The store of provisions at Jamestown was so wasted by rats, introduced by the vessels, that all the works of the colonists were brought to an end, and they were employed only in procuring food. Two Indians that had been some time before captured by Smith, had been until the present time kept fettered prisoners, but made to perform double tasks, and to instruct the settlers in the cultivation of corn. The prisoners were released for want of provision, but were so well satisfied as to remain. For upwards of two weeks the Indians from the surrounding country supplied the colony daily with squirrels, turkeys, deer, and other game, while the rivers afforded an abundance of wild-fowl. Smith also bought from Powhatan half of his stock of corn. But, nevertheless, it was found necessary to distribute the settlers in different parts of the country to procure subsistence. Sergeant Laxon, with sixty or eighty of them, was sent down the river to live upon oysters; Lieutenant Percy with twenty, to find fish at Point Comfort; West, brother of Lord Delaware, with an equal number, repaired to the falls, where, however, nothing edible was found but a few acorns. Hitherto the whole body of the colonists had been provided for by the courage and industry of some thirty or forty. The main article of their diet was, for a time, sturgeon, an abundant supply of which was procured during the season. It not only served for meat, but when dried and pounded, and mixed with herbs, supplied the place of bread. Of the spontaneous productions of the soil, the principal article of sustenance was the tuckahoe-root, of which one man could gather enough in a day to supply him with bread for a week. The tockawhoughe, as it is called by Smith, was, in the summer, a principal article of diet among the natives. It grows in marshes like a flag, and resembles, somewhat, the potato in size and flavor. Raw it is no better than poison, so that the Indians were accustomed to roast it, and eat it mixed with sorel and corn-meal.[75:A] There is another root found in Virginia called tuckahoe, and confounded with the flag-like root described above, and erroneously supposed by many to grow without stem or leaf. It appears to be of the convolvulus species, and is entirely unlike the root eaten by the Jamestown settlers.[75:B] Such was the indolence of the greater number of the colonists, that it seemed as if they would sooner starve than take the trouble of procuring food; and at length their mutinous discontents arose to such a pitch that Smith arrested the ringleader of the malecontents, and ordered that whoever failed to provide daily as much food as he should consume, should be banished from Jamestown as a drone. Of the two hundred settlers, many were billeted among the Indians, and thus became familiar with their habits and manner of life.