Page 66 - American Stories, A History of the United States

the Mississippi River. Under the leadership of their paramount chief or werowance,
Powhatan, these Indians had by 1608 created a loose association of some 30 tribes. 2.1
When Captain John Smith arrived to lead several hundred adventurers, the Powhat-
ans (named for their king) numbered some 14,000 people, including 3,200 warriors.
These people hoped to enlist the Europeans as allies against native enemies. 2.2
When it became clear that the two groups, holding such different notions about
labor and property and about exploiting the natural environment, could not coexist
in peace, the Powhatans tried to drive the invaders out of Virginia, once in 1622 and 2.3
again in 1644. Their numbers sapped by losses from European diseases, the Powhatan
failed both times. The failure of the second campaign destroyed the Powhatan empire.
In June 1610, the settlers who had survived despite starvation and conflicts with 2.4
the Indians actually abandoned Virginia. Through a stroke of luck, however, a new
governor and new colonists arrived from England just as they were sailing down the
James River. The governor and the deputy governors who succeeded him, Sir Thomas
Gates and Sir Thomas Dale, ruled by martial law. The new colonists, many of them
male and female servants employed by the company, were marched to work by the beat
of the drum. Such methods saved the colony but could not make it flourish. In 1616, Quick Check
company shareholders received no profits. Their only reward was the right to a piece Why did the first Virginia settlers not
of unsurveyed land located 3,000 miles from London. cooperate for the common good?

Tobacco Saves Virginia
The economic solution to Virginia’s problems grew in the vacant lots of Jamestown.
Only Indians bothered to cultivate tobacco until John Rolfe, a settler who achieved
notoriety by marrying Pocahontas, realized this local weed might be a valuable export.
Rolfe experimented with the crop, eventually growing in Virginia a milder variety that
had been developed in the West Indies that was more appealing to European smokers.
Virginians suddenly possessed a means to make money. Tobacco proved relatively
easy to grow, and settlers who had avoided work now threw themselves into its production
with single-minded diligence. In 1617, one observer found that Jamestown’s “streets and
all other spare places [are] planted with tobacco . . . the Colony dispersed all about planting
tobacco.” Although King James I originally considered smoking immoral and unhealthy,
he changed his mind when the duties he collected on tobacco imports began to mount.
The Virginia Company sponsored another ambitious effort to transform the col-
ony into a profitable enterprise. In 1618, Sir Edwin Sandys (pronounced Sands) led a
faction of stockholders that began to pump life into the dying organization by institut-
ing sweeping reforms and eventually ousting Sir Thomas Smith and his friends. Sandys
wanted private investors to develop their own estates in Virginia. Before 1618, there
had been little incentive to do so, but by relaxing Dale’s martial law and promising an
elective representative assembly called the House of Burgesses, Sandys thought he house of Burgesses The elective
could make the colony more attractive to wealthy speculators. representative assembly in colonial
Even more important was Sandys’s method for distributing land. Colonists who Virginia.
covered their own transportation cost to America were guaranteed a headright, a headright System of land
50-acre lot for which they paid only a small annual rent. Adventurers were granted distribution in which settlers were
additional headrights for each servant they brought to the colony. This allowed pros- granted a 50-acre plot of land
perous planters to build up huge estates while they also acquired dependent laborers. from the colonial government for
each servant or dependent they
This land system persisted long after the company’s collapse. So too did the notion that transported to the New World. It
the wealth of a few justified the exploitation of many others. encouraged the recruitment of a
Sandys also urged the settlers to diversify their economy. Tobacco alone, he argued, large servile labor force.
was not a sufficient base. He envisioned colonists busily producing iron and tar, silk
and glass, sugar and cotton. There was no end to his suggestions. He scoured Europe
for skilled artisans and exotic plants. To finance such a huge project, Sandys relied on a
lottery, a game of chance that promised a continuous flow of capital into the company’s
treasury. The final element in the grand scheme was people. Sandys sent English set- Quick Check
tlers by the thousand to Jamestown, ordinary men and women swept up by the same In what sense did tobacco save the
hopes that had carried the colonists of 1607 to the New World. Chesapeake colonies?
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