John Rolfe and Tobacco
Those ships that brought colonists were in every instance
expected to return to England laden with the commodities of
Virginia. At first cargoes of precious ores were looked for. These
failing, the Company must take from Virginia what lay at hand and
what might be suited to English needs. In 1610 the Company issued a
paper of instructions upon this subject of Virginia commodities. The
daughter was expected to send to the mother country sassafras root,
bay berries, puccoon, sarsaparilla, walnut, chestnut, and chinquapin
oil, wine, silk grass, beaver cod, beaver and otter skins, clapboard
of oak and walnut, tar, pitch, turpentine, and powdered sturgeon.
It might seem that Virginia was headed to become a land of fishers,
of foresters, and vine dressers, perhaps even, when the gold should
be at last discovered, of miners. At home, the colonizing merchants
and statesmen looked for some such thing. In return for what she
laded into ships, Virginia was to receive English-made goods, and to
an especial degree woolen goods, "a very liberall utterance of our
English cloths into a maine country described to be bigger than all
Europe." There was to be direct trade, country kind for country
kind, and no specie to be taken out of England. The promoters at
home doubtless conceived a hardy and simple trans-Atlantic folk of
their own kindred, planters for their own needs, steady consumers of
the plainer sort of English wares, steady gatherers, in return, of
necessaries for which England otherwise must trade after a costly
fashion with lands which were not always friendly. A simple, sturdy,
laborious Virginia, white men and Indians. If this was their dream,
reality was soon to modify it.
A new commodity of unsuspected commercial value began now to be
grown in garden-plots along the James -- the "weed" par excellence,
tobacco. That John Rolfe who had been shipwrecked on the Sea
Adventure was now a planter in Virginia. His child Bermuda had died
in infancy, and his wife soon after their coming to Jamestown. Rolfe
remained, a young man, a good citizen, and a Christian. And he loved
tobacco. On that trivial fact hinges an important chapter in the
economic history of America. In 1612 Rolfe planted tobacco in his
own garden, experimented with its culture, and prophesied that the
Virginian weed would rank with the best Spanish. It was now a
shorter plant, smaller-leafed and smaller-flowered, but time and
skilful gardening would improve it.
England had known tobacco for thirty years, owing its introduction
to Raleigh. At first merely amused by the New World rarity, England
was now by general use turning a luxury into a necessity. More and
more she received through Dutch and Spanish ships tobacco from the
Indies. Among the English adventurers to Virginia some already knew
the uses of the weed; others soon learned from the Indians. Tobacco
was perhaps not indigenous to Virginia, but had probably come
through southern tribes who in turn had gained it from those who
knew it in its tropic habitat. Now, however, tobacco was grown by
all Virginia Indians, and was regarded as the Great Spirit's best
gift. In the final happy hunting-ground, kings, werowances, and
priests enjoyed it forever. When, in the time after the first
landing, the Indians brought gifts to the adventurers as to beings
from a superior sphere, they offered tobacco as well as comestibles
like deer-meat and mulberries. Later, in England and in Virginia,
there was some suggestion that it might be cultivated among other
commodities. But the Company, not to be diverted from the path to
profits, demanded from Virginia necessities and not new-fangled
luxuries. Nevertheless, a little tobacco was sent over to England,
and then a little more, and then a larger quantity. In less than
five years it had become a main export; and from that time to this
profoundly has it affected the life of Virginia and, indeed, of the
United States.
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Werowance A title used for chiefs in the Powhatan Indian Tribe. |
This then is the wide and general event with which John Rolfe is
connected. But there is also a narrower, personal happening that has
pleased all these centuries. Indian difficulties yet abounded, but
Dale, administrator as well as man of Mars, wound his way skillfully
through them all. Powhatan brooded to one side, over there at
Werowocomoco. Captain Samuel Argall was again in Virginia, having
brought over sixty-two colonists in his ship, the Treasurer. A bold
and restless man, explorer no less than mariner, he again went
trading up the Potomac, and visited upon its banks the village of
Japazaws, kinsman of Powhatan. Here he found no less a personage
than Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas. An idea came into Argall's
active and somewhat unscrupulous brain. He bribed Japazaws with a
mighty gleaming copper kettle, and by that chief's connivance took
Pocahontas from the village above the Potomac. He brought her
captive in his boat down the Chesapeake to the mouth of the James
and so up the river to Jamestown, here to be held hostage for an
Indian peace. This was in 1613.
Pocahontas stayed by the James, in the rude settlers' town, which
may have seemed to the Indian girl stately and wonderful enough.
Here Rolfe made her acquaintance, here they talked together, and
here, after some scruples on his part as to "heathennesse," they
were married. He writes of "her desire to be taught and instructed
in the knowledge of God; her capableness of understanding; her
aptnesse and willingnesse to recieve anie good impression, and also
the spiritual, besides her owne incitements stirring me up
hereunto." First she was baptized, receiving the name Rebecca, and
then she was married to Rolfe in the flower-decked church at
Jamestown. Powhatan was not there, but he sent young chiefs, her
brothers, in his place. Rolfe had lands and cabins thereupon up the
river near Henricus. He called this place Varina, the best Spanish
tobacco being Varinas. Here he and Pocahontas dwelled together
"civilly and lovingly." When two years had passed the couple went
with their infant son upon a visit to England. There court and town
and country flocked to see the Indian "princess." After a time she
and Rolfe would go back to Virginia. But at Gravesend, before their
ship sailed, she was stricken with smallpox and died, making "a
religious and godly end," and there at Gravesend she is buried. Her
son, Thomas Rolfe, who was brought up in England, returned at last
to Virginia and lived out his life there with his wife and children.
Today no small host of Americans have for ancestress the daughter of
Powhatan. In England-in-America the immediate effect of the marriage
was really to procure an Indian peace outlasting Pocahontas's brief
life.
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