THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL COLONIES.
This chapter is given up almost wholly to facts. It deals largely with
the beginning of the thirteen original colonies from which sprang the
Republic, the operation of which now gives so many thousands of men
in-door employment four years at a time, thus relieving the
penitentiaries and throwing more kindergarten statesmen to the front.
[Illustration: SAMPLE PURITAN.]
It was during this epoch that the Cavaliers landed in Virginia and the
Puritans in Massachusetts; the latter lived on maple sugar and armed
prayer, while the former saluted his cow, and, with bared head, milked
her with his hat in one hand and his life in the other.
Immigration now began to increase along the coast. The Mayflower began
to bring over vast quantities of antique furniture, mostly hall-clocks
for future sales. Hanging them on spars and masts during rough weather
easily accounts for the fact that none of them have ever been known to
go.
[Illustration]
The Puritans now began to barter with the Indians, swapping square black
bottles of liquid hell for farms in Massachusetts and additions to log
towns. Dried apples and schools began to make their appearance. The low
retreating forehead of the codfish began to be seen at the stores, and
virtue began to break out among the Indians after death.
Virginia, however, deserves mention here on the start. This colony was
poorly prepared to tote wood and sleep out-of-doors, as the people were
all gents by birth. They had no families, but came to Virginia to obtain
fortunes and return to the city of New York in September. The climate
was unhealthy, and before the first autumn, says Sir William Kronk, from
whom I quote, "ye greater numberr of them hade perished of a great
Miserrie in the Side and for lacke of Food, for at thatte time the
Crosse betweene the wilde hyena and the common hogge of the Holy Lande,
and since called the Razor Backe Hogge, had not been made, and so many
of the courtiers dyede."
John Smith saved the colony. He was one of the best Smiths that ever
came to this country, which is as large an encomium as a man cares to
travel with. He would have saved the life of Pocahontas, an Indian girl
who also belonged to the gentry of their tribe, but she saw at once that
it would be a point for her to save him, so after a month's rehearsal
with her father as villain, with Smith's part taken by a chunk of
blue-gum wood, they succeeded in getting this little curtain-raiser to
perfection.
Pocahontas was afterwards married, if the author's memory does not fail
him, to John Rolfe. Pocahontas was not beautiful, but many good people
sprang from her. She never touched them. Her husband sprang from her
also just in time. The way she jumped from a clay-eating crowd into the
bosom of the English aristocracy by this dramatic ruse was worthy of a
greater recognition than merely to figure among the makers of
smoking-tobacco with fancy wrappers, when she never had a fancy wrapper
in her life.
Smith was captured once by the Indians, and, instead of telling them
that he was by birth a gent, he gave them a course of lectures on the
use of the compass and how to learn where one is at. Thus one after
another the Indians went away. I often wonder why the lecture is not
used more as a means of escape from hostile people.
[Illustration: THE REHEARSAL.]
By writing a letter and getting a reply to it, he made another hit. He
now became a great man among the Indians; and to kill a dog and fail to
invite Smith to the symposium was considered as vulgar as it is now to
rest the arctic overshoe on the corner of the dining-table while
buckling or unbuckling it.
Afterward Smith fell into the hands of Powhatan, the Croker of his time,
and narrowly saved his life, as we have seen, through the intervention
of Pocahontas.
Smith was now required in England to preside at a dinner given by the
Savage Club, and to tell a few stories of life in the Far West.
While he was gone the settlement became a prey to disease and famine.
Some were killed by the Indians while returning from their club at
evening; some became pirates.
The colony decreased from four hundred and ninety to sixty people, and
at last it was moved and seconded that they do now adjourn. They started
away from Jamestown without a tear, or hardly anything else, having
experienced a very dull time there, funerals being the only relaxation
whatever.
But moving down the bay they met Lord Delaware, the new Governor, with a
lot of Christmas-presents and groceries. Jamestown was once more saved,
though property still continued low. The company, by the terms of its
new charter, became a self-governing institution, and London was only
too tickled to get out of the responsibility. It is said that the only
genuine humor up to that time heard in London was spent on the jays of
Jamestown and the Virginia colony.
Where is that laughter now? Where are the gibes and _bon-mots_ made at
that sad time?
They are gone.
All over that little republic, so begun in sorrow and travail, there
came in after-years the dimples and the smiles of the prosperous child
who would one day rise in the lap of the mother-country, and, asserting
its rights by means of Patrick O'Fallen Henry and others, place a large
and disagreeable fire-cracker under the nose of royalty, that, busting
the awful stillness, should jar the empires of earth, and blow the
unblown noses of future kings and princes. (This is taken bodily from a
speech made by me July 4, 1777, when I was young.--THE AUTHOR.)
