Of all the joyous festivals among the Southern Colonists, none was so mirthful as a wedding. The early records of the wreck of the Sea Venture and the tedious and dangerous delay on the Bermudas mention that in even that troublous time they held one “merry English wedding.” In anynew land marriages and births are joyful events. All that is needed for prosperity is multiplication of settlers, and so it is quite natural that the setting up of a new household should be celebrated with rejoicing and merry-making.
In one respect the colonists broke with the home traditions. They insisted on holding their marriage ceremonies at home rather than in church, and no minister could move their determination. As civilization advanced, and habits grew more luxurious, the marriage festivities grew more elaborate and formal. The primitive customs gave way to pomp and display, till at length a wedding became an affair of serious expense. “The house of the parents,” says Scharf in his “Chronicles of Baltimore,” “would be filled with company to dine; the same company would stay to supper. For two days punch was dealt out in profusion. The gentlemen saw the groom on the first floor, and then ascended to the second floor, where they saw the bride; there every gentleman, even to one hundred a day, kissed her.”
A Virginia wedding in the olden time was a charming picture—the dancers making merry in the wide halls or on the lawn; the black servants dressed in fine raiment for the occasion and showing their white teeth in that enjoyment only possible to a negro; the jolly parson acting atonce as priest and toast-master; the groom in ruffles and velvet, and the bride in brocade and jewels. Never again will our country have so picturesque a scene to offer. Let us recall it while we may!
His Dress. “In teacup time of hood and hoop And when the patch was worn”
Ifyou have any curiosity to know what clothes these first Colonial Cavaliers wore, you may learn very easily by reading over the “particular of Apparrell” upon which they agreed as necessary to the settler bound for Virginia.
The list includes: “1 dozen Points, a Monmouth cap, 1 waste-coat, 3 falling bands, 1 suit of canvase, 3 shirts, 1 suit of frieze, 1 suit of cloth, 4 paire shoes, 3 paire Irish stockings, and 1 paire garters.” Besides these he would need “1 Armor compleat, light, a long peece, a sword, a belt and a Bandelier,” which may be reckoned among his wearing apparel, for it would be long before the settler could be safe without them when he ventured outside the palisade.
Englishmen in those days were fond of elaborate dress. It was the period of conical hats, and rosetted shoes, of doublets and sashes and padded trunk-hose, which his Majesty, James the First,much affected because they filled out his ill-shaped legs. Suits of clothes were a frequent form of gift and bequest. Captain John Smith’s will declares, “I give unto Thomas Packer, my best suite of aparrell, of a tawney colour, viz., hose, doublet, jerkin and cloake.”
The peruke began its all-conquering career in England, under the Stuarts. Elizabeth, it is true, had owned eighty suits of hair, and Mary of Scotland had varied her hair to match her dresses. But a defect of the French Dauphin introduced the use of the wig for men as well as women, and false hair became the rage throughout the world of fashion. A London peruke-maker advertised: “Full-bottom wigs, full bobs, minister’s bobs, naturals, half-naturals, Grecian flyes, Curleyroys, airey levants, qu perukes and baggwiggs.” The customer must have been hard to please, who could find nothing to suit his style in such a stock.
The settlers in Colonial America did not allow themselves such luxuries of the toilet as a variety of wigs, though a well-planned peruke or “a bob” might have been a good device to trick the tomahawk of the savage into a bloodless scalping. With the poorer people, a single wig for Sunday wear sufficed, and was replaced on week days by a cap, generally of linen.
The Colonial dames, being too far from Court tocopy the low-necked dresses, the stomachers and farthingales of the inner circle of fashion, wore instead, huge ruffs, full, short petticoats, and long, flowing sleeves, over tight undersleeves. Even in the wilderness, however, they retained a feminine fondness for gay attire.
John Pory, a clever scapegrace intimately acquainted with gaming-tables and sponging-houses in London, but figuring in Virginia as secretary to Governor Yeardley, wrote home to Sir Dudley Carleton, “That your Lordship may know that we are not the veriest beggars in the world, our cow-keeper here of James Cittie, on Sundays goes accoutred all in fresh flaming silk, and a wife of one that in England professed the black art, not of a scholar but of a collier of Croydon, wears her rough beaver hat with a fair pearl hat-band and a silken suit, thereto correspondent.”
Lively John was probably lying a little in the cause of immigration, but it is certain that the desire for fine clothes early called for a check, and at an early session of the Virginia House of Burgesses, a sumptuary law was passed “against excess in apparell,” directing “that every man be ceffed in the church for all publique contributions—if he be unmarried, according to his own apparrell; if he be married, according to his own and his wives, or either of their apparell.”Here, surely, is a suggestion from the past, for the fashionable church of the present.
A later law in the provinces enacts that “no silke stuffe in garments or in peeces, except for hoods or scarfes, nor silver or gold lace, nor bonelace of silke or thread, nor ribbands wrought with silver or gold in them, shall be brought into this country to sell, after the first of February.” A Maryland statute proposes that two sorts of “cloaths” only be worn, one for summer, the other for winter. But this was going too far, and the law was never enforced.
It was permitted to none but Members of the Council and Heads of Hundreds in Virginia to wear the coveted gold on their clothes, or to wear any silk not made by themselves. This last prohibition was intended not so much to discourage pomp and pride, as to stimulate the infant industry of silk production, which from the beginning had been a pet scheme of the colonists. They had imported silk-worms and planted mulberry trees; and as an inducement to go into the business, the Burgesses offered a premium of five thousand pounds of tobacco to any one making a hundred pounds of wound silk in any one year.
His Gracious Majesty, Charles the Second, sent to his loyal subjects in Virginia, a letter, still to be seen in the college library at Williamsburg. Itis written by his Majesty’s private secretary and signed with the sacred “Charles R.” It is addressed to Governor Berkeley, and runs:
“Trusty & Wellbeloved, We Greet You Well. Wee have received wthmuch content ye dutifull respects of Our Colony in yepresent lately made us by you & yecouncell there, of yefirst product of yenew Manufacture of Silke, which as a mark of Our Princely acceptation of yorduteys & for yrparticular encouragement, etc.—Wee have commanded to be wrought up for yeuse of Our owne person.”
From this letter has sprung the legend, dear to loyalist hearts, that the robe worn by Charles at his coronation was woven of Virginia silk.
So much material was needed “for yeuse of our owne person,” that the offering of silk was no doubt very welcome. The King’s favorite, Buckingham, had twenty-seven suits, one of them of white uncut velvet, set all over with diamonds and worn with diamond hat-bands, cockades and ear-rings, and yoked with ropes and knots of pearls.
It was an era of wild extravagance. Not satisfied with the elegance of the time of Charles First, his son’s courtiers added plumes to the wide-brimmed hats, enlarged the bows on the shoes, donned great wigs, loaded their vests withembroidery, and over their coats hung short cloaks, worth a fortune.
