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THE VIRGINIA INDIAN TRADE TO 1673.¹

By A. J. MORRISON.

The continent of Europe was disturbed by wars in the year 1551. The sadder, the more solid or graver, merchants of London, not willing to be dashed in their business, took counsel together and asked the advice of Sebastian Cabot, eminent man of nautical science. The upshot was the formation of a company of Merchant Adventurers, chartered about the middle of December, 1551, with Sebastian Cabot as life governor. The good old gentleman, Master Cabot, of Venetian parentage and of large experience about the world, spend his last years to good result for England. He had in his youth been to America of the north, in his middle age he had wasted a few years in what we call the Argentine; relinquishing the office of chief pilot to Emperor Charles V of Spain and the New World, Master Cabot was in his old age the man of all others to show England how to go to sea. He said himself he had the knowledge of the art of finding longitude by divine revelation. Henry VIII, notwithstanding, had dealt harshly with him. Upon the death of King Henry he was brought back to England and virtually given charge of the maritime affairs of the nation. His art of finding longitude was thought worth subvention in those critical times, when the continent of Europe was upwrought and the Hansa League was over strong in English affairs.

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Master Cabot and his Company of Merchant Adventurers attempted a North East passage. Why, said they, accept the world as it seemed to be with regard to England then? They sent out three ships in 1553 to reach Cathay by the North East, and so discovered Russia, found that Muscovy could be come at direct by an open sea. Muscovy was a fur country. Here was a new market. The British trader was soon thereafter at home in Muscovy, and was pushing on to Persia and Central Asia. Anthony Jenkinson, who had been bred to the Levant trade, was chosen as their Russia agent by those merchants interested in the business of Muscovy. Diplomatist in Turkey and the Mediterranean, Anthony Jenkinson was diplomatist also in the Tszar’s Dominions, and by 1560 had reached Bokhara. He still thought that a North East passage to China should be a practicable move; at Bokhara the values of the china trade must have been matter of routine speculation. Anthony Jenkinson and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, early in 1566, petitioned the crown for license to discover China by the North East. Such enterprise was about grown fashionable then, but it is not at all impossible that Anthony Jenkinson was the first to suggest such things to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who towards the end of 1566 petitioned for license of discovery by the Northwest as an alternative to his petition with Jenkinson. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was in Ireland in 1566, helping to settle a colony of Englishmen in Ulster, a colony soon unsettled. It was not until 1578 that Humphrey Gilbert, step brother to Walter Raleigh, received his latent to discover, find, search out, and view such remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people. Sir Humphrey Gilbert went down in the Squirrel, near the shores of North America early in 1579. His patent was to expire in 1584, and it was then that his brother Walter Raleigh had it revived in his own name, March 25th, 1584. By July of that year Amadas and Barlow, of Raleigh’s ships to Oregon Inlet, were writing their pleasant journal of life in Virginia where for a tin dish 10 skins could be had, and for a copper kettle 50.

The British eagle was mewing. Walter Raleigh, born a year after the chartering of the Cabot Company, was to see with his

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own eyes an England changed from perplexity regarding its place in the world to audacity limitable only by the world itself. The English, to be sure, were following their noses a good deal during the life time of Sir Walter Raleigh, but they had good strong noses, excellent head pieces in general, and the idea once lodged with there that to save England they must go out into the world, they went out. The destinies of Ireland, India, and Virginia were strangely going on together around the year 1600. The venture towards India being at first wholly commercial it was Irish affairs that influenced especially Virginia. If Britons could be settled among the wild Irish, then why not still further overseas, despite of Raleigh’s ill success? Talks to the Irish on the part of Queen Elizabeth’s agents sound wonderfully like Georgian talks to the Cherokees or the Creeks. And it is not to be overlooked that Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with the education of the Irish in the item of potatoes—and of the English in that of tobaccos.

