Dedicated readers of this blog know that I have a special place in my heart for pigs. As one might imagine, the Bacons have adopted the pig as a family totem. Today’s debased popular culture, as I have blogged on occasion, does not accord the porcine species the affection and respect that it deserves. Regular readers also know that I am fascinated as well by the original Bacon’s Rebellion, one of the first expressions of popular sovereignty in colonial America — and inspiration for this blog.
At long last, these two divergent obsessions have intersected. Pigs, it turns out, played a significant role in the historic Bacon’s Rebellion! (Even better: the conflict was driven by dysfunctional human settlement patterns!!)
In “Creatures of Empire” University of Colorado historian Virginia DeJohn Anderson focuses on the critical role played by domesticated mammals — cows, pigs, horses — in the Chesapeake colonies and New England. Not only did these animals provide a means of subsistence, as they did in England, but they became a leading cause of conflict between settlers and native Indians. It was an Indian war that sparked Bacon’s Rebellion.
The story begins in England. In a country where land was scarce and labor abundant, English animal husbandry favored the input of labor over land. Traditional farming practices called for the close human supervision of animals and considerable investment in barns, sties and, above all, fencing to keep the animals from wandering onto a neighbor’s property. In the American colonies, the situation was the reverse: Land was abundant but labor scarce. As a practical matter, the colonials turned the animals loose and let them forage in the woods.
The colonials’ pattern of agriculture in the New World required more land than English farmers needed back home: four or five acres of woodland for the animals to forage in for every acre of land put under cultivation. The land-intensive pattern of settlement acted as a multiplier for the growing number of settlers: Land-hungry Englishmen pushed deeper into the frontier and came into conflict with the native Indians.
Conflict, when it occurred, most frequently centered on animals. The Indians, who had no concept of animals as private property, captured pigs that ran loose and unsupervised in the woods. Englishmen, who considered that theft, often retaliated. Eventually, Indians came to understand that English concept of animals as property, but that did not resolve the tension. In the Chesapeake particularly, English settlers let their animals rove great distances for weeks and months at a time. Turning feral, the pigs proved a great nuisance to the Indians. The prolific, fast-breeding beasts found unfenced Indian corn plots a tempting source of food. When Indians killed the marauding hogs, their English owners sought retribution. Later in the century, as the pressure of the English settlers and their unsupervised animals became unbearable, Indians lashed back by killing cows and pigs for no immediate cause.
A treaty establishing peace between the English and the Pamunkey Indians articulated the problem quite clearly. Writes Anderson:
Article 4 claimed that the “Violent Intrusions of diverse English” onto native lands had forced Indians “by way of Revenge, to kill the Cattel and Hogs of the English,” helping to spark “the late unhappy Rebellion.”
I will let others draw conclusions regarding the baleful consequences of dysfunctional, land-intensive human settlement patterns in the 17th century and their implications for today. As for me, I will simply note that it is high time that scholars acknowledge the pivotal role of pigs in early American history.
