Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/298

 their relentless enemies, as they might naturally have been expected to do when the bloody provocation is remembered, they quietly held themselves in check until the growing maize had attained a good height, and then fell upon the savages with terrible ferocity, carrying ruin and death into the villages, with gun and sword and brand, and ravaging their fields, so that the calamities of famine would fall upon the owners in the approaching season of winter. These sweeping measures cleared a wide area of country of its Indian inhabitants, leaving it to be gradually settled by an English population.

In 1622, the year of the massacre, a large crop of tobacco was cut and a great quantity of grain reaped, but the latter was entirely consumed by the number of people who in that year were introduced into the Colony without any provision having been made for their support. The five months succeeding December, 1622, appear to have been the most trying that had intervened since the memorable Starving Time. By March, 1623, the price of a bushel of flour or meal had trebled. An epidemic, the seeds of which were brought into Virginia by the passengers who had come over in the crowded ships, broke out and spread through the plantations, attended by an appalling mortality. Five hundred persons are supposed to have died, leaving barely that number of survivors. Whether this calculation was accurate or not, the relative proportion of deaths was enormous.