 | CHAPTER XXV History of Virginia |  |
CHAPTER XXV
THE REBELLION OF 1676
It was a very natural impulse that moved the colonist to
look upon an Indian incursion with extraordinary horror, for,
in all recorded history, there has, perhaps, never been a foe
who carried on hostilities in a spirit of greater ferocity than
the American aboriginal savage. The atrocities committed by
him were committed in a manner so original and so peculiar
as to impart, if possible, a more aggravated cruelty to them.
It was not merely that he slew his enemy, however innocent or
helpless, in the spirit of an inhuman ogre, but the prolonged
tortures, suggested by a diabolical ingenuity, which he loved
to inflict, and the glee with which he gloated over his victim's
agony—all gave to a war with his race the blackest aspect
assumable by war. It was a war in which no mercy was asked
or granted; a war softened by no touch of amenity even at
long intervals; a war in which women and children ran the
same risk of destruction as the fighting man, and in a manner
equally revolting and pitiless. The feeling of horror was
made more intense by the noiselessness with which the Indians
moved, the ease with which they hid their tracks, the suddenness
with which they appeared at unexpected points.
The wildness of the individual's physical aspect also added
to this horror—his naked and painted skin; his sinewy frame
as lithe and active as that of a panther or wild cat; his hawklike
eye; his scream of triumph, which curdled the blood far more
than the cry of some fierce wild animal at midnight. The very
image of the terrible creature stamped itself upon the imagination
like some figure conjured up from the region of devils, the
very consummation of all that the world had to offer of cruelty
and unquenchable.
The rebellion of 1676 started on the frontiers.[1]
It had
its immediate origin in an act of Indian aggression on the
borders of the Colony, and thence spread to every part of
it, with the exception of the Eastern Shore. Down to the
month of July in 1675, the peace between the two races had
been preserved without serious friction. If there had been
any depredation, it had been committed by the whites, but in
such a small way as to cause no permanent resentment. In
1675, the Susquehannocks had been driven into Maryland by
the Senecas, and in the summer of this year, accompanied by
the Doegs, they crossed the Potomac and drove off numerous
hogs belonging to one of the planters. It was claimed by
these Indians that this was done in retaliation for some
hostile act on his part. They were pursued, overtaken, and
some of them killed, while the hogs were recaptured and
returned to their owner.
When the tribes to which these Indians belonged heard
of this attack, they determined to revenge themselves on Matthews,
the man who had been robbed by the original marauders.
A band of warriors stealthily passed over the Potomac,
tomahawked two of Matthews's servants, and then vanished
in the darkness of the woods. Coming back again, with the
same furtiveness, they scalped Matthews's son, and again
fled into the forest fastnesses; but the hue and cry was at
once raised, and Colonel George Mason and Major George
Brent, with a company of hardy frontiersmen, started upon
their trail. Brent pursued the Doegs and Mason the Susquehannocks.
Brent, running upon a house in the underbrush
which the Doegs used as a place of rendezvous, led his rangers
his warriors, and scattered the rest in flight. Mason, on his
side, attacked the camp of the Susquehannocks and shot down
fourteen of its defenders.
The Governor of Maryland, either convinced that these
particular Indians were innocent of offense, or revolted by
the severity of the retaliation, sent a letter of remonstrance
to Berkeley; but he afterwards co-operated with the Virginian
troops in an excursion against the members of these tribes.
Anticipating an onset in force, the latter had erected a fort
north of the Potomac at a spot flanked by tangled swamps;
and here they soon found themselves surrounded by one thousand
besiegers, who included many of the Indian allies of
the English, eager to satiate their hatred of their swarthy
hereditary foes. Formidable as these seasoned troops were, it
was not until the end of the seventh week that they broke into
the rude fortification, and only after fifty of their own ranks
had perished and most of their horses had been captured by
the savages and devoured behind the grim palisade. Four
emissaries had been sent to the besiegers with white flags
asking for a parley. The only reply was to murder them in
cold blood. Concluding that no peace would be made with
them, the Indians, accompanied by their wives and children,
and carrying off all their portable goods, abandoned their fort
under the cover of night and escaped into the swamps.
This siege was not followed up by an active campaign.
