way:
by violence. Since the settlers had weapons of violence superior to
those possessed by the Indians, it was not very frequently that the
Indians won their "case."

In the Assemblies of these years there is occasional mention of the
splitting of counties in two parts, or of the formation of new parishes.
Usually these divisions were made along rivers or streams. Such
legislation suggests that settlement was spreading back from the water
routes into the land area between streams. The early counties were
normally set up to embrace the area on both sides of watercourses, even
broad rivers like the James and York. The rivers were, in the early
period of settlement, bonds that linked the settlers on either side to
each other. It was natural that rivers should be the principal
thoroughfares of the country. But as settlement spread into the
interior, up the tributary streams that issued into the larger rivers,
the natural social unit that developed was that of communities on the
same side of the river. Hence the gradual conversion of rivers into
political boundaries.

The Assembly of March 1655, for the first time in Virginia's history,
restricted the voting privilege to "housekeepers whether freeholders,
leaseholders, or otherwise tenants." Freemen who could not qualify as
householders, even though they may have been grown sons living in their
father's house, could not vote. It is significant that this first
restriction on the right to vote in Virginia came not under a royal
governor, but under so-called "Parliamentary" rule. So unpopular was
this enactment that it was amended by an act of the Assembly of March
1656 on the grounds that "we conceive it something hard and unagreeable
to reason that any persons shall pay equall taxes and yet have no votes
in elections." Freemen were again allowed to vote provided that they did
not do so "in a tumultuous way."

The Assembly of March 1656 passed an act which attempted to solve the
Indian problem in a way that had never been tried before but has been
frequently tried since. The plan was to encourage the growth of an
acquisitive spirit among the Indians to serve as a counterweight to the
acquisitive spirit of the English. The preamble to the act asserted that
the danger of war from the Indians stemmed from two causes: "our
extreame pressures on them and theire wanting of something to hazard and
loose beside their lives." Therefore the Assembly enacted that for every
eight wo