Raleigh looked West. He was not concerned with India. But quite naturally when the English companies came to be set up for India and for Virginia the directorates were interlocking somewhat—for example, John Eldred (venerable name) of “Nutmeg Hall,” Sir Thomas Smythe (of the Muscovy and all the companies), Sir John Wolstenholme, backer of Hudson, Baffin, and others in their Northwest attempts. A full list of Directors, at once of the East India Company and of the Virginia Company, with elucidation as touching their careers, would make an interesting memorandum. These companies were planned for profit. The East India Company knew what to expect—187% at the least. The Virginia Company had little notion of what to expect. They knew that there were fur-bearing animals in North America. But promotion in their case was to be from settlement if possible to a market created by the Company settler. So when Captain Newport wrote home in 1607 of his voyage up James River towards the Mountains Quirauke, the Directors must have been pleased at his report “we have excellent furrs, in some places of the country great store.” And whatever the worth of the assertion, it was significant that John Rolfe could relate of Virginia about 1616, that the Indians were then coming in to buy corn of

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the English, purchasing with skins or mortgaging their lands “they seek to sell their skins from their shoulders, which is their best garments, to buy corn; yea, some of their petty kings have this last year borrowed from us five hundred bushels of wheat, for payment whereof they have mortgaged their whole country.” Here were the difficult questions arisen of deed and deed of trust among a people holding the land by tribe as it pleased them and as they could. Sir Walter Raleigh, in the Tower must have read such reports with a certain interest. He had had leisure in the Tower to look into world history, and knew the philosophy thereof sufficiently well. His life about ending in 1616, he doubtless felt convinced that there was to be a new world of Virginia without fail now that the red indwellers were beginning to be in pawn.

But the Indian Trade was a shifting business at best. Shortly after 1616, Governor Argall was promulgating a law that there should be “no trade nor familiarity with the perfidious savages, lest they discover our weakness?” Then in 1620 the company itself issued its enlarged schedule of furs—sables, luzernes, martens, wildcats, fox, muskrat, beaver—with high prices listed. In 1610 the Company’s fur talk had been brief and commonsense—“bever skynnes being taken in winter tyme will yield good profitt; the like will otter skynnes.” The Directors at home knew what the Dutch were doing at Manhattan, as did also the James River Virginians. The Directors looked for nothing comparable at Jacobopolis, but were willing to see the possibilities of the colony developed. Tobacco was a growing article. Should the price of tobacco fall very much, there might be something substantial in furs and skins. The historian Stith says something to show that the glass manufactory planned for Jamestown in 1621 was to give of its time to the making of beads for the Indian trade. The colonists were disregardful of the Argall rules and in 1621 were employing Indians, with guns, to hunt for them, to bring in to them game and no doubt the skins and furs the Company was advertising for. Then in 1622—Governor Argall was right, those Indians were not fancying deeds of trust—the great massacre checked enterprise somewhat and commercial penetration somewhat. Yet in 1624 there was a cargo of furs sent to Holland from Virginia.

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That cargo probably came out of Chesapeake Bay. These items seem to show that under Company rule to 1624 there was neither public nor private organization of the Indian trade in the James River Country. It was a haphazard business at the first contact, springing largely from curiosity on both sides, and what trading was done went on up the James and to the north, in the Rappahannock and the Potomac and about Chesapeake Bay. For many years the English were seized with the dreads regarding the country south of James River.

Besides, the colonists about Jamestown were for some years upon a joint stock basis, not admitting of private enterprise, and for some years they were expecting to come upon mines of silver and gold, as of the territory and city of Raleigh. The governor, council and burgesses of the colony, writing about themselves to Ping Charles in 1628, said nothing of an Indian trade, but spoke cheerfully of mines—“we conceive that there is great hope of the ritchness of the Mountains, and there was a discovery made formerly nyneteen years since in the which some of us were, and about four days journey above the falls of James River as we are informed certain assurance of a silver mine.” What were the prospectors meaning to say? Whether they themselves were there or not, it is interesting to hear their talk of the back country four days above the Falls. Curious minded colonists, Romany men, early became interested in the back country. In 1617 George White was pardoned, on the explanation of his running away to the Indians, and Henry Potter condemned to death for stealing a calf and running away to the Indians. In 1619 Captain Henry Spelman was examined by the Grand Assembly on charges preferred by Robert Poole, interpreter. Poole said he had met Captain Spelman at the Opechancanough’s court, and that Spelman had tallied to the Opechancanough unreverently and maliciously against the colony government, had alienated the mind of the Opechancanough. Captain Spelman, third son of the scholar Sir Henry Spelman, (member of Raleigh’s London Society of Antiquaries), much to the displeasure of his friends had gone out to Virginia and there learned the native tongue thoroughly well. For intriguing with the Opechancanough, a mild and queer sentence

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was imposed upon him—he must lose his title of Captain, and serve the Colony seven years in the nature of interpreter to the Governor. Henry Spelman apparently was soon rehabilitated.