The women dressed as befitted the court of a dissolute king. Their artificial curls were trained in “heart-breakers” and “love-locks.” The whiteness of their skin was enhanced by powder and set off by patches. Their shoulders rose above bodices of costly brocade hung with jewels which had sometimes ruined both buyer and wearer.
The Puritans, by their opposition to the Court, escaped the evil influences of these extravagances. But the Colonial Cavaliers, who bowed before the King lower than the courtiers at home, of course imitated his dress, so far as their fortunes allowed. Every frigate that came into port at Jamestown or St. Maries brought the latest London fashions. A little before Colonel Fitzhugh in Virginia was ordering his Riding Camblet cloak from London, Mr. Samuel Pepys was writing in his journal, “This morning came home my fine camlete cloak with gold buttons.” While this gentleman was attiring himself in his new shoulder-belt and tunique laced with silk, “and so very handsome to church,” Sir William Berkeley and Governor Calvert were opening their eyes of a Sunday morning three thousand miles away, and making ready to get into their rosetted shoes, and to lace their breeches and hose together with points as fanciful as his, and, like him, perhaps, having their heads “combed by yemaide forpowder and other troubles.” No doubt Lady Berkeley, in her fine lace bands, her coverchef and deep veil, was as fine as Madam Pepys in her paragon pettycoat and “just a corps.”
With the beginning of the eighteenth century, the hoop appeared, and carried all before it, in more senses than one. “The ladies’ petticoats,” I read in the notes of a contemporary of the fashion, “are now blown up into a most enormous concave.” Over this concave the ladies wore, on ceremonious occasions, such as a ball at Governor Spotswood’s or an assembly at Annapolis, trailing gowns of heavy brocade, many yards in length. Dragging these skirts behind, and bearing aloft on their heads a towering structure of feathers, ribbons and lace, it was no wonder these dames preferred slow and stately measures. At their side, or as near as the spreading hoop permitted, moved their favored cavaliers, their coat-skirts stiff with buckram, their swords dangling between their knees, their breeches of red plush or black satin, so tight that they fitted without a wrinkle.
Men of that day took their dress very seriously. Washington, who had doubtless gained many ideas of fashion from the modish young officers of Braddock’s army, ordered his costumes with as much particularity as he afterward conducted hiscampaigns. Shortly before he started with his little cavalcade of negro servants on his five-hundred-mile ride to Massachusetts, in 1756, he sent over to a correspondent in London an order for an extensive wardrobe. He wanted “2 complete livery suits for servants, with a spare cloak and all other necessary trimmings for two suits more.” He omits no detail. “I would have you,” he writes, “choose the livery by our arms; only as the field is white, I think the clothes had better not be quite so, but nearly like the inclosed. The trimmings and facings of scarlet, and a scarlet waistcoat. If livery lace is not quite disused, I should be glad to have the cloaks laced. I like that fashion best, and two silver-laced hats for the above servants.”
In addition to this, he wishes “1 set of horse-furniture with livery lace, with the Washington crest on the housings, etc. The cloak to be of the same piece and color of the clothes, 3 gold and scarlet sword-knots, 3 silver and blue ditto, 1 fashionable gold-laced hat.”
It is not strange that the gallant young officer made a sensation among the dames and damsels of Philadelphia and New York as he journeyed northward, nor that Mistress Mary Phillipse nearly lost her heart to the wearer of the gold and scarlet sword-knots and the fashionable gold-laced hat.
All society went in gorgeous array in those gaydays, before color had been banished to suit the grim taste of the Puritan, and to meet the economical maxims ofPoor Richard. Judges, on the bench, wore robes of scarlet, faced with black velvet, exchanged in summer for thinner ones of silk. Etiquette demanded equally formal costume for advocates at the bar. Patrick Henry, who began by indifference to dress, even rushing into court fresh from the chase, with mud and mire clinging to his leather breeches, at length yielded to social pressure, and donned a full suit of black velvet in which to address the court; and, on one occasion at least, a peach-colored coat effectively set off by a bag-wig, powdered, as pompous Mr. Wirt observes, “in the highest style of forensic fashion.”
A satirical description sets forth the dress of a dandy in the middle of the eighteenth century, as consisting of “a coat of light green, with sleeves too small for the arms, and buttons too big for the sleeves; a pair of Manchester fine stuff breeches, without money in the pockets; clouded silk stockings, but no legs; a club of hair behind, larger than the head that carries it; a hat of the size of a sixpence, on a block not worth a farthing.”
In October, 1763, the free-school at Annapolis was broken into by robbers, and the wardrobe of the master stolen. When I remember the scanty salaries paid to these schoolmasters, I look withsurprise on the inventory, which the victim of the robbery publishes. Here we have a superfine blue broadcloth frock coat, a new superfine scarlet waistcoat bound with gold lace, a pair of green worsted breeches lined with dimity, besides a ruffled shirt, pumps, and doe-skin breeches. A very pretty wardrobe, I should say, for the teacher of a Colonial village-school!
It was a picturesque world in those days. The gentry rode gayly habited in bright-colored velvets and ruffles; the clergy swept along in dignified black; the judges wore their scarlet robes, and the mechanics and laborers were quite content to don a leather apron over their buckskin breeches and red-flannel jacket. The slaves in Carolina were forbidden to wear anything, except when in livery, finer than negro-cloth, duffils, kerseys, osnaburgs, blue linen, check-linen, coarse garlix or calicoes, checked cotton, or Scotch plaid. This prohibition was quite unnecessary, as the slave thought himself very lucky if he were clad in a new and whole garment of any sort.
Even paupers had their distinctive badges. A Virginia statute commands that every person who shall receive relief from the parish, and be sent to the poorhouse, shall, upon the shoulder of the right sleeve of his, or her, uppermost garment, in an open and visible manner, wear a badge withthe name of the parish to which he, or she, belongs, cut either in blue, red, or green cloth, at the will of the vestry or churchwardens. If any unfortunate were afflicted with pride as well as poverty and refused to wear this badge of pauperism, he was subject, by the law, to a whipping, not to exceed five lashes.
The students of William and Mary College were required to wear academical dress as soon as they had passed “yegrammar school,” and thus another costume was added to the moving tableaux on the street of Williamsburg.
In the college-books, I find it resolved by the Faculty in 1765 that Mrs. Foster be appointed stocking-mender in the college, and that she be paid annually the sum of £12, provided she furnishes herself with lodging, diet, fire, and candles. Considering the length of stockings in those days, and assuming that the nature of boys has not materially changed, I cannot help thinking the salary somewhat meagre for the duties involved. Stockings, however, were less troublesome than shirts. A Mrs. Campbell sends her nephews back to school accompanied by a note explaining that she returns all their clothes exceptelevenshirts, not yet washed.
