Paul Musselwhite (editor) - Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America

In the summer of 1616, John Rolfe sat down to write a brief description of Virginia. He had recently arrived in London accompanied by his wife, Rebecca, better known as the Indian princess Pocahontas (daughter of the great Powhatan chief Wahunsonacock), their baby son, Thomas, Pocahontass sister Matachanna, and her husband, Uttamatomakkin, an adviser to Opechancanough, the Powhatan war chief and Wahunsonacocks de facto successor. Traveling with them were another half dozen or so Powhatans, young and old, including several women of marriageable age who the English hoped might be persuaded to convert to Christianity and wed suitable Englishmen; a Spanish spy, Don Diego de Molina, who had spent five years in captivity at Jamestown; and the tough military commander and deputy governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale. All had sailed from Jamestown on the warship Treasurer, captained by the experienced mariner Samuel Argall. The Treasurer would return to Jamestown the following year, bringing Argall back to begin a tempestuous tenure as deputy governor. It would come again to the shores of the Chesapeake in 1619, this time in consort with the White Lion, carrying a cargo of captive Africans. Those voyages lay in the future. But the future was a topic on the minds of all the Treasurers passengers in 1616.

Besides being one of the strangest collections of travelers to cross the Atlantic in this period, the backgrounds of the voyagers, their reasons for going to England, and their political and commercial networks offer revealing insights into the complexity and variety of interactions that characterized the emergence and latency of English America. Dale, for example, had arrived in Virginia in 1611 in the midst of a devastating war against the Powhatans. Serving as high marshal responsible for prosecuting hostilities, he had been recommended for the position by Sir Robert Cecil, first earl of Salisbury, and Sir Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton, politically powerful and immensely wealthy men who were leading figures in the Virginia Company of London, the financial sponsor and governing authority of the colony. Dale had expanded strict martial laws, enacted to control unruly settlers and enforce law and order; these laws would later prompt intense criticism of company leaders treatment of settlers in these years. At an especially low ebb in the fortunes of the colony, he had succeeded in avoiding what would have been a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Powhatans, which might well have led to the end of the enterprise, and had eventually secured peace with the great chief, symbolized by the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas in April 1614. Believing the English and Indians were now firmely united together, and made one people, Dale and the company looked forward with confidence to the steady and infinit profits they had promised investors but that had so far proved elusive. I have seen the best countries in Europe, he told Sir Thomas Smythe, treasurer of the Virginia Company, in his usual blunt manner, but I protest unto you, before the Living God, put them all together, this country will be equivalent unto them if it be inhabitant with good people. He had introduced incentives for settlers to produce a range of crops and commodities that would increase productivity and encourage a diverse economyindustrial goods such as pitch, tar, and potash as well as crops such as sassafras, silk grass, hemp, and tobacco. Anyone could grow it, planter and secretary of the colony Ralph Hamor wrote of tobacco, and he assured his readers that it would provide sufficient profit for the planters needs with little labor. On arriving back in Plymouth, England, in early June 1616, Dale reported with satisfaction that he had left the colony in great prosperytye and pease [peace] contrarye to manye mens Exspectatyon. If his boast was somewhat inflated, there can be little doubt his influence on the fledgling colony had been huge and would have a highly significant bearing on what was shortly to come.