Chapter 3 Summary: The Southern Colonies in the 17th Century, 1601-1700 pp 53-76

The American Promise: A Compact History 3rd Edition Vol 1: To 1877

Introduction.

This chapter begins with a description of Captain John Smith’s capture by the warriors of Powhatan, the chief of about fourteen thousand Algonquian peoples who lived along the coast of Virginia. Smith believed that Powhatan had been ready to kill him by smashing his head with rocks but that he was fortuitously saved by Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas. However, it is far more likely that she was playing a part in a ceremony designed to express Powhatan’s power of life and death over a subordinate chief. Relations broke down between English settlers and the Algonquians though. Captured, Pocahontas eventually married John Rolfe, had a son, and moved to England where she was celebrated with a great deal of pomp and circumstance. Powhatan’s world of hunters and gatherers was gradually replaced by one of settlers with weapons, tools, and ideas foreign to the Native Americans. As a thriving tobacco trade grew between the Chesapeake Bay colony and Europe, Native American lands were usurped and their ways of life irreparably challenged.

An English Colony on the Chesapeake, pp. 71-80.

In 1603, King James I of England, impressed by Spain’s successes in the New World, was eager to establish colonies of his own in North America. England’s success in defending itself from the Spanish Armada suggested that England might now succeed in defending new colonies in North America on land claimed by Spain. Thus, in 1606, the king granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company of adventurers, authorizing their occupation of over six million acres in North America. These men and other proponents of colonization hoped settlements would benefit the empire, both by yielding goods and by providing a convenient destination for masses of unemployed English people. Virginia Company investors dreamed about the quick and easy profits they could reap, but they failed to appreciate the difficulties of adapting European desires and expectations to the New World environment, particularly in regard to Native American peoples. Within twenty years the Jamestown settlement somehow managed to survive, but the English government replaced the private Virginia Company, which was never profitable.

The Fragile Jamestown Settlement.

In December 1606, 144 Englishmen sailed for Virginia aboard three ships. In May 1607, the survivors of the journey put ashore on a small peninsula in the James River in the heart of Powhatan’s chiefdom. They hastily built a fort as protection from the Indians and Spanish and named the settlement Jamestown, but skirmishes with the Indians were frequent. The settlers soon discovered that disease and famine were greater threats than the Indians’ spears and arrows or attacks by the Spanish. Despite Powhatan’s eventual overtures of peace and delivery of much needed foodstuffs and John Smith’s forays to trade with the Indians, by January 1608, only 38 of the original settlers remained alive to welcome the Virginia Company’s supply ships and 120 new colonists. Although the Virginia Company sent hundreds of new settlers each year to Jamestown, few survived these early years.

Cooperation and Conflict between Natives and Newcomers.

Given the colonists’ vulnerability, it is surprising perhaps that Powhatan did not attack Jamestown and drive the English out of the Chesapeake. Several factors probably contributed to his hesitation. The Indians were impressed by the English God, whom they felt must be very powerful, and even more by English goods. They were eager to trade corn to get these valuable items. Moreover, Powhatan and his werowances probably concluded that such powerful strangers would make better allies than enemies, especially in regard to other Native American tribes. Notwithstanding, more than once the Indians refused to trade their corn to the settlers, but the English brutally broke that boycott by attacking the uncooperative Indians, pillaging their villages, and confiscating their corn. Despite receiving or taking food from the Indians, Jamestown failed to thrive not only because of the settlers’ weakened physical condition, but also because the majority were gentlemen and their servants, who considered cultivating the land beneath them. Nevertheless, over time, the colony slowly expanded. Its continued existence changed Indian society, introducing new tensions over resources as well as European diseases that decimated Indians in epidemic proportions. In 1622, after fifteen years of an uneasy truce, Opechancanough, Powhatan’s brother and successor after his death, launched an all-out assault on the colony, killing 347 settlers— nearly one-third of the English population. The attack failed to drive the English out. From this point on, the colonists no longer deemed the Indians necessary for their survival; instead, they concluded that their settlement’s existence depended on the destruction of all Indians in the vicinity.

 From Private Company to Royal Government.

The shocking mortality rate and evidence of mismanagement led to the Virginia Company’s dissolution in 1624; Virginia became a royal colony governed directly by the crown. The king now appointed the governor, but most features of local government established under the company remained in effect, such as the House of Burgesses, first convened in 1619. By 1624, it was evident that English settlers were in Virginia to stay: New settlers were still arriving, the crown was committed to the colony, and steady progress was being made in the cultivation of tobacco. 

A Tobacco Society, pp. 80-87.

Tobacco grew wild in the New World where Native Americans had been using it for thousands of years. During the sixteenth century, Spanish colonists in the New World sent tobacco to Europe where it was an expensive luxury but, during the following century, English colonists in North America sent so much tobacco to European markets that it became quite affordable and was used widely. In 1612, John Rolfe’s experiments with West Indian tobacco seeds showed that the plant could be cultivated successfully in Virginia. The first shipment of Virginia-grown tobacco arrived in England in 1617 and sold for a handsome price. Ironically, the same Virginia colonists who could not or would not grow food for themselves quickly learned how to harvest as much tobacco as possible. Tobacco cultivation proved a crucial turning point for the Virginia colony, as the crop changed the aimless settlers into a community of dedicated planters.

