In the early 17th century, Jordan's
Point, a promontory on the tidal James River in Prince George County,
Virginia, was the location of a plantation village known as Beggars
Bush or Jordan's Journey. Both documents and archaeology suggest that
Samuel Jordan had someone living on his property perhaps as early as
1620, but there is no doubt that the village as we now know it grew
rapidly in the weeks following March 22nd, 1622, when Opechancanough,
king of Pamunkey and paramount chief of all the Powhatan tribes, led
a well-planned attack on the Virginia colony, leaving 346 dead and 17
more dying of the wounds they received that morning. In recounting
the event and its aftermath two years later, Captain John Smith
reported that Master Samuel Jordan had gathered about him many
survivors, fortified in his plantation, and continued to live in the
heart of the Weyanokes "in despight of the enemie." ii
I have called Jordan's Journey a
village, because the term current in the 1620sÑplantationÑdoesn't
quite convey the nature of the place or the relationships among its
inhabitants. In February of 1623/24 there were 42 people living at
Jordan's Journey, and 8 more who had died there during the year.
Inexplicably, Samuel Jordan isn't among those counted in the
so-called list Òof the living and the dead,Ó as it is called (*),
so if we count him, there were at least 51 persons in the village
that year.
The following year, upon the
dissolution of the Virginia Company of London and the launching of
Virginia as a royal colony, a much more remarkable document was
produced. This is known as the muster of 1624/25 (*), and it's a
peerless source. It enumerates all the persons living in Virginia by
household, by muster, and by settlement or plantation, along with
their provisions, weaponry, and stock. In January of 1624/25 there
were 56 persons living at Jordan's Journey, and 2 more who had died
that year. When we compare the names on the two lists and exclude
duplicates, we can conclude that a total of 75 persons lived at the
settlement sometime between 1623 and 1625. The muster reported 22
dwelling houses in the village, the same number that was reported for
Jamestown.
The village probably looked a little
something like the Vintners settlement at Balleague in Ulster,
Northern Island, as it appeared in 1622 (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). At the
head of the village plan lay the master's fortified manor house
compound, a combination of public and private space wherein church
services were held, court was convened, and the public business of
the community was conducted. Extending from a gate in the fort there
was probably a lane which defined the town commons, and another road
to the landing on the river. Along the main lane were fourteen more
individual houselots: croft, toft and yard complexes of individual
tenants and their servants. Some or all of these were also enclosed
within defensive palisades. Of the fifteen compounds that made up the
village, archaeological studies have uncovered four or, perhaps,
five.
Norman Barka (*) has recently published
a very valuable analysis of the Virginia muster, extending earlier
demographic work by Irene Hecht (*). The muster lists 28 settlements,
all but one on the James River. Barka has ranked these on 14
quantifiable attributes, such as population, number of households,
number of servants, frequencies of armor, weapons, domestic animals,
stores of foodstuffs, etc. He then summed the ranks and ranked the
results. This provides some overall rank score which is hard to name,
but which is intuitively sensible. Jordan's Journey ranked fourth
among the 28 settlements. The village was divided into 15 households
and was headed, at that time, by Mr. William Farrar and Mrs. Cicely
Jordan. Farrar and his tenants and servants were among the survivors
brought to Jordan's Journey after the massacre, and following Samuel
Jordan's death in 1623, Farrar and Cicely Jordan cohabited and,
eventually, married.
The household muster of Mr. Farrar and
Mrs. Jordan is the census of the Jordan-Farrar compound (Figures 3.4
and 3.5), the fortified manor house complex (or Òbawn,Ó to use the
Ulster term); that is, the site we call 44PG302. Within this fort
lived Mr. Farrar, age 31, and Mrs. Jordan, age 24, three children,
and 10 servants, all males mostly between the ages of 21 and 26.
William and Cicely had 5 houses, 2 boats, 16 neat cattle, 20 poultry,
200 bushels of corn, 200 pounds of fish, 14 pounds of gunpowder, 300
pounds of lead, 11 Òfixt pieces,Ó and 12 Òcoats of male.Ó
The census takerÑprobably Mr. Farrar
himselfÑwalked out the gate of his fort and down the lane,
encountering the houses and palisaded compounds of his tenants, where
the various muster-masters passed muster. First he met Thomas Palmer
who lived with his wife Joane, her 11-yr.-old daughter, Priscilla,
and Richard English, an 11-year-old servant. The Palmers had 2 houses
and reasonably good provisions and weaponry.
Next came the Fishers, Robert and
Katherine and their year-old daughter ÒSisly,Ó probably named for
their mistress. The Fishers had a maid servant, aged 30, named Idye
Halliers. They also had two houses. One of these households was
probably that which we excavated at 44PG307, another fortified
compound just a couple hundred yards from the Jordan-Farrar fort
(Figure 3.6). This was also a very rich site, with two moderately
large houses and four additional buildings.
Farrar's walk would have taken him to
the households of 6 more nuclear families. He also would have visited
the house of Christopher Safford and his partner, John Gibbs, and
their servant, Henery Lane; and that of John Davies and his partner,
William Emerson, and their servants, William Popleton and Eustice
Downes. Richard Milton, Thomas Ironmonger, Thomas Cawsey and Joseph
Bull all lived alone. The last palisade he would have crossed would
have taken him to the riverside home of Nathaniel and Thomasine
Cawsey, whose compound I believe to be represented by the site
44PG300, excavated by Jay Harrison.
In all, the people of Jordan's Journey
had, at the time of the muster, 22 houses, 44 armors, 41 firearms,
263 domestic animals including fowl, 112.5 barrels of corn and 1 and
1/4 tons of dried or pickled fish. As you will see, that's not the
whole story. The archaeological sites of Jordan's Journey have
proven to be extraordinary in every dimension. The saga of Jordan's
Journey began long before January of 1624 and the tale of its
discovery, excavation, and interpretation could outlast the lifetime
of the community itself.
***
There is oneÑand only oneÑstory about
Jordan's Journey which has inscribed itself into the collective
memory of popular history in Virginia, a place where people know
their place, as often as not, through the narrative devices of
popular history. It frames Cicely Jordan as the subject of Virginia's
first breach-of-promise suit, and it goes something like this.iii
Cicely Jordan was widowed in 1623 when her husband, Samuel, died of
unknown causes. She was left with two young children and she was
pregnant with a third. Sober storytellers speak of the scarcity of
women in early Virginia, and the more colorful speculate on Cicely's
charms, when they introduce the Reverend Grivel Pooley. Pooley
entered a suit against Mrs. Jordan in June of 1623, scarce months
after Samuel's death, contending that she was living infamously with
William Farrar, even though she was betrothed to Pooley.
To the court Captain Isaac Madison
testified that, just a few days after Samuel's death, Pooley had
asked him to serve as a go-between and announce his, that is Reverend
Pooley's, request for a marriage to Mrs. Jordan. Madison testified,
ÒMrs. Jordan replied that she would as willingly have him as any
other, but she would not marry any man until she was deliveredÓ
[that is, until her baby was born].
Pooley took that as a Òyes.Ó A little
later Pooley, along with Captain Madison, sat drinking toasts with
Cicely Jordan and, after an uncertain number of rounds, he lifted his
glass and declared that he took Cicely Òto be my wedded wife.Ó
Captain Madison, at the trial, could not recall if Mrs. Jordan had
consented, but she apparently kissed the Reverend and drank a few
more toasts with him. The court could not decide the matter and
deferred it to England but, after a time, with Cicely continuing to
live openly with William Farrar, and even having been witnessed
publicly kissing him, Pooley withdrew his suit. A year later,
testimony in an unrelated matter suggested that Samuel Jordan had had
another lover, and that fact had caused considerable tension between
he and Cicely.
Thus Jordan's Journey has entered into
our historical mythos as a frontier Peyton Place. Life in early
17th-century Virginia was a tawdry soap opera which, through all the
estrangement of the ages, was not so different from our own. History,
so this old story goes, is but a change of scenery, and had Samuel
and Cicely Jordan, Grivel Pooley and William Farrar lived in our own
time, this story of the rich and famous would be as familiar to us as
anything we might read while waiting in the grocery store check-out
line. So why do we study the cultures of the past? Inquiring minds
want to know.
***
The fruits of archaeological
workÑwhether they be written materials, museum interpretations, oral
presentations to colleagues or civic groups, or minor wisdoms
incorporated into classroom lecturesÑare representations of other
ways of life. ÒArchaeography,Ó if I may borrow Deetz's term, shares
this with historiography and ethnography. We archaeologists inscribe
history in the present. At first blush, our burden may seem less than
that of the ethnographer, whose representations of present-day
“others” clearly have potential present-day consequences. But we
share with historians another, equally grave, and perhaps even more
complex responsibility, for the representations of historical
archaeology are always about Òus,Ó a poorly formed, emergent ÒusÓ
which needs to remain in qualifying quotation marks. If historical
archaeology is Òthe archaeology of us,Ó then the ÒusÓ we are
representing most certainly has present consequence. What happened
in the past isn't really very important, except, as Foucault (*)
incisively put it, as the history of the present. In asking Òwho do
they think they were?ÓÑthe people of Jordan's Journey, that isÑI
am seeking to illuminate who we think we are. Early
17th-century Virginia is rather poorly represented in contemporary
texts, and most of these, historians have noted, were written by
community leaders or company shareholders often looking to put a
finer face on the state of the nascent colony than others might have
ventured. Nonetheless, there are some interesting texts and, taken
with archaeological evidence, they represent the early colony rather
well.
