker sex. There were children also, witnesses to the devotion of their mothers in their care.
The colony was abandoned; but only for three days, and then began the time of uninterrupted English dominance. There is, however, in its history nothing of importance to our subject until we reach 1621,--very near the limit which has been set as the end of the "period of settlement." At this time there occurred an event so peculiar and so far-reaching in its social results and withal so intimately connected with the general, though not the particular, chronicle of woman in the early colonies that it may be set forth in some fulness, even though it was one that does not give us any instance of feminine development. But it was so typical of its time and so ominous of the mothers that moulded the characters of the native-born pioneers in the southern settlements that it has its legitimate place in a history of American women. That event is the coming of the "maids," as they were called in the old chronicle from which we draw most of our knowledge concerning the early settlers of Virginia.
Sir Edwin Sandys, being at the head of the London Company, in whose hands were now the interests of the Virginia plantations, devised the plan of sending out as wives to the Virginia adventurers a number of respectable young women. It is probable that Sandys was instigated by the thought of the dangers of mixed marriages with the Indians, which were apt to result from the paucity of women of Caucasian race,--for many young men had of late been tempted to try their fortunes in the New World, and the proportion of women had failed among the settlers. Sandys was in every way a believer in vigorous immigration, and in one year he sent out one thousand two hundred and sixty-one new settlers; these he was desirous of attaching to the soil of their new country,--a thing that could be done only by aiding them there to establish a home. So he secured a cargo of young women, ninety in number, who were willing to go to a far land in search of husbands. Whether he had great difficulty in finding such women, or whether matrimony as a prospect, even though with an indeterminate partner, was so attractive to the average spinster of the day as to make her eager to embrace any opportunity which held certainty of result, cannot be known; but the "maids" went, though under somewhat peculiar and even, to modern eyes, degrading conditions. For the thrifty company was not minded that the prospective husbands should have their wives as free gifts; no, they must pay for them as for any other chattel, and the price fixed was one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco each, the value of this amount of the weed being about eighty dollars at present values. One would think that, if the matter was to be one of barter, the company might have set a higher price upon a wife, even if only out of compliment to the sex; but doubtless the company knew the true value of the goods which it purveyed.
It must be admitted that the worshipful company, notwithstanding its parsimonious spirit in the matter of vend, acted in good faith with both prospective husbands and present "maids." It had already made many regulations intended to promote matrimony by distinguishing in favor of married men; and in the selection and care of the feminine cargo exported it took the utmost precautions to ensure the purity of the women offered as wives. Moreover, the "maids" were carefully guarded from imposition or force. Orders were straitly given that "In case they cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that have wives until they can be supplied with husbands.... We desire that the marriage be free, according to nature, and we would not have these maids deceived and married to servants, but only such freemen and tenants as have means to maintain them... not enforcing them to marry against their wills." However, there was very little need for these precautions, since the men of the settlement flocked in crowds to the sale of the ladies, and the only difficulty was that there were more suitors than there were fair ones to make them happy. The scene presented must have been very much like that to be found at the old hiring fairs of England, and there does not seem to have been more embarrassment on the part of the "maids" while their charms were being appraised by their suitors than if they had been merely disposing of their services for a short time and in menial capacity. It is impossible to suppose that women who would seek matrimony under such circumstances were of a very refined type; but, on the other hand, they must have been possessed of bravery and independence beyond the common lot of women of whatever class. Later, sixty other "maids," "young, handsome, and chaste," according to the chronicle, were induced to come out to the colony under the same conditions, and these and their predecessors were among the founders of the race which developed into the soldiers of the Revolution and of the yet more terrible struggle of later years.
Unfortunately, there were at this time introduced into the young colony two elements that were to affect it, one slightly and temporarily only, the other profoundly and for as long as there was in the South a distinctiveness of culture. These were the practice of sending criminals to Virginia and the introduction of slavery. To the first number of settlers sent over by Sandys, James I. added one hundred felons, and this was by no means the last shipload of criminals to be exported to the Virginias. These criminals included both men and women, and their introduction among the colonists, though on the pretence of their being indented servants, was an evil which for long found results in the lower strata of the growing civilization. The women, generally of the lowest dregs of English life,--where not political convicts, who were of course of entirely different stamp,--were "hired" by the more dissolute of the unmarried male colonists, and became openly their mistresses; and thus there came into existence a social element which was to do important if insidious work in the undermining of the older morals of the settlement. Slavery, however, was of far more import, and affected all the future civilization. In August, 1619, twenty negroes were sold as slaves to some of the planters, the blacks having been brought by a Dutch ship. This was the rise of the African cloud, as yet no bigger than a man's hand, but in time to grow to most portentous dimensions, and to bear the whirlwind as its legitimate progeny. It may be questioned why note is made of the rise of slavery in a book devoted to the history of woman; but to those who will trouble to think the reason is evident. The woman is always at once a formative cause and a product of her civilization; and the civilization of the South was built upon the institution of slavery. To comprehend the culture even the nature of the Southern lady we must keep constantly in mind the influence of the national institution, so that, as its effects will have to be frequently noted in the future, it is not amiss to chronicle here the small root which afterward spread to such upas growth.
Turning to matters more immediately of the time with which we are at present concerned, a proclamation of Governor Wyat, issued shortly before the fall of the Virginia Company and the consequent beginning of the real colonial period, is worthy of note as bearing upon the universal story of women. Though including men as well as women in its provisions, the proclamation was aimed chiefly at the latter, and its intent was the breaking up of the seemingly common habit of becoming engaged to more than one person at a time. A man was to be whipped for doing so vile an action, though a woman might escape with a fine. The worthy governor forbade women "to contract themselves to two several men at one time," for the reason that "women are yet scarce and in much request, and this offense has become very common, whereby great disquiet has arisen between parties and no small trouble to the government." It was further proclaimed that "Every minister should give notice in his church that what man or woman soever should use any word or speech tending to a contract of marriage to two several persons at one time... as might entangle or breed scruples in their consciences, should for such their offense either undergo corporal correction or be punished by fine or otherwise, according to the quality of the person so offending."
Such a regulation would not be popular nowadays; but coquetry seems to have been of more serious moment then. That flirtation should threaten the government itself suggests a singular state of affairs indeed.
It is now time to turn to a consideration of another settlement--the only one that rivalled that of Virginia in effectiveness of result and continuity. For the settlements in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and others--with one exception, to be reserved for later brief consideration--did not continue the civilization which they established, but took their later culture, that which survives, from the more prepotent colonies of Virginia and New England. Therefore they do not enter into our present inquiry, since they produced no feminine type or even individual of note; it is to the more northern and southern settlements that we must look for the foundations and matrices of American femininity. We have glanced at that of the South; let us glean what we may of the story of women in that of the North.