George Mason I and Bacon's Rebellion
The growing enmity and sporadic conflict of the Anglo-Powhatan Wars merely paved the way for the conflicts to come. When George Mason I arrived in Virginia in 1651-1652, he was involved in conflicts that contributed to the consistent removal of Indians from their land as well as the overall decimation of their population.
When the Maryland colony was founded in 1632, tribes like the Piscataway allied with the colonists for protection from their Indian enemies: the Iroquois and Powhatan tribes, as well as the Susquehannocks.[1] Later, the Susquehannocks would seek their protection as well. In 1666 the Articles of Peace and Amity Treaty was signed between the Piscataway and the English colonists of Maryland, which was meant to protect them from English encroachment, but instead made the Piscataway and 11 other tribes subordinate to the English in Maryland. One of the most degrading requirements of the treaty was made because the Maryland settlers could not "easily distinguish" the Iroquois from the Piscataway.[2] The Piscataway were forced to use a "greeting system" with the colonists, where not only were they barred from wearing paint, but had to call aloud before they reached 300 paces and throw down their arms, or be considered an enemy who would be a "legal target for the Englishman's bullet".[3]
After his arrival in Virginia in 1651-52, George Mason I became involved in conflict with Indians. In 1662, after some violent encounters between English settlers and the Potomac, or Patawomeck Indians, a tribe of the Powhatan chiefdom, Captain Brent brought accusations of murder and treason against its chief.[4] Captain Brent and three others, Captain George Mason, Colonel Gerard Fowke, and John Lord were found guilty of offenses against the chief and were ordered to pay reparations with wampum (a shell-like bead used for decoration or money).[5] However, taking advantage of the headright system, Mason, Fowke, and other settlers continued their expansion into the Northern Neck, eventually engulfing the Potomac Indians.[6] The English also continued to have violent encounters with Indian tribes, such as the Doeg and the Potomac.
George Mason soon became involved in one of these violent encounters, an event that led to Bacon's Rebellion. In 1675, Doeg Indians stole hogs from Thomas Mathew after he failed to pay for goods he bought from them.[7] Mathew ended up killing some Indians in pursuit of the hogs, to which the Doeg responded by killing one of Mathew's servants. The Doeg Indians escaped into Maryland where they were harbored by Susquehannocks in a Piscataway encampment.[8] Colonel Mason and Captain Brent crossed the Potomac into Maryland to pursue the Doeg. The English captured the Doeg chief's 8-year-old son and was taken to Mason's home. The boy who "lay ten dayes in bed, as one dead," was converted by baptism without his consent and eventually sent home.[9] During this pursuit, Mason and Brent also killed 24 Indians before they realized they had killed some "Susquehannock friends."[10] Virginia and Maryland colonists soon laid siege on a fort the Susquehannocks had built in Maryland, and when 5 Indian leaders came out to negotiate, they were killed. Responding to the killings by Mason and Brent, as well as their leaders, the Susquehannocks escaped the fort and began killing colonists in Virginia and Maryland.
In the wake of the attacks by the Susquehannocks, "frequent complaints of bloodshed were sent to S'r Wm. Berkeley... often answered with promises of assistance."[11] Nathaniel Bacon accused Berkeley for "haveing protected favoured and Imboldened the Indians"[12], and demanded a commission from Berkeley to destroy them. When Berkeley refused, Bacon took it upon himself to get satisfaction for their "many Invasions Murthers and Robberies Committed upon us."[13] In a conversation with Thomas Mathew regarding the actions of Bacon, George Mason said, “If the govern’r would give his own commission he would be content to serve under generall Bacon.,”[14] and therefore Mason played no further part in the rebellion.
At the committee for Indian affairs in the Assembly, the Queen of Pamunkey, Cockacoeske, was asked to assist the colonists' with guides through the wilderness to pursue their Indian enemies.[15] But a short time later, Bacon's campaign to "ruin and extirpate all Indians in general" was brought against the Pamunkey, of whom he attacked and massacred about 50.[16] Racial hatred played a huge part in not only uniting the rebels in Bacon's Rebellion, but in justifying their use of violence in dealing with the Indians.[17] Edmund Morgan even states that the rebellion made Virginians connect their most powerful racial hostilities, publicly and officially, with slavery.[18] Though Berkeley had denied Bacon a commission, he did declare war in written law at the Virginia Assembly of 1676 against their Indian enemies. This law declared many things, one of which was that "all Indians taken in warr be held and accounted slaves dureing life".[19] Indians essentially became prisoners of war as Indian slavery was legalized with this law.
Bacon's reign of terror ended in October 1676 when he died, and Cockacoeske signed the 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation that ended hostilities, including Indian slavery, between the Virginians and area Indian groups.[20] The Pamunkey's acted quickly after Bacon's Rebellion to get their lands restored, which was done by the Assembly in 1677.[21] However they, as well as other Indian tribes, would struggle to maintain the lands promised to them, as English settlers, like George Mason, continued to move onto the territories of tributary Indians. This often led the Pamunkey and other tribes to the brink of starvation, as the shrinking of their territory also shrank their hunting lands.[22]
[1] Anna Coxe Toogood, Piscataway Park, Maryland : General Historic Background Study (Washington: U.S. Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, Division of History, 1969). 26
[2] Ibid 50
[3] Ibid 50-51
[4] Pamela C Copeland, The Five George Masons (University Of Virginia Press, 2016). 13
[5] Ibid 14
[6] Ibid 13
[7] Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York ; London: W.W. Norton, 2003). 251
[8] Toogood, Piscataway Park, Maryland. 57
[9] Thomas Mathew, The Beginning, Progress and Conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, in the Years 1675 and 1676. (Washington, 1835). 9
[10] Toogood, Piscataway Park, Maryland. 57
[11] Mathew, The Beginning, Progress and Conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. 10
[12] Nathaniel Bacon, “Proclamations of Nathaniel Bacon,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 1, no. 1 (1893): 55–63, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4241733?seq=5. 59
[13] Nathaniel Bacon, “Proclamations of Nathaniel Bacon”. 59
[14] Mathew, The Beginning, Progress and Conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. 18
[15]Mathew, The Beginning, Progress and Conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia. 14
[16] Ethan A. Schmidt, “Cockacoeske, Weroansqua of the Pamunkeys, and Indian Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” American Indian Quarterly 36, no. 3 (2012): 288, https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.36.3.0288. 288
[17] Ethan A Schmidt, The Divided Dominion: Social Conflict and Indian Hatred in Early Virginia (University Press Of Colorado, 2015). 171
[18] Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom. 328
[19] 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 2: 346
[20] Schmidt, "Cockacoeske, Weroansqua of the Pamunkeys, and Indian Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Virginia." 289
[21] Helen C Rountree, Pocahontas’s People : The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996). 112
[22] Schmidt, “Cockacoeske, Weroansqua of the Pamunkeys, and Indian Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Virginia”. 305