Indeed, the Governor of Maryland very soon entered into a
treaty of amity with the Indians, while the Virginians themselves
appeared simply to hold their arms in rest. But if
the episode was put on one side by them, it was not forgotten
by the Susquehannocks, who, in January, 1675-76, determined
to retaliate. During the coldest part of that month, they
crossed the Potomac at a point situated near the upmost of
the English frontier settlements, and after slaying many
persons of the unfortunate planters' families, stole southward
to the banks of the lower Rappahannock, and there repeated
thirty of the colonists, they dispersed in the vast wilderness
of woods.
When news of this bloody irruption was brought to Jamestown,
Berkeley commissioned Sir Henry Chicheley to go in
pursuit of the marauders with a large force of horsemen and
footmen, but before the necessary preparations for the excursion
could be completed by the eager and indignant soldiers,
the governor canceled the commission and ordered the troops
to be disbanded. His feeble excuse for this vacillating conduct
was that the next General Assembly was the proper body
to decide upon the course that should be taken to punish the
Indians. In the interval of several months to elapse before
the Assembly could convene, the planters along the northern
frontier were to be left without the protection of a single
soldier or ranger. Most of them, justly alarmed for the safety
of their families, deserted their homes as if lying under a
plague and fled through the woods at night to the older settlements.
In the course of twenty-five days following January
24, only eleven plantations in the single parish of Sittingbourne
on the Rappahannock River, which contained over
seventy in all, was still occupied by their owners. The same
story of abandonment was to be told of the whole of the contiguous
region; and yet, in spite of this precaution on the part
of the great majority of its residents, three hundred people
at least had been shot or tomahawked to death in those infested
parts before the Assembly came together in the spring. Few
of these valuable lives would have been lost had Chicheley been
permitted to march to the frontiers to overawe the stealthy
savages, who continued to lurk there throughout the winter.
What substitute for this bold policy was proposed by the
General Assembly when it did meet to devise a scheme? This
alone—the erection of a fort at the head of each of the great
rivers. Public opinion condemned this method of thwarting
the Indians, on the ground that the interval between the fortifications
was so great and so heavily wooded that the sly
girdle, and repeating their murders, and then escaping to the
forests back of it. Hampered as the garrisons would be by
the vast forest spaces, they would be further crippled by
the Assembly's command that no attack was to be made
without specific orders from Jamestown.
The forts were built, the garrisons were established, and
the popular prediction was soon proven to be exactly correct.
The people, groaning under the heavy taxation which the
erection of these forts and the support of their garrisons
imposed on them, watched with an ever growing dismay and
exasperation, the murders, burnings, and robberies that followed
in rapid succession. Naturally, this feeling was strongest
among those who were most exposed to danger. These
denounced the taxation for the worthless fortifications as a
mere device of the councillors and other wealthy men to
gather in the profits to be obtained from supplying the materials
for their construction. They petitioned the governor
to issue a commission to some competent person to lead them
against the barbarous enemy; but so far from sympathizing
with this just request, he, by proclamation, ordered that no
such demand should again be made to him. This heartless
manifesto fell upon desperate ears. Word passed from
mouth to mouth that Berkeley and his friends were too deep
in the Indian trade ever to consent to its destruction by war.
It is true that he had announced that this trade would be
suspended, but it was well known that he had privately given
permission to some of his friends to continue their exchanges
with the Indians on the frontier; and it was whispered that
these men had sold to the savages the very guns and shot
which had been sent out from England to defend the outlying
plantations, now so little protected.
A report soon spread that the Indians, fully armed, were
descending in a large body upon the inner group of settlements,
and the people of Charles City, a county situated not
far from Jamestown, urgently petitioned Berkeley to adopt
positively refused to listen to this request; nor did he pay
any attention whatever to the remonstrance which his obstinacy
caused.
Why should he have acted in this manner when he was
fully aware that the savages were murdering the colonists
and their families in all the northern frontier communities?
It was this man who had stoutly fought Opechancanough to a
finish in the War of 1644; and, at a later period, it was this
man also who had boldly confronted the invading Dutchmen.
The suspicion that he derived a personal profit from the
Indian trade, and, therefore, did not wish it to be broken up
by hostilities, was inconsistent with the reputation for pecuniary
disinterestedness which he had previously enjoyed.