If the clothes of boys were troublesome, those of girls were more so. Madam Mason, as guardianof her children, sends in an account, wherein the support of each child is reckoned at a thousand pounds of tobacco yearly. Her son, Thomson, is charged with linen and ruffled shirts, and her daughter, Mary, with wooden-heeled shoes, petticoats, one hoop-petticoat, and linen. We may be sure that the needling on those petticoats and ruffled skirts would be a reproach, in its dainty fineness, to the machine-made garments of our age.
Little Dolly Payne, who afterward became Mrs. Madison and mistress of the White House, trotted off to school in her childhood (so her biographer tells us), equipped with “a white linen mask to keep every ray of sunshine from the complexion, a sun-bonnet sewed on her head every morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and arms.”
Gentlewomen, big and little, in yeolden time, seem to have had an inordinate fear of the sunshine, as is evidenced by their long gloves, their veils, and those riding-masks of cloth or velvet, which must have been most uncomfortable to keep in place, even with the aid of the little silver mouthpieces held between the teeth. But vanity enables people to endure many ills. In a correspondence between Miss Anna Bland in Virginia, and her brother Theodorick in London, the young lady writes: “My Papa has sent for me a dress and apair of stays. I should be glad if you will be peticular (sic) in the choice of them. Let the stays be very stiff bone, and much gored at the hips, and the dress any other color except yellow.”
No doubt, the consciousness of looking well, sustained the young martyr, as she gasped through the minuet, in her new dress and her stiff stays, drawn tight at home by the aid of the bed-post. The first directions to the attendant in a case of swooning, so common in our great-grandmothers’ lifetime, was to cut the stays, that the imprisoned lungs might get room to breathe once more.
Human nature is oddly inconsistent. These people, who found it incomprehensible that savages should tattoo their bodies, hang beads round their necks, and wear ornaments of snakes and rats hung by the tails through their ears and noses, decked themselves with jewelry, wore wigs and patches, and pierced their ears for barbaric rings of gold or precious stones. I protest I don’t know which would have looked queerer to the other, the Indian squaw or the Colonial belle of the eighteenth century; but, from the artistic standpoint, the advantage was all with the child of nature.
In a grave business letter, written to Washington on matters of state by George Mason, the correspondent adds: “P.S. I shall take it as a particular favor if you’ll be kind enough to get metwo pairs of gold snaps made at Williamsburg, for my little girls. They are small rings with a joint in them, to wear in the ears, instead of ear-rings—also a pair of toupée tongs.”
It is a pleasant glimpse we thus gain of one great statesman writing to another, and turning away from public enterprises to remember the private longings of the two little maidens at home, whose hearts are to be gladdened, though the flesh suffers, by these bits of finery.
It was not little girls alone who were willing to endure discomfort in the cause of personal appearance. Washington’s false teeth still remain, a monument of his fortitude. They are a set of “uppers and unders” carved in ivory, inserted in a ponderous plate, with clamps in the roof that must have caused torture to the inexperienced mouth. The upper set is connected with the lower by a spiral spring, and the two are arranged to be held in place by the tongue. No one but the hero of Trenton and Valley Forge, could have borne such an affliction and preserved his equanimity.
Tooth-brushes are a modern luxury. In the old times, the most genteel were content to rub the teeth with a rag covered with chalk or snuff, and there was more than a suspicion of effeminacy in a man’s cleaning his teeth at all. It is not strange that there was such a demand for the implantedteeth which Dr. Le Mayeur introduced toward the end of the century.
I think it may be fairly claimed that the nineteenth century has marked a great advance in personal cleanliness. To this, as much as anything, except perhaps the use of rubber clothing, we owe its increase of longevity. It is impossible to overestimate the importance to modern hygiene of water-proof substances, keeping the feet and body dry. Pattens and clogs were of service in their day and generation, but they were a clumsy contrivance as compared with the light overshoes of India-rubber. It was not till 1772 that the first efforts were made in Baltimore to introduce the use of umbrellas. “These, like tooth-brushes,” writes Scharf, “were at first ridiculed as effeminate, and were only introduced by the vigorous efforts of the doctors, who recommended them chiefly as shields from the sun and a defence against vertigo and prostration from heat. The first umbrellas came from India. They were made of coarse oiled linen, stretched over sticks of rattan, and were heavy and clumsy, but they marked a wonderful step in the direction of hygienic dress. Before their introduction, ministers and doctors, who, more than any one else in the community, were called to face the winter rains, wore a cape of oiled linen, called aroquelaire.”
If the dress of the period before the Revolution was not hygienic, it was handsome, and eminently picturesque, as the old portraits of the last century show. The universally becoming ruffles of lace were in vogue, and women still young wore dainty caps, whose delicate lace, falling over the hair, lent softness and youth to the features. Old ladies were not unknown as now, but, at an age when the nineteenth century woman of fashion is still frisking about in the costume of a girl of twenty, the Colonial dame adopted the dress and manners which she conceived suited to her age and dignity. Here, for instance, is the evidence of a portrait, marked on the stretcher, “Amy Newton, aged 45, 1770, John Durand,pinxit.” The lady wears an ermine-trimmed cloak draped about her shoulders, over a bodice, lace-trimmed and cut square in the neck. The lace-bordered cap falls as usual over the matron’s hair. There is, to me, something rather fine and dignified in the assumption of a matronly dress as a matter of pride and choice. In one respect the Colonial dames, old and young, were gayly attired. Their feet were clad in rainbow hues of brilliant reds and greens and their dresses were generally cut to show to advantage the high-heeled slipper and clocked stocking of bright color.
Washington’s order-book forms an excellent guide to the prevailing modes of the day. Theorders call for rich coats and waistcoats and cocked hats for himself; and for Mrs. Washington, a salmon tabby velvet, fine flowered lawn aprons, white callimancos hoes, perfumed powder, puckered petticoats, and black velvet riding masks. Master Custis is fitted out with two hair bags and a whole piece of ribbon, while the servants are provided with fifty ells ofosnabergs(a coarse cloth made of flax and tow manufactured at Osnaberg, in Germany, and much in vogue for servants’ wear).
The goods of the time, for high and low, were made to outlast more than one generation. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, was betrothed in his youth to a beautiful young lady. The wedding-dress was ordered from London, but before its arrival the bride elect had died, and the dress was laid aside. A century later, it appeared at a fancy dress ball, its fabric untarnished, and untouched by time. It was worth while to pay high prices for such stuffs. In many a household to-day is cherished some bit of the brocades, sarcenets, shalloons, and tammies worn by our great-grandmothers and their mothers.
In the MarylandGazette, somewhere in the middle of the last century, Catherine Rathel, milliner, from London, advertises a tempting assortment of white satin, India and other chintzes, calico, gingham, cloaks, cardinal’s hats, flowered gauzeaprons, bonnets, caps, égrettes, fillets, breast-flowers, fashionable ribbands, buttons and loops, silk hose, superfine white India stockings, box and ivory combs.