In April, 1623, he was in command of a trading expedition up the Potomac to the Anacostan Indians, who had their quarters then about where the District of Columbia now is. Captain Spelman, “a warie man, well acquainted with their treacheries and the best linguist of the Indian tongue in the country,” was by the account trading for corn. The Anacostans were too subtle for him. They professed friendship, and then suddenly turned and slew nineteen of the English, among them Henry Spelman. Henry Fleet and others were held captive. Governor Wyatt, reporting the disaster, said—“Indeed all trade with these Indians must be foreborne, and without doubt we must cleere them or they us out of the country.” Matters went that way. The great massacre had been but the year before, and shortly after. Henry Fleet was conspicuous in the Indian trade of that Potomac region.

In 1623 Henry Fleet was about twenty-five years old. His father was William Fleet of the London Virginia. Company. Henry Fleet seems to have come to Virginia not before 1623, and thus was introduced to the colony and to the Anacostan Naturalls in the same twelvemonth. He was kept in captivity (within the bounds of Fleet gaol, he may jocosely have put it) for four years, as long as might be, until 1627 when his friends contrived to ransom him. Henry Fleet was a man of skill. He applied himself during his Anaconstan days to the study of his environment, and learned so much that on going home to England at the first opportunity he made it manifest to a firm of London merchants Clobery Company that he could be of use to them in Virginia. William Clobery was a. merchant adventurer. He was a chief man in the Guinea trade, and was open to suggestions for good trade anywhere. Apparently he sent Henry Fleet to Virginia well endorsed for promoting a Chesapeake Indian trade. At any rate September 6, 1627, the ship Paramour, London, 100 tons, was licensed to clear, Henry Fleet master, William Clobery & Company owners. William Clobery backed Dutch traders up the Hudson as well. The papers of his firm for twenty years to 1640 would much

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elucidate the history of the American Indian trade. Sir John Wolstenholme was still living, active nearly to 1640. He set up William Claiborne as a trader up Chesapeake Bay. Henry Fleet, William Claiborne, Sir John Wolstenholme, Clobery & Company and the Baltimores were responsible for much Chesapeake Bay history before 1640, centering about a trading post at Kent Island.

Sir John Wolstenholme, who was practically disposed to the American idea, was encouraged to invest something through William Claiborne on Chesapeake Bay. Claiborne knew that region—had been authorized by government to explore there as early as 1627, and knew that the chance was best there for an Indian trade from the older Virginia. He was settling a post in the upper Bay at his Kent Island, when the Baltimore charter for Maryland was issued. He and Sir John Wolstenholme not to mention others, were greatly miffed at that charter. It is possible that Sir John Wolstenholme then withdrew from the Kent Island enterprise, and that Claiborne at once took up with a strictly commercial man, William Clobery no less. That was intricate business, which can hardly be traced at this distance. The Baltimore party, coming to their Maryland, touched at Virginia early in 1634. They saw Captain Claiborne, who in respect of Maryland (where was Maryland?) could not be pleased and tallied dismally of what the Potomac and Bay Indians might and might not do. The Baltimore party passed up the Bay taking with them Captain Henry Fleet “excellent in language, lore and experience with the Indians.” Captain Fleet was interpreter and guide to the Marylanders. He brought them to “as noble a seat as could be wished,” and then left them, drawn away by Captain Claiborne, factor for Clobery. The Baltimore party expected to bring the Indians to their religion at once, and to establish trade with them at once. While Captain Fleet was with them they fancied they could proceed but little with the Piscataway in matters of religion, because the captain, a Protestant, misconstrued their talk. Moreover the Captain, an old experienced trader, was at first willing to go as partner with them in their trade, but soon was off getting skins on his own account or for Captain Claiborne. Coelum non mundum mutant qui trans mare currunt.

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Among the memoranda of the first Marylanders, it is especially interesting to read Leonard Calvert’s letter home to his associate Sir Richard Lechford, dated May 30, 1634. Leonard Calvert came with the party for Maryland for trade, the Indian trade in skins. He had already an intimate acquaintance with the trade. What he said in his letter throws light upon the history of the business, when business organization in general was being so greatly pushed by Strafford. In the first place, the rosiness of Leonard Calvert’s hopes is evidence of the briskness of the Claiborne trade at the time. But Leonard Calvert was writing, too, to hearten his associate who had money desired on account. He said—“By direction of our Captain Henry Fleet, who was very well acquainted with all parts of the river and of the Indians likewise, I found a most convenient harbour and pleasant country lying on each side of it. Whilst we were a-doing these thing [necessary to a seating] our pinnace by our directions followed the trade of beaver through all parts of the precincts of this province. But by reason of our so late arrivall here we came too late for the first part of the trade of this year: which is the reason I have sent home so few furrs (they being dealt for by those of Virginia before our coming)—the second part of our trade is now in hand, and is like to prove very beneficiall. The nation we trade withal at this time a-year is called the Massawomeckes. This nation cometh seven, eight, and ten days journey to us—these are those from whom Kircke had formerly all his trade of beaver. We have lost by our late coming 3000 skins, which others of Virginia have traded for, but hereafter they shall come no more here, wherefore I make no doubt but next year we shall drive a very great trade if our supply of trucke fail not. There is not anything doth more indanger the lose of Commerce with the Indians than want of trucke to barter with them, wherefore I hope you will not grudge to put in your share though as yet you have not the full return you expected.”

It is a little striking that Leonard Calvert, in his very informing letter, said nothing of Captain William Claiborne by name. Captain Claiborne was in touch with Clobery & Company—and that was a powerful firm. Whoever has power abuses it, an eminent historian remarked. Clobery & Company treated Captain

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Claiborne badly, so far as the record appears. The Captain held on at Kent Island, both by management and by gunpowder. But the Baltimore Marylanders showing rather strong with their charter, Clobery & Company began to cool towards their factor, who was no Marylander. Trade follows the flag. Instead of putting the case plainly, that as Maryland-Virginia politics stood, Captain Claiborne’s political activities were prejudicial to his factorship at Kent Island, the Cloberys for reasons difficult to understand followed the method of indirection. Possibly they were so interested elsewhere they left Kent Island to shift for itself. Possibly the Marylanders were forced to subtle plotting as against so strong a man as Captain Claiborne. The facts are, that late in 1636 there appeared at Kent Island Captain George Evelin who from his first coming may have been an agent of the Cloberys, set to watch the performance of Captain Claiborne. George Evelin professed himself a friend to Claiborne and no Baltimore man. He had an uncle, Captain Young, who about this time was endeavoring to establish a trading post in the Delaware River.² George Evelin could talk of the trade and made himself agreeable. At last, early in 1637, there arrived at the Island a ship, the Sara and Elizabeth, sent with servants and goods by Clobery & Company, but consigned

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not to Captain Claiborne but to George Evelin. And pointedly, power of attorney was exhibited from the Company, demoting Captain Claiborne from his factorship at the post and substituting George Evelin. Captain Claiborne was summoned home to show cause why he had not recently been trading to better advantage. He had not the trucke! He had been making what shift he could, had kept the post going, but without plenty of trucke from his principals [Leonard Calvert let us know], the Chesapeake Indians would fall away. They had learned speedily what the trade should be. This trade history of Kent Island is worth examination on several counts.

From the evidence, we will assume that Henry Fleet and William Claiborne were the chief promoters of the Virginia Indian Trade, at least to the Northward, in Chesapeake Bay and up the Potomac, during the years immediately after the Company rule ceased, and miscellaneous commercial enterprise directed from London, was growing more active. Lord Baltimore’s Maryland interfered with those Virginians trading to the northward, just as William Penn’s grant was later to interfere with Lord Baltimore. Metes and bounds in an old free country like America were difficult to fix in matters of trade with the naturalls. Any regulation of such a trade was of course difficult. Lord Baltimore at one time tried to prevent Maryland from dealing with the Indians for pork, but the Marylanders would not be prevented. As for skins and furs, Virginia found early that too many skins were going out of the country as articles of export—the people needed skins at home in Virginia. Virginia in 1633, at the height of William Claiborne’s northern trade, discovered that too much cloth was being engrossed by Indian traders. An act was then passed admitting “that all trade with the natives was to be cherished for many respects, yet it being thought fit that the necessity of present want should be first supplied,” it was ordered that trade to the Indians in cottons and bayes be stopped except by special leave. In Virginia and in Maryland, for some years after the first Massacre, it is pretty evident that there was a considerable Indian trade. Then, as such intercourse went on, with its inevitable misunderstandings unmodified by the chastened spirit, there sprung up in the nature

