Land & Inheritance in The Widow Ranter

Woodard’s “Founding Tidewater” contextualizes Bacon and the Indian King’s conversation at the beginning of Act II Scene I regarding inheritance of land, and complicates Bacon’s motives throughout the play. While they discuss the end of their truce and the likelihood of them facing each other in battle again, the Indian King tells Bacon,

“I’m sensible of Injuries; and oft have heard my Grandsire say, That we were Monarchs once of all this spacious World, till you, an unknown People, landing here....abusing all our charitable Hospitality, usurp’d our Right, and made your Friends your Slaves” (Behn).

As Woodard explains, Powhatan “adopted” rival chiefs after defeating them in battle to create a 24,000-person large bulwark against the threat Jamestown posed, thereby establishing the sort of rule the Indian King rightly considers as extensive as a monarchy (46). The colonists’ willingness to use violence and constant supply of more settlers from Great Britain meant that by 1669, “the English population had grown to 40,000, spreading across Tidewater, clearing Indian lands to grow tobacco” (Woodard 47). Thus, the flood of colonists the Indian King refers to was recent enough for his Grandsire to remember, along with the clearing of lands and changing of the landscape. By describing the colonists as having “usurp’d our Right,” the Indian King demonstrates that he regards the land as an inherited right that the indigenous people still have sovereignty over, based on their long history of settlement there.

In contrast, Bacon views inheritance of land differently having only arrived in Jamestown a few years prior. He responds to the Indian King’s charge against the colonists by stating:

“I will not justify the Ingratitude of my Forefathers, but finding here my Inheritance, I am resolv’d still to maintain it so, and by my Sword which first cut out my Portion, defend each Inch of Land, with my last drop of Blood” (Behn).

When Bacon refers to his inheritance of land, he refers to a sizable portion. As Woodard explains, immigrants like Bacon who could afford to come over to Tidewater without becoming indentured servants “were entitled to 50 acres” once they arrived in Virginia (49). Although Bacon acknowledges the unjust way such land was gained from the indigenous peoples, he still claims this recent inheritance. Furthermore, Bacon’s willingness to “defend each Inch of Land, with my last drop of Blood” exemplifies the violence through which Tidewater dominated the indigenous peoples and maintained its own internal hierarchy (54). Thus, Woodard’s historical context and analysis reveal how within this conversation about land between him and the Indian King, Bacon reinforces the strict and tyrannical hierarchy that he claims to be fighting against in Jamestown.

Works Cited

Behn, Aphra. The Widow Ranter. Gutenberg,

www.gutenberg.org/files/27273/27273-h/widow.html#widow_texttag31, Accessed 8 Oct. 2021.

“Founding Tidewater.” American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of

North America, by Colin Woodard, Penguin Books, 2012, pp. 44–56.