Harris,
King, Jackson, Long, Martin, Miller, Newton, Philips, Richards, Turner,
White, appear with monotonous repetition. Except in the years 1655 and
1656, after the Drogheda tragedy when one sees such names as O'Lanny,
O'Leaby, O'Mally, and Machoone, or in 1679 when there was a sprinkling
of Scottish names, the entire list is distinctly English.

It must not be supposed that immigration to Virginia in the Seventeenth
century was restricted to indentured servants. Some of the settlers were
freemen, paying their own passage and establishing themselves as
proprietors immediately after arriving in the colony. But the conditions
which attracted them were the same as those which brought over the
servants. In both cases it was tobacco, the rich returns which it
promised and the urgent need it had of labor, which impelled them to
leave their homes in England to seek their fortunes in the strange land
beyond the seas.

Having seen the character of the immigration to Virginia, it remains to
determine what was the fate of the settler after he reached the colony,
what role lay before him in its social and economic life. Would he
remain permanently in the status of a servant, entering into a new
agreement with his master after the expiration of the old? Would he
eventually become a day laborer, working for wages upon the estates of
the wealthy? Would he become a tenant? Could he hope to become a
freeholder, making of Virginia, like Rome in the early days of the
republic, the land of the small proprietor?

_CHAPTER III_

THE VIRGINIA YEOMANRY

The system of indentured labor differed vitally from negro slavery. The
servant usually was bound to his master for a limited period only, and
at the expiration of four or five years was a free man, to go where he
would and pursue what employment seemed most lucrative. And of
tremendous importance to the future of Virginia was the fact that he was
of the same race and blood as the rest of the population. There was no
inherent reason why he might not take up land, marry and become a part
of the social structure of the colony.

When races of marked physical differences are placed side by side in the
same territory, assimilation of one or the other becomes difficult, and
an age long repugnance and conflict is apt to result. Perhaps the
greatest crime against the southern colonies was not the introduction of
slavery, but the introduction of negroes. It was inevitable that
eventual