"The Virginia Company talked a lot about defense and it provided the colony with a lot of military supplies," says Jamestown historian Tom Davidson. The archaeological evidence is telling us that they really did supply the settlers."
Each male colonist was issued his own suit of armor. In the earliest years of James Fort, especially, the settlers were required to gather into a company of war every Saturday for military drills. And the equipment they had was so extensive that Capt. John Smith was able to make the following inventory of arms and armor just before he returned to England in 1609:
"24 peeces of ordnance [artillery], 300 muskets snaphaunces and fire lockes, shot powder and match sufficient; curats [cuirasses or body armor], pikes, swords, and morrions [helmets] more than men."
"We know that a great deal of chain mail was sent here". Several other types of military equipment - including such staff-mounted weapons as pikes, halberds, poleaxes and bills - remained popular in European warfare long after the Virginia colonists had abandoned them as too unwieldy for frontier fighting.
Far more effective were the settlers' daggers and swords, which could be deadly in close combat with the lightly armed Powhatans. Equally important was the snaphaunce musket, which the colonists favored over the cheaper, simpler, yet slower matchlock musket because of its superiority in fending off sudden Indian attacks.
Most of the earliest settlers buckled on the so-called "pikeman's suit" whenever they gathered for Smith's mandatory drills. Made up of a breastplate, a backplate, two tassets - or metal skirts - to protect the thighs, a gorget to protect the neck and a helmet for the head, this basic set of infantryman's armor was standard issue from the Virginia Company, Davidson says. Gauntlets and small, buckler-style shields sometimes joined the war chests of the colonists, too.
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