96 Singing Valleys 



the village and till the cornfields until harvest; then remove, 

 leaving the whites one-half of the crop. By this wise arrange- 

 ment the Marylanders had food and to spare. That first au- 

 tumn they sent a ship loaded with corn to Massachusetts to 

 trade for salt fish. 



The Calverts were noblemen high in favor at the court of 

 the Stuarts, even despite William Claiborne's efforts to dis- 

 credit their intentions in America. Lord Baltimore's position 

 was that of a feudal baron; he paid to his sovereign during 

 Easter week in token of fealty, two Indian arrows a year. His 

 own rentals from settlers were collected in corn, capons, fat 

 pullets, occasionally a buck's forefoot. The society they 

 founded was simple. It drove its roots deep into the rich soil. 

 Father Andrew White's journal tells how the English women 

 learned gratefully from the squaws how to prepare the Indian 

 corn. And from another observer comes this comment of life 

 in Maryland: "The Son works as well as the Servant, so that 

 before they eat their bread they are commonly taught how to 

 earn it." 



All this was quite another mode of life from that which 

 tobacco prosperity was causing to grow along the rivers of 

 Virginia. There, as the plantations spread, the work was done 

 first by indentured white servants. These were divided into 

 two classes. There were those who had sold themselves into 

 servitude to pay for their passage to Virginia; and there were 

 the felons, sent to work out the terms of their sentences and 

 the "kids," shanghaied by unscrupulous "spirits" about the 

 docks of London and Liverpool. These kidnappers did a good 

 business selling bond-servants, male and female, to the ships' 

 captains to be conveyed to the colonies. But toward the end 

 of the seventeenth century this trade fell off as the African 

 slave trade grew. The planters preferred slaves to servants who 

 would attain their freedom just when they had become most 

 valuable. 



The blacks who survived the voyage and reached the tobacco 

 and cornfields, increased rapidly in numbers. Negroes were 