Major excavation projects typically
lead to new interpretations of the past. At the very least, they
offer new stories to tell about the past: stories which may
contradict established narratives or which may challenge conventional
wisdoms. In the following pages I look at the archaeology of Jordan’s
Journey, and especially of the fortified manor house complex known as
the Jordan-Farrar Site (44PG302), and I suggest some new stories that
might be told of a Virginia past that has assumed the proportions of
myth.
Let me take as a given that identity is
Òinter-referential,Ó to use George Marcus's term. It is formed
largely in interaction with others. Who individuals at Jordan's
Journey thought they were, surely varied with regard to those around
them. The most exuberantly interpreted site of this period to date is
Martin's Hundred, and No‘l Hume's picture of life in that
settlement owes much to the sensationalism evoked by images of the
deadly 1622 massacre. The exhibits of Martin's Hundred on display at
the Rockerfeller * Museum at the site on the James River outside
Williamsburg make powerful use of these graphic depictions of the
1622 massacre created by artist Richard Schlect. These images of
burning buildings, scalpings, of families butchered at their
breakfast tables by murderous Indians weilding shovels as weapons,
are familiar to those who have followed the story of archaeology at
Martin's Hundred in two National Geographic articles (*), two edition
of No‘l Hume's masterful book (*), and a popular documentary film
of the excavations (*).
The dominating images are of maniacal
Indians butchering women and children, of the man whose face was
reconstructed by forensic wizardry, but who died apparently from a
blow with his own shovel, and, perhaps most poignantly, of ÒGranny,Ó
found naked, apparently dead of exposure in a trash pit, her clothes
left lying in front of her house and her hair-roll pulled back to
offer her murderer a scalplock. These images are clearly painted
through masterful wordsmanship by No‘l Hume, detailed and
expressive watercolors by Schlect, and museum exhibits of the highest
caliber. They evoke a frontier of hard-working Christians bravely
eeking out an existence in an impossibly hostile and foreign land.
But all was lost in the vicious attack.
Let's look at the relationship between
Indians and colonists from some other angles. In 1619 John Pory,
secretary of the colony, natural historian, and explorer, wrote a
letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador to the Netherlands.
...there be many grounds here cleared by the Indians to our handes,
which being much worne out will bear no more of their corn...but of
our grain of all sorts it will bear abundance. We had this year a
plentiful crop of English wheat...In July last so soon as we reaped
this self-sowen wheat, we sett Indian corn upon the same ground,
which is come up in great abundance; and so by this means we are to
enjoy two crops in one year off one and the same field (*).
For Pory, the successful crop of
English wheat was owed to fields cleared by Indians, and the
bountiful double crop, virtually unheard of in England, was due to
the rotation of English and Indian corns. A little further along he
writes:
All our riches for the present doe consist in Tobacco, wherein one
man by his own labor hath in one yeare raised to himself the value of
200 l sterling; and another by the means of six servants hath cleared
at one crop a thousand pound English. These be true, yet indeed rare
examples, yet possible to be done by others. Our principal wealth (I
should have said) consisteth in servants: But these are chardgeable
(sic) to be furnished with armes, apparel and bedding and for
their transportation and casual [expenses], both at sea, and for
their first year commonly on land also: But if they escape, they
prove very hardy, and sound able men (*).
Tobacco, of course, was an Indian gift
transformed by Pory's colleague, John Rolfe, into the cash crop of
Virginia. For the decade between 1620 and 1630, many more men would
meet, and exceed, Pory's examples of riches gained through tobacco
cultivation. It is interesting to note that Pory felt that wealth was
to be measured in servants, and that that was a double-edged sword,
for servants were expensive, and fragile commodities. By the phrase
Òif they escapeÓ Pory meant, Òif they survive.Ó Tyler points out
that there were 1000 English in Virginia at Easter of 1619. Over the
next three years a total of 3570 people immigrated to Virginia, and
yet, the day before the massacre, there were only 1240. The massacre
killed about 360 people, but nearly ten times that many had succumbed
to other causes. Surely, a few had returned to England, but most had
died of disease and hardships which had nothing to do with Indians.
