Existing comment:
Why the Indians Attacked
In 1610, with seventy men, George Percy massacred the Paspahegh and Chickahominy. At one settlement, he "put some fifteen or sixteen to the sword" and ordered his soldiers "to burne their houses and to cut down their corne." Percent's men also "put [a captured] Queen to the sworde" and "put her children to death by throwing them overboard and shooting out their braines in the water."
The Colonial Response
Following the 1622 attack, the colonists banned Indians from entering their settlements, retreated to fewer outposts, attacked in retaliation, acquired new lands, and built a wall of palisades around their territory. After three Anglo-Powhatan Wars (1610-1614, 1622-1626, and 1644-1646) and followed by attacks during Bacon's Rebellion, the Treaty of 1677 set up reservations for each tribe, which almost completely removed them from the landscape.
"We, who hitherto have had possession of no more ground that their waste and our purchase, may now by right of war invade the country, and those who sought to destroy us whereby we shall enjoy their cultivated places."
-- A Virginia settler, in the aftermath of the 1622 attack |