CHAPTER V
Nathaniel Bacon
and the
Uprising of the People in Virginia
in 1676
[1647-1676]
When Smith returned to England he left the colony without a leader. At once the Indians, who had been held in check by fear of Smith, began to rob and plunder the settlement, and at the same time famine and disease aided in the work of destruction. Dogs, horses, and even rats and mice were in demand for food, and while at its worst the famine compelled the suffering colonists to feed upon the bodies of their own dead.
Tobacco Plant.
At the close of that terrible winter, known ever since as the "Starving Time," barely sixty of the five hundred men whom Smith had left in the colony survived. The future promised nothing, and the wretched remnant of sufferers were about to leave Virginia for their fatherland when an English vessel hove in sight on the James. Greatly to their relief and joy Lord Delaware had arrived with a company of men and much-needed supplies. This was in June, 1610.
By reason of ill-health Lord Delaware soon returned to England, leaving Sir Thomas Dale in control of the colony. He was even more firm and vigorous than Smith had been in dealing with the worthless men who made the greater part of the colony. Some of the most unruly were flogged, some were branded with hot irons, and one man was sentenced to death by starvation.
Holding down the lawless by the arm of the law, Dale was also able to introduce reform. Before he took charge of affairs in Virginia there was a common storehouse from which everybody, whether idle or industrious, could get food. When the good-for-nothing settlers found out that they could thus live upon the products of others' labor, they would do nothing themselves, but held back, throwing all the work upon thirty or forty men. Dale, appreciating the evil of this system, gave to every man his own plot of land. Out of what he raised each was obliged to put into the common storehouse two and a half barrels of corn; the rest of his crop he could call his own. By this plan the idlers had to work or starve, and the thrifty were encouraged to work harder, because they knew they would receive the benefit of their labor.