This sharing out the land to them I left to Will Atkins, who was
now grown a sober, grave, managing fellow, perfectly reformed,
exceedingly pious and religious; and, as far as I may be allowed to
speak positively in such a case, I verily believe he was a true
penitent. He divided things so justly, and so much to every one’s
satisfaction, that they only desired one general writing under my
hand for the whole, which I caused to be drawn up, and signed and
sealed, setting out the bounds and situation of every man’s
plantation, and testifying that I gave them thereby severally a
right to the whole possession and inheritance of the respective
plantations or farms, with their improvements, to them and their
heirs, reserving all the rest of the island as my own property, and
a certain rent for every particular plantation after eleven years,
if I, or any one from me, or in my name, came to demand it,
producing an attested copy of the same writing. As to the
government and laws among them, I told them I was not capable of
giving them better rules than they were able to give themselves;
only I made them promise me to live in love and good neighbourhood
with one another; and so I prepared to leave them.
One thing I must not omit, and that is, that being now settled in a
kind of commonwealth among themselves, and having much business in
hand, it was odd to have seven-and-thirty Indians live in a nook of
the island, independent, and, indeed, unemployed; for except the
providing themselves food, which they had difficulty enough to do
sometimes, they had no manner of business or property to manage. I
proposed, therefore, to the governor Spaniard that he should go to
them, with Friday’s father, and propose to them to remove, and
either plant for themselves, or be taken into their several
families as servants to be maintained for their labour, but without
being absolute slaves; for I would not permit them to make them
slaves by force, by any means; because they had their liberty given
them by capitulation, as it were articles of surrender, which they
ought not to break.
They most willingly embraced the proposal, and came all very
cheerfully along with him: so we allotted them land and
plantations, which three or four accepted of, but all the rest
chose to be employed as servants in the several families we had
settled. Thus my colony was in a manner settled as follows: The
Spaniards possessed my original habitation, which was the capital
city, and extended their plantations all along the side of the
brook, which made the creek that I have so often described, as far
as my bower; and as they increased their culture, it went always
eastward. The English lived in the north-east part, where Will
Atkins and his comrades began, and came on southward and south-
west, towards the back part of the Spaniards; and every plantation
had a great addition of land to take in, if they found occasion, so
that they need not jostle one another for want of room. All the
east end of the island was left uninhabited, that if any of the
savages should come on shore there only for their customary
barbarities, they might come and go; if they disturbed nobody,
nobody would disturb them: and no doubt but they were often
ashore, and went away again; for I never heard that the planters
were ever attacked or disturbed any more.
CHAPTER VIII – SAILS FROM THE ISLAND FOR THE BRAZILS
IT now came into my thoughts that I had hinted to my friend the
clergyman that the work of converting the savages might perhaps be
set on foot in his absence to his satisfaction, and I told him that
now I thought that it was put in a fair way; for the savages, being
thus divided among the Christians, if they would but every one of
them do their part with those which came under their hands, I hoped
it might have a very good effect.
He agreed presently in that, if they did their part. “But how,”