Tobacco Agriculture.

A demanding crop, tobacco required close attention and a great deal of hand labor year-round. Primitive tools and planting methods made this intensive cycle of labor more taxing. Fields were cleared by girdling trees, and the tree-stump-studded fields were hoed instead of plowed. Colonists also had to grow food crops in the midst of the tobacco production cycle, leaving little time for idleness. But in spare moments, they enjoyed the fruits of their labor. English settlers, however, were willing to work hard because they could expect to do much better in the Chesapeake than in England. A hired laborer in a Virginia tobacco field earned in one year what it took his counterpart in England to earn in two to three years. More important, land was so plentiful in Virginia that even laborers could hope to obtain it. New settlers to the area who paid their own passage received fifty acres of free land known as a headright. This policy, begun by the Virginia Company, was continued by the royal government to attract settlers.

A Servant Labor System.

The seventeenth-century Chesapeake was fundamentally a servant society, with about 80 percent of new arrivals working as indentured servants. As indentured servants, English workers contracted their labor for a period of four to seven years in return for passage to Virginia and the chance to acquire land and wealth. The planter paid the cost of transportation and provided the servant with food and shelter. As many as half of the indentured servants died before their servitude ended, but those who survived were likely to acquire their own farms. More than two-thirds of the servants were young, unskilled males between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. Only about one servant in four was a woman because employers preferred men for fieldwork. Servant life was very harsh by the standards of England and the Chesapeake. Servants who ran away or female servants who became pregnant had additional time added on to their contract. For some servant women, premarital pregnancy was a path out of servitude: The father of an unborn child sometimes purchased the indenture of the servant mother-to-be, freed, and married her. Notwithstanding, indentured servitude was not an easy road for those who chose to work it.

Cultivating Land and Faith.

Dispersments of the Chesapeake settlements were determined by the demands of tobacco. Because tobacco exhausted the land of its nutrients quickly, farms consisted of cultivated land surrounded by virgin forest. Moreover, planters preferred land on navigable rivers to ease transporting the tobacco onto ships. Most Chesapeake settlers nominally were Protestants, but few were very observant. Even the colony of Maryland, which was founded by Lord Baltimore and intended as a haven for persecuted English Catholics, devoted more attention to tobacco cultivation than to religion.

The Evolution of Chesapeake Society, pp. 87-93.

Tobacco cultivation propelled the evolution of Chesapeake society. The varying degrees of success among tobacco growers created a hierarchical society, in which wealth and status among colonists were quite disparate. Social stratification led to political polarization that climaxed in 1676 with Bacon’s Rebellion. Amid this political and social change, tobacco cultivation remained a constant.

Social and Economic Polarization.

Until mid-century, societal divisions in the Chesapeake were less between rich and poor planters than between free farmers and indentured servants, and a rough frontier equality characterized free families. After 1650, however, three developments contributed to a growing social polarization. First, tobacco prices declined as production increased, making it more difficult for freed servants to save enough to become landowners. Second, as the mortality rate of freed servants decreased, the number of freed men seeking land increased. Finally, the drop in mortality also contributed to a rising planter elite class whose members were living longer, acquiring more land, and making more money. By the 1670s, Chesapeake society had become polarized: Landowners-the planter elite and the more numerous yeoman farmers-made up one group; landless settlers, mostly freed servants, made up another group. Each looked upon the other with mistrust.

Government Policies and Political Conflict.

In general, government and politics intensified rather than reduced socioeconomic distinctions. Discrepant laws governed masters and servants. Moreover, the planter elite dominated the government, from membership in the House of Burgesses to the governor’s council. In the late seventeenth century, the franchise became more restricted, with voting limited to landowners and householders. Colonial officials not only administered government but profited from it as well, especially through revenue collecting. Beginning in 1660, the Navigation Act allowed the crown to extract revenue from the Chesapeake, and subsequent acts would be applied to other colonies. These measures were designed to give English merchants, shippers, and even seamen a monopoly on the colonial import trade. The acts reflected English mercantilist assumptions— the idea that the colonies existed to benefit the mother country. Hierarchy and stratification defined not only the relationship between king and colonies but also that between the planter and the lower classes.

Bacon’s Rebellion.

In 1676, Bacon’s Rebellion erupted as a dispute over Indian policy. As the Chesapeake population grew, the land-hungry poor whites encroached on Indian land and violence between settlers and Indians erupted. The government tried to maintain the peace, but frontier settlers, led by the ambitious Nathaniel Bacon, wanted revenge. They saw the colonial government, headed by William Berkeley, as run by corrupt officials who were as much their enemies as the Indians.

