Baltimore had little to show in the way of profits. The future, too,
looked as bleak as the cold Newfoundland winters, as barren as the
sterile soil. True, there were fish to be had for the taking--weather
permitting. But the trade in pelts was only fair, for the more
profitable fur frontier had long since passed into the interior of
Canada. And agricultural pursuits, the traditional support of English
feudal manors, were almost impossible due to the inclemencies of the
climate.
The Lord Proprietor of Avalon was soon looking southward, his eyes
resting appraisingly on Virginia. There, the warmer weather and richer
soil seemed to offer more appropriate conditions for the kind of
province he had in mind. There, in the lush tidewater of the Chesapeake
Bay country, he could hope for a better trade in pelts too.
As for possible profits from Newfoundland cod, he would gladly consign
them to those hearty fishermen who by nature were better able to cope
with the rigors of the northern climate!
So it came about that in 1629 his lordship wrote to King Charles asking
that a precinct of land in Virginia be granted to him with the same
quasi-regal privileges he enjoyed under his Newfoundland patent. Then,
without waiting for a reply, he embarked for Jamestown where he let it
be known that he was looking for a new plantation site, and forthwith
began cruising about Chesapeake Bay with the air of a man who was
confident that the king would approve his plans.
This was anything but politic. No Virginians, Anglican or Puritan,
wanted a Catholic in their midst. They didn’t want one even as a
neighbor in their great bay, and especially such an influential convert
as Baltimore. Who knew what Romish plot he might be promoting?
But even more alarming was the threat that this ambitious baron posed
to their fur trade in the Chesapeake.
* * * * *
The tidewater had come to represent a treasure house of pelts to
the merchants and factors on the James River, at Jamestown and at
Kecoughtan, and to scores of traders plying their shallops and pinnaces
in the bay. On the York, the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers these
traders regularly visited the villages of the Indians, their shallops
returning to the James River plantations laden with skins. And across
the bay on the Eastern Shore there was still another lively fur trading
center at Accomac where beaver and muskrat abounded in the near-by
streams and marshes.
The most profitable branch of this trade was that in the Potomac River,
where the Spaniards of the sixteenth century had been the first of
record to barter with the natives for pelts and hides. Captain Samuel
Argall, who succeeded Captain John Smith in 1609 as the colony’s main
support for trade with the Indians, made several early visits to the
villages of the Patowomecks there. For hatchets and hoes, no doubt, he
took good quantities of beaver, otter, raccoon and deer skins as well
as the corn that was so badly needed at Jamestown. In 1612 he really
whetted the Patowomecks’ appetite for English goods when he produced a
copper kettle for their chief. Many English traders, with and without
permits, followed Captain Argall into the Potomac River, but especially
members of the Virginia Council who more or less controlled the
Chesapeake trade as a perquisite of office.
The Eastern Shore was opened up for trade in 1619 by Ensign Thomas
Savage who was one of the earliest professional factors in the
Chesapeake tidewater. He had spent several years as a youthful hostage
with Chief Wahunsonacock of the Powhatan Confederacy after having been
left with this old Powhatan in 1608 by Captain Christopher Newport.
During that time young Savage became a favorite of the natives and
learned much about the dialects and customs of the tribes in the
tidewater country. Later, when his services as an interpreter came to
be in demand by Virginia officials, he was commissioned an “Aunchient,”
or ensign, on the staff of the Master of Ordnance at Jamestown. It
was in this capacity on expeditions of discovery in the Potomac and
Patuxent Rivers and on the Eastern Shore that he began bartering on his
own account.
Like Captain John Smith before him, Ensign Savage learned of the great
trade in furs being had by the Frenchmen on the “backside of Virginia.”
In 1621 his account of their deeper penetration of the hinterland
reached the Virginia Company Council in London. At the same time the
company received reports of Dutch traders operating along the Virginia
coasts. A detailed account of this competition was rendered by Thomas
Dermer, the New England fur trader, who in addition to having paid
the visit to Jamestown went into the Delaware and Hudson Rivers. He
reported that in both those rivers he had “found divers ships of
Amsterdam and Horne who yearly had there a great and rich trade in
Furrs.”
