USA > Virginia > Historical collections of Virginia : containing a collection of the most interesting facts, traditions, biographical sketches, anecdotes, &c. relating to its history and antiquities ; together with geographical and statistical descriptions ; to which is appended, an historical and descriptive sketch of the District of Columbia. > Part 20
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The idea of numbers is, therefore, very limited among the tribes. Some of them can reckon a thousand, while others cannot exceed ten ; to express any greater number they are compelled to resort to something indefinite. As numerous as the pigcons in the woods, or the stars in the heavens, is a mode of expression for any greater number. For the same reason, their language has no term for the abstract ideas of time, space, univer- sal, &c. There is, however, a conjecture, which, if true, will prove that the Indians of Virginia had a more copious antimetic. It is suggested that Temocomece or Uttomar comac was sent to England by Powhatan, for the purpose of procuring an exact account of the number of the people of England. Tomocomoco made the attempt till his arith. metic failed ; but before he would be sent on such an errand, he must have been able to reckon the Powhatans, and these, according even to the lowest estimates, amounted to eight thousand.
It has been said that the Indian is the most improvident of animals ; that, satisted with his present enjoyments, he wastes no thought on the morrow, and that repeated calamities have added nothing to his care or foresight. This may have been true of some of the tribes in South America, or in the islands. The North American, and more especially the Virginian, always had their public stock hoarded. Powhatan and the other sachems carried on a continual grade with the first colonists for corn, and we find that Raleigh, Baltimore, and Penn, derived their principal support from simler sources. But the quantity of labor and industry required for raising this superfluity was compara .. tively nothing. A few did not, as in established societies, work for the support of the whole, and for the purpose of enabling the rich to vend their surplus commodities in for- eign markets. Here every man labored for himself, or for the common stock, and a few days in every year were sufficient for the maintenance of each man, and by conse- quence, of all the members of the tribe.
The Indians of Virginia have no written laws, but their customs, handed down from age to age in the traditions of their old men, have all the force of the best-defined and positive institutions. Nor is this respect acquired by the fear of punishment. The aborigines of Virginia, whatever may be pretended, enjoyed complete freedom. Theu sachems made their own tools and instruments of husbandry. They worked in the ground in common with the other Indians. They could enter into no measure of a pub- lic nature without the concurrence of the matchacomoco or grand council ; and even after this body had decided on the merits of the question, the consent of the people at large was necessary to sanction their proceedings. If the voice of this council be in favor of war, the young men express their approbation by painting themselves of various colors, so as to render their appearance horrible to their enemies. In this state they rush furiously into the council : they begin the war dance, accompanying their steps with fieres gestures, expenses of their thirst of vengeance ; and describing the middle in which they will surprise, wound, kill, and scalp their enemies. After this they sing their own glories ; they recount the exploits of their ancestors, and the ancient glories of their nation.
The Indian festival dance, says Beverly, is performed by the "dancers themselves forming a ring, and moving round a circle of carved posts. that are set up for what pur. pose ; or else round a fire, made in a convenient part of the town; and then each has his rattle in his hand, or what other thing he fancies most. as his bow and arrows, or nis tomahawk. They also dress themselves up with branches of trees, or some other strange
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accoutrement3. Thus they proceed, dancing and singing, with all the antie postures they can invent ; and he is the bravest fellow that has the most prodigious gestures."
Indian Festival Dance
When any matter is proposed in the national council, it is common for the chiefs of the several ulbes to consult thereon apart with their counsellors, and when they have agreed, to deliver the opinion of the tribe at the national council, and as their govern- ment seems to rest wholly on persuasion, they endeavor, by mutual concessions, to obtain unanimity. Their only controls are their manners and their moral sense of right and wrong, which, like tasting and smelling, in every man makes part of his nature.
An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or when the case is serious, as in murder, by the individuals whom it concerns.
