ness, then by crueltie or roughness... there must bee presented unto
them gratis, some kindes of our pettie marchandizes and trifles: As look-
ing glasses, Belles, Beades, Bracelets, Chaines, or collers of Bewgle,
Chrystall, Amber, Jet, or Glasse &c. For such be the things, though to us
of small value, yet accounted by them of high price and estimation: soon-
est will induce their Barbarous natures to a liking and a mutuall societie
with us. But if after these good and fayre meanes used, the Savages never-
thelesse will not bee herewithall satisfied, but barbarously will goe about
to practise violence eyther in repelling the Christians from their Ports &
safelandings, or in withstanding them afterwards to enjoy the rights for
which both painfully and lawfully they have adventured themselves
thither: Then in such a case I holde it no breach of equitie for the
Christians to defend themselves, to pursue revenge with force, and to doe
whatsoever is necessarie for the attaining of their safetie.Settlers in Virginia soon followed that advice, but they got the sequence
wrong: although they obviously needed the Indians’ help, since they did
not know how to plant or to hunt, they antagonized the Indians before hav-
ing fully learned from them. Without their assistance, the colonists died like
flies. During the first years after 1607, when they were finally established,
about one in each two died each year. By the end of the first decade, 1,700
settlers had arrived but only 351 were still alive.
From the start, Virginians were more bellicose and less cooperative
than settlers in Maryland and New England. Having begun to take the land
of the Indians and finding that virgin lands required massive amounts of
labor—either hoeing around trees to plant crops; girdling them so that they
would die; or, more laboriously, cutting them down and digging up the
stumps—the early colonists could manage only small plots of land. No mat-
ter how much land might be granted by the colonial authorities, little was
actually cultivated. Clearing sufficient land was beyond the settlers’ capac-
ity. That is what made hostility with the Indians inevitable. As Captain
John Smith had observed during his trip around the Chesapeake basin in
1607, “many plain marshes, containing some twenty, some a hundred,
some two hundred acres, some more, some less,” had already been cleared
by the Indians. Since clearing land was such an exhausting and time-
116 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA