The Tuckahoe Colony of Virginia [pp. 235-238]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
King-Beaver; Ustatahamen, Hominy. Note. This is said to
be an African word. Lord Bacon calls it the cream of maize,
and recommends it as an article of diet for the sick.
Beverley spells wigwam, wigwang.
Indians had no saltbut what they obtained from ashes. They
were fond of roasting ears, and had them dried. Their spoons
held half a pint, and they laughed at the small spoons of the
English, that had to be carried so often to the mouth.
One month they called the Moon of Stags.
Their money was made of conk-shell, and was called either
peak, or wampum-peak, or runtee, (which last was a drilled
bead,) or finally roenoke; made of cockle-shell.
For knives they made use of sharpened reeds or shells.
For skinning deer, flat stones sharpened, and semicircular, of
the shape of a saddler's knife.
For axes and hatchets, stones sharpened and fastened to a
stick, and glued with turpentine.
Their bows were made of locust; their arrows were plumed
with feathers of the wild turkey, fastened with the glue of the
velvet horns of the deer, and headed with a white stone, or the
spur of a wild turkey.
Beverley had seen one of their canoes thirty feet long.
UTTAMUSSACK.
Twelve miles above Richmond, near the James river, there
were three houses for their idols, and a solid crystal, three or
four feet solid cube, called a Pawcorance, or altar-stone, so clear
and translucent, that the grain of a man's hand might be seen
through it, and it contained silver ore. This the Indians called
their altar-stone, and on it they offered their sacrifices.
NECKS.
The colony of Virginia was divided into necks, the northern
neck between the Potomac and the Rappahannock, and the
other necks between the other rivers.
MOUNTAINS.
The Alleghanies Beverley calls the Apalachian mountains.
Henry Batt and a party were sent out by Governor Berkeley on
an exploration among these mountains.
Governor Spottswood was the first man that crossed the BIue
Ridge. In consideration of this, the King of England gave him
a golden horse-shoe, with a Latin inscription. This horse-shoe
has, within a few years, been sold to a jeweller for old gold!
MARRIAGE.
1609. John Laydon married Anna Burrows, and this was the
first marriage in Virginia.
The first birth was that of Virginia, daughter of Ananias Dare,
born August 18th, 1587.
COLONIES.
1609. Jamestown sent out two colonies, one to Nansemond,
on James river, thirty miles below Jamestown-the other to
Powhatan, six miles below the falls of James river, now the city
of Richmond. This last land was purchased from Powhatan
for copper. Each colony was settled with one hundred and
twenty men.
Shortly after another colony was planted at Kiquotan, near
what is now the borough of Norfolk, at the mouth of James
river, and a fort was there built and called Algernon, since that
time made more illustrious by being the cognomen of the patriotic Sidney.
Mulberry island, in the James river, eighteen miles below
Jamestown.
HUGUENOTS.
1699. Eight hundred Huguenot refugees came to Virginia,
and settled at Monacan town, south side of James river, twenty
miles below Richmond. They made an attempt to tame buffaloes, by catching them young. They made a strong-bodied claret wine of wild grapes. They found a patron and benefactor
in Colonel Byrd.
CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS.
During the great rebellion in England, several good Cavalier
families came over to Virginia; and at the restoration ofCharles
the Second, some families of the Roundheads came over and
settled in the colony, but not many, they being for the most part
pre-possessed in favor of the New England colonies.
MALEFACTORS.
It has been often repeated that the first settlers of Virginia
were convicts. This is a mistake; very few of this description
were transported to Virginia at any time.
WILLIAMSBURG.
This place was at first called the Middle Plantation; after
f]
wards it was named after William the Third. It was laid off in
the form of a capital W, in compliment to the Prince of Orange.
INDIANS.
By the treaty of 1677 each Indian town was to pay three Indian arrows for their land, and twenty beaver skins forprotection.
INDIAN POPULATION.
The Indians in 1707 had only five hundred fighting men left,
so that the whole Indian population was at that time less than
two thousand within the limits of the colony.
BREAD.
The Indians made bread of sunflower seed.
RAPPAHANNOCK.
The Indian name for this river was Toppohannock; there is
a town in Hanover county by that name.
BOTANY.
Beverley mentions the following species as met with in Virginia:
Cherries; Plums; Persimmons; Mulberries; Hurts, or Huekleberries; Wild Raspberries, probably Blackberries; Wild
Strawberry; Chesnuts; Chinquapins; Hazelnuts; Hickories;
Walnuts; Puccoon and Musquaspen, roots with which the natives painted their bodies; Cushaw or Cymlings, called by the
northern Indians Squash; Sumach; Sassafras; Jamestown
Weed, a great cooler; Tuckahoe, a tuberous root, growing in
marshes. There is a place in New York of this name, and a
creek in Virginia, and those living east of it are called Tuckahoes-those west Cohees, perhaps corrupted from the Scotch
expression "quoth he." Currants; Cranberries, probably the
same with Captain Smith's Rawcomens; six species of Grape;
Honey Tree; Sugar Tree, maple-the Indians had made maple
sugar time out of mind; Maycocks, Maracocks; Lupines;
Myrtle, fi-om which was made a wax, out of which were made
candles without grease, never melting, and exhaling a fragrant
incense; the Crown Imperial; Cardinal Flower; Indian Corn.
PRICES CURRENT IN VIRGINIA, 1703.
Beef and Pork, ld. to 2d.; Pullets, 6d.; Capons, 8d. to 9d.;
Chickens, 3s. a dozen; Ducks, 9d. a piece; Geese, Is.; Turkey
Hens, 18d.; Deer, 10s. a head; Oysters and Wild Fowl, cheap.
JAMESTOWN IN 1616.
Two hundred and eighteen years ago this little colony was the
germ of a future empire, destined to spread from the Atlantic to
the Pacific.
A pinnace fromEngland lay off at anchor, rocking on the waters of theJames. Men were at work upon a palisade, and the
clink of the anvil was heard. A mocking bird warbled to the
strangers, and occasionally was heard the plunge of the sturgeon.
With the fatigues, sufferings and perils of a colonial life is
mingled a tincture of romance, the curious thirst of adventure,
the fresh glow of new images, and the dignity of danger.
Here some of the English, oppressed by the heat of an unaccustomed sun, lay reposing in the shade of a tree; while others,
with shouts and laughter, played the favorite game of bowls.
Among the lookers-on were some of the Powhatan Indians,
naked, with keen eyes and raven hair, gazing at the game with
a sort of stoical attention. Ah, little did they foresee that from
this speck of cloud a storm would gather to sweep them from the
earth!
In the group of the bowling green might be seen "younger
sons of younger brothers, poor gentlemen, starveling gallants,
ostlers trade-fallen, decayed tapsters-the cankers of a calm
world and a long peace."
Perhaps a party of Captain Smith's men might be seen firing
at a target, to the consternation of the salvages; or on the way
to a neighboring forest to fell trees.
Perhaps Captain Smith was employed in punishing profanity,
by pouring a bucket of water down the coat-sleeve for each
oath, or landing a boat load of corn just arrived from Pamaunkee.
Were Captain Smith to revisit Virginia, he would find Jamestown in ruins, and no Phoerix arisen from the ashes. He would
be startled to see the Pocahontas or the Patrick Henry come
foaming by with the speed of a race-horse. He would find, too,
rail-roads running through woods that he first explored, and
over rivers that he first navigated. And as the train of cotton
bales and hogsheads of tobacco came sweeping by, he would
naturally be reminded of his old friends, "the sofisticating
tobacco-mongers in London."
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