Towards the end of 1605, a group of merchants and their friends, including the younger Hakluyt, petitioned the Crown for a charter incorporating two companies, one from the City of London, called the London Company, the other from the ports of Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, called the Plymouth Company, to establish two colonies in that part of America “commonly called Virginia.” This area was defined as lying between latitudes 34 and 45 degrees north, which James I, Elizabeth's successor, affirmed was outside the dominion of either Spain or France, since neither nation had established any effective settlement there.
The plea was accordingly successful and a charter duly issued on April 10, 1606. The London Company, or South Virginia group, was granted the area between 34 and 41 degrees north: the Plymouth Company, or North Virginia group, could settle anywhere between 38 and 43 degrees north, though neither company was to come within 100 miles of the other. No difficulties were anticipated in this respect, since the South Virginia group intended to concentrate on the Chesapeake area, which White and others had explored in the winter of 1585. The North Virginia group, in contrast, intended to devote itself to the area to the north reconnoitered by Weymouth.
The two ventures would be governed in part by the adventurers, overseen by a royal council chosen by the king. The normal joint stock model was not adhered to in this case because the two companies were not simple trading organizations. That they were rather aiming to develop commerce by peopling new lands with subjects of the Crown led James I to believe that his Privy Council should oversee all important aspects of the new venture. Both groups were in any case represented on the new royal council, the northern company by Sir Fernando Gorges and the southern company by Sir Thomas Smith.
Initially few objections were voiced, for the prospects still looked promising. The charter granted the companies “all the Lands, Woods, Soil, Grounds, Havens, Ports, Rivers, Mines, Minerals, Marshes, Waters, Fishings, Commodities, and Hereditaments” within their jurisdiction. In addition they could mine for gold and other precious metals, though one-fifth of any such discoveries would belong to the Crown. They could also mint money, a rare privilege, but could not trade with foreign nations, meaning Europeans. Finally, the companies had the right to expel any interlopers, which effectively gave each an absolute monopoly in its respective area.
The charter also had to address the status of those now going across the sea. It was clearly not intended that they should cease to be subjects of the king. On the other hand, neither should their position be disadvantaged as a result of leaving their homeland. Consequently it was agreed that the colonists and their children should be guaranteed all the “liberties, franchises, and immunities” which Englishmen then enjoyed. These were not defined, although recognized as among the most important was the right to own and inherit property. Nevertheless, all lands in North America were to be held as part of the king's demesne in free and common socage, not fee simple.12 Except in New England, seventeenth-century property rights were never to be as absolute as they later became in the United States.13
What of the people who already inhabited these lands? The charter provided that the settlements might “tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty” by spreading “the christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance.” The hope was that such missionary work would “in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government.” Perhaps the Indians could be civilized and brought to Christianity, and would not have to be conquered. And surely the Indians could be induced to trade and provide the English colonizers with food. The colonizers had every reason to be optimistic.
In the initial stages of colonization, the northern group (the Plymouth Company) proved the more speedy. By August 1606 it had a ship ready to reconnoiter its designated area. Unfortunately, the vessel was blown off course and then seized by the Spanish. A second attempt at reconnoitering the New England coast was more successful, but by the time the crew returned, the London Company had already dispatched three ships – Sarah Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery – with a new group of colonists on board.
1. At one time historians saw the colonial history of the Americas as a product of the inevitable advance of European cultures across the Atlantic and onto North and South American shores. Today, historians tend to emphasize the contingency and unpredictability of historical change. Moreover historians are now less inclined to look at history primarily in terms of the development or advance of any single group, emphasizing instead the ways in which history results from interactions between diverse groups of people, often across a wide geographical area. One important recent school in the historical analysis of colonial North and South American history is known as Atlantic world history. It focuses on the ways in which exchanges, interactions, and links between Europe, Africa, and the Americas would produce changes in each of these regions, as well as shaping the history of the entire Atlantic basin. A recent assessment of the vast literature on Atlantic history is Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (New York, 2009). This chapter draws extensively from the findings of Atlantic historians.
2. The phenomenon of the Columbian Exchange was described in Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: The Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, 1972), a book that broke new ground in suggesting that biological exchanges of plants, animals, and diseases across the Atlantic had a greater impact on the history of the early modern world than did human decisions. Crosby's work is an early example of Atlantic world history.
3. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (London, 1997), 135.
4. For information on Spanish incursions into North America, see David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, 1992).
5. Paul W. Mapp, The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713–1763 (Chapel Hill, 2011), demonstrates that the lack of geographical knowledge would play an important role in future imperial contests for North America as Spain, France, and Great Britain all sought control over the North American West during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in hopes that a water route to the Pacific might still be discovered.