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of things jealousy, unfairness, and settled hostility. By 1641, despite of the very good intentions of the Governors of Maryland, there was a settled hostility towards the Marylanders on the part of their Indian inmates and neighbors. We do not know: maybe the Virginia traders, up the Chesapeake or across the Rappahannock Marches, egged on the Maryland Indians. Maybe the old Opechancanough of Virginia, seeing how the Maryland Indians stood of their own accord, waited for a time he judged fitting and then struck. Some people thought the civil strifes in England had something to do with unsettling the Indians, whose unsettling at any time needs no long explanatory argument. However it was, the Indians of Maryland were on bad terms with their European neighbors by 1641. And year 1644 Indians of Virginia came down for another massacre. But a few months before, government had made proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving, in memory of the 22nd of March 1622. The warring that followed gave, in Virginia, a notable impulse to the organization of the Indian Trade.

April 1644, the Opechancanough’s people came down to slay. ’They slew, and if they had held firm they might have retarded Virginia greatly. Luck was with the English. Also, Sir William Berkeley being their governor, they met the facts pointedly and squarely. They harried the enemy. To keep him at a comfortable distance, recurrent as he was, they set up forts—on the Pamunkey (Fort Royal), on Chickahominy Ridge (Fort James), at the Falls of the Appomattox (Fort Henry). Then Captain Henry Fleet was commissioned to negotiate a peace, at his own expense should he fail. We gather that Captain Fleet was still a powerful man in Indian affairs, and if he carried through a treaty was to be allowably much the gainer. Treaty was arranged with Necotowance, successor of the ancient Opechancanough, on terms that showed a marked advance of civilization; Necotawance must do homage for his land to the King of England, in token whereof he was fined 20 beaver skins “at the going away of the Geese yearly.” The people of Necotowance were to keep themselves carefully to the North side of York River, and to the South their dead line was drawn from the head of Yapin the Blackwater to the old Monakin Town. When trading was to be done, or runaway blacks returned, the people of Necotowance were to repair from the North

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north west to Fort Royal (Ricahack) on the Pamunkey—from the south, to Fort Henry on the Appomattox or to the house opposite of Captain John Flood. At the time, Captain Flood was chief interpreter to the colony. His house being on the Appomattox the evidence is perhaps that the more important Indian business of Virginia had shifted already to the South. Certain it is, that of the four trading forts established after the second massacre, Fort Henry, under Captain Abraham Wood on river Appomattox, was the most conspicuous as the records are. Captain Wood, who had made his own way in the colony, once established at Fort Henry, long continued there. He was a Southside man. Stipulations following the massacre of 1644 made it clear that the north side and the south side of the James were, by reason of the broad river, regions distinct; each must fend for itself. Abraham Wood was chosen commander on the Southern March. His abilities, well approved in peace and war, he was confirmed by government in his tenure of Fort Henry, allowed to keep the post (with a plantation) at his own charge, free of taxation for a term of years. He was to maintain a small force there, his own trading force, which should be garrison as well. This was the policy with all those forts—the emergency past, those four posts were handed over to private enterprise, trader’s enterprise, the concessionaire to guarantee defence. Captain Henry Fleet had in this way been authorized, when treating with Necotowance, to build a fort on Rappahannock, an important station, but we know more about Fort Henry. The second massacre had done much to organize the trade.

