Find the Peninsula, Middle Peninsula, and Northern Neck on John Smith's map - the Native American cornfields were at their towns
The other frontier was occupied by the Native Americans. In the areas unsettled by the English, there was minimal conflict over land use. The Native Americans would harvest a surplus of furs and food from their lands and trade with the English. Both sides benefitted from the transactions. The French focused on building up such trade, rather than occupying Native American land and creating an agricultural colony, in their settlement of Canada, Louisiana, and the Ohio River Valley.
Initially, the tribes west of the Fall Line were limited in their access to trade with the English at Jametown. The Powhatans established themselves as an initial "middleman" who would take a cut of the profits.
The power of the Powhatans was broken gradually, as the English established farms on the Peninsula, Middle Peninsula, and then finally the Northern Neck (about 50 years after Jamestown was founded). The English and Native Americans had dramatically different concepts of "appropriate land use," however and the two cultures were unable to establish a basis for peaceful coexistence in the areas occupied by English settlers.
The Powhatan cornfields were the most convenient areas to grow tobacco - land was fertile and flat, and the trees had already been cleared so the tobacco could grow in plenty of sunlight. Town sites were equally attractive for planting tobacco, once the Powhatans had been displaced. On the other hand, killing English cattle was easier than hunting deer... I suspect some of the English blamed every lost cow on the Native Americans, while some of the Native Americans blamed every hungry day on the English.
Both the English and the Powhatans built forts for protection. The Powhatans had pallisaded towns, where tree trunks were aligned to encircle the houses and provide a wall of defense. These were designed for tribal conflicts using pre-contact technology; the palisades offered only minimal protection against the cannon of the Europeans. (See the image of a pallisaded Algonquian town, from Roanoke Colony watercolors of Thomas White that later were etched into woodcuts by Theodor De Bry.)
The English also built a pallisaded fort at Jamestown. It may have been inadequate against a Spanish attack, but it was sufficient to protect against the arrows and hatchets lof the Powhatan neighbors. In addition, the walls allowed the English to control how many Native Americans were allowed in the town at one time, reducing the threat of a surprise assault.
Away from Jamestown, the initial English farmers built sturdy wooden houses that also served as defensive structures. Such houses are called "forts" in many reports written in colonial days, especially after settlement reached the Shenandoah Valley. It was far more difficult for the Native Americans to cut trees and shape logs without iron axes and sharp metal tools, and the English had no difficulty in destroying the traditional reed- or bark-covered huts in the Native American towns.
Not surprisingly, the two cultures fought using different tactics. The Native Americans relied upon swift surprise attacks, which killed a few people but rarely forced a wholesale retreat by other English settlers. The English engaged in search-and-destroy maneuvers, burning cornfields and towns to starve the assailants that they could not see.
Forts on the frontier provided protection for the English settlers, though few stayed in the fort year-round. Families would retreat to the fort only when there was a specific alarm that a war party was nearby. The plantations and farms far from the fort were the most vulnerable, since they would be the first to be attacked and might never receive a warning.
Forts also provided a base for the rangers that were occasionally emmployed to search for groups of Native Americans. Prince William County, now urbanizing as growth in Northern Virginia continues to expand, was once on the frontier. The stone walls in the basement of the Bel Air house may be the remnants a 1670's fort that housed rangers assigned to the headwaters of various coastal streams. The rangers were looking primarily for hunting parties of Susquehannocks and Iroquois from New York. Such groups were considered more likely to raid English farms, since they had no local towns or farm fields to protect.