The firm of Rivington & Brown present an equally attractive display for gentlemen: “An importation of hats, gold and silver-laced, andcocked by his Majesty’s Hatter. London-made pumps and boot-garters, silk or buff sword-belts and gorgets, newest style paste shoe-buckles, gold seals, snuff-boxes of tortoise-shell, leather, or papier-maché.”
Whatever luxuries or elegances of the toilet a man of fashion might possess, his snuff-box was his chief pride. This was the weapon with which he fought the bloodless battles of the drawing-room and, armed with it, he felt himself a Cavalier indeed. The nice study of the times and seasons when it should be tapped, when played with, when offered or accepted, and when haughtily thrust into the pocket, marked the gentleman of the old school. But one use of the snuff-box, I am certain, was never devised by either Steele or Lilie, but was left for the brain or nerves of a Colonial dame to invent. A widow, left alone and unprotected, occupied that ground-floor room generally designated in the Colonial house as the parlor-chamber. Fearing firearms more than robbers, she armed herself with a large snuff-box, which, in case of anysuspicious noise in the night, she was wont to click loudly, in imitation of the cocking of a gun. The effect on the hypothetical robbers was instantaneous, and they never disturbed her twice in the same night.
Colonial dress, as we advance toward the time of the Revolution, grows simpler. Wigs fall by their own weight, and men begin to wear their own hair, drawn back and fastened in dignified fashion with a bow of broad ribbon, generally black. Except for ruffled shirts and deep cuffs, the costume of society approaches the sobriety of to-day, and the lack of money and threat of war subdue the dress even of the women. The military alone still keep up the pomp and circumstance of costume worn by all men in the Stuart era. In 1774, the Fairfax Independent Company of Volunteers meet in Virginia, and resolve to gather at stated seasons for practice of military exercise and discipline. It is further resolved that their dress shall be a uniform of blue turned up with buff, with plain yellow metal buttons, buff waistcoat, and breeches, and white stockings; and furnished with good flint-lock and bayonet, sling cartouch box and tomahawk.
Washington’s orders from Fort Cumberland, dated the seventeenth of September, 1775, prescribe the uniform to be worn by the VirginiaRegiment in the opening struggle: “Every officer of the Virginia Regiment to provide himself, as soon as he can conveniently, with suit of Regimentals of good blue Cloath; the Coat to be faced and cuffed with scarlet, and trimmed with Silver; a scarlet waistcoat, with silver Lace; blue Breeches, and a silver-laced hat, if to be had, for Camp or Garrison duty. Besides this, each officer to provide himself with a common soldier’s Dress for Detachments and Duty in the Woods.”
In looking back to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, when that great wrench was made which separated America from the parent country, we have a feeling that men’s minds were wholly occupied with the tremendous issues at stake; yet, as we study the old records, we find the same buying and selling, the planting and reaping, the same pondering and planning of dress and the trifles of daily life going on much in the old fashion. In Jefferson’s private note-book, under date of July 4th, 1776, the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I find, entered in his own hand, the item: “For seven pairs of women’s gloves, twenty shillings.”
Even so do great things and small jostle one another in this strange world of ours, and a woman’s glove lies close to the document which changed the fate of nations.
News, Trade, and Travell
Inthe early days, the highways of the Cavalier Colonies were the broad waters of bay and sound; their by-ways, the innumerable rivers and creeks; and their toll-gates, the ports of entry. Road-making was tedious and costly, and the settlers saw no reason for wasting time and energy in the undertaking, when nature had spread her pathways at their feet, and they needed only to step into a canoe, or a skiff manned by black oarsmen, to glide from one plantation to another; or to hoist sail in a pinnace for distant settlements. Many animals travel, but man is the only one who packs a trunk, and, except a few like the nautilus and the squirrel, the only one who sails a boat. There is a sentiment connected with a ship, which no other conveyance can ever have. The very names of those old colonial vessels are redolent of “amber-greece,” “pearle,” and treasure, of East India spices and seaweed
“From Bermuda’s reefs, and edgesOf sunken ledgesIn some far-off bright Azore.”
The history of the colonies might be written in the story of their ships. There wereThe Good Speed,The Discovery, andThe Susan Constant, which preceded the world-famousHalf MoonandMayflowerto the new world. There wereThe ArkandThe Dovethat brought over Lord Baltimore and his colonists;The Sea-Venturewhich went to wreck on the Somer Isles; andThe Patience, andThe Deliverancewhich brought her crew safe to Virginia. These were the pioneers, followed by a long line of staunch craft, large and small, from theGolden LyontoThe Peggy Stewart, which discharged her cargo of taxed tea into Chesapeake Bay.
Many ships in those days were named, as we name chrysanthemums, in honor of some prominent man or fair dame. These good folk must have followed the coming and going of their namesakes with curious interest. The sight of a sail on the horizon never lost its excitement, for every ship brought some wild tale of adventure. The story of shipwreck “on the still vexed Bermoothes,” and the wonderful escape of Gates and Somers, with their crew, has been made famous forever by the tradition that it suggested to Shakespeare the plot ofThe Tempest; but every “frygat” that touched at Jamestown or Annapolis brought accounts almost as thrilling, of storm and stress, of fighting tempests with a crewreduced by scurvy to three or four active seamen, of running for days from a Spanish caravel or a French pickaroune.
TheMargaret and Johnset sail for America early in the seventeenth century, carrying eighty passengers, besides sailors, and armed with “eight Iron peeces and a Falcon.” When she reached the “Ile of Domenica,” the captain entered a harbor, that the men might stretch their limbs on dry land, “having been eleven weeks pestered in this vnwholesome ship.” Here, to their misfortune, they found two large ships flying Hollander colors, but proving to be Spaniards. These enemies sent a volley of shot which split the oars and made holes in the boats, yet failed to strike a man on theMargaret and John.
“Perceiving what they were,” writes one of the English crew, “we fitted ourselves the best we could to prevent a mischief: seeing them warp themselves to windward, we thought it not good to be boarded on both sides at an anchor; we intended to set saile, but the Vice-Admiral battered so hard at our starboard side, that we fell to our businesse, and answered their vnkindnesse with such faire shot from a demiculvering, that shot her betweene wind and water, whereby she was glad to leave us and her Admirall together.” The Admiral then bespoke them, and demanded asurrender; to which the sturdy English replied that they had no quarrel with the King of Spain, and asked only to go their way unmolested, but as they would do no wrong, assuredly they would take none. The Spaniards answered these bold words with another volley of shot, returned with energy by the English guns.
“The fight continued halfe an houre, as if we had been invironed with fire and smoke, untill they discovered the waste of our ship naked, where they bravely boorded us, loofe for loofe, hasting with pikes and swords to enter; but it pleased God so to direct our Captaine and encourage our men with valour, that our pikes being formerly placed under our halfe deck, and certaine shot lying close for that purpose under the port holes, encountered them so rudely, that their fury was not onely rebated, but their hastinesse intercepted, and their whole company beaten backe; many of our men were hurt, but I am sure they had two for one.” Thus, all day and all night, the unequal battle continued, till at length the doughty little British vessel fairly fought off her two enemies, and they fell sullenly back and ran near shore to mend their leaks, while theMargaret and Johnstood on her course.
