Animals into the wilderness: The development of livestock husbandry in the seventeenth-century chesapeake

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 59, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 377-408

  Anderson, Virginia Dejohn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33947324150     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491742     Document Type: Article

References (167)

1. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia . . . , 13 vols. (Richmond, 1819-1823), 1:328, 393-96
2. see Allan B. Forbes et al., eds., Winthrop Papers, 1498-1654, 6 vols. (Boston, 1929-1992), 2:120
3. "Observations by Master George Percy, 1607," in Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625 (New York, 1907), 18
4. Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter 1606-1609, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., I, no. 136 (Cambridge, 1969), 161
5. Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London, 4 vols. (Washington, D. C., 1906-1935), 4:283
6. John Smith, The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia, [1606-1612] . . ., in Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631), 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1986), 1:273
7. Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 1:257
8. On environmental conditions, see Timothy Silver, A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800 (New York, 1990), 14-15, 61-62
9. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "The Puzzle of the American Climate in the Early Colonial Period," American Historical Review, 87 (1982), 1264-65
10. E.S.E. Hafez, ed., Adaptation of Domestic Animals (Philadelphia, 1968), 107, 117, 183, 187, 242, 289
11. E. Mount, The Climatic Physiology of the Pig (Baltimore, 1968), 120-21, 123
12. David W. Stahle et al., "The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts," Science, 280 (1998), 564-67
13. Hafez, ed., Adaptation of Domestic Animals, 175-76
14. Frederick F. Siegel, The Roots of Southern Distinctiveness: Tobacco and Society in Danville, Virginia, 1780-1865 (Chapel Hill, 1987), 71
15. A few wolves survived in Ireland and Scotland until the mid-18th century; see Frederick Zeuner, A History of Domesticated Animals (London, 1963), 82
16. Warren M. Billings, ed., "Some Acts Not in Hening's Statutes: The Acts of Assembly, April 1652, November 1652, and July 1653," VMHB, 83 (1975), 68, 69
17. William Hand Browne, ed.. Archives of Maryland . . . . 72 vols. (Baltimore, 1883-1972), 1:362-63
18. On the possible expansion of the wolf population following the arrival of livestock, see Silver, New Face on the Countryside, 176
19. Smith, Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia, 275
20. On the wretched condition of the colonists, see Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), chap. 4, esp. 72-73
21. and Kupperman, "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," Journal of Ame rican History, 66 (1979), 24-40
22. Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia (1615) (Richmond, 1957), 23
23. Martha W. McCartney, "An Early Virginia Census Reprised," Quarterly Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, 54 (1999), 179, 181
24. Waterhouse, "A Declaration of the State of the Colony . . . ," in Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 3:545
25. Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 3:612, 4:228-29, 235, 476
26. For an account of the 1622 attack, see Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 98-99, 104
27. Hening, ed., Statutes of Virginia, 1:153
28. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 139-40
29. Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh, Robert Cole's World: Agriculture andSociety in Early Maryland'(Chapel Hill, 1991), 223, 228
30. James Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the SeventeenthCentury Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, 1994), 277
31. Gloria Main, Tobacco Colony: Life in Early Maryland, 1650-1720 (Princeton, 1982), 61-62, 67-68
32. Markham, Markham's Farewel to Husbandry: Or, the Enriching of All Sorts of Barren and Sterile Grounds in our Nation . . ., 10th ed. (London, 1676), 115-16
33. For England's dependence on livestock, see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York, 1983), 26. Agricultural treatises of the period in general suggest that livestock care consumed much time and effort
34. see Markham, Cheape and Good Husbandry, nth ed. (London, 1664)
35. Mascai, Government of Cattell
36. Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (London, 1663)
37. John Worlidge, Systema Agricultural The Mystery of Husbandry Discovered, 4th ed. (London, 1687)
38. See also G. E. Fussell, The English Dairy Farmer, 1500-1900 (London, 1966)
39. On the labor demands of tobacco, see Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 108-13, 141-42
40. "Perfect Description of Virginia," 3
41. John Hammond, Leah and Rachel, or, The Two Fruitfull Sisters Virginia and Mary-Land (1656), in Clayton Colman Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633-1684 (New York, 1910), 291
