Before the Mason's: Conflict Between the Powhatan Tribes and the English
By the time the English arrived in Virginia, there were many different Indian tribes established. And before George Mason I arrived in Virginia in 1651-52, there had been over 40 years of interaction between the English and the Indians.
During one of his many expeditions out of Jamestown in 1608, Captain John Smith recorded and described the Indian populations of the Potomac River. He made a note of who the hostile Indians he encountered were, and of tribes that welcomed the expedition, such as the Indians at Moyaone, the Piscataway, who had 100 men, and the Indians at Tauxenent, the Doeg, who had 40 men.[1]
The Powhatan chiefdom was already a well-established conglomerate of people. Chief Powhatan had inherited six tribes- Powhatan, Arrohateck, Appamattuck, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and Chiskiack, but by 1607 ruled over about 6,000 square miles of land that contained about 14,000 Algonquian speakers.[2] Their most frequent enemies were Maryland tribes, particularly the Iroquoian and Siouan tribes, as well as the Piscataway. Every couple of decades, the Powhatan Indians would move to a different location, leaving the land behind for other tribes to cultivate.[3] The English would eventually take advantage of the "abandonment" to make a permanent claim of the land with the English system of land tenure, denying the Powhatan right to the land.[4]
The first few years after the English arrival were particularly difficult, as English-Indian relations were often fraught with violence. The First Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1609 with a breakdown in trade relations between the Powhatan Indians and English colonists and after years of back and forth violence ended in 1614 with one last English offensive, as well as the marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas, who converted to Christianity.[5] After Powhatan died in 1618, his brothers Opitchapam and Opechancanough became the new rulers of the Powhatan chiefdom. In 1622, Opechancanough led an attack that killed 347 Jamestown colonists. The efforts by the English to convert Indians to Christianity and the establishment of the head-right system to expand the tobacco economy that led to colonial expansion on Indian land were among the main reasons why the Second Anglo-Powhatan War began.[6]
In 1632 a peace treaty was signed that was said to have ended the war.[7] However, despite this treaty, hostilities between the Indians and the English and the colonial expansion of land continued. After the 1622 massacre, there was a shift in English-Indian relations, and it seems violence became the best way for the English to deal with Indians; so much so that it was written into law at the Virginia Assembly of 1624.[8] This law was the beginning of many laws passed regarding Indians and was a recognizable beginning of an "us vs. them" mentality, the "them" referring to the inferior Indians. According to Robert Beverly, the 1622 massacre, "gave the English a fair pretence of endeavoring the total expiration of the Indians, but more especially of Oppechancanough and his nation."[9] And as Edmund Morgan says, “After the massacre of 1622 the government's policy of extermination and the continuing guerrilla warfare between natives and settlers combined to encourage racial hatred in both.”[10]
The Third Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1644, when Opechancanough launched another attack, killing between 400 and 500 colonists.[11] Governor William Berkeley and the colonists retaliated by attacking various Powhatan Indian tribes, and Opechancanough was captured and killed. This conflict ended in 1646 with a peace treaty that made the Powhatan Indians tributary to the English. This treaty degraded the Indians, as it led to the continued "dispossession of Native land and rights"[12], and they were forced to now "inhabit and hunt on the northside of Yorke river".[13] And if the Indians were seen on English land, it was lawful for "any person to kill any such Indian"[14]. But after this treaty, the English would continue to encroach on Indian land in Virginia as well as Maryland, and violence would ensue.
[1] Anna Coxe Toogood, Piscataway Park, Maryland : General Historic Background Study (Washington: U.S. Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, Division of History, 1969). 1, 2
[2] Helen C Rountree, Pocahontas’s People : The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). 3, 10
[3] Ibid 6
[4] Ibid 6
[5] Ethan A Schmidt, The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia (University Press Of Colorado, 2015). 47, 58
[6] Ibid 69-72
[7] Rountree, Pocahontas's People. 81
[8] William Walter Hening, “The Statutes at Large; : Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619. : Published pursuant to an Act of the General Assembly of Virginia, Passed on the Fifth Day of February One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight. : Volume I[-XIII]. /” (1823), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009714930/Home. vol. 1: 128
[9] Robert Beverly and Charles Campbell, The History of Virginia, in Four Parts (1705; repr., Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926: Richmond, Va. : J.W. Randolph, 1855). 42
[10] Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York ; London: W.W. Norton, 2003). 130
[11] Schmidt, The Divided Dominion. 126
[12] Kristalyn Marie Shefveland, Anglo-Native Virginia : Trade, Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion, 1646-1722 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2018). 8
[13] Hening, The Statutes at Large, 1: 324
[14] Hening, The Statutes at Large, 1: 324