What is the significance of the 1622 massacre

News of the killings did not reach England until mid-June. The Virginia Company responded by sending more supplies and weapons. King James also contributed weapons. Captain John Smith, safe in London, avowed revenge and threatened to destroy the Indians himself if necessary. The colonists in Jamestown retaliated with treachery of their own and numerous attacks to avenge the losses. All restraints were released and men used the massacre as an excuse to wreak havoc on Indians wherever they found them.

They feigned peaceful relations, let the Indians plant their corn wherever they chose, and then, just before the crop was ready for harvest, they attacked them, killing as many as they could and burning their crops. English armies destroyed entire villages. Captain William Tucker threatened to kill Opechancanough on several occasions but proved unable to fulfill his boast.

Meanwhile within the Virginia Company a debate ensued over enslavement versus extirpation with integration now in full retreat. Since the Indians were better woodsmen and could not be easily caught, putting them to work in the mines and fields of the English would not be a simple task. Events overtook the discussion as swiftly as passion overcame reason.

Virginians had given their answer in the forms of burning Indian villages, destroyed crops, and other measures of retribution. Within a couple of years, they had avenged the deaths many times over.

The English were unprepared and surprised, and their attackers burned houses, killed livestock, scattered possessions, and mutilated the dead and dying before fleeing. Although the official number of Virginia colonists killed was recorded at , some settlements, such as Bermuda Hundred, did not send in a report, so the number of dead was probably higher. Within months of the uprising, Edward Waterhouse, a secretary for the Virginia Company, reported in his official Declaration of the State of the Colony and.

However, Waterhouse overestimated the number slain, for he listed as dead several women who were unaccounted for and were presumed killed but who were, in fact, captives. At least 58 colonists died at the plantation, and the dazed and despairing survivors had every reason to believe that those missing had either been killed in inaccessible areas, hacked or burned beyond recognition, or captured, which they believed would lead to certain death.

The devastated colonists spent their time trying to feed and shelter themselves and brace for future attacks by the Indians.

With her at the Indian stronghold near present-day West Point, Virginia, were Mistress Jeffries, wife of Nathaniel Jeffries who survived the uprising, and Jane Dickenson, wife of Ralph Dickenson, an indentured servant slain in the assault. While their former neighbors feared new attacks, the captive women were placed in almost constant jeopardy by the fierce and frequent English raids on the Powhatans.

Lodged as they were with Opechancanough, the prime target of retaliation, the English women, like their captors, endured hasty retreats, burning villages, and hunger caused by lost corn harvests. In March , he sent a message to Jamestown stating that enough blood had been spilled on both sides, and that because many of his people were starving he desired a truce to allow the Powhatans to plant corn for the coming year.

In exchange for this temporary truce, Opechancanough promised to return the English women. To emphasize his sincerity, he sent Mistress Boyse to Jamestown a week later. Boyse was the only woman sent back at this time, and she remained the sole returned captive for many months. For the present, colony officials felt that killing hostile Indians took precedence over saving English prisoners, and they never intended to honor the truce in good faith.

In May the colonists arranged a spurious peace parley with Opechancanough through friendly Indian intermediaries. On May 22, Captain William Tucker and a force of musketeers met with Opechancanough and other prominent Powhatans on neutral ground along the Potomac River, allegedly to negotiate the release of the other captives.

English settlers, believing they were safe, allowed the Powhatan to come and go openly in the settlements. Then, on March 22, , Opechancanough orchestrated a coordinated attack. In settlements along the James River, Powhatans entered ostensibly as friends.

At a prearranged signal, they pulled out weapons and attacked, slaughtering men, women, and children in the fields and homes of several plantations. Jamestown was warned and took steps to defend itself, but nearly everywhere else the attack was devastating. Plantations were destroyed and burned. The Powhatan killed people, or one-third of the English population. This Massacre of as the settlers called it launched what historians call the Second Anglo-Powhatan War.

This woodcut by Matthaeus Merian depicts the massacre of Jamestown settlers by the Powhatan on March 22, The work is based on a series of engravings by Theodore de Bry. Opitchapam and Opechancanough did not press their advantage and continue the attack, leaving some historians to believe that perhaps their purpose was not to eradicate the English presence. Rather, they may have wanted to make clear that the English lived there at their pleasure.

Other historians argue that Openchancanough tried to debilitate the English to the point where they would abandon the settlements. For the English, however, the attack signaled that the American Indians had to be conquered. Hostilities continued, and the English, isolated and struggling to feed and defend themselves, suffered a second starving time during the winter of In organized campaigns against the Powhatan, the English burned villages, destroyed crops, and killed warriors, women, and children.

The Powhatan responded with raids and attacks against English settlers. In May, Captain William Tucker held peace negotiations and concluded by providing a toast that poisoned and sickened more than two hundred Powhatans. Then the English fired on the Indians and killed several. The next year, the combatants met in a two-day battle that ended with Indian cornfields destroyed and the Powhatans in retreat. By , the two sides had fought to a draw, and they negotiated a peace.

But the balance of power had shifted to the English. More settlers continued to arrive: By the s, there were more than eight thousand. They outnumbered the Powhatan living in the region and continued to expand along the James and York Rivers and up into the middle and northern peninsulas of Virginia. Opechancanough became paramount chief in In , he launched another ferocious attack that killed more than English settlers, but by then, that represented only a small fraction of their number.

The settlers struck back with equal ferocity. In , they captured Opechancanough at his fort on the Pamunkey River. They brought him to Jamestown in chains and treated him like a curiosity on display. English settlers came to gawk at him. Within two weeks he was murdered by one of his guards.

His successor, Necotowance, concluded a peace treaty with English governor William Berkeley. The interactions between the American Indians and English in the first 40 years of Virginia settlement were often turbulent and fraught with violence. Each side struggled to dominate and control the contested lands and their bounty, but in the end, the Powhatan could not counter the constant arrival of new English colonists who spread across the Chesapeake region.

The expanding English colony steadily displaced native people and established a pattern that was repeated over the next two centuries. What was the main reason for this time of peace? Which statement best describes the precedent established by interaction between the English and Powhatan during the first half of the seventeenth century?

In this attack of the English of both sexes and all ages were killed. Simply killing our people did not satisfy their inhuman nature, they dragged the dead bodies all over the country, tearing them limb from limb, and carrying the pieces in triumph around. When the occurrence of this massacre became known in the mother country, the English were ordered to take revenge by destroying with fire and sword everything of the Indians; consequently they.