42. Thomas Glover, An Account of Virginia . . .
43. Carr et al., Robert Cole's World, 51
44. Main, Tobacco Colony, 62
45. Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Washington, D. C., 1932), 1:207-08
46. Philip Alexander Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century . . . , 2 vols. (New York, 1895), 1:298-99, 376-77
47. Hamor, True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia, 23
48. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, 1:200, 223-24
49. McCartney, "Early Virginia Census," 181
50. [Durand of Dauphine], A Frenchman in Virginia: Being the Memoirs of a Huguenot Refugee in 1681 (Richmond, 1923), 108
51. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, 1:298, 335, 374, 375
52. Main, Tobacco Colony, 45, 67
53. David O. Percy, Of Fast Horses, Black Cattle, Woods Hogs, and Rat-Tailed Sheep: Animal Husbandry Along the Colonial Potomac, National Colonial Farm Research Report No. 4 (Accokeek, Md., 1979), 5-6
54. Carr et al., Robert Cole's World, 137; "Perfect Description of Virginia," 3
55. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States, 1:38, 202
56. Carr and Menard, "Immigration and Opportunity: The Freedman in Early Colonial Maryland," in Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society (Chapel Hill, 1979), 218
57. On the dispersed pattern of Chesapeake settlement, see Kevin P. Kelly, "'In dispers'd Country Plantations': Settlement Patterns in Seventeenth-Century Surry County, Virginia," ibid., 183-205
58. Julia Cherry Spruill, Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies (New York, 1998; orig. pub. 1938), 3-19
59. Calvert Papers, Maryland Historical Society Fund-Publications, 3 vols. (Baltimore, 1889-1899), I (no. 28), 196
60. Percy, Fast Horses, 22, 30-33
61. Siegel, Roots of Southern Distinctiveness, 71
62. Joanne Bowen, "A Comparative Analysis of the New England and Chesapeake Herding Systems," in Paul A. Shackel and Barbara J. Little, eds., Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake (Washington, D.C., 1994), 161
63. Henry M. Miller, "An Archaeological Perspective on the Evolution of Diet in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1620-1745," in Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill, 1988), 176-99
64. Carr et al., Robert Cole's World, 97, 217-18
65. Kupperman, "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," 32-33
66. Markham, Cheape and Good Husbandry, nth ed., 2-73
67. Mascal, Government of Cattell, 2-166
68. Markham, Markham's Farewelto Husbandry, 10th ed., 115-18
69. Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 3:18, 221
70. see also Laing, "Cattle in Seventeenth-Century Virginia," 160
71. Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia, ed. Louis B. Wright (Charlottesville, 1968; orig. pub. 1947), 37
72. Barbour, ed., Complete Works of Capt. John Smith, 2:242
73. Lorena S. Walsh, Ann Smart Martin, and Joanne Bowen, "Provisioning Early American Towns; The Chesapeake: A Multidisciplinary Study," Final Performance Report, NEH Grant RO-22643-93 (1997), 32
74. A True Declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia . . . (London, 1610)
75. [Durand of Dauphini], Frenchman in Virginia, 116-17
76. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, 1:315
77. Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 17:422-23
78. and Walsh et al., "Provisioning Early American Towns," 30. For court cases involving errant swine, see Accomack County Records, Virginia State Library, microfilm, reel 4, fol. 226, and Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 4:412-13
79. James Blakely and David H. Bade, The Science of Animal Husbandry, 4th ed. (Reston, Va., 1985), 106, 125, 394, 586, 587
80. Katherine A. Houpt, Domestic Animal Behavior for Veterinarians and Animal Scientists, 3d ed. (Ames, Iowa, 1998), 100, 289-90, 319
81. Billings, "Some Acts Not in Hening's Statutes," 58
82. For a description and illustrations of Virginia fences, see Berkeley and Berkeley, eds., "Another 'Account of Virginia,'" 426
83. William Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 5th ed., 16 vols. (London, 1942), 3:378-79