Our excavations at the Jordan-Farrar
site presented us with some tantalizing observations. Among the most
abundant coursewares in many colonial features were sherds of the
Gaston and Roanoke ceramics made by the Weyanokes and other Powhatans
(Figure 3.6). Of course, this is to be expected. Jordan's Journey was
planted in an Indian town site, and the ground was liberally peppered
with Indian garbage. Nonetheless, when we look at Native American
artifacts from very early colonial featuresÑthose associated with
setting up the community, such as the lower fill in the sawpit
(Figure 3.7)Ñwe find mixtures of protohistoric materials with
earlier Woodland and Archaic materials in abundance. When we look at
Native American materials in colonial occupation fills, such as the
trash layer on top of the sawpit, we find a statistically significant
greater proportion of Weyanoke ceramics, including the plain smoothed
shell-tempered wares that seem to be prototypes for Colono-Indian
ceramics found ubiquitously on later Virginia plantation and town
sites. This suggests that colonists received Indian pots from sale
or trade transactions, and used them as utensils.
Perhaps the pots arrived at the site
filled with corn, for despite John Pory's optimism about the crops,
many Virginians during the tobacco boom of the 1620s devoted all
their effort to the cash crop. The council letters of Virginia
contain a note saying that Governor Francis Wyatt was sent with
instructions (and I quote):
for the conversion of the Salvages; the suppressing of planting
Tobacco, and planting of Corne; not depending continually to be
supplied by the Salvages, but in case of necessity to trade with
them, whome long ere this, it hath been promised should have been fed
and redressed by the English, not the English by them... (Smith p
436*)
The excellent faunal assemblages from
the sites contain lots of deer bones (*faunal report) (Figure 3.8).
Wild animals were clearly important in the early 17th century diet,
as Henry Miller (*) has demonstrated, but who at Jordan's Journey was
a proficient deer hunter? Deer, in England, were the prerogative of
the aristocracy. Jay Anderson (*) points out that their abundance in
Virginia symbolized Virginia's cornucopia-like richness. I suspect
that most of the servants at Jordan's Journey were taken from the
ranks of the urban unemployed and apprentices of London. Even if they
included some cottagers of the countryside who may have known the use
of a goose gun, they would have risked hanging to shoot a deer in the
old country. The question remains: who were the hunters?
John Smith, in 1624 (*p346), wrote
...I have much admired to heare of the incredible pleasure, profit
and plenty the Plantation doth abound in, and yet it hath oft amazed
me to understand how strangely the Salvages hath been taught the use
of our arms, and imploied in hunting and fowling with our fowling
peeces; and our men rooting in the ground about tobacco like swine.
Later Smith was questioned concerning
his opinion about the cause of the massacre, and he wrote, comparing
Virginia under the martial law days when he was there, versus the
boom days a decade later.
In my time, though Captaine Nuport furnished [the Indians] with
swords by truck, and many fugitives did the like, and some Peeces
[firearms] they got accidentally...it was death to him that should
shew a Salvage the use of a Peece. Since [that time], I understand,
they became so good shott, they were employed for Fowlers and
Huntsmen by the English. (*Tyler p400)
Samuel Jordan was elected to represent
Charles City in the first representative assembly in English America.
He and five other men sat with Governor Yeardly in Jamestown and made
laws for the colony, including this act:
As touching the instruction of drawing some of the better disposed of
the Indians to converse with our people and to live and labour among
them, the Assembly...thinke it fitte to enjoin, least to counsel
those of the Colony, neither utterly to reject them nor yet to drawe
them to come in. But in case they will of themselves come voluntarily
to places well peopled, there to do service in killing of Deere,
fishing, beatting of Corne and other workes, that five or six may be
admitted into every such place...Provided that a good guarde in
the night be kept upon them...And it were fitt a house were builte
for them to lodge in aparte by themselves...(*Tyler p. 264; my
emphasis).
The assembly also made it lawful for
all free men to trade with the Indians. Trade, not warfare, was the
primary mode of relation between English and Indian in Virginia. It
was not a particularly friendly trade, but one apparently perceived
by all parties as advantageous, and, perhaps, necessary. The
ÒRelation of the Virginia Assembly of 1624Ó described it in this
way:
We never perceaved that the Natives of this Countrey did voluntarily
yeeld themselves subjects to our gracyous Sovraigne, neither that
they took any pride in that title, nor paid at any time any
contrybutione [tribute] of corne for sustentation of the Colony, nor
could we at any tyme keepe them in such good respect of
correspondency as we became mutually helpful each to the other but
contrarily what was done proceeded from feare and not love, and corne
procured by trade or the sworde. (Tyler p 425*)
Structure 20 at the Jordan-Farrar site
sticks out of the wall of the fort palisade like a sore thumb (Figure
3.9). It is situated in the corner with the main gate and bastion.