An exploratory trade, the Indian Trade from the James River country, during Charles I’s last years and later, was substantially furthered by Sir William Berkeley, Governor of the Colony. The Berkeleys were good Americans. Sir Maurice Berkeley, Sir William Berkeley’s father, was a member of the Virginia. Company. Lord Berkeley of Stratton, Sir William Berkeley’s brother, was upon the Restoration a Proprietor up and down the Atlantic Coast from Hudson’s Bay to Florida. The minute and transcendental philosopher, Bishop Berkeley of the Bermudas (theoretically) and Rhode Island was perhaps a distant relation. George Berkeley, Baron Berkeley, to whom was inscribed the Anatomy of Melancholy,

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became in 1630 immediately upon the grant a feudatory of Sir Robert Heath in Carolina. When Sir William Berkeley came to Virginia about 1640 he had good reason to think himself interested in the country—he had been a Canada Commissioner in 1632. The author of the “Perfect Description,” writing near the Strand to be sure, said of Sir William Berkeley in 1648—“and had not this present governor been sent as he was and continued, who hath done all a gentleman could do to maintain the colony alive, it had upon this second massacre been utterly deserted and ruinated, as things stand in our own land. [But] the Indians have of late acquainted our Governor that within five days journey to the west and by south there is a great high mountain, and at foot thereof great rivers that run into a great sea. Sir William was hereupon preparing fifty horse and fifty foot to go and discover this thing himself in person which will mightily advance and enrich this country. And for matter of their better knowledge of the land they dwell in, the planters resolve to make a further discovery west and by south up above the fall and over the hills, and are confident upon what they have learned of the Indians to find a way to China and East Indies³ . . . and by such a discovery the planters in Virginia shall gain the rich trade of the East India, part by land and part by water, and in a most gainful way and safe, and far less expenseful and dangerous than now it is.”

There is no claim that Sir William Berkeley was the instigator of the authorized Virginia trading exploration of his time. It is

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reasonable to suppose that he could have small influence in government explorations under the Commonwealth. And it is not proved that he was at any time directly concerned in the Indian Trade. But it is known that Sir William Berkeley was an encourager to exploration. During his many years in Virginia there was much exploration, as a thing of course. The country had shown itself able to exist, and that meant growth. Give the English footing in a country of eastward flowing rivers like Virginia, and a no-man’s land between them and the Spanish, what was to be expected? There was no pan-Indian policy, else from the west and the south and other quarters, Virginia. (and Sir William Berkeley), might have gone down under pressure. Admitting their dreads, the South was the most negotiable quarter for the Virginia English, and Southern Virginians, (especially Abraham Wood of Appomattox Falls), are most in evidence now as factors in what went on then among the explorers. For example in 1650 Edward Bland, merchant in James River, Captain Abraham Wood and others, were permitted by the Governor to go exploring south. They went South South West several days journey and then they thought it well to return. They reached a country in their opinion “far more temperate than ours of Virginia, and the inhabitants full of children.” This was likely the country of the Island of Occoneechee where the Roanoke branches into the Sapony and the Saura, that is to say the Staunton and the Dan. On the way out a Nottaway King said to them: There was a Wainoke Indian told him that there was an Englishman, a Cockarous, hard by Captain Flood’s gave this Indian bells and other petty truck to lay down to the Tuskarood King, and would have had him to go with him, but the Wainoke in doubt what to do when to Captain Flood who advised him not to go for that the Governor would give no license to go thither. Our recorded history in this field is plainly fragment. The Englishman of the narrative, a cockarous or important man, went to the Tuscarora without the Wainoke and without pestering the Governor. The exploring party heard of him again: a Tuscarora Indian they met at a Meherrin town gave them word that the adventuring cockarous was then a great way off at the further Tuscarora town. Mr. Edward

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Bland sent him a letter, couched in English, Latin, Spanish, French and Dutch. Nothing came of the polyglottal note. Some time afterwards they found that the runner they employed never took the letter. Several things that happened they were convinced had been done “of purpose to get something out of us and we had information that at that time there were other English among the Indians.” License? What mattered license? The man who fancied the risk took it.”⁴ Hakluyt’s story is not unbelievable of Davy Ingram roving in 1578 from Mexico to Massachusetts Bay.