84. Peter Karsten, "Cows in the Corn, Pigs in the Garden, and 'the Problem of Social Costs': 'High' and 'Low' Legal Cultures of the British Diaspora Lands in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries," Law and Society Review, 32 (1998), 66-67
85. Glover, Account of Virginia, 19
86. [Durand of Dauphiné], Frenchman in Virginia, 54, 59, 60, 115-17
87. On horseracing in colonial Virginia, see T. H. Breen, "Horses and Gentlemen: The Cultural Significance of Gambling Among the Gentry of Virginia," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 34 (1977), 239-57
88. Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982), 98-101
89. and Jane Carson, Colonial Virginians at Play (Charlottesville, 1965), 102-32, 257-60
90. "Letter from Mr. John Clayton," 25-26, 35; Beverley, History and Present State of Virginia, ed. Wright, 291, 314, 318
91. On English farmers' use of sainfoin as a forage crop, see Eric Kerridge, The Agricultural Revolution (New York, 1967), 278-80
92. Beverley, History and Present State of Virginia, ed. Wright, 318
93. Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 4:168
94. Carr et al., Robert Cole's World, 177, 187
95. "Letter from Mr. John Clayton," 20, 25-26 (quotation)
96. Waterhouse, "Declaration of the State of the Colony . . ." (1622), 545
97. see also the letter from John Pory in Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 3: 221
98. Beverley, History and Present State of Virginia, ed. Wright, 291
99. Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 38:11
100. see also Walsh et al., "Provisioning Early American Towns," 39-41
101. On the concern about the potential effects of the American environment on English people, see Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), chap. 4
102. When Assateague ponies are taken as foals and fed a high protein diet, they grow to horse size; see Ronald R. Keiper, The Assateague Ponies (Centreville, Md., 1985), 15-16
103. "A Relation of Maryland, 1635," in Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, 78-79
104. Shrigley, True Relation of Virginia and Mary-Land, 5
105. Alsop, Character of the Province of Maryland, 348
106. Henry Hartwell, James Blair, and Edward Chilton, The Present State of Virginia, and the College (i727), ed. Hunter Dickinson Farish (Williamsburg, 1940), 9
107. [Durand of Dauphine], Frenchman in Virginia, 109
108. "Letter from Mr. John Clayton," 20-21
109. Jones, Present State of Virginia, ed. Morton, 77
110. Carville V. Earle, The Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System: All Hallow's Parish, Maryland, 1650-1783 (Chicago, 1975), 24-30
111. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States, 1:198
112. Richard L. Bushman, "Opening the American Countryside," in James A. Henretta, Michael Kammen, and Stanley N. Katz, eds., The Transformation of Early American History: Society, Authority, and Ideology (New York, 1991), 242-43
113. Kelly, "'In dispers'd Country Plantations,'" 183-205
114. Earle, Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System, 138-40
115. Sam B. Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860 (Carbondale, 1972), 136
116. Hartwell et al., Present State of Virginia, and the College, ed. Farish, 8; Silver, "Useful Arcadia," 155, 161
117. "Letter from Mr. John Clayton," 21; [Durand of Dauphine], Frenchman in Virginia, 59
118. Darrett B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750 (New York, 1984), 153
119. Horn, Adapting to a New World, 169, calculates that just over 40% of landholders in mid-17th century Lower Norfolk County, Va., owned fewer than 300 acres
120. Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 4:283-84
121. Hammond, Leah and Rachel, 295
122. Billings, ed., "Some Acts Not in Hening's Statutes," 62, 83
123. See also Raphael Semmes, Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland (Baltimore, 1938), chap. 3
124. and Horn, Adapting to a New World, 352, 360-61
125. On slander and defamation in early America, see Helena M. Wall, Fierce Communion: Family and Community in Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), chap. 2