The Indians of Virginia had no idea of distinct and exclusive property ; the lands were in common, and every man had a right to choose or abandon his situation at pleasure. Their mode of computation, as with us, was by units, tens, and hundreds. There is no light on the records by which we may discover its limits or extent. Analogy affords no helps on this occasion. The Iroquois could reckon a thousand, while other tribes, al- inost in their neighborhood, could count no further than ten.
"They reckon their years by winters, or cohonks, as they call them, which was a name taken from the note of the wild geese, intimating so many times of the wild geese com- ing to them, which is every winter.
'They distinguish the several parts of the year by five seasons, viz. : the badding or blossoming of the spring ; the earing of the corn, or roasting ear time ; the summer, or highest sun ; the corn-gathering, or fall of the leaf ; and the winter, or cohonks.
They count the months by the moons, though not with any relation to so many in a year as we do; but they make them return again by the same name, as the moon of stags, the corn moon, the first and second moon of cohonks."
They have no distinction of the hours of the day, but divide it only into three parts, the rise, the power, and lowering of the sun ; and they keep their accounts by knots on a string, or notches on a stick, not unlike the Peruvian Quippoes.
If we believe the accounts of Smith and Beverly, the Indi ins of Virginia were grossly superstitious, and even idolatrous. The annexed engraving is a representation of their idol Okee, Quioccos, or Kimnasa, copied from one in Beverly's History. " They do not look upon it as one single being, but reckon there are many of the same nature ; they likewise believe that there are tutelar deities in every town."
Although they have no set days for performing the rites of religion. they have a num- ber of festivals. which are celebrated with the utmost festivity. They solemnize a day for the plentiful coming of their wild fowl, such as geese, ducks, teal, &c. ; for the re- turns of their hunting seasons ; and for the ripening of certain fruits. But the greatest annual festival they have is at the time of their corn-gathering, at which they revel several days together. 'To these they universally contribute, as they do to the gathering of the corn: on this occasion they have their greatest variety of graines, and mor. especially of their war dances and heroic songs: in which they bist tout their com being now gathered, they have store enough for their women and children, and have nothing to do but go to war, travel, and to seek for new adventures.
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There is a second annual festival, conducted with still greater solemnity. It com- mences with a fast, which exceeds any thing of abstinence known among the most mor. tified hermits. This fast is succeeded by a feast. The old fire is put out, and a new fire, called the drill fire, elicited by the friction of two pieces of wood. They sprinkle sand on the hearths, and, to make the lustration complete, an emetic is taken by the whole nation. At this meeting all crimes, except murder, are pardoned, and the bare mention of them afterwards is considered as disreputable. At the close of this festival, which continues four days, a funeral procession commences, the signification of which is that they bury all the past in oblivion, and the criminals having tasted of the decoction of casina, are permitted to sit down by the men they have injured.
The ceremony of huskanawing returns after an interval of fourteen of sixteen years, or more frequently, as the young men happen to arrive at maturity. This is intended as a state of probation, preparatory to their being initiated into the class of warriors and counsellors. The candidates are first taken into the thickest part of the forest, and kept in close and solitary confinement for several months, with scarcely any sustenance besides an infusion or decoction of some intoxicating roots. This diet, added to the severity of the discipline, invariably induces madness, and the fit is protracted for eighteen days. During the paroxysins they are shut up in a strong enclosure, called an huskanaw pen, "one of which," says Beverly, "I saw belonging to the Pamaunkie Indians, in the year 1694. It was in shape like a sugar-loaf, and every way open like a lattice for the air to pass through." When their doctors suppose they have drunk a
Indian Idol.
sufficient portion of the intoxicating juice, they gradually restore them to their senses by lessening the quantity of the potion, and before they recover their senses they are brought back to the town. This process is intended to operate like Lethe on their mem - ory : "To release the youth from all their childish impressions, and from that strong partiality to persons and things which is contracted before reason takes place. So that when the young men come to themselves again, their reason may act freely without be- ing biased by the cheats of custom and education. Thus they also become discharged from any ties by blood ; and are established in a state of equality and perfect freedom. to order their actions and dispose of their persons as they think proper, without any other control than the law of nature."
