When the colonists looked around them on the first day in their new home,
they beheld a scene which will never again in the history of this world
be spread before the eyes of man.
Before them lay a vast land just as God made it. No furrow had followed
the plough or wheel of civilization. The earth had been pressed by nothing
sterner than the light hoof of the reindeer or the moccasined foot of the
Indian. No seed had ever drifted hither on the winds, or been brought by
a bird wanderer from a distant country. The land was bounded by vast,
untravelled seas. The earth had been stirred in cultivation only by
the hands of women and children, unaided by any implement of steel or
iron. In the forests and fields the great mystery of birth and death and
birth again had silently gone on unmarked for countless ages. There was
literally no known past, no record of a yesterday which might explain the
problems of to-day.
Of course the English colonist would be keenly curious as to the fauna
and flora of the new land. There were "such faire meadowes and goodly
tall trees," says Percy,[15] "with such Fresh-waters running through the
woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof. My selfe and
three or foure more walking into the Woods, by chance we espied a path-way
like to an Irish pace. We were desirous to knowe whither it would bring
us. Wee traced along some foure miles, all the way as wee went having the
pleasantest Suckles, the ground all bespred and flowing over with faire
flowers of sundry colours and kindes as though it had been any Garden or
Orchard in England."
Mute witnesses to the truth of Percy's picture will be found at the
opening of our coming celebration, if our guests can find a convenient
forest. In it will be seen just the flowers that so ravished his soul:
the white honeysuckles, the scarlet trumpet creeper, the clematis, white
and purple tipped, the sweetbrier, violets, swamp roses, red swamp lilies.
"There be many Strawberries," continues Percy, "and other fruites
unknowne. Wee saw the Woods full of Cedar and Cypresse Trees with other
trees (out of) which issues our sweet Gummes like to Balsam, and so wee
kept on our way in this Paradise." There were not many "fruits unknown."
One of these, highly esteemed, was "maracocks"--the seed-pod of the
passionflower,[16] which was not dismissed from the list of Virginia
fruits until the middle of the last century. Until then it was cultivated
in gardens for its fruit as well as its flowers. There was also another
new fruit, still prized by the Virginia schoolboy, and still found by him
to "draw a man's mouth awrie with much torment" if incautiously meddled
with when green or yellow. Only when red is it ripe and "as delicious as
an Apricocke." Need we say this is the Virginia persimmon--a corruption
of the "putchamin" of the Indian? There were no peaches or apples, only
two kinds of plums, grapes, and berries,--strawberries, mulberries,
and whortleberries or "hurts." All other fruits were introduced by the
English. There were no sheep, oxen, goats, or horses, no chickens or other
domestic poultry. There were wild turkeys, none domesticated. The deer
was king, but never used as a beast of burden. Bears, rabbits or hares,
squirrels, the otter and the beaver; birds without number (their king the
eagle)--these were indigenous to the new land, planted there when God made
it, their flesh the food of man, their skins his garment.
And there, too, was man as God made him. To this day nothing is known
of the origin of the North American Indian--whence he came, or what his
early history. There he was--having evolved little for himself. His one
discovery had been fire. He had used what he found, but manufactured
little except bows and arrows, rude mats and baskets woven of grass,
earthen pipes and pots, and uncouth garments fashioned without scissors
or knives, and sewed with the sinews of the deer. He had no textile
fabric of any kind. When necessary to defend himself against the cold, he
had killed a deer or raccoon and slipped his shivering limbs within the
skin, or fashioned a mantle of the warm feathers of the turkey. In these
he exhibited no perception of grace or beauty. Nature offered him her
loveliest expression of both, but when he essayed ornament on his skin or
scant garment, he elected only the terrible. Even the young girls bound
horns to their heads instead of flowers. Writers of the period often speak
of coral--but there was no coral in the Virginia waters. Pearls they had,
and the teeth of animals to string for beads and fringes.
The Indian had made no utensil of iron or the copper he so much prized.
When he needed a canoe or bowl, he burnt the wood, then scraped it with
oyster shells, and burned again, until the wood was hollowed out. How
he ever felled a tree is a mystery! Weeks of scraping and burning were
spent on each canoe. He had no written language, no signs recording past
events. He had done nothing for himself except to minister to the needs
of the hour. There was no hieroglyphic, no testimony of the rocks. Even
the humble art of pottery, the earliest trace of the human race, was not
found among the American Indians to any extent. A few broken earthen pipes
and bowls, arrow-heads of flint, remnants of shell necklaces, these are
all that the ploughshare of the labourer or the pick and shovel of the
antiquarian have ever revealed.
Of the temper and disposition of the "Naturells," as King James called
them, we shall have abundant occasion to learn; but as Powhatan and his
people play a leading rôle in the following story it is indispensable
that my reader be made acquainted with the religion, customs, and habits
of this tribe of Indians. We have given space to a brief sketch of the
English monarch. The American monarch surely claims some attention before
we enter upon the story of the struggle between the two: between the
Stuarts of England and the Algonquins of America!
Historians of the Indians have asserted that the tribes under King Philip
and those subject to Powhatan were of a higher class than many other of
the North American Indians, more restrained by social and tribal laws,
more cleanly in their habits, more intelligent in every way. They are an
intensely interesting and mysterious people, and romantic writers love to
invest them with virtues which the Powhatans, at least, did not possess.
John Smith and Strachey argue that "they are inconstant in everie thing
but what peace constraineth them to keepe. Craftie, timerous, quicke of
apprehension, and very ingenious: some bold, most cautious, all _Savage_:
soone moved to anger, and so malitious they seldom forget an injury."
Schoolcraft, the modern Indian historian, said to me "they had not a
single virtue or single trait of true nobility." They never met a foe
in an open field,--cunning was their best weapon,--but some virtues they
surely had, nevertheless.