It is hard, in these days, when the high seas are as safe as city streets, to realize the condition ofterror to which merchantmen were reduced, two hundred years ago, by the rumor of a black flag seen in the offing, or of some “pyrat” lying in wait outside the harbor. In Governor Spotswood’s time, Williamsburg was thrown into a state of great excitement by the report that the dreaded buccaneer John Theach, known by the name of Blackbeard, had been seen cruising along the coasts of Virginia and Carolina. The Governor rose to the occasion, however. He sent out Lieutenant Maynard with two ships, to look for Blackbeard. Maynard found him and boarded his vessel in Pamlico Sound. The pirate was no coward. He ordered one of his men to stand beside the powder-magazine with a lighted match, ready, at a signal from him, to blow up friends and foes together. The signal never came, for a lucky shot killed Blackbeard on the spot and his crew surrendered. They might as well have died with their leader, for thirteen of them were hanged at Williamsburg. Blackbeard’s skull was rimmed with silver and made into a ghastly drinking-cup, and we hear no more of pirates in those waters.
The protection of vessels was not the only reason for policing the waterways. Smuggling was much more common than piracy, and the laws against it were the harder to enforce, because the entire community was secretly in sympathy withthe offenders. In the earliest Maryland records is Lord Baltimore’s commission, giving his lieutenant authority to “appoint fit places for public ports for lading, shipping, unlading and discharging all goods and merchandizes to be imported or exported into or out of our said province, and to prohibit the shipping or discharging of any goods or merchandizes whatsoever in all other places.” Any one violating the shipping law was subject to heavy fines and imprisonment.
In Virginia the statutes compelled ships to stop at Jamestown, or other designated ports, before breaking bulk at the private landings along the river. Who can picture the excitement in those lonely plantations when the frigate tied up at the wharf, and began to unload from its hold, its cargo of tools for the farm, furniture for the house, and, best of all, the square white letters with big round seals, containing news of the friends distant a three months’ journey! Sometimes the new comer would prove no ocean voyager, but a nearer neighbor, some stout, round-sterned packet, from New Netherland or New England, laden with grain and rum, or hides and rum, to be exchanged for the tobacco of the Old Dominion.
To journey from one colony to another thus, the trader must first secure a license and take oath that he would not sell or give arms or ammunition tothe Indians. On these terms Lord Baltimore, in 1637, granted to a merchant mariner, liberty “to trade and commerce for corn, beaver or any other commodities with the Dutchmen on Hudson’s river, or with any Indians or other people whatsoever being or inhabiting to the northward, without the capes commonly called Cape Henry and Cape Charles.”
Long after the waters of Chesapeake Bay were dotted with sails, and the creeks of Maryland and Virginia gay with skiffs, the land communication was still in an exceedingly primitive condition. The roads were little more than bridle-paths. The surveyors deemed their duty done if the logs and fallen trees were cleared away, and all Virginia could not boast of a single engineer. Bridges there were none; and the traveller, arriving at a river bank, must find a ford, or swim his horse across, counting himself fortunate if he kept his pouch of tobacco dry. Planters at a distance from the rivers hewed out rolling-roads, on which they brought down their tobacco in casks, attached to the horses that drew them by hoop-pole shafts. Roads, winding along the streams, were slowly laid out, and answered well enough in fair weather, but in storms they were impassable, and at night so bewildering that belated travellers were forced to come to a halt, makea fire, and bivouac till morning. In 1704, the roads in Maryland were so poor that we find the Assembly passing an act declaring that “the roads leading to any county court-house shall have two notches on the trees on both sides of the roads, and another notch a distance above the other two; and any road that leads to any church shall be marked, into the entrance of the same, and at the leaving any other road, with a slip cut down the face of the tree near the ground.” Guide-posts were still unknown.
The travel was as primitive as the roads. Public coaches did not exist. Horseback riding was the usual way of getting over the ground, though the rough roads made the jolting a torment. “Travelling in this country,” wrote a stranger, as late as the Revolution, “is extremely dangerous, especially if it is the least windy, from the number of rotten pines continually blowing down.” It was no uncommon thing for a driver to be obliged to turn into the woods half a dozen times in a single mile to avoid the fallen logs. A certain Madame de Reidefel, who was driving in a post-chaise with her children, had a narrow escape from death. A rotten tree fell directly across her path, but fortunately struck between the chaise and the horses, so that the occupants of the carriage escaped, though the front wheels were crushed, and one of the horses lamed.
Ye “Blaze.”
Between pirates on sea and pine-trees on land, so many perils beset the traveller that starting on a journey became a momentous undertaking. “It was no uncommon thing,” writes the historian, “for one who went on business or pleasure from Charleston to Boston or New York, if he were a prudent and cautious man, to consult the almanac before setting out, to make his will, to give a dinner or a supper to his friends at the tavern, and there to bid them a formal goodbye.”
A journey being so great an affair, the traveller was of course a marked man, and his arrival at an ordinary was the signal for the gathering of all who could crowd in to hear of his adventures, and also to hear the public and private news of which he might be the bearer. “I have heard Dr. Franklin relate with great pleasantry,” said one of his friends, “that in travelling when he was young, the first step he took for his tranquillity and to obtain immediate attention at the inns, was to anticipate inquiry, by saying: ‘My name is Benjamin Franklin. I was born at Boston, am a printer by profession, am travelling to Philadelphia, shall have to return at such a time, and have no news. Now what can you give me for dinner?’”
This curiosity was rather peculiar to NewEngland. The Southerner, while perhaps as anxious to hear the news, was more restrained in asking questions. That good breeding and tact which were a Cavalier inheritance, taught him to wait decorously for his news as for his food. A foreigner in the last century, in travelling through the South, came upon a party of Virginians smoking and drinking together on a veranda. He reports that on his ascending the steps to the piazza, every countenance seemed to say, ‘This man has a double claim to our attention, for he is a stranger in the place!’ In a moment, there was room made for him to sit down; a new bowl was called for, and every one who addressed him did it with a smile of conciliation; but no man asked him whence he had come or whither he was going.
All foreigners bear the same testimony to this universal courtesy, which smoothed rough roads and made travelling enjoyable, in spite of its difficulties and dangers. When I realize what those difficulties were, I am surprised at the willingness with which journeys were undertaken. I read of Washington setting out on a mission to Major-General Shirley in Boston, and riding the whole distance of five hundred miles on horseback in the depth of winter, escorted only by a few servants; yet little is made of his experiences. Women, too, were quite accustomed to ridingon long expeditions. An octogenarian described to Irving the horseback journeys of his mother in her scarlet cloth riding-habit. “Young ladies from the country,” he said, “used to come to the balls at Annapolis, riding, with their hoops arrangedfore and aftlike lateen sails; and after dancing all night, would ride home again in the morning.”