Marriage, or the union of husband and wife, stood precisely on the same footing as among the other American tribes. A man might keep as many wives as he could support : but in general they had but one, whom. without being obliged to assign any reason, they might at any time abandon, and immediately form a new engagement. The rights of the woman are the same, with this diference, that she cannot marry again until the next annual festival.
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Courtship was short, and, like their marriage, unembarrassed by ceremony. If the presents of a young warrior are accepted by his mistress, she is considered as having agreed to become his wife, and without any further explanations to her family, she goes home to His hat. The principles that are to regalate their future conduct are well under- stood. He agrees to perform the more laborious duties of hunting and fishing ; of felling the tree, erecting the hut, constructing the canoe, and of fighting the enemies of the tribe .. To her, custom had assigned almost all the domestic duties ; to prepare the food ; to watch over the infancy of the children. The nature of their lives and circumstances added another, which, with more propriety, taking in a general view, should have been exercised by the male. It belonged to the women to plant the corn, and attend all the other productions of an Indian garden or plantation. But the labor required for raising these articles was trifling, and the warriors, being engaged in hunting and war, had neither leisure nor inclination to attend to objects of such inferior consideration.
To compensate for this seeming hardship or neglect, the women had several valuable privileges, that prove their importance, and the respect entertained for them by the men. All the honors of an Indian community are maternal. and the children, in the event of a separation, belong to the wife. The husband is considered only as a visitor ; and, should any difference arise, he takes up his gun and departs. Nor does this sepa- ration entail any disgrace upon the parties.
If any credit be due to the accounts of our carly historians, the women in the Pow- hatan confederacy had considerable weight. Some of the tribes had even female sachems, a regulation which could not have been tolerated by freemen and warriors, if, as has been imagined by some historians. they had been regarded only as objects of con- tempt and ill-usage. What agitation and sorrow were not excited by the death of Poca- hontas, and how anxious the inquiries of her family respecting her health and her feel- ings, her content and her return !
It was no uncommon spectacle to see groups of young women, almost naked, frisking with wanton modesty in the wild gambols of the dance. Even the decent Pocahontas did not disdain to mingle in those pastimes. Crowned with a wreath of leaves and flowers, she sometimes led the chorus and presided in the dance. Nor should this be regarded as a deviation from the rules of modesty and innocence. They acted agrecably to the usage of their country and the dictates of nature. Every object inspired happi- ness and content, and their only care was to crowd as many pleasures as possible into the short span of a fleeting existence.
The following summary account of the Indians in Virginia, as they were about the year 1700, is from Beverly's History of Virginia.
The Indians of Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge, are almost wasted, but such towns or people as retain their names and live in bodies. are hereunder set down ; all which together cannot raise five hundred fighting men. They live poorly, and much in fear of the neighboring Indians. Each town, by the articles of peace, 1677, pays three Indian arrows for their land, and twenty beaver-skins for protection, every year.
In Accomack are eight towns, viz : Matomkin is much decreased of late by the small- pox, that was carried thither. Gingoteque ; the few remaina of this town are joined with a nation of the Maryland Indians. Kiequotank is reduced to a very few men. Matchopungo has a small number yet living. Oecahanock has a small number vet living. Pungoteque ; governed by a queen, but a small nation. Oanancock has but four or five families. Chiconessex has very few, who just keep the name. Nanduye : a seat of the empress ; not above twenty families, but she hath all the nations of the shore under tribute. In Northampton, Gangascoe, which is almost as numerous as all the foregoing nations put together. In Prince George, Wyanoke is extinct. In Charles City, Appamattox, extinct. In Surry, Nottaways, which are about a hundred bowmen, of late a thriving and increasing people. By Nansamond : Menheering, has about thirty bowmen, who keep at a stand: Nansamond : about thirty bowmen: they have increased much of late. In King William's county, Pamunkie has about forty bowmen, who deerease. Chickahomonie, which had about sixteen bowmen, but lately increased. In Essex : Rappahannock, extinct. In Richmond : Port Tabago, extinct. In Northumberland: Wiccomocco has but few men living, which yet keep up their kingdom, and retain their fashion : yet live by themselves, separate from all other In- dians, and from the English.
