University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XV

ADMINISTRATION OF SIR FRANCIS WYATT

Yeardley's commission expired November, 1621, and he
was succeeded by Sir Francis Wyatt, who was accompanied
to Virginia by George Sandys as treasurer, William Newce as
marshal, William Claiborne as surveyor, and John Pountis
as vice-admiral. There were nine ships embraced in the
fleet. Daniel Gookin followed and settled on the site of the
modern city of Newport News. He was instrumental in
importing many cattle and colonists. During this first year
about twenty-one vessels arrived, with a passenger roll of
thirteen hundred men, women, and children.

Just before the massacre of 1622, the number of inhabitants
was about two thousand, all of whom were comfortably
sheltered. The planters owned a very considerable variety of
livestock, and also numerous boats for the passage from
settlement to settlement along the rivers. There was no lack
of grain despite the supreme attention given to the production
of tobacco; and there were at least ten thousand vines growing
in some of the vineyards; and the silkworm was successfully
propagated. About five thousand pounds sterling had been
expended upon the construction of iron-works for the manufacture
of pig-iron. Tobacco was selling at a high rate,
although a monopoly of it had been established in England.
The colonists, it was said, now looked upon themselves as the
happiest subjects of the King, and their good reports very
naturally helped to swell the emigration from the mother-country
to Virginia; and this in turn quickened the increase
in the number of new plantations. It was estimated that
24,000 pounds sterling had been expended for the maintenance

of the Colony during the treasurership of Sir Thomas
Smythe. About 75,000 pounds had been invested in the merchandise
of the joint stock and in the transportation of new
settlers. At last, the future of Virginia, as an English
dependency, seemed to be positively assured. A broad and
solid foundation had been laid for a noble superstructure.

At this cheerful moment, there fell, with the suddenness
of a great earthquake, a blow from the Indian hand, grasping
the tomahawk and the scalping knife, which appeared during
the first hour to be fatal to the very existence of the community.
This was the Massacre of 1622. Could that atrocious
event have been avoided? Had not the old settlers sufficient
recollection of the treacherous character of the savages in
the past to keep themselves and their families and friends
always on their guard against the chance of slaughter? Seemingly
not. A large part of the population in 1622 were newcomers.
Governor Wyatt himself was a stranger. His
instructions had simply enjoined him from relying too much
on the Indians for supplies of food. Not a word was inserted
to urge caution in the planters' intercourse with them. As a
matter of fact, wariness was thrown to the winds by the
colonists; they actually taught the Indians the use of guns,
and employed them to shoot wild game for their tables; invited
them to their firesides; and offered them seats at the family
meals. They loaned them the very boats in which they passed
from one side of the Powhatan to the other in arranging
their conspiracy, and they exhibited in other ways their confidence
in the supposed changed spirit of the savages.

The peace between the races had now lasted five years, and
it was thought to be unnecessary to build forts in easy access
of each group of plantations. The regular military exercises
were abandoned, and as was afterwards said with scorn, the
people gave up their entire time to "rooting in the ground
about tobacco like swine." Rev. Jonas Stockton alone seems
to have put no reliance upon the good intentions of the
Indian. "Until their priests and ancients are killed, it is
hopeless," he asserted, "to expect the conversion of the rest."

The first event that disturbed the kindly relations of the
two races was the death of a warrior known as Jack of the
Feather, from the fact that he always wore a plume in his
black hair. He loudly boasted that he was invulnerable to
arrow and bullet, but in a wrangle at the house of one Morgan,
he was shot, and afterwards sank under the wound. With his
last breath, he begged his slayer to conceal the instrument of
his death, and to bury him among the whites. News of his
killing, however, reached Opechancanough, who was so much
incensed that he threatened to retaliate. At the disinterment
of Powhatan's body in 1621, the Indians present were reported
to have sworn that they would exterminate the colonists.
Wyatt, on his arrival, demanded of Opechancanough an
explanation of this rumor, and he replied that the sky would
fall before he would attack his friends the English. How
secretly he matured the plot of the massacre—for he was the
head and front of the diabolical scheme—was demonstrated
by the fact that the assault fell at the same hour on all the
widely dispersed communities, with the exception of the few
that had been warned in time that it was impending.

