fields--the Warriscoyacks,
the Nansemonds, the Chickahominies and in 1630, the Chiskiackes. Then,
the white men took over their areas of cleared land.

[Illustration: Photo by Virginia State Library

Lee House (Chiskiac)--York County

The main building here shown was built about 1690 and was the home of
the descendants of Henry Lee, who was in Virginia by the middle of the
seventeenth century. The site, now within the United States Naval Mine
Depot, was, before 1630 the territory of the Chiskiac (Kiskiacke)
Indians. The wing attached is a modern addition.]

However, these fields were but small open spaces required by the
Englishmen who arrived in increasing numbers. There was a constant
operation, in the seventeenth century, of clearing and planting new
lands. As help in the white indentured servants was never very
plentiful, the planters, finally resorted to an available supply of
Negro labor, being peddled along the coast of the Americas, and landed
wherever the slaveships could gain entry.

The muster of 1625 shows that many goats had been brought to the Colony
by that time. Multiplying, they provided able assistance during the
early seventeenth century in thoroughly clearing away the undergrowth,
preparatory to cutting down trees and grubbing stumps. Joseph Ham, in
the colony by 1633, resorted to these omnivorous quadrupeds in clearing
his land. He lived in the New Poquoson area where growth of all kinds is
lush. The region, which has its name from the Indian term for lowlands,
had afforded the Kecoughtan Indians a rich hunting-ground. Midst tall
pines, oak, walnut, cedar, wild cherry, locust, swamp willow, holly,
myrtle and persimmon, entangled with grape vines, reaching the tops of
trees, and Virginia creeper, game found a haven. Deer, bears, rabbits,
squirrel, opossum, raccoon, foxes, weasels, mink, otter and muskrat were
sheltered in the thickets and adjacent swamps, while wild ducks and
geese made of the marshes, bordering the waterways, a rendezvous for
days and weeks on their flights southward. The Bay at hand, and its
estuaries, abounded in trout, hogfish, rock, shad, sturgeon and other
edible species in season, not to speak of soft-shell crabs, hard-shell
crabs, turtles, terrapin, clams and oysters.

Here was food in plenty, but to clear the land for a crop posed a
problem to Joseph Ham. He had married a widow with two young children
and the family had one servant only--a maid. The heavy work fell to