6. For the changing volume of the slave trade, see David Eltis, “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment,” William and Mary Quarterly, 58 (2001), 17–46.
7. This newer argument was proposed by John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 1993; 2nd edn 1998). Thornton's book provides another example of Atlantic world history in that he shows how both the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery were shaped by the interactions of African peoples and Europeans, rather than being created primarily by Europeans.
8. Historians have been divided on the question when and whether early European encounters with Native Americans were shaped by ideologies of race. Recent literature suggests that the concept of racial difference (as opposed to difference based on degree of civilization) did not originate in Europe, but emerged after years of interaction and struggle between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans.
9. For the argument that the colonists joined the Chesapeake Indians see Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (Totowa, 1984), and David B. Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584–1606 (Chapel Hill, 1985). For a recent reassessment of how news of the lost colonists influenced English actions in early Virginia, see James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (New York, 2005).
10. Extracts of Hakluyt's writings are to be found in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612 (London, 1979), Vol. 3, 71–123.
11. The argument that Ireland provided a model for the English colonization of America is put forward by Nicholas P. Canny in “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 30 (1973), 575–98.
12. The term “socage” meant that the possessor had to pay a small annual fee, known as quitrent, to the king, as opposed to enjoying an absolute fee simple, which would have been equivalent to owning the land outright. Modern English property law uses the term “leasehold” for socage and “freehold” for fee simple. These latter terms are generally used hereafter to describe such property arrangements.
13. This was true of all “rights” at this time, which basically fell into three categories: privileges granted by the Crown, privileges established by custom, and rights laid down by statute. Crown privileges varied according to the residence and circumstance of the individual. The same was true of custom. Only rights established by statute, notably trial by jury, were common to all. Even these were not absolute in the sense of the later state and federal constitutions of America, since what one parliament had granted another could take away.
Part II
The Seventeenth-Century Settlements
Chapter 3
The English Conquer Virginia, 1607–1660
1570–1600 Rise of the Powhatan Confederacy.
1607 Jamestown and Sagadahoc are established.
1609–10 Jamestown endures “the starving time.”
1611–16 Gates and Dale are governors.
1614 Peace is concluded with the Powhatan Confederacy. John Rolfe marries Pocahontas. The first shipment of tobacco is exported to England.
1618 The Virginia Charter of Liberties is granted.
1619 The first meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses takes place. The first Africans arrive in Virginia.
1622 The Powhatan Confederacy attacks the Jamestown settlements.
1624 The Virginia Company lapses.
1625 Charles I accedes to the throne.
1639 The Crown formally recognizes the Virginia assembly.
1644–6 A second war breaks out against the Powhatan Confederacy.
1651 Virginia acknowledges the authority of Parliament.
1 Virginia Before the English
ALTHOUGH THEY DID not know it, the Algonquian-speaking Indians who lived around the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 were about to encounter a group of prospective English colonists sent by the London Company to found a colony on their land. These were not the first Europeans they had met. In the 1560s a group of Spanish Jesuits had established a mission somewhere in the region between the James and the York rivers. In 1570 and 1571 the Jesuits' heavy-handed methods provoked a series of attacks that resulted in the violent deaths of most of the missionaries and at least 23 Indians. The erience of this massacre would be one of the factors that shaped their subsequent interactions with the English.
The early encounter with the Spanish Jesuits may also have influenced political relationships among local Indians around the Chesapeake Bay in the years after 1571. Sometime between 1571 and 1607, a number of small local tribes became part of a confederacy led by a paramount chieftain called Wahunsonacock, or, as he would be known by the English, Powhatan. By the early 1600s, the Powhatan Confederacy included about 30 tribes with over 600 fighting men, along with numerous additional allies upon whom they could call if needed. Powhatan governed not as an absolute ruler, but as the chief of a number of lesser district chiefs, called werowances, who owed him a loose allegiance. The tribes who joined Powhatan may have wanted his protection against the possibility of future violent attacks by the Spanish. Or they may have been concerned about local threats, since there were other powerful tribes and confederacies around them, including the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks to their north and Tuscaroras to their south. In any case Powhatan had become a powerful chief who wanted to maintain or expand his power, and had confidence in his ability to do so. This political reality, too, would shape the Indians' encounter with the English.
Map 3 The Powhatan Confederacy in 1607. From Helen Rountree, Powhatan Foreign Relations (Charlottesville, 1993).