Annapolis, before the Revolution, was a centre of gayety. Its rich families came up to town for the season each Fall, and in the Spring moved back to their country-houses with their various belongings. The family coach which was used to transport these possessions was a curious affair to modern eyes. It was colored generally a light yellow, with smart facings. The body was of mahogany, with Venetian windows on each side, projecting lamps, and a high seat upon which coachman and footman climbed at starting.
As this old coach lumbered up and down the streets of Annapolis, its occupants no doubt fancied that they had reached the final limit of speed and comfort in travel, and they looked back with scorn and pity on the primitive conveyances of their ancestors, just as posterity will doubtless look back from their balloons and electric motors on our steam engines. In one of Jefferson’s early letters we chance upon a curious prophecy. Being aboutto make a visit, he asks to be met by his friend’s “periagua,” as a canoe was called, and suggests that some day a boat may be made, which shall row itself.
After all, I question whether there was not more pleasure in travel in those days, before boats rowed themselves, and when horses were made of flesh and blood instead of iron and steam; when the rider ambled along, noting each tree and shrub, pausing to exchange greetings with every wayfarer, and stopping by night beneath some hospitable roof to make merry over the cup of sack or the glass of “quince drink” prepared for his refreshment. If the traveller was of a surly and unsocial nature, he was indeed to be pitied; since, for him who would not accept his neighbor’s hospitality, there remained only the roadside tavern or “ordinary,” and woe to him who was compelled to test its welcome! The universal practice of keeping open-house made the inns poorer in quality, and the contempt of the community for one who would receive money for the entertainment of guests, kept men of repute out of the business.
A Maryland statute, in 1674, resolves “that noe Person in that Province shall have a Licence to keep Ordinary for the future but ththe shall give Bond to his Excellency with good Sureties that he shall keep foure good ffeather beds for theEntertainment of Customers.” In any place where the county court is held, he is directed to keep “eight ffeather or fflock beds at the least, and ffurniture suitable.” The charges of the ordinary-keeper are fixed by law. He is allowed to charge ten pounds of tobacco per meal “for dyet,” ten pounds “for small beare,” and four “for lodgingin a bed with sheets.”
While the traveller was loitering on the road, enjoying hospitality or enduring ordinaries, those he left at home were in ignorance of his whereabouts; and it was only after days or weeks of anxious waiting, that they could hope to hear of his safe arrival at his destination. Meanwhile rumor, which always thrives in proportion to ignorance, might make their lives miserable by reports of a riderless horse seen galloping into some village, of storms and gales, or of trees crashing across the lonely roads. In the absence of the post and the telegraph, this spreading of false news became so troublesome that an act was passed in Maryland declaring that, “Whereas many Idle and Bussie-headed people doe forge and divulge falce Rumors and Reports,” it is enacted that they be either fined or “receive such corporall punishment, not extending to life or member, as to the Iustices of that court shall seeme meete.”
It was long before the idea of a postal service under government control dawned upon the Colonies. Throughout almost the whole of the seventeenth century letters were sent by the hand of the chance traveller. Maryland directed that in the case of public state-papers the sheriff of one county should carry them to the sheriff of the next, and so on to their goal; but private letters had no such official care.
An old Virginia statute commanded that “all letters superscribedfor the publique service, should be immediately conveyed from plantation to plantation to the place and person directed, under the penalty of one hogshead of tobacco for each default.”
Another law, bearing date 1661, orders that “when there is any person in the family where the letters come, as can write, such person is required to endorse the day and houre he received them, that the neglect or contempt of any person stopping them may be the better knowne and punished accordingly.”
A letter in those days merited the attention it received, for it represented a vast deal of labor and expense. Paper was a costly luxury, as we may infer from those old yellow pages crossed and re-crossed with writing, and the tiny cramped hand in which the old sermons are written. In 1680, Ifind Colonel William Fitzhugh ordering from London “two large Paper-Books, one to contain about fourteen or fifteen quires of paper, the other about ten quires, and one other small one.”
The paper was left blank on one side, and so folded that it formed its own envelope. It was fastened with a seal whose taste and elegance was a matter of pride with the writer. The style was formal, as became the dignity of a person who knew how to write. In those times people did not write letters; they indited epistles. A communication sent across the ocean, in 1614, is addressed “To yeTruly Honorable & Right Worthy Knight, SrThomas Smith,” and is signed: “At YrCommand To Be Disposed of.”
Love-letters shared the formality of the time, and were written with a stateliness and elaboration of compliment which suggest a minuet on paper. Family letters are often in the form of a journal, and cover a period of months. They cost both labor and money but they were worth their price. Cheap postage has made cheap writing. We no longer compose; we only scribble.
In 1693, Thomas Neale was appointed by royal patent, “postmaster-general of Virginia andall other parts of North America.” The House of Burgesses passed an Act declaring that if post-offices were established in every county, Neale shouldreceive threepence for every letter not exceeding one sheet, or to or from any place not exceeding four score English miles distance.
In 1706, letters were forwarded eight times a year from Philadelphia to the Potomac, and afterward as far as Williamsburg, with the proviso that the post-rider should not start for Philadelphia till he had received enough letters to pay the expenses of the trip.
The average day’s journey for a postman covered a distance of some forty miles in Summer, and over good roads; but, when the heavy Autumn rains washed out great gullies in his path or the Winter storms beat him back, he was lucky if he accomplished half that distance. His letters were subject to so many accidents, that it is a wonder they ever reached the persons to whom they were addressed. It was not till the post-office passed into Franklin’s energetic and methodical hands that it was made regular and trustworthy.
The estimate of the common post in early daysis curiously illustrated by an episode which occurred in Virginia. The hero was one Mr. Daniel Park, “who,” says the chronicle, “to all the other accomplishments that make a complete sparkish gentleman, has added one upon which he infinitely values himself; that is, a quick resentment of every, the least thing, that looks like an affront or injury.”
One September morning, when the Governor of Maryland was breakfasting with Mr. Commissary Blair at Middle Plantation, Colonel Park marched in upon them, having a sword about him, much longer than what he commonly travelled with, and which he had caused to be ground sharp in the point that morning. Addressing himself to the Governor of Maryland, he burst out: “Captain Nicholson, did you receive a letter that I sent you from New York?”
“Yes,” answered Nicholson, “I received it.”
“And was it done like a gentleman,” fumed the fiery colonel, “to send that letter by the hand of a common post, to be read by everybody in Virginia? I look upon it as an affront, and expect satisfaction!”
Fancy the number of affairs of honor that this “complete young sparkish gentleman” would have on hand if he lived in the present year of grace and resented every letter sent him bythe common post!
