desperately short supply in England which had been deforested by ship-
building, heating, and iron smelting. So even before Jamestown was settled,
the colony sent a shipment of timber to the mother country. We know about
it only because Sir Walter Ralegh’s little 70-ton Jobwas forced by bad
weather into a French port, where it was found to contain 16 tons of
“Cedar wodde.” That probably was the first timber exported from America
to England. It was followed shortly thereafter by shipments of clapboard,
logs for masts and spars, and staves for barrels. In 1621, the Pilgrims at
Plymouth freighted the Fortunewith “good clapboard as full as she could
stow.” (That cargo plus two hogsheads of beaver and otter skins was
thought to be worth the princely sum of 500 pounds but was looted by
French privateers.) Just a few years later, settlers in Maine were harnessing
waterpower to run sawmills. And by mid-century, ships were being pur-
posefully built to carry long white-pine logs to be made into masts for the
Royal Navy.
The Indians in Virginia also cultivated and used tobacco (Algonquian,
apooke). In its original form, it was too bitter and strong for the English
market, but it was catching on, as we know because King James I “blasted”
the “filtyie novelitie” of smoking, “so vile and stinking a custome.” It was,
he said, “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain
[and] dangerous to the lungs.” His attack did not deter his subjects, and
after 1612, when John Rolfe adapted West Indian or “Spanish” methods of
curing Virginia tobacco, it gained popularity. Almost overnight, it became
the salvation of the community. As a colonist later wrote, “Tobacco is our
meat, drinke, cloathing and monies.” So frenzied were the colonists that
they planted it even in the lanes between their houses.
Another local product also caught the attention of the settlers in
Virginia, as it had attracted the French farther north—furs. Colonists could
not get furs themselves. They were generally unable to use firearms, did not
know how to hunt, and were afraid to venture into the interior. So the
colonists had to work out a relationship with the 13,000 or so nearby
Algonquian-speaking Indians. That should be easy, Sir George Peckham
had predicted: just treat them as childlike barbarians:
Considering that all creatures, by constitution of nature, are rendered
more tractable and easier wonne for all assayes, by courtesie and mild-Early Days in the Colonies 115