There were episodes in the insurrection of 1676 in which
Berkeley's attitude seemed to be that of an opinionated fool,
who resented any form of insubordination to his perverted
will; and it is possible that, at this initial hour, when good
judgment and temperate conduct would have smoothed down
the rising difficulties, some such notion as that the people had
no right to take action first, and, that, being the people, they
were incapable of wise conclusions, got possession of his
mulish mind, and made him determined to have his own way.
He was an old man, and since the Restoration, he had been
accustomed to such submissiveness on the part of the leading
citizens, and he had grown to be so callous to the sentiments
of the common people, that opposition to his will aroused his
vehement anger, and wholly chilled his sense of fairness and
discretion.
If Berkeley was really under the impression at the start
that the alarm and agitation would subside at his official bidding,
he soon found out his error. Perceiving that no aid was
to be expected from him in the existing emergency, the planters
towards the northern frontiers began to organize volunteer
bands that would be ready to march against the Indians just
as soon as a competent leader could be discovered. The
and Secretary Ludwell referred to them contemptuously as
"the scum" of the community. In a strict sense, this was true,
but there must have been many men of position in the outlying
counties who understood and sympathized with the perfectly
natural feeling of the so-called mob, whose only aim was to
defend their families from the merciless savages. They may
have been too discreet to join in such a movement in opposition
to Berkeley's passionate attitude, but they were clearly
aware that their own welfare was deeply involved in the
success of the proposed resistance.
It was not long before this "rabble," this "scum," this
"mob," found a leader who was worthy of the greatest of
all causes,—the cause of a people who are prepared to run any
risk for the preservation of their rights and their lives. This
was Nathaniel Bacon, the younger, a cousin of the President
of the Council of the same name, and a kinsman of the famous
philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon. He held the
diploma of a master of arts of Cambridge, and, as a young
man, had traveled widely in Europe. After a course in law at
Gray's Inn, he had emigrated with his wife to Virginia; had
acquired plantations at Curls Neck and near the falls in the
James; and although not far beyond his majority, had been
appointed to a seat in the council. He was, in 1676, only
twenty-nine years of age, tall but slender in figure and with
hair noticeable for its raven blackness. His general aspect
was distinctly suggestive of the young Napoleon. Thus he is
said to have had an ominous, pensive and melancholy look. His
temper also was imperious. Although not inclined to talk
freely or to make quick replies, he was, as occasion demanded,
capable of discourse at once logical and persuasive. His
enemies described him as a man of "pestilential" opinions in
politics and religion, when, in reality, he was perhaps only
liberal in his views on both subjects. He was certainly opposed
to long assemblies, to oppressive taxation, and to indifference
to the popular wishes; and he was always so ready to uphold
by age and supposed wisdom in others, that he was charged
by those who disliked him with arrogance. This self-sufficiency
and independence of spirit caused him in the retrospect to be
characterized by the English Commissioners as a "dangerous
man;" but this impression of theirs was derived only from
their knowledge of his part in the rebellion.
Bacon had personal reason for hating the Indians, for they
had butchered one of his overseers. "If the Redskins meddle
with me," he exclaimed impetuously, "damn my blood, but
I will harry them, commission or no commission." The
Susquehannocks had set up a camp in the region west of the
falls, and from this place they fell upon the outlying settlements
with tomahawk, scalping-knife, and torch. Thoroughly
aroused by this bloody course, Bacon was easily persuaded to
cross the river and visit the volunteer companies which had
been drawn together to retaliate on the savages. One of their
number, Crews by name, had prepared the troops for his
coming, and when he appeared, they cried out with one voice,
"A Bacon, a Bacon." The enthusiasm and unanimity of the
call proved quickly irresistible. He addressed them in an
eloquent speech, in which he accused Berkeley of negligence,
incapacity, and wickedness; denounced the oppressive taxation;
and declared that he would lead them against the enemy
and assist them in reforming the grinding laws. They in reply
drank "damnation to their souls" should they be unfaithful to
him; and they took the oath to be obedient to all his commands.
