American Life in theSeventeenth Century

1607-1692

WILLIAM BRADFORD, OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION, C. 1630

As the seventeenth century wore on, the crudeencampments of the first colonists slowly gave way

to permanent settlements. Durable and distinctive waysof life emerged as Europeans and Africans adapted tothe New World and as Native Americans adapted to thenewcomers. Even the rigid doctrines of Puritanism soft-ened somewhat in response to the circumstances of lifein America. And though all the colonies remained tied toEngland, and all were stitched tightly into the fabric ofan Atlantic economy, regional differences continued tocrystallize, notably the increasing importance of slavelabor to the southern way oflife.

BEING THUS PASSED THE VAST OCEAN, AND A SEA OF TROUBLES

BEFORE IN THEIR PREPARATION ••• , THEY HAD NOW NO FRIENDS

TO WELLCOME THEM, NOR INNS TO ENTER~AINE OR REFRESH

THEIR WEATHERBEATEN BODYS, NO HOUSES OR MUCH LESS

TOWNS TO REPAIRE TOO, TO SEEKE FOR SUCCORE.

The Unhealthy ChesapeakeLife in the American Wilderness was nasty, brutish, andshort for the earliest Chesapeake settlers. Malaria,dysentery, and typhoid took a cruel toil, cutting tenyears off the life expectancy of newcomers from Eng-land. Half the people born in early Virginia and Mary-land did not survive to celebrate their twentieth

birthdays. Few of the remaining half lived to see theirfiftieth-or even their fortieth, if they were women.

The disease-ravaged settlements of the Chesapeakegrew only slowly in the seventeenth century, mostlythrough fresh immigration from England. The greatmajority of immigrants were single men in their lateteens and early twenties, and most perished soon afterarrival. Surviving males competed for the affections ofthe extremely scarce women, whom they outnumberednearly six to one in 1650 and still outnumbered by threeto two at the end of the century. Eligible women did notremain single for long.

Families were both few and fragile in this ferociousenvironment. Most men could not find mates. Mostmarriages were destroyed by the death of a partnerwithin seven years. Scarcely any children reached adult-hood under the care of two parents, and almost no oneknew a grandparent. Weak family ties were reflected inthe many pregnancies among unmarried young girls. Inone Maryland county, more than a third of all brideswere already pregnant when they wed.

Yetdespite these hardships, the Chesapeake coloniesstruggled on. The native-born inhabitants eventually

66

acquired immunity to the killer diseases that had ravagedthe original immigrants. The presence of more womenallowed more families to form, and by the end of theseventeenth century the white population of the Chesa-peake was growing on the basis of its own birthrate.As the eighteenth century opened, Virginia, with somefifty-nine thousand people, was the most populouscolony. Maryland, with about thirty thousand, was thethird largest (afterMassachusetts).

The Tobacco EconomyAlthough unhealthy for human life, the Chesapeake wasimmensely hospitable to tobacco cultivation. Profit-hungry settlers often planted tobacco to sell before theyplanted corn to eat. But intense tobacco cultivationquickly exhausted the soil, creating a nearly insatiabledemand for new land. Relentlessly seeking fresh fieldsto plant in tobacco, commercial growers plunged everfarther up the river valleys, provoking ever more Indianattacks.

Leaf-laden ships annually hauled some 1.5 millionpounds of tobacco out of Chesapeake Bay by the 1630sand almost 40 million pounds a year by the end of thecentury. This enormous production depressed prices,but colonial Chesapeake tobacco growers responded tofalling prices in the familiar way of farmers: by plantingstill more acres to tobacco and bringing stillmore prod-uct to market.

More tobacco meant more labor, but where was it tocome from? Families procreated too slowly to provide it

An agent for the Virginia Company inLondon submitted the following descriptionof the Virginia colony in 1622:"I found the plantations generallyseated upon mere salt marshes fullof infectious bogs and muddy creeksand lakes, and thereby subjected toall those inconveniences and diseaseswhich are so commonly found in themost unsound and most unhealthyparts of England."

The Importance of Tobacco 67

Early Tobacco Advertising Crude woodcuts likethis on6ewere used to identify various "brands"of tobacco-one of the first products to be sold bybrand-name advertising. Then, as later, advertiserssometimes made extravagant claims for theirmerchandise.

by natural population increase. Indians died too quicklyon contact with whites to be a reliable labor force.African slaves cost too much money. But England stillhad a "surplus" of displaced farmers, desperate foremployment. Many of them, as "indentured servants,"voluntarily mortgaged the sweat of their bodies forseveral years to Chesapeake masters. In exchange theyreceived transatlantic passage and eventual "freedomdues," including a few barrels of corn, a suit of clothes,and perhaps a small parcel of land.

Both Virginia and Maryland employed the "head-right" system to encourage the importation of servantworkers. Under its terms, whoever paid the passage of alaborer received the right to acquire fifty acres of land.Masters-not the servants themselves-thus reaped thebenefits of landownership from the headright system.Some masters, men who already had at least modestfinancial means, soon parlayed their investments inservants into vast holdings in real estate. They becamethe great merchant-planters, lords of sprawling river-front estates that came to dominate the agriculture andcommerce of the southern colonies. Ravenous for bothlabor and land, Chesapeake planters brought some100,000 indentured servants to the region by 1700.

68 CHAPTER4 AmericanLifein the SeventeenthCentury,1607-1692

These "white slaves" represented more than three-quarters of all European immigrants to Virginia andMaryland in the seventeenth century.

