Our first century

Introduction

IT is the purpose of this book to present, on the basis of a connected narrative, a picture of life in America during the seventeenth century.

The text-books used in the schools must cover the entire history of our country within a very brief space. They must, therefore, confine themselves to a brief recital of facts, chiefly political and military. The larger histories, in which life, manners, customs and the conditions governing them are treated with admirable scholarship, must of necessity be too voluminous and too costly to be available for the use of busy readers.

In the present work the author seeks to give a popular account of the hfe, manners and customs of those who first planted English colonies along the Atlantic coast, and laid the foundations of our country. The manner of men they were, the ideas they brought with them across the sea, the mistakes they made in entering upon a new life, under strange conditions, the means they adopted of adjusting themselves to their new environment, the forces that gave form to their systems of government, the occupations in which they engaged, their religious beliefs, their amusements, the clothes they wore and the food they ate — all these phases of their social and ecovi INTRODUCTION

nomic existence have seemed possible of popular presentation in a little history of colonial life.

For a narrative written with this view, rather than in the older and more conventional way, there has seemed to be warrant in the increased interest felt in the life and customs of our ancestors, and in the abundance of new material furnished by the special students of the last fifteen years.

Edward Eggleston, whose articles in the Century Magazine about twenty years ago showed the richness of the field, was perhaps the first of the modern American school of writers upon colonial history. Of the minute investigation shown in his " The Beginners of a Nation " and " The Transit of Civilization," it is not necessary to speak. More recently Cheyney, Andrews, Tyler, Farrand, Bourne and the other scholars, who have contributed to Professor Hart's very notable history of " The American Nation," have made special studies of peculiar importance, and, during very recent years, a number of works of consequence have appeared, among them Bruce's '' Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century," and Professor Osgood's "American Colonies ill the Seventeenth Century." These exhaustive works have greatly enriched our knowledge of the early history of Englishmen in America. We have had also many special studies of particular phases of colonial life, such as the admirably interesting books of Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, Miss Esther Singleton and others.

INTRODUCTION vii

The present work is intended to be a popular presentation of the principal facts of early colonial life, concerning itself chiefly with the life of the people. In writing it the author has used historical events as landmarks, assuming some knowledge of the principal facts of pubHc history on the part of the reader. He has not deemed it desirable to encumber the book with an account of the earlier Spanish and French occupations of this continent. His work properly begins with the story of the earliest permanent English .colonies whose settlement upon the Atlantic coast was in fact the founding of our nation. He has endeavored to trace the life story of the colonists during their first century of toil, hardship and conquest.

In telling this story the author has been glad to supplement his narrative with pictorial accompaniments, most of which have been chosen with a view to the illustration of life.

The author knows of no book written from precisely this point of view, and it is his hope that the human interest of the story may commend it to that large class of readers for whose use the small general histories are too compact and meagre, and the elaborate special works too comprehensive. For the general reader who is not a special student, and for school libraries, it is believed that a little history of colonial life may commend itself to acceptance.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION ..... V

I. A STORY OF ACCIDENTS . . . .1

Chapter I

COLUMBUS discovered America by accident. He blundered upon the country while trying to make his way to the eastern coasts of Asia, and so long as he lived he did not know what he had found. He died at last in the belief that he had made his way across the ocean to the Indies.

For a hundred years afterwards nearly everything done with respect to America was founded upon misconception, and everything well done was largely the result of accident. It was accident that gave the name America to the New World. It was by accident that Cabot and the rest discovered various parts of the North American mainland. They were searching for something quite other than this. Little by little it had dawned upon their intelligence that America was not Asia, but was instead a new continent, hitherto unknown, obstructing the pathway from Europe to Asia by the

A 1 westward route. This was clearly demonstrated when Balboa, in 15 13, saw the Pacific Ocean from a peak in Darien, and still more clearly when one of Magellan's ships ( 1 5 20) circumnavigated the globe, passing through the strait that bears that great navigator's name.

But it was an age of credulous ignorance and greed, and for a long time Europeans persisted in the belief that there must be some water way through this continent, by which ships could reach " The Indies," as all the Asiatic countries were then called in Europe.

The universal desire in Europe at that time was for wealth, and in their eagerness to get the rich trade of the Orient, European men refused to believe that a great continent stood obstinately in the way.

