Jamestown, Virgina

State of Affairs Between Natives and Europeans

On May 14, 1607, the Virginia Company explorers landed on Jamestown Island, to establish the Virginia English colony on the banks of the James River. Almost immediately after landing, the colonists were under attack from what amounted to the on-again off-again enemy, the Algonquian natives. Although the suffering did not totally end at Jamestown for decades, some years of peace and prosperity followed the wedding of Pocahantas, the favored daughter of the Algonquian chief Powhatan, to tobacco entrepreneur John Rolfe. The Algonquians eventually became disenchanted and, in 1622, attacked plantations killing over 300 of the settlers.

Despite inspired leadership of John Smith, chaplain Robert Hunt and others, starvation, hostile relations with the Indians, and lack of profitable exports all threatened the survival of the Colony in the early years as the settlers and the Virginia Company of London each struggled. However, colonist John Rolfe introduced a strain of tobacco which was successfully exported in 1612, and the financial outlook for the colony became more favorable. Two years later, Rolfe married the young Indian woman Pocahontas, daughter of Wahunsunacock, Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, and a period of relative peace with the Natives followed. Relations with the Indians continued to be generally friendly for the next year, and Pocahontas was a frequent visitor to Jamestown. She delivered messages from her father and accompanied Indians bringing food and furs to trade for hatchets and trinkets.

She is said to have intervened to save the lives of individual colonists. In 1616 John Smith wrote that Pocahontas was "the instrument to pursurve this colonie from death, famine, and utter confusion." And Pocahontas not only served as a representative of the Virginia Indians, but also as a vital link between the native Americans and the Englishmen.

Sources

Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Woodward, Grace Steele, Pocahontas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.

After the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1613), the marriage of Chief Powhatan's youngest daughterPocahontas and colonist John rolfe in 1614 began a period of more peaceful relations between the English colonists and the Indians of the Powhatan Confederacy. In 1618, after the death of Wahunsonacock, better known as the original Chief Powhatan, his half-brother Opechancanough became leader of the Powhatans. Opechancanough did not feel that peaceful relations with the colonists could be maintained. Having recovered from the defeat of his earlier command of the Pamunkey warriors at the end of the First Anglo-Powhatan War, he planned the destruction of the English settlers. In the spring of 1622, after the murder of his adviser, Nemattanew, by an Englishman, Opechancanough launched a campaign of surprise attacks upon at least thirty-one separate English settlements and plantations mostly along the James River.

The Indian massacre of 1622 (also known as the Jamestown Massacre) occurred in the Virginia Colony on Good Friday, March 22, 1622. About 347 people, or almost one-third of the English population of Jamestown, were killed by a coordinated series of surprise attacks of the Powhatan Confederacy under Chief Opechancanough. Jamestown was the site of the first successful English settlement in North America in 1607, and was the capital of the Colony of Virginia. Although Jamestown itself was spared due to a timely last-minute warning, many smaller settlements had been established along the James River both upstream and downstream from it and on both sides. The attackers killed men, women, and children, and burned homes and crops.

Indian massacre of 1622, depicted as a woodcut by Theodore de Bry

On the day prior to the attack, the Indians came bringing gifts of meats and fruits and shared them with the settlers, thereby disguising their intentions. The following morning they circulated freely and socialized with the settlers before suddenly seizing their own work tools to attack them.

The colonists in Jamestown were in an uproar, stunned by the massacre. The settlers immediately withdrew to the fort and to other easily defensible locations. In addition to the loss of life, the colonists also lost valuable crops and supplies necessary to survive the winter. Ironically, during the winter of 1622-23 the colonists were forced to trade with the Indians for corn and supplies and even with these provisions many went hungry.

Sources

Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia (1997).

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom (1975).

Rountree, Helen. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia (1989).

Vaughan, Alden. American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia (1975).

Both Americans and English thus came to the founding of Jamestown with some knowledge and some assumptions about the other. The English had been taught to think of the Americans as accomplished people living in highly developed societies. It was the Indians' accomplishments that made colonization feasible in English eyes. They knew they would rely on native crops for their food and they hoped for native products to be obtained in trade to pay their costs.

Powhatan was prepared to allow the English to settle along the James River because Indians throughout the region valued the manufactured trade goods they brought from across the Atlantic. Metal tools that could hold an edge were especially highly prized; they enhanced farming, hunting, and warfare without dramatically changing traditional modes. Copper kettles also made life easier.

Despite their inexperience and weakness, the English expected to dominate the Indians. From the beginning the Virginia Company wrote that the relationship would inevitably become hostile: "for you Cannot Carry Your Selves so towards them but they will Grow Discontented with Your habitation."

Economic and social power became concentrated in late seventeenth-century Virginia, leaving laborers and servants with restricted economic independence. Governor William Berkeley feared rebellion: “six parts of Seven at least are Poore, Indebted, Discontented and Armed.” Planter Nathaniel Bacon focused inland colonists’ anger at local Indians, who they felt were holding back settlement, and at a distant government unwilling to aid them. In the summer and fall of 1676, Bacon and his supporters rose up and plundered the elite’s estates and slaughtered nearby Indians. Bacon’s Declaration challenged the economic and political privileges of the governor’s circle of favorites, while announcing the principle of the consent of the people.

Most Indian tribes of the region were part of the Powhatan empire, with Chief Powhatan as its head. The colonists' relations with the local tribes were mixed from the beginning. The two sides conducted business with each other, the English trading their metal tools and other goods for the Native Americans' food supplies. At times the Indians showed generosity in providing gifts of food to the colony. On other occasions, encounters between the colonists and the tribes turned violent, and the Native Americans occasionally killed colonists who strayed alone outside the fort.

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