The attack began on both sides of the river at precisely
eight o'clock on the morning of April 1, 1622 (n. s.). Different
methods of approach were adopted in different places. At
one, the assassins sauntered into a house apparently for
purposes of trade; at another, the inmates were lured by one
pretence or another out of doors; here the murderers entered
a field where the unsuspecting people were planting corn or
tobacco; there, they joined the men engaged in building a barn
or manufacturing brick or sawing plank. Few escaped the
pitiless blow of their bloody weapons. About four hundred
of the colonists perished, among whom were six members of
the council. John Rolfe was one; George Thorpe was another.
Thorpe was so friendly with the Indians that he is said to have
denied them nothing which they asked for; and he even blew
out the brains of several mastiffs in his possession because
the savages were either really afraid of them or thought that

Massacre in 1622

the dogs would interfere with their terrible designs. He had
built Opechancanough a house for his own use. Not satisfied
with killing him, the Indians grossly mutilated his body.

Wherever a brave defense was made, the would-be murderers
retired without attempting resolutely to overcome.
Nathaniel Cawson split open the head of one of his attackers
with an axe, and the remainder took at once to their heels. In
another case, two settlers who had found refuge in their
house succeeded in the end in driving off a band of sixty
warriors. A third saved his family from massacre by shooting
off his gun from his window as rapidly as he could load it.
Captain Ralph Hamor, aided by his servants, defended his
home with spades and axes as if they were so many bludgeons.
All the inhabitants of Jamestown also would have perished
had not Chanco, an Indian boy—who was a Christian convert
living on a plantation known as Pace's Pains—revealed the
plot to Pace, instead of killing him, as urged on by another
Indian who was deep in the conspiracy. Pace took horse at
once and galloped through the night to Jamestown to inform
the governor, and the governor in turn dispatched messengers
at full speed to every settlement in the vicinity; but the
interval was too short to allow of his warning the inhabitants
of the colony at large.

Above the mouth of the Appomattox, on either side of the
Powhatan, the several settlements were practically extirpated.
Few of the inhabitants of Bermuda City and Hundred
escaped; and as far as the modern Isle of Wight, on the
southern bank of the stream, the plantations were scenes of
carnage in which nearly all the people lost their lives. The
group of colonists established by Daniel Gookin at Newport
News, and also by Samuel Jordan on his own patent, remained
for reasons unknown unmolested; and Mrs. Proctor, residing
on her own estate with a few servants only, was equally fortunate.
When three weeks after the massacre the governor
sent out an order to all the people to concentrate in a few places
for protection, these three persons declined to obey.

There was after the massacre a population of only eight
hundred and ninety-three left in Virginia, and these sought, as
we have already said, consolation in the thought that thereafter
they would be able to take possession of the corn-fields
of the Indians, the most fertile spots to be found in the
country; and that the deer and wild fowl would no longer be
decimated by the destructive methods employed by the savages
in killing them. Possibly too the devils could be more easily
converted by conquest than they had been by conciliation. To
relieve the immediate wants, two ships were sent out on a
trading and fishing voyage; and luckily, at this critical moment
there arrived a barge loaded with poultry and potatoes. The
planting of corn as well as tobacco had been interrupted by
the massacre; and this fact was expected to lead to a slender
harvest in the autumn. Many men too were drawn away
from the fields by the expeditions which were now despatched
through the woods against the Indian towns on the Powhatan,
Pamunkey, and Chickahominy.

These expeditions were led by George Sandys, Sir George
Yeardley, Captain William Powell, and Captain John West.
Owing to the fleetness of the savages, and the fastnesses
offered by the swamps and brakes, few of them were overtaken,
but their wigwams were fired and their corn-rows
beaten down with sticks. The Indians retaliated by killing
four settlers in Elizabeth City, and in return, Sir George
Yeardley fell upon the Nansemonds and Warrosquoyacks and
destroyed their villages and carried off their stores of grain.
The attacks were repeated during the four or five years that
succeeded. "Either we must clear them out of the country,"
said Governor Wyatt, "or they must clear us out." These
expeditions were always effective, but their success was
sometimes attended with an almost diabolical ruthlessness.
In 1623, a party of English visited the Pamunkey River and
induced many Indians to gather at a certain point on the bank
in a parley for the release of the white prisoners in their
possession. Having, by tempting offers, accomplished this

purpose, the soldiers let off a fusillade of muskets that brought
down forty of the savages. Captain Matthews, in the course
of a voyage up the Potomac, suspecting treachery, seized
Japasaws and other chiefs and slew a large number of the
frightened people. During the following year, Captain
Spelman and twenty-six others, who had gone among the
members of this tribe, were murdered in retaliation.

John Selden