recognition of the paramount ownership of the Indian emperor, which was taken as a means of securing the little band of Englishmen from attack, was perhaps never brought to the attention of the Company, or if so, it was done at a time when it was too late to condemn it. In 1615, an unusual scarcity of provisions prevailed in some of the Indian towns, in consequence of which their principal men mortgaged to the English, for four or five hundred bushels of corn, divisions of country as extensive as an English shire.[1] A large body of land at Wyanoke was, in 1617, presented to Sir George Yeardley by Opechancanough, and this gift was confirmed by the Company, probably without any recognition on their part of the original right of the Indian chief.[2] This was their attitude in every similar instance arising after 1619, the year in which the general distribution of the soil among adventurers and planters began. Thus in 1621, Governor Yeardley, proceeding in conformity with general instructions, granted certain lands in the Colony to a Mr. Barkham; but the transfer was made conditional upon the consent of Opechancanough being obtained, this consent, however, to be subsequently ratified by a Quarter Court in England. When Mr. Barkham entered his petition for approval, the Company hotly condemned that part of it relating to Opechancanough as “dishonorable and prejudicial,” because tantamount to an admission of sovereignty in that “heathen infidel,” who it may be remarked was simply compounding for soil which had belonged to
- ↑ Rolfe’s Virginia in 1616, Va. Hist. Register, vol. I, No. III, p. 106. Purchas comments on this fact as follows: “a thing of no small consequence to the conscience when the milde law of Nature, not that violent law of armes, lays the foundation of this possession.” Pilgrimage, chap. V, sect. IV, p. 946.
- ↑ Deed Book of General Court, No. I, p 82. This reference is given in Robinson Transcripts. The Deed Book has been destroyed.