This building's location is very similar to one drawn in 1625 on the
fort at Bangor, an English settlement in Ulster (Figures 3.10 and
3.11). Note also the notch, gate, maze and central street of this
fort which so resemble those of Jordan's Journey. These buildings
which are outside the fort, but attached to it at the main gate, are
reminiscent of trading posts and gate or guard houses on some
18th-century frontier forts. In these latter cases, the gate house
often served as a trading post, as, I believe, did Structure 20. And
since Samuel Jordan and his fellow Assemblymen saw fit to permit
Indian servants only in those well-peopled places where they could be
guarded at night and, preferably, housed in separate quarters, I
suggest that Structure 20, outside the fence and adjacent to the
probable guard tower at the gate, also served as an Indian barracks.
Violence between colonists and Indians
did occur, and it certainly affected the Jordan's Journey settlers'
view of themselves and their world. Burial 17 was a dual interment of
a man and woman, possibly husband and wife (Figure 3.12). Burial 17B
had lodged in his upper thorax a small quartz arrowhead of the type
used by the Powhatans. Each apex of the point was shattered, as if it
had impacted armor or bone before coming here to rest. This was one
of the earlier burials in the south cemetery, as noted by its
inadvertant intrusion by a later interment. This may represent a pair
of massacre victims brought here after death, or who died later of
mortal wounds. But arrows and hatchets were by no means the most
serious threat to a long life at Jordan's Journey, and relationships
between the settlers and their Indian neighbors were far more
complex, and far more important, than a tabloid account of March
22nd, 1622 can effectively communicate.
***
Despite its early date, Jordan's
Journey may also tell us something important about relations between
blacks and whites, and the institution of racial slavery in Virginia,
with all that that means for formation of group identities. The pot
mentioned in the previous chapter, and illustrated in Figures 2.3 and
2.4, was, for me, one of the most interesting objects found at
Jordan's Point. It is a slightly carinated vessel with mammiform lug
handles and a flat base. It was hand built from slabs or fillets, and
was finished by coarsely smoothing the surface with a wet hand after
the pot had dried to the leather-hard stage. The surface was then
burnished, apparently not with a stick or stone, but with a cloth or
skin and silt or clay slip. It was burnished on both interior and
exterior surfaces. It was fired inverted over a smudging fire,
probably to seal the clay-body pores with soot. Its form, finish and
wear patterns indicate it was a cooking pot designed for use with
liquid-based preparations, such as stews and gruels.
As I have noted, this pot is probably
of a West Indian ÒcreoleÓ type. It has many formal and
technological attributes similar to those found in what Ebanks has
called the Afro-Jamaican pottery tradition. I wondered if the pot had
been made in the Caribbean and carried here as a commodity, or if it
had been made in Virginia by an African or creole Carib slave. Dr.
Tom Davidson of the Jamestown Settlement Museum prepared both thick
and thin sections from the vessel. I have not yet had these properly
studied by a petrographer or mineralogist, but the temper seems to be
a mixture of grog, quartz and quartzite. If this is the case, the pot
was more likely made in Tidewater Virginia than in the Caribbean
islands.
The vessel's sherds were spread over
four features in the Northwest corner of the site, including in
postmolds to one of the two small enigmatic buildings I previously
described, Structures 17 and 18*check MVC*. These are nearly
identical structures sitting adjacent to each other. Their size (*x*)
is consistent with some later slave cabins, and Structure 17 included
a small rectangular Òroot cellarÓ in one corner. There is little
doubt that these were domestic structures, given the rich domestic
assemblage from the root cellar and the postmolds. I think they were
slave cabins, and their placement at the opposite end of the fort
from other dwellingsÑincluding the dwellings of the Jordan and
Farrar indentured servantsÑis suggestive. These houses are
structurally placed among the cattle pen, trash pits, and
agricultural buildings. If this interpretation is reasonable, then I
think that the arguments we have heard far too many times about
institutionalized race-based slavery being an invention of the late
17th or early 18th century are, at best, overstated. That period
documents refer to Africans as ÒNegro manÓ or ÒNegro woman,Ó
without names, and usually without other qualifiers, is also
significant. Separate quarters, and separate conceptual treatment,
not only for Indian servants, but also for black slaves, was the
order of the day as early as the 1620s.
***
Identity also proceeds from one's
status within a community and perceptions of the rigidity or
permeability of status boundaries. Approximately 1/3 of those living
at Jordan's Journey in 1625 were servants, and all but William
Farrar, Cicely Jordan and her children were tenants or cottagers.
Martha McCartney (*) has traced some of the tenants and servants
through the documents and has found that some returned to England,
some went on to patent sizeable landholdings of their own, and manyÑa
great manyÑjust disappeared from the records. Most of these probably
did not live long. Those who came to Virginia, whether as free
persons or servants, probably did so in the hope of improving their
lot in life. Samuel Jordan and William Farrar were both descended of
gentry families, and they held gentry positions in Virginia.