The reading of their journal does not give the idea that Bland and Wood were accomplishing much of importance in exploration. They went into the vague, went down South not much more than a hundred miles, to Occoneechee perhaps, as that region was later called. It is the asides of Bland and Wood’s journal that are of interest. Any of Abraham Wood’s force of ten at his post may well have seen all that country sometime before. Mr. Bland made his progress. There is no saying whether the mysterious cockarous of the journal, and the other roving English mentioned, were not already in 1650 sufficiently familiar with the Tuscarora towns. There is no saying what were the characteristics of the Virginia trade to the Indians from 1644 on, to and beyond the Restoration. That must have been a nervous time. Under the Commonwealth in Virginia exploration at least was much encouraged. Parliament’s Governors were not behind Sir William Berkeley in that matter. Governor Bennett was especially concerned. Nor were the Commonwealth men in power chary of granting privileges to those of an exploring turn, old trading explorers like Claiborne, Fleet, and Wood. In 1652 it was ordered that Colonel William Claiborne, Captain Henry Fleet, they and their associates with them, might and should enjoy such benefits, profits, and trades for fourteen years as they should find out in places where no English ever had “bin and discovered or had perticular trade: the like order granted to Major Abraham Wood and his associates.” The

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particular trade was most likely an Indian trade. But where had Colonel Claiborne, Captain Fleet, and Major Mood not been? It is a legend that Major Wood, following his order of 1652, and trying to go where he had never been, reached waters of the Mississippi in 1654. Who were the Ricahecrians who in 1656 are supposed to have come down from the West and to have demoralized Colonel Hill of Virginia and some Pamunkeys? Were the Ricahecrians Cherokee, and were they displeased at Major Wood’s attempts? From a statute after that disturbance, end of year 1656, it is to be inferred that the posts at the heads of the rivers were not in regular maintenance, but that traders were still there. The statute ran—no Indian was to come within the fenced plantations without a ticket from some person to be nominated on the head of each river where the Indians lived: and any freeman could lawfully repair to the said houses (or Indian marts) at the heads of the rivers and trade with the Indians in permitted communities. There is nothing in this statute by which we can trace the professional trader.⁵ The indication is that he was being discouraged at that juncture, that a miscellaneous trade was being encouraged, but with restriction as far as might be upon any roving, packhorse trade out among the Indians. As for the value of the trade, however accomplished, it is plain how high the value was, from the startling enactment of 1609, 10th Commonwealth.—“Whereas it is manifest that the neighboring plantations, both of English and forainers [Dutch] do plentifully furnish the Indians

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with gunns, powder and shott, and do thereby draw from us the trade of beaver to our great loss and their profit . . . it is enacted that every man may freely trade for guns, powder, and shott, it derogating nothing from our safety and adding much to our advantage.” A striking pronouncement, certainly in view of the late unpleasantnesses. Trade follows the imagination. The laissez-faire policy shown in this enactment gave place very soon to a definite objective programme in the circumstances. Early in 1662 it was ordered that the Governor should cause by proclamation a prohibition of all Marylanders, English and Indians (”which they have already done to us”) and of all other Indians to the northward of Maryland from trucking, trading, bartering or dealing with any English or Indians to the South of that place. Colonel Abraham Wood was empowered to manage this broad, impossible business. Maryland, in fine, was charged with being unethical, a term not used then, on the ground that Susquehannock and other Northern Indians were frequently coming down to the heads of the Virginia rivers, whereby plain paths would soon be made and the whole trade of the Indians tributary to Virginia be drawn away. And so the Governor was to make proclamation about it. This was an extraordinary enactment. It seems now as if it had been folly to meet the facts that way. The facts as exhibited are of much interest.

To the south also, the Restoration come about, there were interesting facts and foreshadowings in respect of trade to the Naturalls of the region. How the story of the Reverend Morgan Jones is to be construed is not clear—how in 1660 he found Indians among the Tuscarora able to speak the old British or Welsh language, and to understand homilies in that language.⁶ Jones (whom Humboldt in his Cosmos calls Morgan Chapelain), Morgan Jones said that he was chaplain to Sir William Berkeley’s Virginia mission to Port Royal, later Carolina; that he had gone up the country to a Tuscarora town, and being under sentence of death there was rescued by a British speaking man of the tribe. Jones, lamenting his fate in Welsh, was caught up by his deliverer and reassured in Welsh. Did Sir William Berkeley send an