126. and Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York, 1996), 211-17, 269-74
127. and Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, 1:371-72, 379
128. Semmes, Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland, 76
129. On English practice, see Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1936), 2:208
130. For scattered references to branding, see Billings, ed., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689 (Chapel Hill, 1975), 90
131. Barton H. Wise, ed., "Northampton County Records in the 17th Century," VMHB, 4 (1897), 406
132. For earmarking, see Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 1:295
133. Susie M. Ames, ed., County Court Records of Accomack-Northampton, Virginia, 1640-164$ (Charlottesville, 1973), 30
134. On the social behavior of domesticable animals, see Zeuner, History of Domesticated Animals, 37
135. and Juliet Clutton-Brock, Domesticated Animals from Early Times (London and Austin, 1981), 15-16
136. Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 10:236, 2:277-79
137. Clutton-Brock, Domesticated Animals, 15
138. Hafez, ed., Behaviour of Domestic Animals, 16-17, 112
139. Houpt, Domestic Animal Behavior for Veterinarians and Animal Scientists, 242, 248
140. H. B. Graves, "Behavior and Ecology of Wild and Feral Swine (Sus Scrofa)," Journal of Animal Science, 58 (1984), 483
141. On using food to control animals' movement, see Sytze Bottema, "Some Observations on Modern Domestication Processes," in Clutton-Brock, ed., The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation (London, 1989), 44
142. and Grigson, "Porridge and Pannage," 302, 303. Colonists may also have used salt for this purpose, but there is no mention of it in the records
143. On the utility of penning farrowing swine as a method of domestication, see Grigson, "Porridge and Pannage," 305
144. McCartney, "Early Virginia Census Reprised," 178
145. Houpt, Domestic Animal Behavior for Veterinarians and Animal Scientists, 38, 46-47, 55-56, 173
146. Keiper, Assateague Ponies, 39
147. G. W. Arnold and M. L. Dudzinski, Ethology of Free-Ranging Domestic Animals (New York, 1978), 125
148. Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake, 95
149. Graves, "Behavior and Ecology of Wild and Feral Swine," 483-90
150. See also Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York, 1986), 174-87
151. H. Epstein and I. L. Mason, "Cattle," in Mason, ed., Evolution of Domesticated Animals, 25
152. McKnight, Feral Livestock in Anglo-America, 41
153. Graves, "Behavior and Ecology of Wild and Feral Swine," 484
154. Joan Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 4: 1500-1640 (Cambridge, 1967), 19, 138, 160, 187
155. Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 54:42-43
156. and Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 10:48-49
157. see also Gary L. Francione, Animals, Property, and the Law (Philadelphia, 1995), 34
158. and Holdsworth, History of English Law, 3:367-68
159. Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 2:40-42
160. For a similar debate about wild livestock in colonial Latin America, see Silvio R. Duncan Baretta and John Markoff, "Civilization and Barbarism: Cattle Frontiers in Latin America," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 20 (1978), 606
161. On the political struggles between proprietor and colonists in Maryland, see Susan Rosenfeld Falb, Advice and Ascent: The Development of the Maryland Assembly 1635-1689 (New York, 1986)
162. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History, 2:294-97
163. see also Andrews, Colonial Period of American History, 2:208, 282-83, 376
164. Browne, ed., Archives of Maryland, 20:26
165. Walsh, "Plantation Management in the Chesapeake, 1620-1820," J. Econ. Hist., 49 (1989), 393-406
166. Walsh, "Land Use, Settlement Patterns, and the Impact of European Agriculture, 1620-1820," in Curtin et al., eds., Discovering the Chesapeake, 237, 240-41
167. William K. Boyd, ed., William Byrd's Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (New York, 1967), 54, 92