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The following able article, from Tucker's Life of Jefferson, relates to the " Abolition of Entails .- Primogeniture .-- Their effects considered .- Church establishment in Vir- ginia-its gradual abolition .- Entire freedom of religion."
On the 11th of October, 1776, three days after Mr. Jefferson had taken his seat in the legislature, he brought in a bill for the establishment of Courts of Justice, which was subsequently approved by the House and passed. Three days afterwards, he intro- duced a bill to convert estates in tail into fee simple. This, he avows, was a blow at the aristocracy of Virginia.
In that colony, in the earlier periods of its history, large grants of land had been ob- tained from the crown by a few favored individuals, which had been preserved -in their families by means of entails, so as to have formed, by degrees, a patrician class among the colonists. These modes of continuing the same estates in the same family, found a protection here which they could not obtain in the mother country ; for, by an act passed in the year 1705, the practice of docking entails, which had previously prevailed in Virginia as in England, was expressly prohibited ; and whenever the peculiar exigen- cies of a family made it necessary that this restraint or alienation should be done away, it could be effected only by a special act of Assembly.
The class which thus provided for the perpetuation of its wealth, also monopolized the civil honors of the colony. The counsellors of the state were selected from it, by reason of which the whole body commonly had a strong bias in favor of the crown, in all questions between popular right and regel prerogative. It is but an act of justice to this class to state, that although some of them might have been timid and hesitating in the dispute with the mother country-disposed to drain the cup of conciliation to the dregs-yet, others were among the foremost in patriotic self-devotion and generous sac- rifices ; and there was but a small proportion of them who were actually tories, as those who sided with Great Britain were then denominated.
Mr. Jefferson was probably influenced less by a regard to the conduct of the wealthy families in the contest, than by the general reason which he thus gives: " To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, and scattered with an equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic."
The repeal of this law was effected, not without a struggle. It was opposed by Mr. Pendleton, who, both from age and temper, was cautions of innovation ; and who, find- ing some change inevitable, proposed to modify the law so far as to give to the tenant in tail the power of conveying in fee-simple. This would have left the entail in force, where the power of abolishing it was not exercised ; and he was within a few votes of saving so much of the old law.
This law, and another subsequently introduced by Mr. Jefferson, to abolish the prefer- ence given to the male sex. and to the first-born, under the English common law, have effectually answered their intended purpose of destroying the gross inequality of for- tunes which formerly prevailed in Virginia. They have not merely altered the distribution of that part of the landed property, which is transmitted to surviving relatives by the silent operation of the law, but they have also operated on public opinion, so as to infa. ence the testamentary disposition of it by the proprietors, without which last effeet the purpose of the Legislature might have been readily defeated. The cases are now very rare, in which a parent makes, by his will, a much more unequal distribution of his pro .. perty among his children than the law itself would make. It is thus that laws, then- selves the creatures of public opinion, often powerfully react on it.
The effects of this change in the distribution of property are very visible. There is no longer a class of persons possessed of large inherited estates, who, in a luxurious and ostentatious style of living, greatly exceed the rest of the community ; a much larger number of those who are wealthy, have acquired their estates by their own talents or enterprise ; and most of these last are commonly content with reaching the average of that more moderate standard of expense which public opinion requires, rather than the higher scale which it tolerates .*
Thus, there were formerly many in Virginia who drove a coach and six, and now
* A large portion of the matter on this page was appropriated by Lord Brougham, in his Miscellanies, without any acknowledginent whatsoever.
