The friendship of the Indians and
the temporary subordination of the settlers we must attribute to
Smith's vigor, shrewdness, and spirit of industry. It was much
easier to manage the Indian's than the idle and vicious men that
composed the majority of the settlement.
In these three months they manufactured three or four lasts (fourteen
barrels in a last) of tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, produced some
specimens of glass, dug a well of excellent sweet water in the fort,
which they had wanted for two years, built twenty houses, repaired
the church, planted thirty or forty acres of ground, and erected a
block-house on the neck of the island, where a garrison was stationed
to trade with the savages and permit neither whites nor Indians to
pass except on the President's order. Even the domestic animals
partook the industrious spirit: "of three sowes in eighteen months
increased 60 and od Pigs; and neare 500 chickings brought up
themselves without having any meat given them." The hogs were
transferred to Hog Isle, where another block house was built and
garrisoned, and the garrison were permitted to take "exercise" in
cutting down trees and making clapboards and wainscot.
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