Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/184

 of his men, rescued their king, and carried off one thousand baskets of grain which were stored in the houses. In the attack on Kecoughtan, whither Captain Smith and a small party of soldiers had gone in search of food for the colonists not long after the foundation of Jamestown, great baskets of maize were discovered, upon which they seized with eagerness. In a subsequent voyage to Moysonicke on the Chickahominy, a hundred savages came down to the banks carrying baskets of maize in expectation of the arrival of the English, and at Mamanahunt, another village on the Chickahominy; the Indians assembled with three or four hundred baskets of the same grain. So anxious for trade were these latter, that they followed Smith in their canoes, and were ready to dispose of their corn for the smallest trifle in return. From this voyage he returned to Jamestown with seven hogsheads of maize, and could easily have obtained a shipload if he had possessed the means of transporting it. In a number of instances we are incidentally informed that three or four hundred bushels were purchased from the Indians at a time, as on the occasion of the visit of Newport and Smith to Powhatan at Werowocomoco. In the expedition to the Nansemond, Smith forced the tribes in suing for peace to consent to deliver in the following year four hundred bushels of maize. Captain Argoll returned from the Potomac after a short voyage with his ship loaded down with over one thousand bushels of the same grain. At certain seasons of the year the tribes were compelled to rely to a large extent on their stored maize for subsistence, and any cause, however remote, which might lead to its destruction or removal, they regarded with natural objection. We have few more pathetic scenes in the early history of Virginia than that of the lamentation raised by the women and children, when the English in 1609 seized upon all the