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expedition by sea to Port Royal in 1660? If so, he may have been looking into the country for his friends at court, they and he so soon to become Proprietaries thereof. Governor again in 1660, Sir William Berkeley was encouraged about the state of Virginia (see his very able Discourse and View of Virginia, 1663) and still open to conviction with regard to the back country. In 1669 he had a plan, somewhat as of twenty years gone, to go out to the West “with 200 gents,” and find the Indian Sea. Continued rains prevented, and he was not regretful, remembering, as he said, Sir Walter Raleigh. Then in 1670 he seems to have authorized John Lederer, a German, to set about exploring West and Southwest. Doctor Lederer went to the mountains, (the Quirauk, Ricahecrian, or Blue Ridge), but as for the Southwest, the narrative he has left looks to be fiction, the working up, no doubt, of Indian trader’s talk. It is possible that 1670, the year the Hudson’s Bay Company was chartered, saw new impulse given the Indian Trade in Virginia. There was fixed settlement in Carolina then, and curiosity may have come thence, besides that Sir William Berkeley was governor of Virginia and a Proprietor of Carolina. At any rate, Abraham Wood, Major General Wood, sent out Batts and Fallam in 1671 to discover something of the West for King Charles and for the trade. Those emissaries proclaimed King Charles at New or Wood River, but dreading the Salt Indians⁷ of the misty beyond, they returned to the Appomattox, having contributed little to knowledge. At the Totero town, on the upper Roanoke, near the mountains, they learned that Captain Byrd of James River Falls was in the neighborhood with a company of explorers. Captain Byrd and General Wood were in 1671 competitors in the Indian Trade to the South.

An interesting year for the trade, 1673. Captain William Byrd was twenty one that year, had reached his majority with a sound head for business, courage and promptitude in going after it. His

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uncle Thomas Stegg, a man of business and solid business connections, had settled upon the Restoration at the Falls of James River, and during the ten years to 1671 had pretty certainly organized a pack-horse trade to Indian towns South. To William Byrd that business was bequeathed in 1671. He and General Wood were then competitors, and it is very likely that General Wood sending out Batts and Fallam, Captain Byrd thought it well to show himself explorer also on their path. The Indian Trade was of course a sphere-of-influence affair. General Wood was convinced of that. His statement regarding his extraordinary attempts of 1673 was—“That I have been at the charge to the value of two hundred pounds starling in the discovery to the South or West Sea declaro.” His men Needham and Arthur, the summer of 1673, went all the way, indisputably, all the long way from Appomattox Falls to the Little Tennessee. Since Bland’s progress of 1650 the path may have been both known and traded over, from the Appomattox to Occoneechee Island on Roanoke. Needham and Arthur passed Occoneechee, kept on Southwest in the Piedmont, and then West North West into the Hills of laughing waters and Tomahitan Cherokee. Leaving Arthur to learn the language, Needham returned to General Wood’s and on his way out again was killed by an Occoneechee, Indian John, a little beyond the Yadkin River. “So died,” wrote General Wood, “this heroick Englishman, whose fame shall never die if my pen were able to eternize it, which had adventured where never any Englishman had dared to atempt before him, and with him died one hundred forty four pounds starling of my adventure. I wish I could have saved his life with ten times the value.” Needham, it may be, was that James Needham who was associated in Carolina with Dr. Woodward, first and famous Indian trader of the Charleston country. Carolina was growing to be a fact, of the British Empire, from 1670 to 1673. There is indication that Dr. Woodward in 1671 travelled up, by the paths as they were from Carolina to Virginia. What if James Needham went with him and so made acquaintance with General Wood? Far western European curiosity about northern America was becoming settled interest in 1673. To the alarm of some of the old inhabitants, it appeared that far

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western Europe was intending not for a little but for a great deal of North America. The Hudson’s Bay Company was doing business. The Dutch and the English were balancing power at Manhattan, Tawasentha, and that region. The Carolinians had got footing. And the French were making way from the Lakes down Mississippi Valley. The Spanish and the Indians, by no means of a common cause, must have been alarmed. About the month of June 1673 the Marquette party were at the mouth of the Ohio: there they found Indians armed with guns and supplied with European implements and glass. July 1673 Needham and Arthur came to the Tomahitan town on Little Tennessee. The Cherokee there had among them sixty guns with locks of a strange fashion, and those Indians spoke of white people “down the river,” who rang bells and lived in brick houses. All that, by the unfolding of the times, meant a changed America. We count 1673, from the circumstances of the American case, as a year appropriately chosen for the beginning of a closer survey of the Southern Indian Trade[.]