'Hold Your Horses'

The Chesapeake Bay is not necessarily known for horses, that is unless you're talking about the ponies that roam back and forth from tiny Assateague Island to the mainland. 'Assateague', sounds like an Indian name - fact is, it is.  How about Nanticoke or Pocomoke.  Indians on the Bay?  Along much of the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, 'natives' did for the earliest Watermen what Indian tribesmen did for the Pilgrims, in what is now Massachusetts.  The Indians didn't have bibles, they did, though, possess the faith in the creator who provided -  provided well.

No one went hungry on the Chesapeake. If a man would work he would eat.  Even the few lazy guys who only wondered the lanes, at midday, while all the other guys were hitting-a-lick, even those men could find a meal somewhere on the Bay.  It's as if everything about the Chesapeake was designed to fulfill HIS promise of an abundant life - there was more than enough for everyone. We ate like kings.  We had the best of everything:  'seafood' from waters, greens from the fields, sweets from the trees, and from the skies, birds, even one who no longer flew.  

The abundance made people egalitarian.  Even the 'natives', who would forever lose control of the lands and waters around the Bay, had little problem sharing much of what HE willed.  I had one relative who called himself a 'rich man', just because he had come from the shores of the Chesapeake.  (Incidentally, that same relative actually became a millionaire entrepreneur).  Not a lot of horses but lots of very fortunate people.  Thank the Nanticoke and the Pocomoke.  Thank the Bay. Bring your Bible.