Even after the Spanish explorer, De Soto, had marched for years over the country from Florida to what is now Arkansas, in 1539 and the succeeding years, thus getting some small notion of the vast expanse of the continent, shipmasters and their merchant owners in Europe, refused to give up the notion that there was a water way through America at some point. This belief survived in some measure even to the end of the eighteenth century.

After exploration had conclusively proved that no such water way pierced the continent in its southern parts, imaginative geographers made maps showing that a little farther north the continent narrowed to nothingness, and was crossed by broad straits. Some of them even represented it as ending- about where the northern boundary of the United States now hes, leaving an open ocean north of it.

In those days the scientific habit of mind, which is common to all men now, did not exist. A man of modern mind, upon seeing one of these maps, would instantly have asked for the facts upon which it rested. He would not have been content to take the mapmaker's word for the existence of the water ways shown in the charts. He would have insisted upon knowing how the mapmaker knew of their existence.

" Have you been there to see for yourself .? " he would have asked. " Or has anybody else sailed over those waters, and brought back a trustworthy report about them .? " And, getting no satisfactory answer to these questions, the man of modern mind would have refused to invest his money and risk his ships and the lives of his men upon such geographical guesses.

But in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries men's minds did not act as they do now, and it is necessary to bear that fact constantly in mind if we would understand what happened.

The continent that Columbus found in his effort to make his way to the eastern shores of Asia by sailing westward was capable of producing food enough to feed all mankind, but very few people thought, for a hundred years and more, of cultivating that continent and making it feed anybody. For a hundred years and more very few of those who thought of America thought of anything in connection with this continent except to find a way through it in order to trade with the Indies, or else to find gold or silver somewhere within the newly discovered country.

The Spaniards found the gold and silver in Mexico, and in Peru. They were also real colonizers in some degree, though their chief concern was for the discovery of gold and silver. That fact gave a new impetus to the idea that America was of comparatively little worth except as a gold or silver mine. Everybody in Europe who in any way concerned himself with thoughts of America continued to hunt either for a passageway through the con-

^^^^ , .^-. tinent, to Asia, or for a region

I /' f/--i''^' ^^^ which the precious metals

^^M^^ ^^^"' abounded. No attention what-

ever was paid to the splendid productiveness of the American soil. Not an adequate thought was anywhere entertained, and especially in England, of the possibilities of wealth that lay in the cultivation of a country whose soil and climate were capable of producing more food stuffs for the consumption of mankind than had ever before been produced anywhere on earth.

It was a period of gross ignorance among the people generally, though a select few were learned according to the highest standards of that age. In order to understand how gross the popular ignorance was it is necessary to remember that the great majority of men did not travel in those days. There were no railroads, no steamboats, no telegraphs, no telephones, no common schools, no newspapers, no magazines and very few books. There were only a few people who could read even such books as existed.

The result of all this was that men knew almost nothing of the world beyond the hills that happened to bound their own horizon. It is difficult in our time of popular education, newspapers, railroads, telegraphs and cheap books to understand the condition of mind which then prevailed in Europe ; yet we must understand it if we would understand what happened in that time.

The Spaniards conquered Mexico and Peru and made settlements at St. Augustine in Florida, at Sante Fe in New Mexico and elsewhere. But these settlements were all made with a primary view to the discovery of gold and the exploitation of the country for profit. There was nowhere any sufficient thought of settling the country and living in it, and cultivating it for the sake of what its soil could produce. The thought of homes in America was not yet born.

The English claimed practically all of Canada and all of what now constitutes the United States north of

Florida by virtue of the discoveries made by John Cabot and other English navigators of the early time. But for nearly a hundred years the English made no attempt to

Spanish Explorations in North America to 1600.

plant colonies here or turn to account in any way the splendid resources of the country they owned.

There were several reasons for this. Some of those

A STORY OF ACCIDP:NTS 7

reasons have been indicated already. Another was that the Spanish power was at that time dominant. Wh«i the French had made a settlement upon the southern Atlantic coast it had been promptly assailed and destroyed by the Spanish who claimed dominion over the entire continent, and who had power to enforce the claim.

Then came a period of sea fighting in which at last the power of Spain was crippled, and England rose to a place among the nations of the first class.