The Dutch encroachments prompted a special letter, too, from the
governor and his council at Jamestown. They urged the company to
undertake “so certaine and gainefull” voyages for pelts as might be
made “to their infinite gaine” in the Delaware and Hudson, both of
which they pointed out were “within our lymits.” The Dutch interlopers
on the coasts were almost as challenging to the Virginians, now that
they themselves were well rooted, as was the possibility of French
competition creeping down the rivers that flowed into Chesapeake Bay
from the northern hinterland.
Almost--but not quite as challenging. For one thing, the settlers on
the James at this time had neither the ships to trade coastwise nor
the trade goods necessary to compete with the Dutch. More importantly,
however, right at their back door was the vast tidewater of the bay
and, beyond that, great stretches of lake country in the north, all
fertile with fur bearers to be had for the taking--provided they got
there before the French. This could be accomplished with home-made
shallops and less fancy trade goods than were needed to compete with
the Dutch.
So it came about that the Virginians left any exploitation of
the Delaware and Hudson Rivers to the merchants in England and,
individually with their more limited resources, extended their own
trading operations in their “Bay of Virginia.”
Scores of immigrants participated in this tidewater fur trade,
including a great many who had the advantage of a knowledge of the
Algonquin tongue because of having cohabited with the savages. Some of
the latter were no more than villainous runaways, cautiously returning
from sanctuary with the natives to share the profits of the boom in
pelts. Others, such as Robert Poole and Henry Spelman, had been left
with the Indians as hostages when they were youths, very much in the
same manner as Thomas Savage. Like him, they too had learned the
dialects and habits of various tribes, acted as spies for the English
colonists and then, later, were useful as interpreters.
Robert Poole traded professionally for the joint-stock, making voyages
in the company’s pinnace and rendering his accountings to the colony’s
treasurer at Jamestown. But he and Thomas Savage also obtained
commissions through members of the council and, renting shallops from
more prosperous colonists for voyages to the villages of the Indians,
did very well for themselves in this way. Probably neither of them
traded for pelts as extensively however as did Henry Spelman who
eventually managed to get financial backing in England and ships of his
own.
Young Spelman was the incorrigible scion of a distinguished English
family. According to his own testimony he had been sent out to Virginia
in 1609 at fourteen years of age because of “beinge in displeasure
of my fryndes and desirous to see other countries.” Captain John
Smith left him with Powhatan’s people, no doubt as the best way to
get rid of him. Henry Spelman was not as popular with the natives as
Thomas Savage, except perhaps with the Indian maidens. In fact he
appears to have escaped with his life only because of the intervention
of Pocahontas who, continuing her interest in white men after the
affair with Captain John Smith, succeeded eventually to marrying an
Englishman named John Rolfe.
Spelman’s entire career in the colony was one of manifold and
dangerous deceit. As a youth living with the Indians, he was accused
of treacherously laying a death trap for some of his fellow Englishmen
at Jamestown. Later, when he was employed as an official interpreter
for the colony, his tenure in office was cut short after he was tried
by the House of Burgesses and degraded from his rank for inciting
Opechancanough, the new Powhatan, against the English governor.
In 1622, when Opechancanough finally loosed his stored-up hatred
against the English, killing some three hundred fifty men, women and
children along the James River in a surprise massacre, Henry Spelman
and a trading partner, Captain Raleigh Croshaw, were bartering in
the Potomac. Opechancanough conspired with Chief Japazaws of the
Patowomecks to have the traders murdered. But the Patowomeck king
double-crossed the Powhatan. Instead of killing the Englishmen,
he entered into an alliance with them, permitting them to build a
fortified trading post on his lands.
All the evidence would indicate that Japazaws was a very wily
politician. He liked English kettles and knives as much as some of his
red neighbors disliked him, and he never did get around to knuckling
under to Opechancanough. No doubt the fort was a smart move on his
part. In any event, because of Japazaws’ need for white friends with
guns Captains Spelman and Croshaw escaped death.
