The Great Law Philadelphia Delaware bly, a body of lawmakers chosen by the people. This assembly formally united the three lower counties (Delaware) to Pennsylvania, and enacted a code of laws for the government of the province. This code, known as the Great Law, was prepared and proposed by Penn. Religious liberty was guaranteed to all "who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God." From Chester, Penn went to the place that had been chosen as a site for the city of Philadelphia. The "city of brotherly love" at the time consisted of three or four little cottages. "The conies were yet undisturbed in their hereditary burrows: the deer fearlessly bounded past blazed trees that foreboded streets; and the stranger who wandered from the river bank was lost in the forest." Penn's new city rose in the wilderness as if by the hand of magic. By 1700 Philadelphia was a thriving place of 10,000 souls, and Pennsylvania had a population of 20,000. The settlers in the three lower counties-that is, in Delaware -were not satisfied to be a part of Pennsylvania, and in 1703 they refused to send members to the assembly that met at Philadelphia. The next year Delaware established a legislature of its own. The "charter of privileges," however, which was the constitution of Pennsylvania, continued to be in force in Delaware. And, likewise, the governor of Pennsylvania continued to be the governor of the three lower counties. EXERCISES AND REFERENCES 1. The Old Dominion: Channing, I, 205-241; Andrews, 202-214. 3. The founding of the Carolinas: Andrews, 129-144. 4. The English conquest of New York: Andrews, 74-90. 5. The Swedes and Dutch in New Jersey and Delaware: Hart, I, 548 51. 6. William Penn: Greene, 165-176. 7. A date for the chronological table: 1664. 8. Summarize the events described in this chapter. 9. Hints for Special. Reading: J. C. Doyle, English Colonies in America, Vol. I, 230-280; John Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America; S. G. Fisher, The Making of Pennsylvania; William Elliot Griffis, The Pilgrims in Their Three Homes; William Hand Brown, Maryland. VII THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE COLONIES The account of English colonization on the mainland of North America has now been brought down to the opening of the eighteenth century, by which time twelve colonies had been planted and civilization was firmly rooted along the Atlantic seaboard. What was the character of this civilization? In particular, what were the material, or economic, aspects of colonial life at the opening of the eighteenth century? THE FORESTS; THE INDIANS For many years the biggest and most stubborn fact in colonial life was the great primeval forest that had to be cleared away by the laborious and incessant swinging of the ax. Over all the seaboard region, over all the Appalachian highland, and over most of the Mississippi valley the trees were so thick and the undergrowth so dense that the settler had to carve his way through a wall of living green, through oaks and hickories and maples and sycamores and beeches and elms. This illimitable woodland abounded in animals and game to an extent that cannot now be easily conceived. A small party of explorers in Game the Appalachian region on a single trip killed twelve buffaloes, eight elks, fifty-three bears, twenty deer, four wild geese and one hundred and fifty turkeys. Wild pigeons swarmed above the forests in such numbers that they darkened the heavens like a cloud. The most important of the animals were the fur-bearers: the beaver, the otter, the sable, and the badger. The most important inhabitant of the forest was a human being the American Indian. Columbus found a strange kind of people in the tropics and called them Indians because he Indians thought they were inhabitants of the East Indies. Cabot also found a new race of men on the ice-bound shores of the "newfound-land." When the English landed at Jamestown one of the first things to meet their eyes was a band of savages lurking in the woods. And so it was at Plymouth, at Boston, at St. The Leading Tribes Indian tion Marys, at Charleston, at Philadelphia; wherever the white. Iman landed he met with a new race of men who in time came to be known by the name that Columbus gave them. Although the Indians were found everywhere, their actual numbers were surprisingly small. Within the entire territory of what is now the United States there were probably not more than 300,000 Indians. These were divided into more than three hundred distinct tribes. In the South these tribes were sometimes very small, ten or twenty wigwams constituting an independent nation. Among the larger tribes of the South were the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. In the North was the great Algonquin family, which held most of the country from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River and from the Great Lakes to the Carolinas. Broadly speaking, the Indians with whom the Europeans first had to deal were wild and uncivilized. They lived chiefly by fishing and by the chase. The men did the hunting and fighting. The women did the housework and also tilled the soil, when any was tilled. They were generally regarded as inferior to men; yet the woman was regarded as the undisputed mistress of household affairs, and she was allowed to hold property in her own name. The dwellings were, as a rule, huts or wigwams made of skin or bark, but the Iroquois lived in long, low houses that were sloped much like an arbor over-arching a garden walk. The principal arts in which the Indians were skilled were basket-making, weaving, and pottery. THE FUR-TRADE AND THE FISHERIES Although the Indian was always troublesome and often a source of terror, he nevertheless was ready to exchange the skins of the fur-bearing animals for the trinkets and firearms and-to his physical and moral undoing-for the rum and brandy of the white man. And the white man was more than ready to make the exchange. In the seventeenth century stoves were not in use, and houses were very poorly heated, if they were heated at all. Accordingly, furs were resorted to as a source of warmth. Floors were covered with furs, bed-clothing consisted largely of furs, and many garments were made of furs. The demand in Europe for furs was so great that in almost every colony there was built up a fur-trade that was extremely profitable. From New England beaver-skins were sent to the mother-country by the tens of thousands; in New York the fur-trade for a long time was the chief business; in The Pennsylvania a brisk trade in furs contributed greatly to the Importprosperity of the colony. Indeed from early colonial days until of the far into the nineteenth century furs held a conspicuous place in the economic history of our country. Quite as important as the fur-bearing animals were the fishes, especially the cod and mackerel that were found in great shoals along the coast from Newfoundland to Cape Hatteras. The value of the New England fisheries was discovered even before the Pilgrims and Puritans arrived. In 1614 Captain John Smith examined the fisheries along the coasts of Maine and made the prediction that they would be ance Fur-trade New England A of all The Land and the Indians the source of untold wealth. After the active colonization of New England began, the colonists found fishing one of their most profitable occupations. In Massachusetts alone hundreds of vessels and thousands of seamen were engaged in the cod and whale fisheries. What tobacco was for Virginia the fisheries were for New England. COLONIAL AGRICULTURE However profitable the fur-trade or the fisheries might be, the essential foundation of economic life was farming. But the typical colonial farmer did a great deal more than till the soil. As a rule he was a Jack of all trades. He hunted in the woods; he fished along the banks of streams; he trapped beavers and otters and tanned their skins; he felled trees and hewed logs and made rough planks and shingles, and worked as a carpenter or mason in the construction of his house and barn and fences. Almost everywhere a farm could be had for a song. The cheapness of land was the basic fact of economic life in America, not only throughout the colonial period but up to a time within the memory of men still living. Before taking actual possession of a tract of land the white man generally went through the form of buying it from the Indians, exchanging rum and gewgaws and articles of little value for great stretches of territory. The island of Manhattan was bought from the red men by the Dutch for cloth and trinkets worth scarcely one hundred dollars of our present currency. The Indians were tempted to sell land cheap because their possessions were almost immeasurable in extent. There was more than 5000 acres of land for each Indian in North America. If the red man refused to part with lands that the white man wanted, the claims of the aboriginal possessor were brushed aside as being invalid, for it was the official theory that the title to all land within the territory claimed by the English was in the king or in his grantee, the Indian having no legal claim that the white man was bound to respect. Still, in the acquisition of land the colonists as a rule desired to be fair. |