Pocahontas was married in 1613. She was baptized the day before. Whoever
thought of that was a bright and thoughtful thinker. She stood the wear
and tear of civilization for three years, and then died, leaving an
infant son, who has since grown up.
The colony now prospered. All freemen had the right to vote. Religious
toleration was enjoyed first-rate, and, there being no negro slavery,
Virginia bade fair to be _the_ republic of the continent. But in 1619
the captain of a Dutch trading-vessel sold to the colonists twenty
negroes. The negroes were mostly married people, and in some instances
children were born to them. This peculiarity still shows itself among
the negroes, and now all over the South one hardly crosses a county
without seeing a negro or a person with negro blood in his or her veins.
[Illustration: NEGROES STILL HAVE FAMILIES.]
After the death of Powhatan, the friend of the English, an organized
attempt was made by the Indians to exterminate the white people and
charge more for water frontage the next time any colonists came.
March 22, 1622, was the day set, and many of the Indians were eating at
the tables of those they had sworn to kill. It was a solemn moment. The
surprise was to take place between the cold beans and the chili sauce.
But a converted Indian told quite a number, and as the cold beans were
passed, the effect of some arsenic that had been eaten with the
slim-neck clams began to be seen, and before the beans had gone half-way
round the board the children of the forest were seen to excuse
themselves, and thus avoid dying in the house.
[Illustration: PREPARING THE FEAST.]
Yet there were over three hundred and fifty white people massacred, and
there followed another, reducing the colonists from four thousand to two
thousand five hundred, then a massacre of five hundred, and so on, a
sickening record of death and horror, even worse, before a great nation
could get a foothold in this wild and savage land; even a toe-hold, as I
may say, in the sands of time.
July 30, 1619, the first sprout of Freedom poked its head from the soil
of Jamestown when Governor Yeardley stated that the colony "should have
a handle in governing itself." He then called at Jamestown the first
legislative body ever assembled in America; most of the members whereof
boarded at the Planters' House during the session. (For sample of
legislator see picture.) This body could pass laws, but they must be
ratified by the company in England. The orders from London were not
binding unless ratified by this Colonial Assembly.
This was a mutual arrangement reminding one of the fearful yet mutual
apprehension spoken of by the poet when he says,--
"Jim Darling didn't know but his father was dead,
And his father didn't know but Jim Darling was dead."
The colony now began to prosper; men held their lands in severalty, and
taxes were low. The railroad had not then brought in new styles in
clothing and made people unhappy by creating jealousy.
Settlements joined each other along the James for one hundred and forty
miles, and the colonists first demonstrated how easily they could get
along without the New York papers.
Tobacco began to be a very valuable crop, and at one time even the
streets were used for its cultivation. Tobacco now proceeded to become
a curse to the civilized world.
In 1624, King James, fearing that the infant colony would go Democratic,
appointed a rump governor.
The oppression of the English parliament now began to be felt. The
colonists were obliged to ship their products to England and to use only
English vessels. The Assembly, largely royalists, refused to go out when
their terms of office expired, paid themselves at the rate of about
thirty-six dollars per day as money is now, and, in fact, acted like
members of the Legislature generally.
[Illustration: JAMESTOWN LEGISLATOR.]
In 1676, one hundred years before the Colonies declared themselves free
and independent, a rebellion, under the management of a bright young
attorney named Bacon, visited Jamestown and burned the American
metropolis, after which Governor Berkeley was driven out. Bacon died
just as his rebellion was beginning to pay, and the people dispersed.
Berkeley then took control, and killed so many rebels that Mrs. Berkeley
had to do her own work, and Berkeley, who had no one left to help him
but his friends, had to stack his own grain that fall and do the chores
at the barn.
Jamestown is now no more. It was succeeded in 1885 by Jamestown, North
Dakota, now called Jimtown, a prosperous place in the rich farming-lands
of that State.
Jamestown the first, the scene of so many sorrows and little jealousies,
so many midnight Indian attacks and bilious attacks by day, became a
solemn ruin, and a few shattered tombstones, over which the jimson-weed
and the wild vines clamber, show to the curious traveller the place
where civilization first sought to establish itself on the James River,
U.S.A.
* * * * *
The author wishes to refer with great gratitude to information
contained in the foregoing chapter and obtained from the following
works:
The Indian and other Animalcula. By N. K. Boswell, Laramie City,
Wyoming.
How to Jolly the Red Man out of his Lands. By Ernest Smith.
The Female Red Man and her Pure Life. By Johnson Sides, Reno,
Nevada (P.M. please forward if out on war-path).
The Crow Indian and His Caws. By Me.
Massacre Etiquette. By Wad. McSwalloper, 82 McDougall St., New
York.
Where is my Indian to night? By a half-bred lady of Winnipeg.
[Illustration]