Nonetheless, they were probably non-inheriting sons whose estates in
the New World were superior to any they might have amassed had they
remained in the Old.
Certainly the hopeÑeven the
expectationÑof bettering one's position meant that colonists, as a
rule, were likely to hold strict class boundaries in scorn. Much more
so during the boom times of the 1620s, when money was being made
handily. John Pory, in his letter to Sir Dudley Carleton wrote:
Nowe that your lordship may knowe, that we are not the veriest
beggers in the world, our cowkeeper herre of James citty on Sundays
goes accowtered all in fresh flaming silk' and a wife of one that in
England professed the black arte, not of a scholler, but of a collier
of Croyden, weres her rough bever hatt with a faire perle hatband,
and a silken suite thereto correspondent.(Tyler p 425*)
The same year Pory wrote that letter,
Samuel Jordan and his fellow assemblymen passed acts ÒAgainst
Idleness, Gaming, drunkenes and excesse in apparell.Ó (*p263). Flush
times tended to blur social distinctions. Three years later the
ÒCouncels Letters for VirginiaÓ contain the following observation:
...seeing they could get so much and such great estates for
themselves as to spend after the rate of 100 pounds, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, 10, nay some say 2000 or 3000 pounds yearely, that were not
worth so many pence when they went to Virginia, can scarece contain
themselves either in diet, apparell, gaming, and all manner of
superfluity... (p346*)
The artifacts from Jordan's Journey
suggest a certain amount of opulence. Even the tenant's trash pit at
44Pg307 produced fine brass objects, delft or faience dishes,
porcelain and wine bottles (Figures 3.13-3.15). As No‘l Hume has
cautioned, we need to be careful when interpreting artifacts which
today might command very high prices at the auction block. A fine
Westerwald frieze jug may have been a very common object (Figure
3.16), but certainly a silver hairpin (Figire 3.17), probably owned
by Cicely Jordan, was a symbol of affluence. Some luxuries came cheap
in Virginia. While the price of fine Virginia tobacco was very high
in London, it was everyday fare in the colony. The tiny bulbous pipes
made in England and Holland were duplicated in form by pipemakers at
Jordan's Journey, but they often held two or three times as much
tobacco (Figures * Ref to figure in Creole chapter). Silver and gold
threads, silver sequins, finely carved knives, bejewelled and beaded
clothing, Ming porcelain wine cups, ornamental delft tiles, and many
other objects all bespeak a comfortable, even somewhat hedonistic
lifestyle. These were not the Òveriest beggers in the world,Ó and
it's not at all difficult to imagine even servants at Jordan's
Journey appearing for Sunday services accoutred in Òfresh flaming
silkes.Ó This ÒexcessiveÓ behavior was clearly frowned on back in
the homeland. While the assembly passed a token one-line act against
Òexcesse in apparell,Ó the Virginia Company in London passed
explicit sumptuary laws designed to enforce humility among the
Òlesser sortesÓ and to preserve prerogatives for those of more
elevated station (*).
Burial number 4 at the Jordan-Farrar
site is probably the remains of Samuel Jordan (Figures 3.17). His
status as a gentleman, and as head of the plantation, and an elder
male in the community are noted in the extraordinary pains taken with
his interment. His grave was the deepest, and best prepared of the 25
burials in the cemetery. He was buried in a coffin, and his was the
only grave with offerings, noted here by one of two brass clasps that
held together a box of some sort laid upon his coffin. His teeth,
like those of other high-status coffin burials in the samples studied
by Owsley and Compton (*), were full of caries and abscesses. It was
an old saw in 17th- and 18th-century England that you could recognize
a gentleman by his rotten teeth, evidence of access to that great
luxury of the day: sugar. Since Samuel spent all his adult life in
Virginia, he probably consumed his sweet treats mostly within the
fort walls of Jordan's Journey.iv
Many early 17th-century Virginia sites
are known for their spectacular assemblages of militaria, and
Jordan's Journey is no exception. Our finds include numerous parts of
swords, suits of armor of various kinds, daggers, musket barrels,
matchlocks, snaphaunce locks, musket shot, and canon balls...all the
iron macho goodies we expect for this period (Figures 3.19). In the
ground we could plainly see evidence of the firing step on the box
bastion at the tenants compound, 44PG307, and the large fort at the
Jordan-Farrar Site is probably our glitziest artifact. Stanley South
(*) noted in his analysis of the artifact patterns from 18th-century
frontier sites that they often contained greater indications of
interactions with Native Americans, as well as elevated proportions
of both military items and luxury items. I do not suggest that life
in the 1620s at Jordan's Journey was somehow just like life in
French-and-Indian War or Revolutionary War forts, but the
similarities are compelling. The American frontier, whether we talk
about the early 17th century, the late 19th century, or somewhere in
between, attracted primarily young people who perceived opportunities
Òout thereÓ that were better than those back home. These
opportunities tended generally to have some high risk costs, however,
and if there is a Òfrontier pattern,Ó or a Òfrontier mentality,Ó
I suggest it is largely in the intersection of opportunity and risk.
