File:Our first century (1905) (14781309344).jpg

Identifier: ourfirstcentury00eggl (find matches)
Title: Our first century
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Eggleston, George Cary, 1839-1911
Subjects: United States -- Social life and customs To 1775
Publisher: New York, A.S. Barnes & Company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ith whomthe Jamestown colonists at first came into relationswere not at all such savages as those encountered bylater colonists in other parts of the country. Indeed they^ere not savages at all in any just sense of the term.They had an orderly life of their own. They were un-der government. They clothed themselves, so far atleast as decency required. Up to the age of twelveyears the children went naked. After that they woreclothes. These Indians provided for their necessities in per-fectly orderly ways, and far more discreetly than thecolonists did. They cultivated fields. Having killedthe trees of a forest by cutting a girdle in the bark ofeach, they stirred up the earth with such rude tools as\they possessed, and planted corn, beans, peas, squashes,/pumpkins and the like in great abundance. The Indianswere so far savages that they left all this work to thei^womenkind—their squaws. But they were so far civ-ilized that their necessities were met by agriculturalwork. 30 JOHN SMITH 31
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Indian Houses in the Village of Secotan. (From the original drawing by John White, artist to the Raleigh Expedition.) 32 OUR FIRST CENTURY While the squaws were thus tilhng the ground theIndian men fished the streams and laid by a great storeof dried fish to furnish food during the brief winterMonths of Virginia. Once a year, also, the tribes—men, women and chil-dren—went away to the woodland on the annual huntingexpedition, from which they brought back abundant sup-plies of provisions—-deer meat, bear meat, the dried fleshof opossums, raccoons, squirrels, wild turkeys and the like. Land was abundant and superabundant in Virginia.Not only so, but land prepared for cultivation might havebeen had by the colonists in exchange for a few trinkets.The Indians had opened many fields on the margins ofall the rivers by girdling the trees in the way alreadydescribed. Many of these fields were not in use whenthe colonists landed. If the men of Jamestown hadbeen governed by ordinary common

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