Compare the agricultural tools listed above with the tractor, pulling its gang of plows, harrow, seeder, and land packer; also the mower, combined harvester, corn binder, potato digger and threshing machine, and you have some idea of the great advance that three hundred years of effort and invention have brought to modern man. It certainly would be a "boob" that would start in to buck the modern game with a Virginia settler's outfit. It's easy to see the "water tank" where he would "hit the grit."
The Indians were communal in their method of life and usually cultivated their fields in common, and the Virginia settlers tried the communal way for a couple of years, but, finding themselves unsuited to such a mode of labor, resorted to individual ownership about 1609 or 1610.
There were three methods of acquiring land; first by purchase of a share of stock in the colonization company; second, by some act of meritorious service; and third, by "Head Right" (paying the passage of some person from England to the Colony). The share of stock cost $62.50 and entitled the holder to one hundred acres in the first subdivision and another one hundred acres in the second subdivision. Great tracts of land were secured to individuals who were able to buy a large number of shares, and much of the early trouble with the Indians arose over the efforts of these shareholders to drive the red men off these purchased holdings, the redskin not being regarded as endowed with any title, either natural or acquired.
Ministers of the church, physicians, government
