1675.]

MURDER OF INDIAN ENVOYS.

295

Six of their chiefs were summoned from the fort, that negotiations might first be tried. They denied that their people were guilty of any hostile acts against the whites, and charged them to the Senecas, who had already fled northward. Truman accepted their explanations, and promised them protection, but the Virginians were not satisfied. The next morning, a detachment brought into the camp the mutilated bodies of one Hanson and some members of his family who had been recently murdered. The act was known be- the Indian fore, and was one of those now under consideration. But when this visible evidence of Indian atrocity was laid before the

Killing of

envoys.

whites, their rage was beyond control. Whether with or without the consent

The Killing of the Chiefs.

of the two commanders, five of the chiefs, who had again come out of the fort for a parley, and who, under the rules of war, were entitled to protection, were instantly bound and led out to execution.

The act was too atrocious to be sustained even by the public opinion of that time. Truman was brought to trial by the Legislature of Maryland, and found guilty in that he did "in a barbarous and cruel manner cause five of said Indians to be killed and murdered, contrary to the laws of God and of nations." How he was punished does not appear, for the records are lost. When Colonel Washington returned to Jamestown, and took his seat in the Assembly, Berkeley said, in his opening address, "If they [the Susquehannocks] had killed my grandfather and my grandmother, my father, my mother, 1 For the fullest narrative of all these transactions, see a lecture before the Maryland Historical Society, by S. F. Streeter, published in Hist. Mag., vol. i.

and all my friends, yet, if they had come to treat in peace, they should have gone in peace.'

Indian re

This public rebuke was Washington's only punishment. Their revenge the Indians took into their own hands. Though taliation. the fort on the Piscataway was strong and capable of defence, they had laid in no provisions for a long siege. In the night, while the camp without slept unsuspicious of danger, the Susquehannocks, with their women and children — leaving behind only a few old crept out silently among their enemies, killing ten of them as they went, and escaped to the forest.

men

Arousing other tribes, they spread dismay along the Rappahanock and the James. Through the following winter they spread through Virginia, almost to Jamestown itself. Their object was rather revenge than plunder. "In these frightful times," says a narrative written a few years afterward by one of the planters who related what he saw,1 "the most exposed small families withdrew into our houses of better numbers, which we fortified with pallisadoes and redoubts; neighbours in bodies joined their laborers from each plantation to others alternately, taking their arms into the ffields and setting centinels; no man stirred out of door unarm'd, Indians were (ever and anon) espied, three, 4, 5, or 6 in a party, lurking throughout the whole land; yet (what was remarkable) I rarely heard of any houses burnt. . . . or other injury done besides murders, except the killing a very few cattle & swine." Sixty of the colonists, before the spring came, had fallen victims to this savage warfare along the York, the James, and the Rappahannock.

Inefficiency

In this season of dire distress Berkeley was strangely inefficient or unpardonably indifferent. Even the Susquehannocks, satof Berkeley. isfied with their bloody work, made overtures of peace, to which they received no answer; the colonists appealed to him for protection, but he was moved neither by their sufferings nor their prayers. The time had come when they must depend upon themselves for safety. In securing that, came the opportunity to redress much other wrong.

Nathaniel
Bacon.

Among the owners of plantations on the James was young Nathaniel Bacon, the cousin and heir of a rich and well-known Jamestown citizen of the same name. Although he was not yet thirty, and had joined his relative in Virginia less than three years before, he was already of sufficient mark in the province to have been appointed member of the council, and to have gained an influence among his neighbors that implied unusual qualities in so

1 The Beginning, Progress, and Conclusion of Bacon's Rebellion. By T. M. Republished in Force's Tracts, vol. i.

1676.]

INEFFICIENCY OF BERKELEY.

297

young a man. He lived upon an estate called Curles, on the river, a little distance below Richmond; but he also owned a plantation near the falls of the James, perhaps where the place called "Bacon Quarter Branch" still keeps his name. Here, in the late winter or early spring of 1676, a band of savages stole into the clearing, and killed two persons, a servant, and Bacon's overseer, whom he held in high esteem.2

The young man had been already greatly excited by the distresses of the people about him, and it needed only this appeal to personal interest and feeling to move him to action. His neighbors, one and all, looked to him as their leader; and he and they had "sent oftentimes to the Governor, humbly beseeching a commission to go against those Indians at their own charge." But no commission came. "The misteryes of these delays were wondered at," and the minds of the people, bitter with other grievances, were filled with "surmizes and murmurings." The climax came when Bacon himself, struck at last in his own family, swore that he would avenge his overseer's death, 1 Campbell's History of Virginia.