In that day ships at sea made war upon each other and captured each other with very little reference indeed to the question whether or not a state of war existed between the two nations whose flags the several ships carried at their mastheads. Spain and England were nominally at peace with each other but they were in fact enemies and if an English ship could capture at sea a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure she did so without hesitation, without a qualm of conscience and without the least fear on the part of her commander, of his being called to account by his sovereign. This was a species of piracy of course but it was piracy of a kind at that time recognized as legitimate.

The profits of this sort of freebooting on the sea were so great that many daring English navigators engaged in the business, dividing the proceeds of it with the queen. Drake, Hawkins, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the rest of the great English sea barons by their assaults upon Spanish commerce greatly enriched themselves and their sovereign and greatly crippled Spain.

At last they succeeded in provoking open and declared war between Spain and England.

Then came the Spanish Armada, called at that time the " Invincible Armada." This was a great collection of Spanish warships which were sent to conquer England and reduce that country to complete subjection to Spain. The ships were so many in number and so strong in their armament that it was believed that no fleet anywhere could possibly hold them in check for one moment. Curiously enough the Armada was placed in command of a land soldier, who knew nothing of navigation, and

who at sea was always so violently seasick as to be incapable of directing the movements of his own fleet.

Nevertheless, under this incapable commander the Armada sailed to attack the coasts of England and to conquer that country.

In order to oppose it, the great English freebooting navigators lay in wait in the channel, intending to assail it with all their vigor whenever it should appear.

They were very ill equipped. Queen Elizabeth, who at that time reigned in England, was a miser, so stingy that she refused even to let her sea captains provide their men with wholesome food and drink. Further than that, she limited them in their supplies of ammunition and brought her miserliness to bear in other ways that threatened to defeat their enterpri, ,e in defence of England.

But these sea barons were men not easily daunted or discouraged. They knew tricks of seamanship that the Spaniards had never learned. They knew how to "tack " — or " beat " as we call it now — that is to say, how to sail upon a zigzag course against the wind. This gave them a very great advantage over the Spaniards, who knew only how to sail directly or very nearly before the wind.

The result of all this was that the English navigators were able to keep out of the way of Spanish shot and shell whenever they chose, and to destroy the great Armada little by little at their leisure. They drove it up the channel, and destroyed ship after ship, until at last they forced the small remnant of the great Armada to flee northward around Scotland and Ireland where most of the ships were wrecked in storms with which the Spanish navigators did not know how to contend, and so the sea power of Spain was crippled. Hawkins and Drake and Gilbert, together with their kind, had made England instead of Spain the foremost maritime power in the world.

Then it was that England's thought turned hopefully for the first time to the colonization of America. For the first time it was thought that an EngHsh colony planted on this continent might be protected by English ships against Spanish assault. The story of it is familiar to most readers, but it must be briefly recounted here as a setting for the history of life conditions which it is the purpose of this book to trace. Throughout the book the chronicle of external events given in succinct form is necessary as showing forth the conditions that made life what it was,

Raleigh was full of enthusiasm in this cause. The careers of the sea barons, including his own half-brother. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had filled his romantic mind and his courageous soul with the spirit of enterprise.

It was a time of seething intellectual activity in the British capital, in spite of the dull stupor of unintelligence that afflicted England outside of London. There were no clubs then, and no newspapers and particularly there was no intellectual life outside of London. The rest of the country was given up to sordid considerations of crops and the like. But in London it was a time of unusual intellectual ferment. The theatre answered then all. the purposes that the newspapers and the magazines and cheap books do to-day, and Shakespeare himself was at the head of the theatre. He and Marlowe and Ben Jonson and Greene used to meet in the coffeehouses with such men as Drake and Gilbert and Raleigh and others who had navigated the seas all over the earth and who had brought back strangely interesting tales of that which they had seen and that which they had done and that which they had learned of other men's doings.

Raleigh was Queen Elizabeth's favorite. That fact acted as a restraint upon him. He was ready not only to invest his money in lavish sums in order to colonize America, but also to go on his own account to the New World in order to build up colonies there which should add to the wealth of Great Britain, increase the power of that country and redound to its glory. If he had been permitted to go he would almost certainly have succeeded by virtue of his energy, his sense and his daring. But the queen said him nay. She would not allow him to absent himself from the court and so all that was left for him to do was to send out colonies at his own expense and trust to others less capable than he for their management. But it is not necessary to occupy space in telling the story of Sir Walter Raleigh's failures.

