So to New England and Virginia there came the founders of a race led forth from home by different motives, bringing different qualities of body and mind and spirit to the formation of the people, but both foundations possessing strength upon which could be built a mighty nation. And not the men of Jamestown or Roanoke, with their fighting and their tilling, not the Pilgrim Fathers, with their stern courage and their strait creed, but the women of Virginia and the Pilgrim Mothers were those to whom must look that new nation for all its best. It was not the blood of kings and princes that came to vitalize this our land in the period of its rescue from the dominion of the lesser races, but the blood of yeomen and peasants, sprung from generations of fighters with the soil rather than with men, yet soldiers too, and so in all ways fitted for the battles they must wage with men and beasts and the earth itself ere they could win an empire for their race. And this blood comes down to us through the women of that day--the Mothers of a Nation.
CHAPTER V
THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD
There were many marked differences between the period of settlement and the early colonial period, which latter, for our present purpose, we may roughly class as that extending from 1630 to 1685. Of course the most salient difference was that in the colonial epoch there first appeared the racial American as we now know him--not the red man of the forest and plain, to whom such title was really due, but the white American, the son of the soil, but not of generations of dwellers thereupon,--the American as universally entitled to-day.
It must be remembered that there is no parallelism in the chronology of the beginnings of the North and the South. The Virginia colony was, in matter of time, far in advance of that on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and the colonial period had fairly begun in the South when settlement was yet hardly established in the North. Many white children, native Americans, had succeeded Virginia Dare in the southern colony before Peregrine White made his appearance as the pioneer American of the New England dominion; and therefore the American type had to some extent become confirmed in the one section before it had been modelled in the other. So that synchronistic treatment of the development of the American race in its beginnings is impossible, and this tends to produce confusion of statement and consequently of thought. It is fortunate for our present purpose, therefore, that the development of a distinct feminine type seems to have been almost confined to New England. The Virginia woman was not markedly individual; she had certain definite characteristics, even from the first, but these seem to have been rather of environment as modifying original race than of race as taking impression from environment. There were many reasons for this, which we shall consider later in the chapter; but for the present we will leave the woman of Virginia to turn to her younger but stronger sister of the North, the American Puritan woman.
If it be true--and denial is hardly possible--that during the period of settlement women played but a small part, at least as individuals, in the general result and progress, the same statement concerning the early colonial period, at least in New England, would meet with prompt and strenuous denial at the hands of history. We are accustomed to vaunt the present as the day of feminine influence in matters of human interest; but it may be doubted if, as far as our own country is concerned, the palm must not be awarded to the early days of the Puritan settlements. Such award may not be altogether to the liking of the fair sex, since the effect of the feminine influence was almost invariably in the direction of turbulence and revolt; but that effect was very intense and formative. It was chiefly in the matters of religion, or that which passed for such, that woman's influence was exerted and effectual; but it must be remembered that religion was the paramount subject in the consideration of the Puritan, whether male or female. None the worse for that, doubtless, were those staunch, if stern, followers of conscience; but one may be permitted to wish that they had been less unbending, less gloomy,--less Puritanical, in short,--in their ideas concerning that which they termed Christianity. As in all else, it was the women who were the extremists in this matter; and fanaticism, persecution, and enthusiasm were by the women rather than the men maintained at a height of fervor, not to say frenzy, that stopped short not even at the taking of life to further its own ends or to crush the purposes of others.
Before entering into this more particular portion of our present subject, however, it may be well to cast a hurried glance at the status of woman in the Puritan settlements when these began to attain to the dignity of colonies. As early as 1631 we find the court of Plymouth sending for the elders and charging them to urge upon the conscience of the people that they should avoid the costliness of apparel which was beginning to be noted, as a detriment to the young colony; but, unfortunately, the worshipful court did not take into consideration all the circumstances of the case, for we read that "divers of the elders' wives were partners in the general disorder," and we may be entirely sure that the elders did not dare too strenuously to urge reform in this matter. Winthrop tells us that "little was done about it." So that even here we find feminine influence paramount, and on the side of disorder; and this was to be the history of the sex in New England for many a day, even though there were to be notable exceptions to the rule thus begun.
When we read the "Twelve Good Rules" of the infant colony, we are constrained to believe that some of them were framed with especial reference to women, and that they were dictated by some sad experiences. The twelve rules ran thus:
1. Profane no divine ordinance.
2. Touch no state matters.
3. Urge no healths.
4. Pick no quarrels.
5. Encourage no vice.
6. Repeat no grievances.
7. Reveal no secrets.
8. Maintain no ill opinions.
9. Make no comparisons.
10. Keep no bad company.
11. Make no long meals.
12. Lay no wagers.