THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

    By the late 17th century, Virginia's and Maryland's economic and social structure relied on the great planters and the  small farmers. The planters of the tidewater region used slave labor.  They had most of the political power.  They owned the best land.  The planters built great plantation houses.  They were very rich.  They had the best from all over the world. They were able to buy from traders who brought them many things.

    At the same time, the small farmers had small tracts of land.  They got together in assemblies and tried to fight for political office to make changes.  They spoke out against their independence and were against the plantation owners who denied freedom to slaves. 

     Charleston, South Carolina, was the leading port and trading center of the South. There the settlers quickly learned to use agriculture and commerce.  Their marketplace became a major source of their way of living and earning a living. Dense forests also brought money.  These forests provided them with many things to sell.  Like lumber, tar and resin.  The resin from the longleaf pine trees provided some of the best shipbuilding materials in the world. The southern farmers did not have to be bound to growing a single crop like  Virginia. North and South Carolina also produced and exported rice and indigo, a blue dye obtained from native plants, which was used in coloring fabric. By 1750 more than 100,000 people lived in the two colonies of North and South Carolina.

    In the southern-most colonies, as everywhere else, population growth in the back country had special significance. German immigrants and Scots-Irish, unwilling to live in the original tidewater settlements where English influence was strong, pushed inland. Those who could not secure fertile land along the coast, or who had exhausted the lands they held, found the hills farther west a bountiful refuge. Although their hardships were enormous, restless settlers kept coming, and by the 1730s they were pouring into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Soon the interior was dotted with farms.
 

    Living on the edge of the Indian country, frontier families built cabins, cleared tracts in the wilderness and cultivated maize and wheat. The men wore leather made from the skin of deer or sheep, known as buckskin; the women wore garments of cloth they spun at home. Their food consisted of venison, wild turkey and fish. They had their own amusements -- great barbecues, dances, housewarmings for newly married couples, shooting matches and contests for making quilted blankets. Quilts remain an American tradition today.