LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

would exclude the Indians from the country of their forefathers. Perceiving his opportunity in the foolish security of the English and in their exposed situation, he determined to annihilate them in one general butchery.

      His plans were laid with great cunning. Although thousands of natives knew of the design, no warning reached the white men until the very eve of the massacre. While Opechancanough was preparing this tremendous blow, he protested in the strongest terms his perpetual good will and love, declaring that the sky would fall before he would bring an end to the peace.175 In order to lull the suspicions of the planters, "even but two daies before the massacre", he guided some of them "with much kindnesse through the woods, and one Browne that lived among them to learne the language", he sent home to his master. The evening before the attack the Indians came as usual to the plantations with deer, turkeys, fish, fruits and other provisions to sell.176

      That night, however, a warning was received, which although too late to save the most remote settlements, preserved many hundreds from the tomahawk. Chanco, an Indian boy who had been adopted by an Englishman named Race, revealed the entire plot to his master. The man secured his house, and rowed away before dawn in desperate haste to Jamestown, to give warning to the Governor. "Whereby they were prevented, and at such other plantations as possibly intelligence could be given."177

      The assault of the savages was swift and deadly. In all parts of the colony they fell upon the settlers, and those that had received no warning were, in most cases, butchered before they could suspect that harm was intended. Sometimes the Indians sat down to breakfast with their victims, "whom immediately with their owne tooles they slew most barbarously, not sparing either age or sex, man woman or childe".178 Many were slain while working in the fields; others were trapped in their houses and butchered before they could seize their weapons. The savages, "not being content with their lives, … fell againe upon the dead bodies, making as well as they could a fresh murder, defacing, dragging, and mangling their dead carkases into many peeces".179

      That the plot was so successful was due to the completeness of the surprise, for where the English made the least resistance the savages were usually beaten off. A planter named Causie, when attacked and wounded and surrounded by the Indians, "with an axe did cleave one of their heads, whereby the rest fled and he escaped; for they hurt not any that did either fight or stand upon their guard. In one place where they had warning of it, (they) defended the house against sixty or more that assaulted it."180

      At the plantation of a Mr. Harrison, where there were gathered seven men and eighteen or nineteen women and children, the savages set fire to a tobacco house and then came in to tell the men to quench it. Six of the English, not suspecting treachery, rushed out, and were shot full of arrows. Mr. Thomas Hamor, the seventh man, "having finished a letter he was writing, followed after to see what was the matter, but quickly they shot an arrow in his back, which caused him to returne and barricade up the dores, whereupon the Salvages set fire to the house. But a boy, seizing a gun which he found loaded, discharged it at random. At the bare report the enemy fled and Mr. Hamor with the women and children escaped."181 In a nearby house, a party of English under Mr. Hamor's brother, were caught by the Indians without arms, but they defended themselves successfully with spades, axes and brickbats.182

      One of the first to fall was Reverend George Thorpe, a member of the Virginia Council, and a man of prominence in England.183 Leaving a life of honor and ease, he had come to Virginia to work for the conversion of the Indians. He had apparently won the favor of Opechancanough, with whom he often discoursed upon the Christian religion. At the moment of his murder, his servant, perceiving the deadly intent of the savages, gave him warning, but his gentle nature would not permit him to believe harm of those whom he had always befriended, and he was cut down without resistance.184

      The barbarous king failed in his design to destroy the English race in Virginia, but the massacre was a deadly blow to the colony. No less than three hundred and fifty-seven persons were slaughtered, including six Councillors. The news of the disaster brought dismay to the London Company. For a while they attempted to keep the matter a secret, but in a few weeks it was known all over England. Although the massacre could not have been foreseen or prevented, it served as a pretext for numerous attacks upon Sandys and the party which supported him. It discouraged many shareholders and made it harder to secure settlers for the colony. Even worse was the effect in Virginia. The system of farming in unprotected plantations, which had prevailed for some years, had now to be abandoned and many settlements that were exposed to the Indians were deserted. "We have not," wrote the Assembly, "the safe range of the Country for the increase of Cattle, Swyne, etc; nor for the game and fowle which the country affords in great plentye; besides our duties to watch and warde to secure ourselves and labor are as hard and chargeable as if the enemy were at all times present."185

      The massacre was followed by a venomous war with the Indians, which lasted many years. The English, feeling that their families and their homes would never be safe so long as the savages shared the country with them, deliberately planned the extermination of all hostile tribes in Virginia. Their conversion was given no further consideration. "The terms betwixt us and them," they declared, "are irreconcilable."186 Governor Wyatt wrote, "All trade with them must be forbidden, and without doubt either we must cleere them or they us out of the Country."187

      But it soon became apparent that neither people would be able to win an immediate or decisive victory. The Indians could not hope to destroy the English, now that their deeply laid plot had failed. In open battle their light arrows made no impression upon the coats of plate and of mail in which the white men were incased, while their own bodies were without protection against the superior weapons of their foes. On the other hand, it was very difficult for the colonists to strike the savages, because of the "advantages of the wood and the nimbleness of their heels".188 Even though they "chased them to and fro", following them to their villages and burning their huts, they found it very difficult to do them serious harm.

      Finally the English hit upon the plan of bringing distress upon the savages by destroying their corn. Although the Virginia tribes subsisted partly upon game, their chief support was from their fields of maize, and the entire failure of their crop would have reduced hundreds of them to the verge of starvation.189 Each year the white men, in small companies, in various parts of the country, brought ruin to the corn fields. Sometimes the savages, in despair at the prospect of famine, made valiant efforts to defend their fields, but were invariably beaten off until the work of destruction was done.

      The natives retaliated with many sudden raids upon the more exposed parts of the colony, where they burned, pillaged and murdered. The planter at work in his fields might expect to find them lurking in the high grass, while their ambushes in the woods made communication from plantation to plantation very dangerous. "The harmes that they do us," wrote the Assembly, "is by ambushes and sudden incursions, where they see their advantages."190 In 1625 Captain John Harvey declared that the two races were "ingaged in a mortall warre and fleshed in each others bloud, of which the Causes have been the late massacre on the Salvages parte. … I conceive that by the dispersion of the Plantations the Salvages hath the advantage in this warre, and that by their suddaine assaults they do us more harme than we do them by our set voyages".191

      When the English had recovered from the first shock of the massacre, they planned four expeditions against the tribes living on the river above Jamestown. Mr. George Sandys attacked the Tappahatomaks, Sir George Yeardley the Wyanokes, Captain William Powell the Chickahominies and the Appomatocks, and Captain John West the Tanx-Powhatans. The savages, without attempting to make a stand, deserted their villages and their crops and fled at the approach of the English. Few were killed, for they were "so light and swift" that the white men, laden with their heavy armor, could not overtake them.192 In the fall Sir George Yeardley led three hundred men down the river against the Nansemonds and against Opechancanough. The natives "set fire to their own houses, and spoiled what they could, and then fled with what they could carry; so that the English did make no slaughter amongst them for revenge. Their Corne fields being newly gathered, they surprised all they found, burnt the houses (that) remained unburnt, and so departed."193

      It is remarkable that the colonists could continue this war while the sickness was raging among them. At the very time that Yeardley was fighting Opechancanough, hundreds of his comrades were dying "like cats and dogs". "With

Скачать книгу