The central figure in that struggle was to be William Claiborne, an ambitious and fiery young man who had been sent out to Virginia by the company in 1621 as the colony’s surveyor. He served against the Indians and rose rapidly to become a member of the governor’s council. In 1626, after the English king took over the management of the colony from the company, Captain Claiborne at twenty-five years of age became Secretary of Virginia, the first to hold that office by royal appointment.
This flattering preferment happened during the midst of the young councillor’s activities to launch himself in the fur trade as a means of supplementing his income. For a base of operations in the tidewater he had just acquired a strategically located plantation at the mouth of the James River. This was at Kecoughtan in Elizabeth City—now Hampton, Virginia, the oldest continuous English habitation on the American continent—a prime seventeenth century warehousing site.
In the favored position of a member of the council Claiborne was joining such enterprising venturers as Raleigh Croshaw, Abraham Peirsey, John Chew and Samuel Mathews in profiting from the Chesapeake fur trade. These merchants furnished guides, interpreters, maps, supplies and trucking stuff not only to seasoned traders already on the bay but to those naively adventurous souls who came out from England with their warrants to barter with the savages. It was a lucrative business, particularly for one who also had influence to peddle in the matter of commissions, licenses and taxes.
However, Captain Claiborne’s ambitions soared much higher with his appointment as Secretary of His Majesty’s Colony of Virginia. In this capacity he was second only to the governor in the colony’s hierarchy of prestige and power, and he was in a position to dispense direct patronage. His trade horizon broadened measurably.
With the acquisition of additional lands on the Eastern Shore, a perquisite of the Secretary’s office, he began doing business on that side of the bay with promising traders like Daniel Cugley and Charles Harmar, as well as with Thomas Savage, who then lived on land given him there by his genial friend, Debedeavon, the Laughing King of the Accomacs. And these rugged frontiersmen together with their friends supported the ambitious young secretary in plans he broached to set up a great new plantation somewhere in the northernmost reaches of the bay, a Virginia Hundred which would serve as a base for far-flung trading operations on the backside of Virginia—to challenge both the Dutch and the French in the hinterland.
Beginning in 1627 Claiborne made several exploratory expeditions in the Chesapeake preparatory to implementing these plans. Since the governor and his council had authority to grant commissions for discovery and trade with the Indians between the 34th and 41st parallels, it was no trick at all for Mr. Secretary to arrange to go whither he pleased in the pursuit of his objective. Also, it would appear, he had less trouble than most in dealing with the savages. He seemed to have a way with them.
On his voyages into the Potomac and other near-by rivers of the tidewater, where the natives were already accustomed to bartering with the Virginians, Indian dugouts filled with braves would escort Claiborne’s boat to a village site or runners would appear along the banks to show the way. There would be drummings, smoke signals and whooping. When the village was reached the entire population might be in evidence, standing about in groups exhibiting their brown beaver, otter, marten, or deerskins by holding up the pelts on poles and otherwise making friendly gestures.
Usually the savages were almost naked. During the hot spring months of the trading season few of them wore much more than little aprons, with possibly feathers or some English ornaments tied on their heads. On sunny days their bodies glistened with grease and oil; often they were streaked with the red and orange dye of pocones root in honor of the distinguished white visitors with the intriguing trade goods.
Sometimes, to prove their friendship, the warriors of a tribe would come dancing to the beat of their drums and singing their peace song all the way down to the water’s edge. A priest might be among them, cavorting about with clattering deer hooves tied around his ankles and rattling dried gourds filled with pebbles and shells. Or even some squaws might join in the greetings with loops of bells, thimbles or pieces of brass which they shook in cadence with the drums.