Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/170

 country extending from the Pyanketank to the southern bank of the Powhatan and east of Orapaks, there was a population in this interval alone as large as the whole of the population which, according to Smith, belonged to the Powhatan Confederacy throughout its territory. Strachey asserts that there were three thousand three hundred and twenty fighting men in this part of aboriginal Virginia, which would signify a general population of ten thousand, but this was probably as much in excess of the real number of the inhabitants in this division of the Colony as the calculation of Smith was below it. Strachey, however, lived in Virginia some years after Smith had withdrawn from it, and therefore had the advantage of the greater knowledge which the English had acquired of the country by more careful exploration. The larger enumeration of Strachey arises not so much from his having attributed a greater force of warriors to the different towns mentioned by Smith than Smith does himself, as from the fact that he includes in his statement of population, towns which Smith had failed to name, doubtless because he was ignorant of their existence.