Greater success came from their attempts to raise animals than
attended their efforts to grow crops. A few animals were brought in.
Reverend W. Simmonds states that: "three sowes in eighteene moneths,
increased sixty and odd piggs. And neere 500 chickens brought up
themselves without having any meat given them."
More livestock was evidently brought in the two supplies which
arrived in 1608 as it was reported, at the time Smith left the colony
in the fall of 1609, that they had "six mares and a horse; five or
sixe hundred swine; as many hennes and chickens; some goats some
sheepe." Captain John Smith during his two years with the colony was
remarkably successful in obtaining from the Indians several hundred
bushels of corn and beans in exchange for English manufactured goods.
The fertile bottom lands of the rivers north of the James yielded
bountiful harvests for the Indians as they have since for Virginians.
Glass beads and tinkling bells intrigued the natives. The white man's
clothing was also a source of wonderment. It was Smith's contention
that the white laborers should devote their time to getting out
clapboards, pitch and soap-ashes to ship to England and depend on the
Indians to keep the colony supplied with food. Smith was not a
farmer. He little realized that the Indians' desire for trinkets
would soon be satisfied. Then, too, public opinion in England,
aroused by the Las Casas exposures of Spanish cruelties in the West
Indies would not sanction forced enslavement of the natives. With the
departure of Smith, in October, 1609, the lucrative Indian trade came
to an end. No other member of the colony had the courage, for
sometime, to visit the tribes along the York and Rappahannock rivers
for the exchange of products.