Virginia was a deadly place, and it
earned itself a horrid reputation as a gateway to hell. The Indian
massacre was as much a cause celebre in London of the 1620s as
it is among historians and archaeologists today, but the real grim
reaper was disease. In 1619, John Pory (p. 283*) wrote, ÒBoth those
of our nation and the Indians also have this Torride sommer bene
visited with great sickness and mortality.Ó A document called ÒThe
Discourse of the Old Company,Ó prepared in 1625, described the
summer following the massacre:
...through the troublesomenes of those tymes, they could not freely
imploie themselves in plantinge...many Plantations being drawne into
few places for their better defence. Wch pestringe of themselves did
likewise breed contagious sicknesse; wch being encreased by the
Infection brought in by some shipps, there dyed that yeare of
mortallitie neere upon 600 more...(*)
That Òyear of mortalitieÓ claimed the
life of Samuel Jordan, and probably many others whose remains we
uncovered in the cemetery at Jordan's Journey. Several of the graves
were hurriedly dug, and bodies were laid in them with little or no
preparation. One woman was interred in a shallow, irregular,
coffinless grave while still in the throes of rigor mortis (Figure
3.20). She was not wrapped in a proper shroud but thrown rather
unceremoniously into the hole, with nobody willing to touch her
corpse to re-arrange it in a posture of repose. The trash pits at
Jordan's Journey contained many valuable or useful personal items
that were apparently quite serviceable when discardedÑbone combs,
jewelry, knives, weapons, and armor. I suspect these items belonged
to victims of pestilence and, like their owners, these objects were
hastily buried to lessen the chance of contagion.
Owsley and Compton (*) note that death
at Jordan's Journey came early. Let's look at the statistics. Figure
3.21 is a chart which shows the age distribution of the community
according to the muster, in light gray bars. The dark grey bars show
the age distribution of burials at the site. There is a huge contrast
in the frequency of teenagers in these two data series. Very few
people in the 15-20 year bracket were alive at the site in 1625, but
a great many of those in the graves belong to that age group.
Virtually nobody could expect to live beyond 40, and very few could
hope to reach that age. Owsley and Compton have pointed out that many
of the dead at Jordan's Journey show signs of having survived rather
serious childhood diseases or malnutrition. If we look at the length
of time persons appearing in the muster had been in Virginia, we see
a small cadre of seasoned veterans, and a large corps of newcomers
who did not, apparently, survive their Òseasoning,Ó as it was
called. This simply underlines the dilemma: those who ventured to
Virginia were leaving hard and dangerous lives for the potential
rewards of making tobacco. And there were potential rewards, ifÑand
it was a big ifÑif they Òescaped.Ó
Perhaps, then, this frontier syndrome
begins to make sense. The gaming, excess of apparel, and other small
luxuries of life, like the big luxury cars in today's poorest
neighborhoods, were the small compensations for lives of desperation.
If you aren't going to live to enjoy it, why embrace frugality and
build an estate of land or capital? Adams and Bolling (*) suggested
that a similar situation helped explain why slaves in the Antebellum
south spent what money they had on consumable luxuries; there was
little or no hope for Òimproving one's lot in lifeÓ through savings
or investment. But if some of the protestant-mercantlist values of
the Company men back in London were flouted by those whose lives were
on the line in the colony, sanity required the attempt to maintain
some continuity of culture under even the bizarre conditions of life
in early Virginia, and there is nothing like the symbolically
luxurious Òcomforts of homeÓ to do that, unless it is to live the
life you are expected to live, despite unexpected conditions. With
that thought, let's revisit Cicely Jordan, and see if we can amend
her story.
***
Cicely arrived in Virginia at about the
age of 10, as one of many young girls bound for wives to the Virginia
settlers. Like many early colonists, she probably came to Virginia
virtually a slave, not as a free-willed adult seeking her fortune.