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such an equipage is never seen. There were, probably, twice or three times as many four-horse carriages before the revolution, as there are at present ; but the number of two-horse carriages may now be ten, or even twenty times as great, as at the former period. A few families, too, could boast of more plate than can now be met with; but the whole quantity in the country has now increased twenty, if not fifty fold
Some nice but querulous observers, have thought that they perceived a correspondent change in the manners and intellectual cultivation of the two periods; and, while they admit that the mass of the people may be less gross, and more intelligent than the back- woodsman, the tobacco-roller,* or the rustic population generally under the regal govern- ment, yet they insist that we have now no such class as that which formerly constituted the Virginia gentleman of chivalrous honor and polished manners -- at once high-minded, liberal, delicate, and munificent; and that as to mental cultivation, our best educated men of the present day cannot compare with the Lees, the Randolphs, the Jeffersons, Pendletons, and Wythes, of that period.
This comparison, however, cannot easily be made with fairness; for there are few who have lived long enough to compare the two periods, and those few are liable to be biased on one side or the other, according to their early predilections and peculiar tastes. But apart from these individual influences, there is a general one to which we are all exposed. Time throws a mellow light over our recollections of the past, by which their beauties acquire a more touching softness, and their harsher parts are thrown into shade. Who that consults his reason can believe, if those scenes of his early days, to which he most fondly looks back, were again placed before him, that he would again see them such as memory depicts them ? His more discriminating eve, and his less excitable sensibility, would now see faults which then escaped his inexperience, and he would look tranquilly, if not with indifference, on what had once produced an intoxica- tion of delight. Yet such is the comparison which every one must make between the men and things of his early and his later life; and the traditionary accounts of a yet earlier period are liable to the same objection, for they all originate with those who de- scribe what they remember, rather than what they actually observed. We must, there .. fore, make a liberal allowance for this common illusion, when we are told of the superior virtues and accomplishments of our ancestors.
The intellectual comparison may be more satisfactorily made. While it is admitted that Virginia could, at the breaking out of the Revolution, boast of men that could hold a respectable rank in any society ; yet, after making allowance for the spirit-stirring occasion, which then called forth all their talents and faculties, there seems to be no reason to suppose that there is any inferiority in the present generation. It must be re- collected, that by the more general diffusion of the benefits of education, and the con tinued advancement of mental culture, we have a higher standard of excellence in the present day than formerly, and in the progressive improvement which our country has experienced in this particular, the intellectual efforts which in one generation confer dis- tinction, would in that which succeeds it scarcely attract notice. It may be safely said, that a well-written newspaper essay would then have conferred celebrity on its author, and a pamphlet would theu have been regarded as great an achievement in letters as an octavo volume at present. Nor does there pass any session of the legislature, without calling forth reports and speeches, which exhibit a degree of ability and political infor- mation, that would, forty years ago, have made the author's name reverberate from one end of British America to the other. The supposed effect of this change in the distri- bution of property, in deteriorating manners, and lowering the standard of intellectual merit, may then well be called in question.
Another law, materially affecting the polity of the state, and the condition of so- ciety, owes its origin in part to Mr. Jefferson. . This way the act to abolish the church establishment, and to put all religious sects on a footing. The means of effecting this change were very simple. They were merely to declare that no man should be com pelled to support any preacher, but should be free to choose bis sect, and to regulate his contribution for the support of that sect at pleasure.
From the first settlement of Virginia, the Church of England had been established
* The tobacco was formerly not transported in wagons, as at present. but by a much simpler process. The hogshead, in which it was packed, had a wooden gut de ved with each head, to which were adjusted a pair of rude shafts, and thus, in the way of a yar- den roller it was drawn to market by horses. Those who followed thes Martes of the bacco-rolling, formed a class by themselves-hardy, reckless, proverbialiy rude, and often indulging in coarse humor at the expense of the traveller who chaneed to be well- dressed, or riding in a carriage.
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