There is something which strikes us as infinitely diverting in his suggestion that everybody in Virginia would be interested in his letter. But perhaps he was nearer the truth than we realize, for in his day all news came through such sources, and a letter was regarded as a good thing, which it would be gross selfishness not to share with one’s neighbors. As for a letter from Europe it was an affair of the greatest magnitude, exciting the interest of the whole community.
Those giant folios which entertain us every morning with their gossip from all quarters of the globe had no existence then. Early in the last century, the Colonial Cavalier gleaned all his knowledge of the world and its affairs, from some three-month-old copy of the London papers and magazines, brought over by a British packet. Even this communication, it seems, was uncertain, for complaint is made that the masters of vessels keep the packages till an accidental conveyance offers, and for want of better opportunities frequently commit them to boatmen, who care very little for their goods, so they get their freight.
The colonists had struggled to establish a local journal, and a printing press had been started in Virginia in the seventeenth century, but it had been strangled in its infancy by Berkeley, who declared it the parent of treason and infidelity; and so itcame about that the Southern Provinces had no public utterance for their news or their views, till the silence was broken by the voice of Maryland, speaking through herGazette, in 1727, when in all America there were only six rival sheets. Franklin says that his brother’s friends tried to dissuade him from publishingThe New England Courant, on the ground that there was already one newspaper in America. His memory lapsed a little, asThe Couranthad in fact three predecessors, but the incident shows how little notion there was at that time, of the public demand for news.
In 1736, was first issuedThe Virginia Gazette, a dingy little sheet about twelve by six inches in size, and costing to subscribers, fifteen shillings a year. The newspaper of the day had no editorial page. Its comments on public affairs were in the form of letters, after the fashion ofThe TatlerandThe Spectator. It had a poet’s corner, where many a young versemaker tried the wings of his Pegasus, and it printed also poetical tributes under the notices of deaths and marriages. In this section, after the record of the wedding of Mr. William Derricoat and Miss Suckie Tomkies, appear these lines:
“Hers the mild lustre of the blooming mornAnd his the radiance of the rising day—Long may they live and mutually possessA steady love and genuine happiness!”
When Edmund Randolph married Betsey Nicholas, the poet found himself unable to express his emotions in less than two stanzas:
“Exalted theme, too high for common lays!Could my weak muse with beauty be inspired,In numbers smooth I’d chant my Betsy’s praise,And tell how much her Randolph is admired.“To light the hymeneal torch, since they’re resolved,Kind Heaven, I trust, will make them truly blest;And when the Gordian knot shall be dissolved,Translate them to eternal peace and rest.”
It is safe to say that this figure, comparing matrimony with a Gordian knot, was original with the poet. Had the bridegroom been as fiery and “sparkish” as Colonel Park, he might have called out the writer, but he seems to have taken it in good part.
The prospectus of the MarylandGazettefor 1745 announces that its price will be twelve shillings a year, or fourteen shillings sealed and delivered. It promises the freshest advices, foreign and domestic, but adds, with much simplicity and candor: “In a dearth of news, which in this remote part of the world may sometimes reasonably be expected, we shall study to supply the deficit by presenting our readers with the best material we can possibly collect, having always due regard tothe promotion of virtue and learning, the suppression of vice and immorality, and the instruction as well as entertainment of our readers.” What more could the most exacting subscriber demand?
Advertisements, then, as now, served the double purpose of filling space, and supporting the paper. They were charged for, at the rate of five shillings for the first week, and one shilling for each week following, provided they were of moderate length—a vague provision, one would say. These old advertisements are of great value to the student of the life of the past. They give a better picture of the condition of society, than a ream of “notes.” Here we read of the shipping of a crew on a packet bound for England. Half-way down the column a lost hog is advertised, and here, Edward Morris, breeches-maker, announces a sale of buckskin breeches, and gloves with high tops, and assures his customers that “they may depend on kind usage at reasonable rates.” Surely the resources of modern advertising have never devised anything more alluring than this promise of “kind usage at reasonable rates.”
Since the art of reading was unknown to a considerable proportion of the community, it was natural that pictorial devices should be largely used. Not only were the shops along the highwaysdistinguished by such signs as “the Blue Glove,” and “the Golden Keys,” with appropriate illustrations; but in the advertising columns of the papers, the print was re-enforced by pictures of ships and horses, and runaway slaves.
The purchase and sale of negroes formed a standing advertisement, beneath the caption of an auction-block.
In the VirginiaGazetteof August, 1767, we find the following under the curious headline:
“Sale of a Musical Slave.”
“A valuable young handsome Negro fellow, about 18 or 20 years of age; has every qualification of a genteel and sensible servant, and has been in many different parts of the world. He shaves, dresses hair, and plays on the French horn. He lately came from London, and has with him two suits of new clothes, which the purchaser may have with him. Inquire at the printing office.”
It is hard to understand why the owner should wish to part with a prodigy possessed of so many accomplishments. Perhaps his playing on the French horn is the explanation.
Runaway servants, both black and white, form the subject of many advertisements in those old newspapers. In the MarylandGazette(1769)appears a description in rhyme of the disappearance of an indented servant:
“Last Wednesday morn at break of day,From Philadelphia ran awayAn Irishman, named John McKeogn.To fraud and imposition prone,About five feet five inches high;Can curse and swear, as well as lie.How old he is I can’t engage,But forty-five is near his age.“He oft in conversation chattersOf Scripture and religious matters,And fain would to the world impartThat virtue lodges in his heart.But, take the rogue from stem to stern,The hypocrite you’ll soon discern“And find, though his deportment’s civil,A saint without, within a devil.Whoe’er secures said John McKeogn,(Provided I should get my own),Shall have from me in cash paid downFive dollar bills, and half-a-crown.”
Mary Nelson is the owner and poet, or, in the fashion of the day, I should say poetess, and perhapsowneress, as I find it recorded of Mary Goddard that she was postmistress of Baltimore andPrintressandEditressof theBaltimore Journal.
The world moves. The auction-block, and therunaway slave, with his bundle on his back, have disappeared from among the pictures in the advertising column; the packet has given way to the ocean steamer; the horse to the bicycle; the stage coach to the railroad; the little provincial gazettes, with their coarse gray paper and blurred type, to the great dailies, as large as the Bible and as doubtful as the Apocrypha. I wonder if another century will have such astounding tales to tell of progress in news, trade and travel!
His Friendes and Foes.
Theearly adventurers had never seen anything of savage life till they touched the shores of Virginia. Everything connected with the strange beings there was full of interest. They set down faithfully whatever they saw, and a good deal more besides.
The Susquehannocks impressed them most of all the Indian tribes. Their enormous height and fine proportions made them look like giants, and their attire was as impressive as their persons. One who saw them, writes home in those first pioneer days: “Their attire is the skinnes of Beares and Woolves. Some have Cassacks made of Beares heads and skinnes that a mans head goes through the skinnes neck, and the eares of the Beare fastened to his shoulders, the nose and teeth hanging downe his breast, another Beares face split behind him, and at the end of the nose hung a Pawe. The half sleeves comming to the elbowes were the neckes of Beares and the armes throughthe mouth with pawes hanging at their noses. One had the head of a Wolfe hanging in a chaine for a Iewell.”