From this hour, Bacon was always hailed by his supporters
as the Darling of the People, and he deserved that endearing
title, for while his conduct at times may have been rash and
intemperate, his lofty purpose, and the sacrifice of fortune and
life which he made for it, lift him to the height of a great
patriot and hero. He wrote to a friend that the welfare of the
Virginians at large had been subordinated to sordid gain by
a few men in the Colony, and that he was determined to stand
in the gap, no matter what consequences should follow.
Before leaving the camp of the volunteers, he sent word
to Berkeley that he was planning to lead an expedition against
the Indians,—with the governor's commission if he could
obtain it, but without it, if he could not. In a short time, he
visited the country of New Kent, where he was received with a
tumult of approval. His object in coming appeared to be to
make an attack on the Pamunkey tribe, which had committed
numerous murders and robberies. Berkeley, who thought that
this tribe was still trustworthy enough to continue to form a
bulwark against the Susquehannocks, refused to give him the
commission requested, and ordered him and his soldiers to
return to their homes. Again Bacon replied that he would
fight without a commission if driven to do so; and that, if he
and his followers had to choose between being denounced as
traitors or being murdered by the savages, they would prefer
the former evil. Berkeley, who had despatched Claiborne with
a force in pursuit of the Pamunkeys for the single purpose of
standing in Bacon's way, now issued a proclamation offering
pardon to all Bacon's active partisans, but suspending Bacon
himself from his seat in the council. The only result was to
make Bacon's followers and sympathizers throughout the
Colony more resolute; and Berkeley, brave and obstinate as
he was, was so overawed by the feeling aroused that he
announced his intention of calling a new Assembly and complying
with the demand for general reforms.
In the meanwhile, Bacon had not stopped to await the full
pressure of popular opinion on the governor's mind, but
putting himself at the head of a large force at the falls in the
Powhatan, had set out through the silent woods for the forks
of the Roanoke towards the southwest, in order to attack the
fort which the Susquehannocks had erected there after their
flight from the North. This region belonged to the Occaneechees,
who had never yet broken the peace with the English.
Their principal town was situated on a great island in the
Roanoke at the juncture of its two principal tributaries, the
modern Dan and Staunton.
After enduring almost the pangs of starvation in their long
march through the trackless wilderness, Bacon and his soldiers
reached a point opposite the island, and they quickly ferried
over and occupied a strong position on it. In an interview
with the King of the Occaneechees, Bacon learned that he
suspected the Susquehannocks, in spite of their friendly reception
by him, of an intention to make a sudden attack on his
town, with its several forts, and if successful, convert it into
their own citadel. These strangers had been weakened by the
presence among them of warriors belonging to tribes which
they had conquered, and the King of the Occaneechees, with
Bacon's connivance, took advantage of this fact to throw his
entire force against their stronghold. The attack was triumphant,
and the enemy were either captured or dispersed.
The attitude of the Occaneechees towards the English
now changed,—they refused to supply them with food, and also
posted men along the river bank to bar their withdrawal from
the island. The King, with most of his subjects, retired into
the forts, which had been hastily strengthened to resist an
assault. At this menacing hour, one of Bacon's soldiers was
shot down from the further bank of the river by an Indian
rifle. Not a moment was lost by the English. At the word
from their leader, they fired their guns against the forts, and
in spite of the hot return from the holes in the logs, several
of the soldiers rushed up and applied the torch to the inflammable
material of the King's retreat, which was soon consumed,
along with the lives of many of the defenders. The
Indians in the other forts sallied out, and hiding themselves
behind the trees, endeavored to pick off the exposed soldiers.
A running fight followed, and this did not come to an end until
night had fallen. In vain the warriors had tried to throw a
cordon around the English. In every instance it was frustrated.
Discouraged, the survivors, with the King at their
head, deserted the island under cover of darkness; and the
next morning, finding his way across the river clear, Bacon
and his men set out on the homeward march.
We have relied for the facts of the great rebellion chiefly on the narrative
of the English commissioners, who had no reason to be prejudiced in favor of
Bacon and his followers. They expressly stated that their account was based
upon an impartial hearing of all sides of the controversy, and a careful examination
of all documents relating to the course of civil and military events.
| CHAPTER XXV History of Virginia | |