The leaders of the Powhatan people had at least rudimentary knowledge about Europeans before 1607. Certainly some local Indians remembered the Spaniards' massacre of their relatives in 1571. They also knew that after the Spaniards had been driven out of the region, they had not returned. One local man, named Paquiquineo, had actually lived in Spain for nine years after being kidnapped by Spanish sailors before returning to his home at Paspahegh, the future site of Jamestown. Paquiquineo would have been an important source of cultural knowledge about Europeans, able to warn his kin and their allies about the dangers Europeans posed, and to point out their vulnerabilities. The Indians knew that Europeans had muskets and gunpowder that could inflict a more lethal wound than a bow and arrow. But they also knew that not all Europeans were good shots, and that they bled and died like other men. All of this knowledge would affect their behavior towards the English who were about to arrive, and would in turn affect the fate of the colony the English were about to establish.1
2 The Virginia Company: Early Settlement
The expedition organized by the London Company (also called the Virginia Company of London) set sail for Virginia on December 20, 1606, with a total of 144 colonists and crew members on three ships. The 105 prospective settlers, all of whom were male, were a mixed lot. About a third were gentlemen, including an Anglican minister, a doctor, and several ex-privateers. Forty were soldiers or ex-soldiers, and the rest included a variety of artisans and laborers. The journey took them via the Azores to the West Indies – the means of determining longitude were still unknown – and they arrived off the Chesapeake only in late April 1607. The instructions given to Captain Newport, the senior naval officer, were to find a site which was secure from Spanish attack but had access to the sea. Here Newport was to build a fort, erect a town, and explore the surrounding countryside.
The Virginia venture was envisioned from the outset as something different from previous experiments, neither a trading post nor a base for pirates but rather a permanent settlement. The investors expected the colonists to devote their energies to numerous profitable activities. In addition to building a fort, they were to try to find lucrative commodities like precious metals and to look for a water route leading west. They were also expected to trade with the Indians if possible. There was a demand in England for products things like dyewoods, medicinal plants, and spices. Also, the colonists should begin to produce crops and manufactures suitable to the climate. The hope was to develop a diverse group of exports whose profits would finance further development.
In pursuit of his instructions, Captain Newport sailed up the James River for about 50 miles. After declaring that the territory belonged to James I, he disembarked on a piece of land joined to the shore by a thin natural causeway, which made it more defensible against an enemy. The site had the additional advantage of being close to the deep-water channel, which allowed the ships to anchor nearby. The new settlement was to be called Jamestown.
Initially everything went well. A sealed box was opened to discover the names of the councillors. The Indians had at first seemed hostile, but within a few days Powhatan was offering food and hospitality, a welcome addition to the colonists' supplies. The colonists began clearing some land to build a fortified palisade with a number of simple dwellings inside. The remaining land was to be devoted to planting crops. As Newport explored upriver, he heard stories that there might be copper or gold in the mountains. He met several chiefs, including Opechancanough, the brother of Powhatan, who commanded almost 300 men. Opechancanough seemed to possess great riches in copper and pearls, a promising sign that there might be more wealth to be found in the region. At the end of June, Newport would sail back to England carrying news of the colony's early successes and samples for the company's shareholders of potentially profitable local products, including clapboard, sassafras, and some likely looking metallic ore.
Figure 8 English colonists landing on the Potomac River in Virginia, 1634. Engraving after John White. Getty Images.
Even so, there were early signs of trouble. The day before Newport's return, the Engli
sh settlers were attacked. Historians speculate that the attack was instigated by Powhatan himself, in order to test the settlers' military abilities.2 Another problem was the settlers' health. During the summer and autumn an alarming number of the colonists began to sicken and die, owing to the unhealthy location of Jamestown, on the edge of a swamp. Unknowingly the colonists had brought with them malaria, typhoid, and dysentery or the “bloody flux,” which they now spread through ignorance of hygienic practices. Furthermore, the water on this stretch of the river became contaminated in summer by sea water, so that those who drank it suffered salt poisoning.3
By the onset of autumn the colonists found that not only were they dying of disease but they did not have enough food. Although they had planted some crops, their arrival relatively late in the spring had given them insufficient time to clear as much land as they needed for a winter supply of provisions. Also, though the colonists did not know it, the region was suffering from a severe drought. The men in charge of the governing council could not agree on a strategy for solving the colony's food problems. Bitter arguments took place between the councillors and their nominal president, an ineffectual aristocrat named Edward Wingfield. Conflicts became so heated that one member of the council was actually executed for mutiny.
The main reason why the colony survived its first winter was a decision by Powhatan to enter into a trading and diplomatic relationship with the colony's most energetic leader, Captain John Smith, a soldier of fortune who had been appointed as one of the councillors for the colony. Although historians have sometimes struggled to understand why Powhatan made this decision, clues to its meaning can be found in the famous story of the two men's first encounter.
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