e vessels, that all the works of the colonists were brought to an
end, and they were employed only in procuring food. Two Indians that had
been some time before captured by Smith, had been until the present time
kept fettered prisoners, but made to perform double tasks, and to
instruct the settlers in the cultivation of corn. The prisoners were
released for want of provision, but were so well satisfied as to remain.
For upwards of two weeks the Indians from the surrounding country
supplied the colony daily with squirrels, turkeys, deer, and other game,
while the rivers afforded an abundance of wild-fowl. Smith also bought
from Powhatan half of his stock of corn. But, nevertheless, it was found
necessary to distribute the settlers in different parts of the country
to procure subsistence. Sergeant Laxon, with sixty or eighty of them,
was sent down the river to live upon oysters; Lieutenant Percy with
twenty, to find fish at Point Comfort; West, brother of Lord Delaware,
with an equal number, repaired to the falls, where, however, nothing
edible was found but a few acorns. Hitherto the whole body of the
colonists had been provided for by the courage and industry of some
thirty or forty.

The main article of their diet was, for a time, sturgeon, an abundant
supply of which was procured during the season. It not only served for
meat, but when dried and pounded, and mixed with herbs, supplied the
place of bread. Of the spontaneous productions of the soil, the
principal article of sustenance was the tuckahoe-root, of which one man
could gather enough in a day to supply him with bread for a week. The
tockawhoughe, as it is called by Smith, was, in the summer, a principal
article of diet among the natives. It grows in marshes like a flag, and
resembles, somewhat, the potato in size and flavor. Raw it is no better
than poison, so that the Indians were accustomed to roast it, and eat it
mixed with sorel and corn-meal.[75:A] There is another root found in
Virginia called tuckahoe, and confounded with the flag-like root
described above, and erroneously supposed by many to grow without stem
or leaf. It appears to be of the convolvulus species, and is entirely
unlike the root eaten by the Jamestown settlers.[75:B]

Such was the indolence of the greater number of the colonists, that it
seemed as if they would sooner starve than take the trouble of procuring
food; and at length their mutinous discontents arose to such a pitch
that Smit