Comic History of the United States | Page 7

intervention
of Pocahontas.
Smith was now required in England to preside at a dinner given by the
Savage Club, and to tell a few stories of life in the Far West.
While he was gone the settlement became a prey to disease and famine.
Some were killed by the Indians while returning from their club at
evening; some became pirates.
The colony decreased from four hundred and ninety to sixty people,
and at last it was moved and seconded that they do now adjourn. They
started away from Jamestown without a tear, or hardly anything else,
having experienced a very dull time there, funerals being the only
relaxation whatever.
But moving down the bay they met Lord Delaware, the new Governor,
with a lot of Christmas-presents and groceries. Jamestown was once
more saved, though property still continued low. The company, by the
terms of its new charter, became a self-governing institution, and
London was only too tickled to get out of the responsibility. It is said
that the only genuine humor up to that time heard in London was spent
on the jays of Jamestown and the Virginia colony.
Where is that laughter now? Where are the gibes and bon-mots made at
that sad time?
They are gone.
All over that little republic, so begun in sorrow and travail, there came
in after-years the dimples and the smiles of the prosperous child who

would one day rise in the lap of the mother-country, and, asserting its
rights by means of Patrick O'Fallen Henry and others, place a large and
disagreeable fire-cracker under the nose of royalty, that, busting the
awful stillness, should jar the empires of earth, and blow the unblown
noses of future kings and princes. (This is taken bodily from a speech
made by me July 4, 1777, when I was young.--THE AUTHOR.)
Pocahontas was married in 1613. She was baptized the day before.
Whoever thought of that was a bright and thoughtful thinker. She stood
the wear and tear of civilization for three years, and then died, leaving
an infant son, who has since grown up.
The colony now prospered. All freemen had the right to vote. Religious
toleration was enjoyed first-rate, and, there being no negro slavery,
Virginia bade fair to be the republic of the continent. But in 1619 the
captain of a Dutch trading-vessel sold to the colonists twenty negroes.
The negroes were mostly married people, and in some instances
children were born to them. This peculiarity still shows itself among
the negroes, and now all over the South one hardly crosses a county
without seeing a negro or a person with negro blood in his or her veins.
[Illustration: NEGROES STILL HAVE FAMILIES.]
After the death of Powhatan, the friend of the English, an organized
attempt was made by the Indians to exterminate the white people and
charge more for water frontage the next time any colonists came.
March 22, 1622, was the day set, and many of the Indians were eating
at the tables of those they had sworn to kill. It was a solemn moment.
The surprise was to take place between the cold beans and the chili
sauce.
But a converted Indian told quite a number, and as the cold beans were
passed, the effect of some arsenic that had been eaten with the
slim-neck clams began to be seen, and before the beans had gone
half-way round the board the children of the forest were seen to excuse
themselves, and thus avoid dying in the house.

[Illustration: PREPARING THE FEAST.]
Yet there were over three hundred and fifty white people massacred,
and there followed another, reducing the colonists from four thousand
to two thousand five hundred, then a massacre of five hundred, and so
on, a sickening record of death and horror, even worse, before a great
nation could get a foothold in this wild and savage land; even a
toe-hold, as I may say, in the sands of time.
July 30, 1619, the first sprout of Freedom poked its head from the soil
of Jamestown when Governor Yeardley stated that the colony "should
have a handle in governing itself." He then called at Jamestown the first
legislative body ever assembled in America; most of the members
whereof boarded at the Planters' House during the session. (For sample
of legislator see picture.) This body could pass laws, but they must be
ratified by the company in England. The orders from London were not
binding unless ratified by this Colonial Assembly.
This was a mutual arrangement reminding one of the fearful yet mutual
apprehension spoken of by the poet when he says,--
"Jim Darling didn't know but his father was dead, And his father didn't
know but Jim Darling was dead."
The colony now began to prosper; men held their lands in