Читать книгу The Birth of the Nation, Jamestown, 1607 - Sara Agnes Rice Pryor - Страница 7

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When the colonists looked around them on the first day in their new home, they beheld a scene which will never again in the history of this world be spread before the eyes of man.

Before them lay a vast land just as God made it. No furrow had followed the plough or wheel of civilization. The earth had been pressed by nothing sterner than the light hoof of the reindeer or the moccasined foot of the Indian. No seed had ever drifted hither on the winds, or been brought by a bird wanderer from a distant country. The land was bounded by vast, untravelled seas. The earth had been stirred in cultivation only by the hands of women and children, unaided by any implement of steel or iron. In the forests and fields the great mystery of birth and death and birth again had silently gone on unmarked for countless ages. There was literally no known past, no record of a yesterday which might explain the problems of to-day.

Of course the English colonist would be keenly curious as to the fauna and flora of the new land. There were "such faire meadowes and goodly tall trees," says Percy,[15] "with such Fresh-waters running through the woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof. My selfe and three or foure more walking into the Woods, by chance we espied a path-way like to an Irish pace. We were desirous to knowe whither it would bring us. Wee traced along some foure miles, all the way as wee went having the pleasantest Suckles, the ground all bespred and flowing over with faire flowers of sundry colours and kindes as though it had been any Garden or Orchard in England."

Mute witnesses to the truth of Percy's picture will be found at the opening of our coming celebration, if our guests can find a convenient forest. In it will be seen just the flowers that so ravished his soul: the white honeysuckles, the scarlet trumpet creeper, the clematis, white and purple tipped, the sweetbrier, violets, swamp roses, red swamp lilies.

"There be many Strawberries," continues Percy, "and other fruites unknowne. Wee saw the Woods full of Cedar and Cypresse Trees with other trees (out of) which issues our sweet Gummes like to Balsam, and so wee kept on our way in this Paradise." There were not many "fruits unknown." One of these, highly esteemed, was "maracocks"—the seed-pod of the passionflower,[16] which was not dismissed from the list of Virginia fruits until the middle of the last century. Until then it was cultivated in gardens for its fruit as well as its flowers. There was also another new fruit, still prized by the Virginia schoolboy, and still found by him to "draw a man's mouth awrie with much torment" if incautiously meddled with when green or yellow. Only when red is it ripe and "as delicious as an Apricocke." Need we say this is the Virginia persimmon—a corruption of the "putchamin" of the Indian? There were no peaches or apples, only two kinds of plums, grapes, and berries,—strawberries, mulberries, and whortleberries or "hurts." All other fruits were introduced by the English. There were no sheep, oxen, goats, or horses, no chickens or other domestic poultry. There were wild turkeys, none domesticated. The deer was king, but never used as a beast of burden. Bears, rabbits or hares, squirrels, the otter and the beaver; birds without number (their king the eagle)—these were indigenous to the new land, planted there when God made it, their flesh the food of man, their skins his garment.

And there, too, was man as God made him. To this day nothing is known of the origin of the North American Indian—whence he came, or what his early history. There he was—having evolved little for himself. His one discovery had been fire. He had used what he found, but manufactured little except bows and arrows, rude mats and baskets woven of grass, earthen pipes and pots, and uncouth garments fashioned without scissors or knives, and sewed with the sinews of the deer. He had no textile fabric of any kind. When necessary to defend himself against the cold, he had killed a deer or raccoon and slipped his shivering limbs within the skin, or fashioned a mantle of the warm feathers of the turkey. In these he exhibited no perception of grace or beauty. Nature offered him her loveliest expression of both, but when he essayed ornament on his skin or scant garment, he elected only the terrible. Even the young girls bound horns to their heads instead of flowers. Writers of the period often speak of coral—but there was no coral in the Virginia waters. Pearls they had, and the teeth of animals to string for beads and fringes.

The Indian had made no utensil of iron or the copper he so much prized. When he needed a canoe or bowl, he burnt the wood, then scraped it with oyster shells, and burned again, until the wood was hollowed out. How he ever felled a tree is a mystery! Weeks of scraping and burning were spent on each canoe. He had no written language, no signs recording past events. He had done nothing for himself except to minister to the needs of the hour. There was no hieroglyphic, no testimony of the rocks. Even the humble art of pottery, the earliest trace of the human race, was not found among the American Indians to any extent. A few broken earthen pipes and bowls, arrow-heads of flint, remnants of shell necklaces, these are all that the ploughshare of the labourer or the pick and shovel of the antiquarian have ever revealed.

Of the temper and disposition of the "Naturells," as King James called them, we shall have abundant occasion to learn; but as Powhatan and his people play a leading rôle in the following story it is indispensable that my reader be made acquainted with the religion, customs, and habits of this tribe of Indians. We have given space to a brief sketch of the English monarch. The American monarch surely claims some attention before we enter upon the story of the struggle between the two: between the Stuarts of England and the Algonquins of America!

Historians of the Indians have asserted that the tribes under King Philip and those subject to Powhatan were of a higher class than many other of the North American Indians, more restrained by social and tribal laws, more cleanly in their habits, more intelligent in every way. They are an intensely interesting and mysterious people, and romantic writers love to invest them with virtues which the Powhatans, at least, did not possess. John Smith and Strachey argue that "they are inconstant in everie thing but what peace constraineth them to keepe. Craftie, timerous, quicke of apprehension, and very ingenious: some bold, most cautious, all Savage: soone moved to anger, and so malitious they seldom forget an injury." Schoolcraft, the modern Indian historian, said to me "they had not a single virtue or single trait of true nobility." They never met a foe in an open field,—cunning was their best weapon,—but some virtues they surely had, nevertheless.