One of their chiefs specially impressed the English. He was a giant among giants. The calf of his leg was three-quarters of a yard round, and “the rest of his limbs answerable to that proportion.” His arrows were five quarters long, and he wore a wolf’s skin at his back for a quiver. The picture of this Indian Hercules accompanied the maps which Captain Smith sent home to enlighten the Company in England.
The stories of the different adventurers were gathered together and printed as “The General History of Virginia.” The volume was adorned (I cannot say illustrated) by a series of woodcuts, which make us laugh aloud by their inaccuracy. The Indians are simply gigantic Englishmen naked and beardless, with the hair standing in a stiff ridge on top of the head, like a cock’s comb. The wigwams look like haystacks, and the canoes like bathtubs. What a collection of pictures we might have had, if a kodak had been among the possessions of Captain Smith and his company! We should see King Pamaunche with “the chaine of pearles round his necke thrice double, the third parte of them as bygg as pease,” and catch a view of his “pallace” with its hundred-acre garden setwith beans, pease, tobacco, gourdes, pompions, “and other thinges unknowne to us in our tongue.” We should have the interiors of the smoky wigwams which Spelman and Archer visited, the forms of the squaws dimly outlined against the grimy mat, as they pounded corn, or dropped the bread into the kettle to boil.
Thanks to John Smith’s graphic pen, we have a picture of Powhatan, that fierce old ancestor of so many first families of Virginia, almost as vivid as a photograph. Smith went to visit him, and found him proudly tying upon a bedstead a foot high, upon ten or twelve mats. “At head sat a woman, at his feet another. On each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men, on each side the fire, five or ten in rank, and behind them as many young women, each a great chaine of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and with such a grave and majestical countenance as drove us into admiration to see such state in a naked savage.”
We might suppose these last words applied to the women, instead of to Powhatan, did we not know how little state and majesty were allowed these copper-colored Griseldas. The Indian squaws were little more than slaves. When the braves moved, it was the squaws who carried the wigwams and set them up in the new camp. When themen sat at meals, they spread the mats, waited upon their masters, and finally contented their appetites with the remnants of the feast. In the field, too, they bore the brunt of the toil: “Let squaws and hedgehogs scratch the ground,” said an old warrior; “man was made for war and the chase.”
Yet, wretched and abused as these women were, they seemed content with their lot, and when their husbands died, they not only mourned for them, but seemed quite ready to enter the same servitude with a new master. “I once saw a young widow,” said Jefferson, “whose husband, a warrior, had died about eight days before, hastening to finish her grief, and who, by tearing her hair, beating her breast, and drinking spirits, made the tears flow in great abundance in order that she might grieve much in a short space of time, and be married that evening to another young warrior.”
Spelman, a Virginia adventurer who, in the course of one of his exploring trips, witnessed an Indian wedding, has left us an account of the ceremony. “Ye man,” he says, “goes not unto any place to be married, but ye woman is brought to him where he dwelleth. At her coming, her father or cheefe frend ioynes the hands togither, and then ye father, or cheefe frend of the man, bringeth a longe string of beades and, measuringehis armes leangth thereof, doth breake it over ye handes of those that ar to be married while their handes be ioyned together and gives it unto ye woman’s father or him that brings hir. And so, with much mirth and feastinge they go togither.”
This “longe string of beades” of which Spelman spoke, was probably made of thepeakandroanoke, which made the riches of the Indian, and served him at once for money and ornament. Both were made from shell—one dark, the other white. The darker was the more valuable, and was distinguished aswampumpeak. The English traders accepted it as coinage, and reckoned its value at eighteen pence a yard, while the white peak sold for ninepence. In the proceedings of the Maryland Council we find Thomas Cornwaleys licensed to trade with the Indians for corn, roanoke, and peak.
When the red men wished to make bargains with the English, before interpreters had been trained to speak both languages, the counting was done by dropping beans, one by one, amid total silence. Woe to the offender who interrupted an Indian during this critical operation, or indeed at any time! An interruption was looked upon as an unpardonable affront. Once, in the time of Bacon’s Rebellion, an Indian chief, accompanied by several of his tribe, came to negotiate a treatyof peace with the English. In the course of the Werrowance’s address, one of his attendants ventured to put in a word. Instantly, the chief snatched a tomahawk from his girdle, split the poor fellow’s skull, motioned to his companions to carry him out, and continued his speech as calmly as though nothing had happened.
The lack of ceremony in the white men’s address, and the frequency with which they interrupted, struck the Indian as amazing and unpardonable. There is a tradition that one of the early preachers strove to teach an old Indian brave the doctrine of the Trinity. The Indian heard him calmly to the end, and then began in his turn to tell of the Great Spirit who spoke in the thunder, and whose smile was the sunshine. In the midst of his discourse, the clergyman broke in, “But all this is not true.” The Indian, turning to the circle around, remarked: “What sort of man is this? He has been talking for an hour of his three Gods, and now he will not let me tell of my one.”
The character of the Indian was a strange mixture of apparent contradictions. He would hunt and fish for a season, and then feast and make merry night and day while his supplies lasted. When they were exhausted, he would gird up his loins, and fast for a period long enough to end the life of a white man. He had an inordinate loveof finery, upon which the English traded from the first. He would barter away a whole Winter’s provisions of corn for a scarlet blanket or a bunch of gay-colored beads. Yet he was not without a natural shrewdness which enlightened him when he was being cheated. The story runs that some of the early missionaries taught the savages that their salvation depended on catching for them shad, which they sold to the settlers. In the course of time the Indians discovered the trick, and drove out the deceivers. Years afterward, another mission was established, and the first priest took as his text, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!” The Indians gathered round the preacher when the sermon was ended, and one of the tribe said: “White man, you speak in fine words of the waters of life; but before we decide on what we have heard, we would like to knowwhether any shad swim in those waters!”
It must be confessed that the Indians appear to better advantage than the English, in the early transactions. When Hamor went to visit King Powhatan, he was received with royal courtesy. The chief sent one of his attendants to bring what food he could find, though he explained that, as they were not expecting visitors, they had not kept anything ready. “Presently,” Hamor recounts, “the bread was brought in two great wodden bowls,the quantity of a bushel sod bread, made up round, of the bygnesse of a tenise-ball, whereof we eat some few.” After this repast, Hamor and his comrades were regaled with “a great glasse of sacke,” and then were ushered into the wigwam appropriated to them for the night. English and Indian ideas of comfort did not correspond, however, for Hamor complains: “We had not bin halfe an hour in the house, before the fleas began so to torment us that we could not rest there, but went forth and under a broade oake, upon a mat, reposed ourselves that night.”