Indian wars of the United States Author:John Frost Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: them in their places of refuge: they only saw in these new establishments an increase of the power of the mother country. It was extending beyond the seas her po... more »wer, commerce, and industry; and it opened to men discontented with their situation, another career and a new field for hope. CHAPTER II. EARLY INDIAN WARS OP VIRGINIA. DEVIOUS to the final settlement of Virginia, many attempts at colonization were made on the soil of the United States. Seve- ral expeditions were sent to the coasts of Maine; and all readers of American history are familiar with the repeated unsuccessful attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a permanent colony in Roanoke, in North Carolina. At length, James I., having divided that portion of North America which extends from the thirty-eighth to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude, into two portions, the one called the first or south colony of Virginia, and the other the second or north colony, authorized Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and their associates in London, to settle any part of the former which they might choose; and several knights, gentlemen, and merchants, of Bristol and Plymouth, com- SETTLEMENT OF THE ENGLISH. 91 monly called the Plymouth company, to occupy the latter. After the lapse of a hundred and ten years from the discovery of the continent by Cabot, and twenty-two years after its first occupation by Raleigh, were the number of the English colonists limited to a hundred and five; and this handful of men proceeded to execute the arduous task of peopling a remote and uncultivated land, covered with woods and marshes, and inhabited only by tribes of savages and beasts of prey. Newport and his squadron, pursuing for some unknown reason the ancient circuitous track to America, did not accomplish their vo...« less