WILLIAM BYRD

(1674--1744)

Introduction

William Byrd, one of the most influential Virginians of colonial times, was born on a Tidewater plantation but received most of his education in England. There he acquired the manners of a gentleman and was trained in the law. He also studied Greek, Latin, and English literature. He learned to dance and fence well and to speak and write with elegance and wit.

Though most of Virginia's landed aristocracy was beginning to progress away from their English roots during the early eighteenth century, William Byrd II provided a connection between the well-developed English society and growing Virginian society through his unchanging routine and pursuit of enjoyment. While his father, William Byrd I, elevated himself in Virginian Society through his family's growing trade enterprise, Byrd's mother, Mary Horsmanden, provided her children with a relation to the colony's established elite. Byrd's English education fostered his love for scholarly pleasures and his disdain for mercantilism and commerce. Relishing the aristocratic, pleasure-seeking life he led in London, Byrd had few problems moving between the elites of England and Virginia.

Byrd was over thirty when he settled down at Westover, his father's plantation on the James River. There he built the admirably proportioned, steep-roofed brick house that is one of the architectural treasures of Virginia. While Byrd's English aristocratic life was marked by intellectual discussions and a pursuit of enjoyment, the Virginian aristocracy had rooted itself in land speculation, agriculture and government.

His life was filled with activity. He gave dances and dinners and arranged fox hunts. He corresponded with friends in England and with the Royal Society. Almost every day he read in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew to keep up his studies in these languages. He made frequent trips to Williamsburg, the colonial capital, for governmental and social reasons. He was proud of his extensive plantation and compared it to a kingdom with flocks and herds and "every sort of trade amongst my own servants, so that I live in a kind of independence of everyone but Providence."

In the spring and fall of 1728, Byrd led a party which surveyed the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina. The journal he kept during the months he pushed through the rough wilderness formed the basis of his book, The History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina and The Secret History of the Line (a humorous version of the exploits), Byrd pointed out all kinds of problems in North Carolina society. Specifically, he criticized the North Carolinians' laziness and ignorance. Byrd obviously felt that Virginia society was far superior to North Carolina society. Several large plantations, including Byrd's estate, Westover, were prominent in eighteenth-century Virginia society. His estate included a Georgian mansion, gardens, and more than 4,700 acres of land. Most of the people in North Carolina, however, were subsistence farmers. There were not huge plantations like Westover in North Carolina, and North Carolina did not have a well-defined hierarchy of social classes such as that of Virginia at the time. People in North Carolina were more or less on an equal, but low, economic level.

Like many of the other wealthy, upper class Americans, Byrd saw Native Americans in a largely negative light as well. Byrd's attitude towards Native Americans is useful because it illustrates the beliefs of the new high-class, pseudo-royalty that was developing in America. The fact that Byrd frowned upon North Carolinians and other European Americans that he deemed to be inferior either because of their lower social status or lack of an inherent industriousness or work ethic (at least in his eyes) clearly shows that he would think ill of anyone that did not fit into his small group of the Virginian gentleman.

[Introductory information compiled from Georgetown University's American Studies website, <www.georgetown.edu/departments/amer_studies/limit> and Adventures in American Literature .]

from The History of the Dividing Line Run in the Year 1728

March 10

...We observed very few cornfields in our walks and those very small, which seemed the stranger to us because we could see no other tokens of husbandry or improvement. But, upon further inquiry, we were given to understand people* only made corn for themselves and not for their stocks, which know very well how to get their own living.

Both cattle and hogs ramble in the neighboring marshes and swamps, where they maintain themselves the whole winter long and are not fetched home till the spring. Thus these indolent wretches, during one half of the year, lose the advantage of the milk of their cattle, and many of the poor creatures perish in the mire, into the bargain, by this ill management.

Some, who pique themselves more upon industry than their neighbors, will now and then in compliment to their cattle cut down a tree whose limbs are laden with moss. The trouble would be too great to climb the tree in order to gather this provender, but the shortest way (which in this country is always counted the best) is to fell it, just like the lazy Indians, who do the same by such trees as bear fruit and so make one harvest for all. By this bad husbandry, milk is scarce in the winter season. ... And, in truth, I believe this is... a very good reason why so many people in this province are marked with a custard complexion.

The only business here is raising of hogs, which is managed with the least trouble and affords the diet they are most fond of. The truth of it is, the inhabitants of North Carolina devour so much swine's flesh that it fills them full of gross humors. For want too of a constant supply of salt, they are commonly obliged to eat it fresh, and that begets the highest taint of scurvy. Thus, whenever a severe cold happens to constitutions thus vitiated, 'tis apt to improve into the yaws, called there very justly the country-distemper. This has all the symptoms of the pox, with this aggravation, that no preparation of mercury will touch it. First it seizes the throat, next the palate, and lastly shows its spite to the poor nose, of which 'tis apt in a small time treacherously to undermine the foundation.

This calamity is so common and familiar here that it ceases to be a scandal, and in the disputes that happen about beauty, the noses have in some companies much ado to carry it. Nay, 'tis said that once, after three good pork years, a motion had like to have been made in the House of Burgesses that a man with a nose should be incapable of holding any place of profit in the province; which extraordinary motion could never have been intended without some hopes of a majority.

April 7

...In the morning we dispatched a runner to the Nottoway-town, to let the Indians know we intended them a visit that evening, and our honest landlord was so kind as to be our pilot thither, being about four miles from his house. Accordingly in the afternoon we marched in good order to the town, where the female scouts, stationed on an eminence for that purpose, had no sooner spied us but they gave notice of our approach to their fellow citizens by continual whoops and cries, which could not possibly have been more dismal at the sight of their most implacable enemies.