One thing that for a long time prevented colonization from England was that the total population of that country did not then exceed five million souls. In other words, there were fewer people in all England then than there are now in London alone — scarcely more than dwell now in New York City and its New Jersey environs. During a considerable part of the time before the people of England seriously considered these colonizing enterprizes there was no surplus population in that country seeking a colonial outlet in any direction. Now, however, a change in conditions had created such a population though it was of the most undesirable sort. The great importation of gold and silver into Europe had reduced the purchasing power of money and correspondingly raised the cost of living in the Old World. The result of this was that many people who had before found it easy enough to support themselves now found it impossible to do so by their unskilled labor.

A little earlier another change in English industrial conditions had occurred. The profits of sheep raising became so much greater than those of plough farming that great areas which had previously been cultivated in grain and the like were laid down in pasture lands. Inasmuch as only one man was needed to attend a flock of sheep, grazing upon great stretches of pasture, where ten men had before been required to cultivate the land, great numbers of people were thrown out of employment. These it must be borne in mind were people belonging to the lowest classes of the population. They had no skill except the rude ability to hold the handle of a plough. They had no reserves of money anywhere, no savings, no mechanical ability, and no resources of any sort. The result of all this was that a multitude of half starved men were thrown upon the community, destitute of the means of support. As they were equally destitute of moral character they quickly became beggars, thieves and outcasts.

When the time came for earnest efforts to be made to colonize America this, chiefly, was the source of human supply to be drawn upon. It was about as unfit for the

Arms in the first half of the 17th century. (From " Hewett's Armor," by permission.)

1. Musketier and caliver-man.

3. Pikeman.

4. Wheel-lock pistol and matchlock of a muscpiet, i6th century.

(From examples in the Tower of London.)

5. Musquetier.

purpose of colonizing as any population ever was anywhere in the world. There was in addition a still more worthless class of young "gentlemen" — that is to say, young men who had been brought up to regard work as unworthy of them, but who had no money and no skill in earning money. These also were available as emigrants, but their worthlessness for the colonization of a wilderness was even greater than that of the humbler unemployed.

These were the conditions in which the first successful effort to plant an English colony in America was made. The fundamental error was that all such efforts were made not in behalf of the colonists and not in behalf of America, but in behalf of speculative companies in England. Out of that fact chiefly came all the failures. Because of that fact mainiy, the successes achieved were slow of accomplishment and narrowly missed failure.

King James, who had succeeded Elizabeth on the throne, chartered two companies to colonize what was then called Virginia — that is to say the region lying between the mouth of the Cape Fear River in North Carohna on the south and Newfoundland on the north. These companies were composed of merchants, speculators and adventurers. Their charters gave them permission to plant colonies anywhere they pleased within the territory indicated, subject only to certain limitations designed to prevent them from trespassing upon each other. The London Company was authorized to plant colonies anywhere between 34 and 41 degrees of north latitude, and the Plymouth Company anywhere between 38 and 45 degrees. But in order to avoid conflict in their overlapping grants each company was forbidden to plant a colony within 100 miles of one already established by the other company.

Spain claimed all of that territory and in spite of the crippling of Spain'» power, one of the elements of difficulty in planting colonies was still the problem of protecting them against Spanish assault and destruction. But the " Sea Barons " of England had by this time pretty effectually checked and curbed the naval power of Spain and so the problems involved in colonizing were somewhat simplified.

Several abortive attempts were made to plant colonies under these and other charters. In 1602 a shipload of people were landed on the Massachusetts coast with intent "to leave them there and found a settlement, but the men who were assigned to be left revolted and went back to England on the ships that had brought them out.

In another case — in 1607, the year in which Jamestown was settled — the Popham colony was established on the coasts of Maine and for a time it seemed to give promise of permanency. But in the end that enterprize also was abandoned and so it was the settlement at Jamestown, in 1607, that constituted the first permanent English colony on these shores.

Near the end of 1606 the so-called London Company, otherwise known as the Virginia Company, seriously set

to work to plant a colony in America. It sent out a

company, numbering, by

different accounts, from

105 to 120 or more men,

without a woman among

them. And these men

were wholly unskilled in

the work they were sent

out to do.

