In Virginia trade with the Indians began at an early date, and the traffic in Indians became later a part of it.[647] The French reported, in 1701, that the English from Virginia, established among the Chickasaw, had armed the savages with guns, joined with them in their expeditions against other people, especially the “Colipissas” (Acolapissa), and had sent the prisoners to be sold as slaves in the West Indies, keeping the children as slaves for themselves.[648] For some time the Virginia authorities did not recognize the right of the whites to enslave an Indian, no matter how obtained. In the session of 1657–1658, the assembly passed an act forbidding the stealing of Indian children or the buying of them from Indians or others for traffic, or the selling of them under any condition by the English, on penalty of 500 pounds of tobacco.[649] In 1662, the assembly passed an act declaring that if any Englishman should bring in any Indians as servants and assign them to any one else he should not sell them as slaves or for any longer time than English servants of like age should serve by act of assembly.[650] The assembly evidently intended to enforce these acts, for in the session of 1662 it ordered a Powhatan Indian to be freed who had been sold to the English by the chief of another tribe who, according to the assembly, had no right thus to sell him.[651] By 1670 the assembly appears to have modified in a measure its opinion regarding Indian slaves. An act of that year declared Indians taken in war by any other nation and sold by such nation to the English to be servants for life, if brought in by sea—if boys or girls, till thirty years old; if men or women, twelve years and no longer.[652] By a later act of 1682 the legislature repealed the act of 1670 and definitely decided who should be slaves. Among those specified were all Indians obtained by purchase, in case they and their parents were not Christians at the time of their first being purchased by a Christian, although afterwards and before their importation into Virginia, they might have become converted to the Christian faith; and all Indians thereafter sold by the neighboring Indians or any other trafficking in slaves. But in 1691 these acts in turn were repealed and after that date no Indian could legally be bought or sold as a slave in Virginia.[653] Legislation, however, did not end the bringing of Indian slaves into the colony. Lawson records the sale in Virginia before 1700 of a young Indian woman brought from beyond the mountains.[654] In 1715, the Carolina settlers reported to the home government that the Sarrow Indians were selling in Virginia among other commodities slaves (presumably Indian as well as negro) taken from the Carolina colonists.[655]