This signal assembled all their great men, who received us in a body and conducted us into the fort. This fort was a square piece of ground enclosed with substantial puncheons, or strong palisades, about ten feet high and leaning a little outwards to make a scalade more difficult. Each side of the square might be about one hundred yards long, with loopholes at proper distances, through which they may fire upon the enemy.

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*people: Here, poor, white North Carolinians (see introduction)

gross humors: ill health

the yaws: a contagious skin disease.

Nottoway: an extinct Native American tribe of Virginia.

Within this enclosure we found bark cabins sufficient to lodge all their people, in case they should be obliged to retire thither. These cabins are no other but close arbors made of saplings, arched at the top, and covered so well with bark as to be proof against all weather. The fire is made in the middle, according to the Hibernian' fashion, the smoke whereof finds no other vent but at the door, and so keeps the whole family warm at the expense both of their eyes and complexion.

The Indians have no standing furniture in their cabins but hurdles to repose their persons upon, which they cover with mats or deerskins. We were conducted to the best apartments in the fort, which just before had been made ready for our reception and adorned with new mats that were sweet and clean. The young men had painted themselves in a hideous manner, not so much for ornament as terror. In that frightful equipage they entertained us with sundry war dances, wherein they endeavored to look as formidable as possible. The instrument they danced to was an Indian drum, that is, a large gourd with a skin braced taut over the mouth of it. The dancers all sang to this music, keeping exact time with feet, while their heads and arms were screwed into a thousand menacing postures.

Upon this occasion the ladies had arrayed themselves in all their finery. They were wrapped in their red and blue matchcoats, thrown so negligently about them that their mahogany skins appeared in several parts, like the Lacedemonian damsels of old. Their hair was braided with white and blue peak, and hung gracefully in a large roll upon their shoulders. This peak consists of small cylinders cut out of a conch shell, drilled through, and strung like beads. It serves them both for money and jewels, the blue being of much greater value than the white... because they are more scarce. The women wear necklaces and bracelets of these precious materials, when they have a mind to appear lovely. Their shapes are very straight and well proportioned. Their faces are seldom handsome, yet they have an air of innocence and bashfulness that with a little less dirt would not fail to make them desirable. The bear's oil, with which they anoint their persons all over, makes their skins soft and at the same time protects them from every species of vermin that use to be troublesome to other uncleanly people. The little work that is done among the Indians is done by the poor women, while the men are quite idle or at most employed only in the gentlemanly diversions of hunting and fishing.

In this as well as in their wars, they now use nothing but firearms, which they purchase of the English for skins. Bows and arrows are grown into disuse, except only. amongst their boys. Nor is it ill policy, but on the contrary very prudent, thus to furnish the Indians with firearms, because it makes them depend entirely upon the English, not only for their trade but even for their subsistence.

Besides, they were really able to do more mischief while they made use of arrows, of which they would let silently fly several in a minute with wonderful dexterity, whereas now they hardly ever discharge their firelocks more than once, which they insidiously do from behind a tree and then retire as nimbly as the Dutch horse used to do now and then formerly in Flanders.

We put the Indians to no expense but only of a little corn for our horses, for which in gratitude we cheered their hearts with what rum we had left, which they love better than they do their wives and children.

Though these Indians dwell among the English and see in what plenty a little industry, enables them to live, yet they choose to continue in their stupid idleness and to suffer all the inconveniences of dirt, cold, and want, rather than to disturb their heads with care or defile their hands with labor.

The whole number of people belonging to the Nottoway town, if you include women and children, amount to about two hundred. These are the only Indians of any consequence now remaining within the limits of Virginia. The rest are either removed or dwindled to a very inconsiderable number, either by destroying one another or else by the smallpox and other diseases. Though nothing has been so fatal to them as their ungovernable passion for rum, with which, I am sorry to say it, they have been but too liberally supplied by the English that live near them.

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matchcoats: wool cloths.

Lacedemonian: Spartan.

Hibernian: Irish.

And here I must lament the bad success Mr. Boyle's charity has hitherto had toward converting any of these poor heathens to Christianity. Many children of our neighboring Indians have been brought up in the College of William and Mary. They have been taught to read and write, and have been carefully instructed in the principles of the Christian religion till they came to be men. Yet after they returned home, instead of civilizing and converting the rest, they have immediately relapsed into infidelity and barbarism themselves.

And some of them too have made the worst use of the knowledge they acquired among the English, by employing it against their benefactors. Besides, as they unhappily forget all the good they learn and remember the ill, they are apt to be more vicious and disorderly than the rest of their countrymen.

I ought not to quit this subject Without doing justice to the great prudence of Colonel Spotswood in this affair. That gentleman was lieutenant governor of Virginia when Carolina was engaged in a bloody war with the Indians. At that critical time it was thought expedient to keep a watchful eye upon our tributary savages, who we knew had nothing to keep them to their duty but their fears.

Then it was that he demanded of each nation a competent number of their great men's children to be sent to the college, where they served as so many hostages for the good behavior of the rest and at the same time were themselves principled in the Christian religion. He also placed a schoolmaster among the Saponi Indians, at the salary of fifty pounds per annum, to instruct their children. The person that undertook that charitable, work was Mr. Charles Griffin, a man of good family, who by the innocence of his life and the sweetness of his temper was perfectly well qualified for that pious undertaking. Besides, he had so much the secret of mixing pleasure with instruction that he had not a scholar who did not love him affectionately.

Such talents must needs have been blessed with a proportionable success had he not been unluckily removed to the college, by which he left the good work he had begun unfinished. In short, all the pains he had undertaken among the infidels had no other effect but to make them something cleanlier than other Indians are.

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Mr. Boyle: the missionary among the Native Americans.

firelocks: muskets.

horse: cavalry.