The Appomattox Indians, at the time of the Jamestown settlement, were
located on a neck of land lying between the James and Appomattox
Rivers. Dale wanted this land. It was cleared, fertile, and easy to
fence, so we are told:
About Christmas following in this same year 1611 in regard of
the injury done us ... without the losse of any except some few
salvages tooke it and their corne.
This newly acquired land he named New Bermudas and he divided it into
several tracts known as "hundreds." The term hundred was a relic of
the feudal system. It meant a political subdivision smaller than a
county. It appears to have been Dale's intention that these hundreds
or group plantations, often referred to as "particular plantations,"
should include the land that could be worked conveniently by the
farmers from their homes in a village or a town. This plan was not
popular. As has been previously stated the colonial pioneers much
preferred to live on the land they tilled. The term "hundred" lost
its significance.
Ralph Hamor described the operations at New Bermudas in the
following:
In the nether hundred he [Dale] first began to plant, for there
is the most corne-ground and with a pale of two miles cut over
from river to river, whereby we have secured eight English miles
in compasse.... Rochdale, by a crosse pale wel nigh foure miles
long, is also planted with houses along the pale, in which
hundred our hogs and cattell have twentie miles circuit to graze
in securely.
Outstanding were the accomplishments of this taskmaster, Governor
Dale, in one year, with men many of whom were unaccustomed to manual
labor. While some were engaged in fence building and the construction
of houses, others were employed in getting out clapboards. Still
others were gathering pitch and tar from the pine trees and burning
logs to make soap-ashes. The London Company had incurred heavy
expense in the settlement and was asking for something in return.
Products from the forests were all that were available. It is no
wonder that the colonists complained bitterly about their hardships
in their letters to the folks back home.
It was not Gov. Dale's purpose to develop an agricultural colony.
Surplus from food products would not pay the cost of shipment across
the ocean. His plantings of corn were purely for local consumption.
He limited the number engaged in farming, and to each of those so
engaged, he allotted three acres of corn land. These farmers were not
allowed to devote their entire time to crop-raising. The livestock as
we have seen was allowed to run at large in the fenced ranges. In a
letter dated June 14, 1614, Gov. Dale reported that he had set the
colonists to the task of "husbanding our corne securely, whereof wee
have above five-hundred acres set, and God be praised in more
forwardness than any of the Indians that I have seen or heard of this
yeare."
When Capt. Argall, as deputy governor superseded Dale in May, 1617,
George Yeardley having been acting governor from April 11, 1616, he
reported that the colony had about four hundred people but not over
200 fit for husbandry and tillage. As for livestock, they had 128
cattle, 88 goats, and a large number of hogs. As to cattle there were
about "fortie bulls and oxen but they wanted men to bring them to
labour and irons for the ploughs and harnesse for the cattell." They
had tried again to grow some small grains.
Thirtie or fortie acres wee had sowne with one plough, but it
stood so long on the ground before it was reaped it was most
shaken.
This was a pitiful showing for the ten years that had elapsed since
Capt. Newport established the colony. It had been a decade of
frustration and heart-breaking disappointments, a decade of gruelling
toil and misery. No blame should be attached to the colonists. They
were thrust into a situation for which they were woefully
unprepared.
Virginia was destined to develop agriculturally. Attempts to suppress
that industry only served to prolong the colony's troubles. There
were no natural resources except the forests in the tidewater region;
no Indian trade of any great value; no gems to be picked up at will;
no minerals to be exploited. When the situation seemed most hopeless,
the culture of a crop new to English farming completely changed their
mental and pecuniary outlook. Despair changed to violent optimism.
John Rolfe is generally credited with having been, in 1612, the first
Virginia planter to engage in the growing of tobacco. Governor Dale
at the time frowned on its culture and ruled that two of each man's
allotment of three acres of land should be seeded to corn. Hence the
change in governorship was a momentous event.