Indentured servants led a hard but hopeful life inthe early days of the Chesapeake settlements. Theylooked forward to becoming free and acquiring land oftheir own after completing their term of servitude. Butas prime land became scarcer, masters became increas-ingly resistant to including land grants in "freedomdues." The servants' lot grew harsher as the seventeenthcentury wore on. Misbehaving servants, such as ahousemaid who became pregnant or a laborer whokilled a hog, might be punished with an extended termof service. Even after formal freedom was granted,penniless freed workers often had little choice but tohire themselves out for pitifully low wages to theirformer masters.

Frustrated Freemenand Bacon's Rebellion

An accumulating mass of footloose, impoverishedfreemen was drifting discontentedly about the Chesa-peake region by the late seventeenth century. Mostlysingle young men, they were frustrated by their brokenhopes of acquiring land, as well as by their gnawingfailure to find single women to marry.

The swelling numbers of these wretched bachelorsrattled the established planters. TheVirginia assembly in1670 disfranchised most of the landless knockabouts,accusing them of "having little interest in the country"and causing "tumults at the election to the disturbanceof his majesty's peace." Virginia's Governor WilliamBerkeley lamented his lot as ruler of this rabble: "Howmiserable that man is that governs a people where sixparts of seven at least are poor, endebted, discontented,and armed."

Berkeley's misery soon increased. About a thou-sand Virginians broke out of control in 1676, led by atwenty-nine-year-old planter, athaniel Bacon. Manyof the rebels were frontiersmen who had been forcedinto the untamed backcountry in search of arable land.They fiercely resented Berkeley'sfriendly policies towardthe Indians, whose thriving fur trade the governormonopolized. When Berkeley refused to retaliate for aseries of brutal Indian attacks on frontier settlements,Bacon and his followers took matters into their ownhands. They fell murderously upon the Indians, friendly

and hostile alike, chased Berkeley from Jamestown, andput the torch to the capital. Chaos swept the raw colony,as frustrated freemen and resentful servants-describedas "a rabble of the basest sort of people"-went on arampage ofplundering and pilfering.

As this civil war in Virginia ground on, Baconsuddenly died of disease, like so many of his fellowcolonists. Berkeley thereupon crushed the uprising withbrutal cruelty, hanging more than twenty rebels. Back inEngland Charles II complained, "That old fool has put todeath more people in that naked country than I did herefor the murder ofmy father."

The distant English king could scarcely imagine thedepths of passion and fear that Bacon's Rebellionexcited in Virginia. Bacon had ignited the smolderingresentments of landless former servants, and he hadpitted the hardscrabble backcountry frontiersmenagainst the haughty gentry of the tidewater plantations.The rebeJlironwas now suppressed, but these tensionsremained. Lordlyplanters, surrounded by a still-seethingsea of malcontents, anxiously looked about for lesstroublesome laborers to toil in the restless tobaccokingdom. Their eyes soon lit on Africa.

Nathaniel Bacon assailed Virginia'sGovernor William Berkeley in 1676

"for having protected. favored. andemboldened the Indians against HisMajesty's loyal subjects. never contriv-ing. requiring. or appointing any dueor proper means of satisfaction fortheir many invasions. robberies. andmurders committed upon us."

For his part, Governor Berkeley declared,"I have lived thirty-four years amongstyou [Virginians]. as uncorrupt anddiligent as ever [a] Governor was.[while] Bacon is a man of two yearsamongst you. his person and qualitiesunknown to most of you. and to all menelse. by any virtuous act that ever 1heard of.... 1will take counsel ofwiser men than myself. but Mr. Baconhas none about him but the lowest ofthe people."

Examining the Evidence 69

EXAMINING THE EVIDENCE

t. An Indentured Servant's Contract, 1746 Legaldocuments, such as this contract signed in Virginiain 1746, not only provide evidence about the ever-changing rules by which societies have regulatedtheir affairs, but also furnish rich information aboutthe conditions of life and the terms of humanrelationships in the past. This agreement betweenThomas Clayton and James Griffin provides areminder that not all indentured servants in earlyAmerica carne from abroad. Indentured servitudecould be equivalent to an apprenticeship, in which ayoung person traded several years of service to amaster in exchange for instruction in the master'scraft. Here Clayton pledges himself to five years inGriffin'semploy in return for a promise to initiate theyoung man into the "Mystery" of the master's craft.Why might the master's trade be described as a"mystery"? From the evidence of this contract, whatare the principal objectives of each of the partiesto it? What problems does each anticipate? Whatobligations does each assume? What does the con-sent of Clayton's mother to the contract suggestabout the young man's situation?

Examining the Evidence 69

EXAMINING THE

~, : An Indentured Servant's Contract, 1746 Legaldocuments, such as this contract signed in Virginiain 1746, not only provide evidence about the ever-changing rules by which societies have regulatedtheir affairs, but also furnish rich information aboutthe conditions of life and the terms of humanrelationships in the past. This agreement betweenThomas Clayton and James Griffin provides areminder that not all indentured servants in earlyAmerica carne from abroad. Indentured servitudecould be equivalent to an apprenticeship, in which ayoung person traded several years of service to amaster in exchange for instruction in the master'scraft. Here Clayton pledges himself to five years inGriffin'semploy in return for a promise to initiate theyoung man into the "Mystery" of the master's craft.Why might the master's trade be described as a"mystery"? From the evidence of this contract, whatare the principal objectives of each of the partiesto it? What problems does each anticipate? Whatobligations does each assume? What does the con-sent of Clayton's mother to the contract suggestabout the young man's situation?

EVIDENCE

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