Governor Berkeley pronounced Bacon a rebel, threatened to punish him for treason, and called for new elections of burgesses, which Bacon and his supporters swept. They passed Bacon’s Laws, which gave local settlers a greater voice in the government and cracked down on corruption. When the king learned of the turmoil in the Chesapeake and its devastating effect on tobacco exports and customs duties, he ordered an investigation. The royal officials replaced Berkeley with a governor more attentive to the king’s interests, nullified Bacon’s Laws, and instituted an export tax on every hogshead of tobacco as a way of paying the expenses of government without having to obtain the consent of the tightfisted House of Burgesses. After Bacon’s Rebellion, political stability slowly returned to the Chesapeake.

Religion and Revolt in the Spanish Borderland, pp. 93-94.

Compared to the English colonies on the Atlantic coast or the Spanish colonies of Central and South Americas?, the Spanish settlements in Florida and New Mexico were failures. Florida and New Mexico lacked both Indian gold and an obvious export crop, and therefore attracted few Spanish settlers other than missionaries and soldiers. Spanish colonists coerced Indians into building churches, paying taxes, and performing labor. Angry at this harsh treatment, native peoples set aside their own disputes to fight Spain. In 1680, Popé led the Pueblo Indians in a revolt against the Spanish colony in New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt temporarily ended Spanish rule. When Spain returned to New Mexico late in the seventeenth century, its agents decreased missionary work and cut back on labor exploitation. Although Florida witnessed no uprising comparable to the Pueblo Revolt, Spain’s colony there also had limited success attracting settlers or converting Indians. 

 Toward a Slave Labor System, pp. 94-98.

African slavery was introduced to the New World by the Spanish and Portuguese during the sixteenth century when European diseases decimated Native American populations. In the seventeenth century, West Indian English planters followed the Iberian example and developed sugar plantations with slave labor. However, in English North America, African slavery was not adopted until the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Beginning in the 1670s, slavery slowly made its way out of the English Caribbean and, by the end of the century, slave labor systems were found in the Chesapeake as well as in the Carolinas.

The West Indies: Sugar and Slavery.

England’s most profitable seventeenth-century colonies were established not on the North American mainland but in the Caribbean. English planters developed a profitable sugarcane industry that, by the end of that century, had exported nearly 50 million pounds a year to the mother country. Sugar plantations demanded a large initial investment; poor farmers could not afford the expensive machinery. The successful planters’ immense profits came from the sweat and toil of African slaves. By 1700, the island of Barbados was literally a slave society controlled by white men. The plantation regime was extremely brutal for slaves, who were often worked to death. Although sugar plantations never developed on the North American mainland, the West Indies nonetheless exerted a powerful influence on the introduction of slavery in North America.

Carolina: A West Indian Frontier.

In 1663, a Barbadian planter named John Colleton and seven other men obtained a charter from King Charles II to colonize the region south of Virginia. The proprietors planned to siphon settlers from Barbados and other colonies and encourage them to develop an export crop. They established a permanent English beachhead in the southern part of the colony at Charles Towne (later Charleston) in 1670. The Barbadian immigrants brought their slaves with them, thus establishing African slaves in South Carolina. During the first generation of the colony, Carolina served primarily as an economic colony of Barbados, exporting everything from livestock to timber back to the island. In the mid-1690s, the colonists hit upon a hardy strain of rice that thrived in the region; thereafter, rice became the industry that dominated Carolina.

Slave Labor Emerges in the Chesapeake.

By 1700, more than eight out of ten persons in England’s mainland southern colonies lived in the Chesapeake, and one out of eight was black. In 1650, slavery was still a relatively minor institution in Virginia and Maryland but, beginning in the 1670s, tobacco planters began a transition from servant to slave labor that portended slavery’s full adoption and institutionalization in the American South. Africans were favored over indentured servants as laborers for a number of reasons. First, because they and their descendants would be slaves for life, they constituted a potentially never-ending and self-perpetuating labor supply for planters. Further, unlike indentured servants, African slaves could be controlled politically. Whereas servants came to the Chesapeake with expectations of eventual liberty and ownership of land, slaves had no hope of attaining the privileges of freedom. Unlike the previous labor system divided between landless colonists on the one hand, and planter elites and yeoman planters on the other, this change from a servant to a slave labor system polarized Chesapeake society along lines of race and status. Although there were still large economic differences among whites, the rights enjoyed by poor white farmers made them feel that they too had a stake in the existence of slavery, even if they could not afford to own slaves themselves.

Conclusion: The Growth of English Colonies Based on Export Crops and Slave Labor, p. 98.

By the end of the seventeenth century, the English colonies of Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina were established firmly in North America, producing staples such as tobacco for export. Export crops made a handful of colonists wealthy and provided a livelihood for many. Southern colonial society differed significantly from that of England, yet the colonists considered themselves English subjects, claiming the rights and privileges of English citizens. The English believed themselves superior to Indians and Africans; thus colonists did not hesitate to deny these groups English rights and privileges. The English colonies differed from New Spain as well. The English did not seek to convert the native population to Christianity, the Chesapeake did not harbor gold or silver mines, and the encomienda system did not develop because Indians were too few and too hostile and their communities too small and decentralized to be organized effectively. However, the Chesapeake developed its own system of forced labor and racial distinctions. Only a remnant of Powhatan’s powerful confederation existed by 1700. The English colonists were in North America to stay.