Henry Spelman was not so fortunate the following year however. On a
trading voyage farther up the Potomac River, at the later site of
Washington, D. C., he was killed by the Anacostan Indians after being
captured in an ambush along with Henry Fleet and some other traders
and servants. Just a few days before his death Spelman had betrayed a
warrior who hazarded warning him of his own intended murder. It appears
he even witnessed the agony of the red man’s tortured execution. Then,
by some sort of final justice, he died at the hands of the same savages
to whom he had given over the kindly warrior.
_Aqua vitae_ may have had something to do with this murderous episode,
for, like the French and the Dutch before them and like the English
who were to follow in New England, some traders in Virginia taught the
savages to drink strong waters as a means of extracting a richer profit
during barter. And what a frightful chance they took!
Emotionally volatile and capricious by nature, the red man was even
more unpredictable of course when he was under the influence of liquor.
He might lose his trading sense to the advantage of the white men who
purposely plied him with _aqua vitae_ during the feasting that always
preceded barter, but when he realized he had been cheated he was apt
to reach for another jug and his tomahawk at the same time. No doubt
many a trader suffered a slow and bestial death while looking into the
bloodshot eyes of savages galled by stomach fires that he himself had
kindled.
Henry Fleet, who had been captured with Spelman, managed the
predicament in which he found himself with more skill than his friend,
indeed with some foresight. While no one in the colony heard from
him in over four years, and all thought he was dead, Fleet not only
contrived to escape execution by the savages, but spent his captivity
to real advantage. By the time he was finally released he had learned
enough about the Algonquin language and had become sufficiently
fraternal with his captors to engage in a profitable trade in skins
with them. Then, returning to London, where he had excellent family
connections, he acquired financial backing from William Cloberry and
other well-known merchants there. Afterward, as Captain Henry Fleet,
he traded in the Chesapeake for some years in his own ships and later
played a significant role in the genesis of the war between the
Virginians and Lord Baltimore over the fur trade.
* * * * *
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.
Always, however, the Virginians had to be watchful for ambuscades, no
matter how friendly things appeared. Only if women and children were
much in evidence was it considered reasonably safe to beach a boat and
proceed with the preliminaries of barter.
Exasperating in their tediousness, these preliminaries had to be
accepted with casualness, else the barter might be off. A great trader
like Captain Claiborne must first engage in seemingly endless pantomime
and orations. After that he had to offer through his interpreter gifts
of axes, knives or hatchets for the chief of the tribe and his head
men, and this must be followed by a distribution of blue beads, bells
and other trinkets among the chief’s wives. But it was the feasting
that took up most of the time. In fact, when a really good catch of
beaver was on hand trading seldom commenced until the second day.
Then, when the goods were finally unloaded, the natives would insist
on viewing it at leisure, tumbling and tossing it over and over again
and stealing whatever they could. If objections were raised, however,
no barter might be joined. Or worse, the savages might “fall out” with
the Englishmen, and killings would result. Therefore, the members of
the bartering detail had to be constantly on the alert to prevent as
much stealing as possible, while their companions stood guard by the
boat with arms in readiness to provide cover for a quick retreat in
case of necessity. After the bartering actually got under way, every
cunning device and ruse was employed on each side to outwit the other.
Suspicion was mutual, and well it might be, for the natives were quick
to learn “English tricks.”
Claiborne was especially successful in the northern reaches of the
bay where contacts were made with fierce hunting tribes from the
hinterland. They brought out decorative panther skins, bundles of tough
bison hides which would serve as leather, and huge bearskins for use
as robes, blankets and floor coverings. Occasionally for mere trifles
they offered sparkling stones and rare gems that would eventually bring
fancy prices from the London jewelers who set them in gentlemen’s rings.
There were even black beaver and sable skins available in the
northernmost bay villages. Sables (American pine marten) brought up
to twenty shillings a pair. One full grown black beaver was worth as
much, whereas a brown beaver pelt weighing two pounds never brought
more than fourteen shillings in the Virginia market at the time. There
were stacks of the cheaper pelts to be had in the northern villages
too--wild-cat, red fox and the little musquash (muskrat). The time
would come in America when the lowly muskrat would be the backbone of
the fur industry, but the smaller varieties in the seventeenth century
sometimes brought only two shillings a dozen--with cods. The cods of
muskrat served for good perfume in England. In Virginia they only added
to the stench of Indian stews!
Wherever the English traders went in the Chesapeake there was no
escaping the hospitality of the feast. And much Indian food was
anything but palatable. Stinking jerked venison swarming with maggots
had to be eaten if offered, however. Gobbets of greasy meat with the
suspiciously foul odors of a communal stew pot must be swallowed. An
Indian could understand why a white trader might decline the offer of a
squaw as a bed fellow for the night but never the refusal of food at a
feast.
Captain Claiborne’s crowning business achievement at this time was
the establishment of trading relations with the giant Susquehannocks
who had previously bartered their fine pelts with Captain John Smith.
These proud and intelligent savages, Iroquois by blood, inhabited the
valley of the Susquehanna River through which the Englishmen hoped
to gain access to the northern lake regions. Claiborne made trading
pacts with their great chief in 1629, the meetings taking place at the
mouth of the river on the mountainous little island which today serves
as a bridge anchor for fast trains and automobiles speeding over the
Susquehanna River between Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Indeed, the Secretary of Virginia was well on his way to consummating
his grand plan for a Virginia Hundred in the upper Chesapeake as the
hub of a great fur-trading empire, when Lord Baltimore appeared on the
scene.
Now, obviously, the English baron had much the same idea as the
Virginians, except in one important respect. He didn’t plan to come
under Virginia’s jurisdiction. He intended to have a province of his
own--and that a slice of Virginia territory--over which he would rule
independently and for which he would be answerable to no one except the
king.
It was an impossible situation for the Virginians. But not for George
Calvert. The First Baron of Baltimore felt that he knew well enough how
to get things done at the English court, and he didn’t intend to let
any muddy colonials stand in his way!
XII
_Kent Island and the Backside of Virginia_
At the time of Lord Baltimore’s arrival the Virginians were already
suffering from mass hypertension induced by fear. Early in the summer
of 1629 there had been another massacre along the James River, and no
sooner had this Indian uprising been quelled than rumors were rife that
the Spaniards were about to attack.
Captain Claiborne led the colonial forces against the offending
Pamunkeys of the Powhatan Confederacy in an effort to “utterly
exterpate” them, that being the settled policy of the colony. No
thought had been given to any further trade with these neighboring
savages since the first bloody massacre they committed in 1622. The
Pamunkeys were fair game and in 1629 the English soldiers “obtained
more spoil and revenge than they had done since the great massacre.”
But even more pressing than the Indian war that year was the feverish
urgency about rebuilding and fortifying the fort at Point Comfort
to protect the plantations against a surprise attack from Florida.
Nervously on the alert for Spanish spies and treachery, the protestant
Virginians not only didn’t trust the intentions of their Catholic
neighbors to the south, they didn’t trust their own king. After all,
they no doubt reasoned, Charles did have a Catholic wife! And didn’t
he have as his new advisor, William Laud, the Bishop of London, who
everyone knew was trying to reconcile the English Church to Rome?
The bigotries of the seventeenth century were indeed unreasoning. But
they were very real to the Virginians in their lonesome outpost of
civilization. To them Spaniard and Catholic were one.
Now into their midst came Lord Baltimore! Had he not once connived with
Gondomar, the hated Spanish ambassador, to bring about the marriage of
the baby Prince Charles to the Infanta Maria of Spain? Maybe he was
in league now with Spain under some subtle arrangement made by King
Charles himself. Anything was possible to the fear-ridden colonists on
the James.
To dispose of this unwelcome intruder, without the risk of too greatly
offending the king, they had to have something fool-proof on which to
hang their collective hats. In the end, they offered Baltimore the
prescribed oath of allegiance and supremacy, making it mandatory for
him to subscribe to the supreme authority of the English sovereign in
all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual. He refused to take the oath
and so was ordered to leave the colony.
* * * * *