2 There are several contemporary accounts of Bacon's Rebellion. The so called "Burwell Account," found among the papers of Captain Nathaniel Burwell, of Virginia, and published in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Second Series, vol. i., is incomplete. That by "T. M." in Force's Hist. Tracts, i., is the fullest. See also An Account of our Late Troubles in Virginia, by Mrs. An. Cotton, of Q. Creeks, in Force, i., 9th paper; A List of those Executed for the Late Rebellion in Virginia, etc., ibid., 10th paper; and the documents in the appendix to chap. v. in Burk's History of Virginia, vol. ii.

and that should news of another murder reach him, he would march out against the savages, "commission or no commission."

Such news was but a little while in coming; and he kept his word. A force whose numbers are differently stated at ninety, three hundred, and even six hundred men, gathered about their leader. But even on the eve of their march, they sent once more to Berkeley for authority, warning him that should he not send it by a certain day, Bacon takes they would go without it. It did not come, and at the the field. appointed time the expedition moved. It had gone only a short distance, before it was overtaken by a messenger, bearing in hot haste a proclamation from the Governor, denouncing all as rebels who did not disperse and return to their homes before a given date. This was decisive, and the line must be drawn at once between such as would brave the final threat of the authorities and such as would turn back while it was yet possible. Fifty-seven of his company kept on into the wilderness with Bacon; "those of estates," who feared their confiscation, returned with discontented obedience to save their property.

Bacon and his party had not accomplished that most difficult and dangerous part of Indian warfare, the finding of the enemy, when their supplies began to run low. Coming upon the fortified village of a friendly tribe, they asked the savages for provisions, with offers of pay. If the white men would wait till the next day, they should have what they asked, was his answer. It shows what was the popular opinion of the Governor, that a suspicion at once arose among the Bacon party that these Indians were acting by his direction. It was absolutely necessary that food should be had. Wading "shoulder deep" through the creek that ran before the palisades, they friendly In- pressed their request. A shot, coming from some unseen dians. enemy as night was falling, killed one of the troop, and aroused a suspicion that the Indians were reënforced. An attack was made, the fort taken and burned, and, according to Bacon's own account, one hundred and fifty Indians were put to the sword. It was the annihilation of the tribe of Susquehannocks. That, it was thought, must put an end to all further trouble from the savages, and the colonists dispersed.

Attack upon

Berkeley in pursuit of

Bacon's force.

The supposed collusion of Sir William Berkeley and the Indians had this much color of probability, that the Governor, so soon as he was satisfied of the determined purpose of Bacon and his men, had taken a troop of horse and set out in pur suit. He did not reach them; but his desertion of the capital, at 1 Burk, ii. 164, says six hundred; Burwell, p. 10, says "about seventy or ninety per sons;" T. M., p. 11, says three hundred men.

1676.]

POPULAR UPRISING.

299

turbance.

this critical moment, proved an ill-judged step. No sooner was he well away, than a revolt broke out among the planters to the south. In the absence of the Governor, the Assembly hesitated and temporized, and allowed the rebellion to gain headway. Hurry- Popular dising back, Sir William found the country everywhere in Berkeley's such commotion that he was compelled to make concessions. concessions. Among the first demanded was the abolition of taxes for the useless forts, their uselessness now doubly shown, and the dissolution of that long Assembly which had not

—

been changed for fifteen years. The scanty records tell us little of the details; but both points were yielded, and for the moment a deceptive quiet was restored.

The elections to the new Assembly, for which writs were immediately issued, resulted almost everywhere, as might have been expected, in favor of the popular party. A great ma- tions.

New elec

. jority of the delegates were men pledged to demand redress of the people's grievances. Bacon, whose great popularity was increased by his action in the Indian matter, was among the new members. Notwithstanding his recent defiance of the Governor, he did not hesitate to start for Jamestown on the day appointed. This audacity even a weaker man than Berkeley might have resented. As Bacon sailed down the river from his home at Curles, on his way to the Assembly's session, his sail-boat was brought to by an armed vessel, and he was carried to the capital under arrest. "Mr. Bacon," asked the The arrest of old Governor, as the culprit was brought before him, "have Bacon. you forgot to be a gentleman ?"-"No, may it please your honor."