The forest of old Virginia was jocund and powerful, eternally young and eternally old.
The forest was Despot in the land--was Emperor and Pope.
With the forest went the Indian.

They had a pact together.

The Indians hacked out space for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, their maize and bean fields and tobacco patches.

They took saplings for poles and bark to cover the huts and wood for fires.

The forest gave canoe and bow and arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum that was beaten at feasts.