She appeared in Jamestown under the name Cicely Bailey. Temperence
Bailey, one of her charges at Jordan's Journey, may have been her
daughter or stepdaughter from an earlier, teenage, marriage. She was
20 or 21 when she bore her first child by Samuel Jordan, and she was
widowed, with three children, by the age of 23. She was 24 when she
married William Farrar, and she bore him two children before her
death, probably at the age of 31 or 32. At Jordan's Journey, Cicely
had a better than usual opportunity to live a life of gender
expectations somewhat more normal for her time than many other
Virginia women. The sex ratio at Jordan's Point was about 3 men per 2
women, whereas, colony-wide, there were 4 or 5 men for every woman.
Most of the households at Jordan's Journey were those of nuclear
families and their servants, a condition which did not obtain in
other Virginia settlements throughout most of the colony's first
century.
Cicely may have had some very heavy
gender role expectations placed on her as a child. I draw this
conclusion primarily from her name, for ÒCicelyÓ was a popular
fictional character invented by Thomas Tusser in his then well-known
lessons, in verse, teaching other little ÒCicelysÓ throughout the
English realm how to be proper housewives. In one verse Cicely is
being warned not to make any of ten common mistakes in the making of
cheese. This verse concludes:
ÒIf thou, so oft beaten,
Amendest by this,
I will no more threaten,
I promise thee, Ciss.Ó (from Anderson
p 134*)
And so bad housewives and maidservants
made bad cheese and got beaten for their transgression, and every
little English girl, we might suppose, knew this to be the case. A
good wife was one who knew her ÒCicelyÓ lessons.
In 1990, Charles Hodges (*) excavated a
series of burials where the entry road to Jordan's Point's new
housing development now runs. One of these was a female, in her early
30s, buried deeply in a coffin in a well-prepared grave. When we
aligned Hodges' excavation grid with our later grid, we found that
this burial lay near to, and aligned with, that of Samuel Jordan. We
believe these are the remains of Cicely Jordan Farrar. Owsley and
Compton found her teeth to have characteristic grooves caused by
holding sewing pins between her incisors, a gesture still common
among seamstresses. Cicely's kitchen included a large iron spit and a
fine brass skimmer. She had an outside oven and probably baked bread
for her entire household. Behind her house stood a buttery where she
made ale, salted and pickled fish (see Structure * in Figures 3.4 and
3.5). Of course, she had help from servants and, possibly, from some
of the tenant wives, but she no doubt also worked in the tobacco
fields and helped supervise the community's needs, particularly in
her husbands' absences at government business in Jamestown. She
almost certainly was responsible for growing the medicinal herbs,
preparing poultices and potions, and ministering to the sick and
dying of Jordan's Journey.
When a husband died, she drank toasts
with the local minister. When a better offer came along, she took it.
Unlike her contemporaries in England, Cicely held a major bargaining
chip: she owned 100 acres of Jordan's Journey, by right of being an
ancient planter. These were her acres, and they allowed her to
negotiate a marriage with greater material security. Indeed, she wore
a silver hairpin and a tortoise shell comb. She may have dressed in
fresh flaming silks. She knew how to tipple some fine wine and ale,
and she knew, somehow, how to turn a life most of us cannot imagine,
into a relatively prosperous and fortunate one, and to survive, as
few others did, into her 30s. Let us hope that the archaeology of
Jordan's Point, if it does nothing else of significance, will recast
Cicely's life story, and get it out of the gossip sheets and into the
history books.
i.
This essay was developed from an oral paper presented at the 1994
Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in Vancouver, B. C.
ii
. The picture of Jordan’s Journey presented here is an
interpretation based upon an excavation directed by Mr. Jay Harrison
(*) at site 44PG300 in 198*; work directed by Nicholas Lucketti and
Barabara Heath (*) of the James River Institute of Archaeology at
site 44PG151 in 198*, and a series of studies directed by Douglas
McLearen and myself (Mouer and McLearen *, McLearen and Mouer *, *,
*) for Virginia Commonwealth University at sites 44PG302, 333, and
307. Other contributing work includes excavation of key burials by
Charles Hodges in 199* (*). Also of prime importance is a volume of
historical research on the site prepared by Martha McCartney (*),
fornensic analysis of historic burials by Douglas Owsley and Birgita
Compton (*), and in-depth artifact analyses by Taft Kiser (*),
Beverly Straub (*), and Dane Magoon (*). Many conversations over
several years with Doug McLearen, Chris Egghart, Beverly Binns and
others have provided a great many insights. This work was
coordinated by David Hazzard who manages the Theatened Sites Program
of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which was the
primary sponsor of this research. Other contributors include
Virginia Commonwalth University, The National Geographic Society, an
anonymous donor, and numerous volunteers and students.
iii.
For more information on Cicely Jordan, and on women in early
17th-century Virginia, see Moncure (*,*), ****
iv.
It should be noted that another factor in Jordan’s dental
pathology could have been many years of a diet in which maize served
as a staple food.
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