Comic History of the United States | Page 8

severalty,
and taxes were low. The railroad had not then brought in new styles in
clothing and made people unhappy by creating jealousy.
Settlements joined each other along the James for one hundred and
forty miles, and the colonists first demonstrated how easily they could
get along without the New York papers.
Tobacco began to be a very valuable crop, and at one time even the
streets were used for its cultivation. Tobacco now proceeded to become
a curse to the civilized world.
In 1624, King James, fearing that the infant colony would go
Democratic, appointed a rump governor.

The oppression of the English parliament now began to be felt. The
colonists were obliged to ship their products to England and to use only
English vessels. The Assembly, largely royalists, refused to go out
when their terms of office expired, paid themselves at the rate of about
thirty-six dollars per day as money is now, and, in fact, acted like
members of the Legislature generally.
[Illustration: JAMESTOWN LEGISLATOR.]
In 1676, one hundred years before the Colonies declared themselves
free and independent, a rebellion, under the management of a bright
young attorney named Bacon, visited Jamestown and burned the
American metropolis, after which Governor Berkeley was driven out.
Bacon died just as his rebellion was beginning to pay, and the people
dispersed. Berkeley then took control, and killed so many rebels that
Mrs. Berkeley had to do her own work, and Berkeley, who had no one
left to help him but his friends, had to stack his own grain that fall and
do the chores at the barn.
Jamestown is now no more. It was succeeded in 1885 by Jamestown,
North Dakota, now called Jimtown, a prosperous place in the rich
farming-lands of that State.
Jamestown the first, the scene of so many sorrows and little jealousies,
so many midnight Indian attacks and bilious attacks by day, became a
solemn ruin, and a few shattered tombstones, over which the
jimson-weed and the wild vines clamber, show to the curious traveller
the place where civilization first sought to establish itself on the James
River, U.S.A.
* * * * *
The author wishes to refer with great gratitude to information contained
in the foregoing chapter and obtained from the following works:
The Indian and other Animalcula. By N. K. Boswell, Laramie City,
Wyoming.

How to Jolly the Red Man out of his Lands. By Ernest Smith.
The Female Red Man and her Pure Life. By Johnson Sides, Reno,
Nevada (P.M. please forward if out on war-path).
The Crow Indian and His Caws. By Me.
Massacre Etiquette. By Wad. McSwalloper, 82 McDougall St., New
York.
Where is my Indian to night? By a half-bred lady of Winnipeg.

[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
THE PLYMOUTH COLONY.
In the fall of 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth during a
disagreeable storm, and, noting the excellent opportunity for future
misery, began to erect a number of rude cabins. This party consisted of
one hundred and two people of a resolute character who wished to
worship God in a more extemporaneous manner than had been the
custom in the Church of England.
They found that the Indians of Cape Cod were not ritualistic, and that
they were willing to dispose of inside lots at Plymouth on reasonable
terms, retaining, however, the right to use the lands for massacre
purposes from time to time.
The Pilgrims were honest, and gave the Indians something for their
land in almost every instance, but they put a price upon it which has
made the Indian ever since a comparatively poor man.
Half of this devoted band died before spring, and yet the idea of
returning to England did not occur to them. "No," they exclaimed, "we
will not go back to London until we can go first-class, if we have to

stay here two hundred years."
During the winter they discovered why the lands had been sold to them
so low. The Indians of one tribe had died there of a pestilence the year
before, and so when the Pilgrims began to talk trade they did not haggle
over prices.
In the early spring, however, they were surprised to hear the word
"Welcome" proceeding from the door-mat of Samoset, an Indian whose
chief was named Massasoit. A treaty was then made for fifty years,
Massasoit taking "the same."
Canonicus once sent to Governor Bradford a bundle of arrows tied up
in a rattlesnake's skin. The Governor put them away in the pantry with
his other curios, and sent Canonicus a few bright new bullets and a
little dose of powder. That closed the correspondence. In those days
there were no newspapers, and most of the fighting was done without a
guarantee or side bets.
Money-matters; however, were rather panicky at the time, and the
people