Five-sixths of them were

English Explorations in North America to 1607.

men without any skill in any sort of labor, or any experience in work. The other sixth included a few mechanics, a barber, and some other people of possible usefulness in the colony. But there were no farmers, no enterprizing seekers after fortunes that might be won in a rational way and no persons who were fit to render the services needed by way of building up an empire in the wilderness.

It seems inconceivable to us now that such a company should have been sent out upon such a mission. The one problem presented to these men was to fell trees, open lands, plough fields and grow crops in a rich soil and a peculiarly favorable climate. A company of a little over one hundred fit men intent upon such purposes as these would quickly have made a prosperous settlement in that James River country in which the first permanent English colony in America was planted. But these were not the sort of men to achieve anything of that kind. They were idlers for the most part, men altogether unaccustomed to work, and for the rest they were the failures and the offscourings of the turbulent times in Britain. Some of them were criminals. They came to these shores filled with absurd dreams of the quick accumulation of gold. They had been told, upon what they accepted as authority, that in this western land gold was so plentiful that even kitchen utensils were made of it and they had not sense enough to understand that if such had been the case gold would have been of no more value than any base metal.

Nothing was further from their minds than the doing of that one thing which it was necessary to do under the circumstances ; the idea of work in the fields was not in their minds, while it was only by work in the fields

B that there could be hope of building up here a prosperous community.

If anything had been necessary to increase and emphasize the conditions of failure in connection with such an expedition it was furnished by the scheme of government provided for the colonists.

To begin with, in setting out to build up a civilization in a wilderness the colonists brought no wives or children with them. The whole idea of home making was excluded from their program. They were adventurers pure and simple, crossing the ocean with the single thought of finding gold somewhere, filling their pockets with it, and going back to England to spend it in riotous living.

The company which sent them out had as clearly absurd a purpose. Its first thought was to enrich itself by whatever might be found of value in America, and incidentally to build up a trade here as the East India Company had done in India.

Under the scheme of government planned for the colony the king in England was in the last resort the sole legislator. The council of the company in London — subject only to the veto of the king — was absolute in its authority over the colony.

The colony itself was to be directly governed by an entirely arbitrary commission appointed by the council of the company in London. N(^ provision whatever was made that any man should own the land he tilled or anything else. Nothing whatever was done to induce men to work. Nothing was done to call into play that personal endeavor for personal benefit which lies at the base of all human activity and all human prosperity.

It was decreed that all the lands and all the proceeds of them and of labor on them should be held by the company in London, and that every man should be supported out of a common fund.

The result was that from the beginning there was no adequate common fund because no man cared to work to create it. Not many men will work under such conditions ; certainly not many of such men as were sent out to plant the earliest permanent English colony in America.

But one good thing, of lasting advantage, was done in sending out the earliest colonists to America. In the first charters, those of Gilbert and Raleigh, and in the later Virginia Company's charter there was written a stipulation that the colonists should have all " the privileges of free citizens and persons native of England, in such ample manner as if they were born and personally resident in our said realm of England."

That stipulation proved ultimately to be the great charter of American liberty. It was to that, from beginning to end, that the colonists appealed in all their struggles against oppression. It was on that basis, two centuries later, that the men of Massachusetts, and the men of New York, and the men of Virginia, revolted and made war. It .was in memory of that, that the Declaration of Independence was written. It was out of that principle that the American colonies grew at last into a nation.

Ideas rule the world. Principles govern always in the end — the decrees of despots, dictators and parliaments to the contrary notwithstanding.

This clause was hghtly written into Sir Humphrey Gilbert's first charter by a queen who would have overridden it, as jauntily as she prescribed the dress of men and women at her court, if occasion to override it had arisen. But as such occasion did not arise during her reign or during that of her immediate successors the principle survived, took root and grew.

When the time came for American men to assert that principle, it was of far too vigorous a growth to be uprooted by any royal decree, or by any act of any parliament on earth.

Chapter II

THE colony which was destined to make the first permanent Enghsh settlement in America, sailed from London in December, 1606, in three little ships, not one of which would now be regarded as fit to cross the Atlantic, especially during the tempestuous winter months.