The Indian Massacre in Virginia: Pamunkey

A terrible reaction in the feelings of the colonists immediately took place.. A war ensued, in which the fiercest impulses that man can feel were called into being. No truce was ever declared. The Indians were shot down at any time and in any place in which they showed them-selves. When seed-time approached, hostilities declined from absolute necessity. The English resorted to a stratagem which cannot be justified. Offering peace to the savages, they seduced them from their places of concealment; but in the midst of their labor they rushed upon them, cut down their corn, and put to death a large number, among whom were several of their greatest warriors and most skilful chieftains. So embittered and so deep was the feeling of hatred thus engendered between the races that for many years it was transmitted from father to son. The colonists looked upon the Indians as their hereditary foes, and the unhappy natives never spoke of the "long knives" without fear and execration.

During the immediately succeeding period no events of any marked importance occurred in Virginia. In 1624 the London Company was dissolved, and Virginia became a royal government. But the rights of trial by jury and of a representative Assembly, which had been granted by the Company, were retained, and all succeeding colonies claimed the same, so that from the formation of the colonial Assembly of Virginia we may date the beginning of the evolution of American liberty. In 1643 another Indian massacre took place, instigated by the same implacable chief.

The Indians were now inveterate enemies. Peace was never thought of. Successive enactments of the Assembly made it a solemn duty to fall upon the natives at stated periods of the year, and heavy penalties were visited upon all who traded with them or in any way provided them with arms and ammunition. The whites were steadily increasing both in moral and physical strength; the Indians were as rapidly wasting away before the breath of civilization. A few incursions,--a few convulsive efforts, always attended by heavy loss to themselves,--one final struggle,--these will complete their history in eastern Virginia.

The illegal grants favored by Sir John Hervey had provoked the natives into active hostility. They saw their hunting-grounds successively swept away by a power which they were unable to resist, and all the passions of the savage arose to demand revenge.. Among the natives there still lived a hero who had proved himself a formidable adversary even when encountered by European skill. Opecancanough had attained the hundredth year of his life. Declining age had bowed a form once eminent in stature and manly strength. Incessant toil and watchfulness had wasted his flesh and left him gaunt and withered, like the forest-tree stripped of its foliage by the frosts of winter. His eyes had lost their brightness, and so heavily did the hand of age press upon him that his eyelids drooped from weakness, and he required the aid of an attendant to raise them that he might see objects around him. Yet within this tottering and wasted body burned a soul which seemed to have lost none of its original energy. A quenchless fire incited him to hostility against the settlers. He yet wielded great influence among the members of the Powhatan confederacy; and by his wisdom, his example, and the veneration felt for his age, he roused the savages to another effort at general massacre.

The obscurity concerning the best records which remain of this period has rendered doubtful the precise time at which this fatal irruption occurred; yet the most probable period would seem to be the close of the year 1643. The Indians were drawn together with great secrecy and skill, and were instructed to fall upon the colonists at the same time, and to spare none who could be safely butchered. Five hundred victims sank beneath their attack. The assault was most violent and fatal upon the upper waters of the Pamunkey and the York, where the settlers were yet thin in number and but imperfectly armed. But in every place where resistance was possible the savages were routed with loss, and driven back in dismay to their fastnesses in the forest.

Sir William Berkeley instantly placed himself at the head of a chosen body, composed of every twentieth man able to bear arms, and marched to the scene of devastation. Finding the savages dispersed, and all organized resistance at an end, he followed them with a troop of cavalry. The aged chief had taken refuge in the neighborhood of his seat at Pamunkey. His strength was too much enfeebled for vigorous flight. His limbs refused to bear him, and his dull vision rendered him an easy prey. He was overtaken by the pursuers, and carried in triumph back to James-town.