WEBVTT NOTE 10. Relations with the Indians 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Volume 1, Chapter 10, Relations with the Indians 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:14.000 The spark that set off the Great Rebellion of 1676 came from the tinderbox of Indian relations. 3 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:23.000 To explain them, we must first go back to chart the history of Indian-White relations in 17th century Virginia. 4 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:30.240 First, we may ask, how did the colonists go about the task urged upon them by King James 5 00:00:30.240 --> 00:00:37.120 of bringing the infidels and savages living in those parts, the Native American Indians, 6 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.000 to human civility? 7 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:45.600 Generally, we must say that the Native American Indians regarded the newcomers with a mixture 8 00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:52.040 of brotherly kindness and eagerness to make contact with the world outside. 9 00:00:52.040 --> 00:00:57.640 This however was countered by hostility based on the well-founded fear that the colonists 10 00:00:57.640 --> 00:01:00.840 were out to seize their lands. 11 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:07.840 The whites generally regarded the Indians as possessors of land ripe for expropriation. 12 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:13.480 This attitude of the whites was partially justified as Indian land was typically owned 13 00:01:13.480 --> 00:01:20.180 not by the individual but by the collective tribal unit and furthermore was inalienable 14 00:01:20.180 --> 00:01:25.740 Tribal under tribal law. This was particularly true of the land itself as contrasted to its 15 00:01:25.740 --> 00:01:32.340 annual use. Furthermore, tribal law often decreed land ownership over large tracts of 16 00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:39.460 even unused acreage. Still, however, this land inequity provided no excuse for the physical 17 00:01:39.460 --> 00:01:46.220 dispersion of individual Indians from their homes and from land actually used, let alone 18 00:01:46.220 --> 00:01:51.900 on the plundering of their crops and the slaughtering of the Indian people. Relations with the Indians 19 00:01:51.900 --> 00:01:57.720 were therefore a combination of hostility and friendship underlain by the relentless 20 00:01:57.720 --> 00:02:04.020 white urge to push westward. Thus, from the very beginning of the Virginia colony, the 21 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:09.740 Indians first attacked the whites only to save the starving infant colony a few months 22 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:16.740 by coming to its rescue with abundant gifts of bread, meat, fish and corn. 23 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:21.740 A few years of conflict was followed by the Peace of 1614, 24 00:02:21.740 --> 00:02:30.740 which was effectively wrecked two years later by Governor Yeardley's seizure of corn from the Chickahominy Indians, 25 00:02:30.740 --> 00:02:36.740 an ironic contrast to the Indians supplying needed corn to the infant colony. 26 00:02:36.740 --> 00:02:41.540 From that point on, relations with the Indians began to deteriorate. 27 00:02:41.540 --> 00:02:53.940 Captain Argel, upon assuming his duties as governor, decided that the colonists were too friendly with the Indians and took harsh steps to rectify this error. 28 00:02:53.940 --> 00:03:02.540 He outlawed all private trading with the Indians and prohibited the hiring of Indian hunters for the shooting of game. 29 00:03:02.540 --> 00:03:12.540 Worse still, Argyle decreed the death penalty both for anyone teaching an Indian the use of a gun and for the Indian eager to learn. 30 00:03:12.540 --> 00:03:17.540 Thus, Argyle moved to cripple the economy of the whites and Indians alike. 31 00:03:17.540 --> 00:03:23.540 But perhaps trade and education were not considered part of the civilizing process. 32 00:03:23.540 --> 00:03:30.860 Guns, of course, as in the case of most weapons, can be used for offense or defense, for highly 33 00:03:30.860 --> 00:03:36.260 productive economic, hunting, as well as for martial purposes. 34 00:03:36.260 --> 00:03:42.840 When the Virginia Assembly first convened in 1619, a part of its liberal reforms forbade 35 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:47.740 any injury to the Indians that might disturb the peace. 36 00:03:47.740 --> 00:03:55.140 The brief period of peaceful coexistence, however, was shattered in 1622 when Opec and Cano, 37 00:03:55.140 --> 00:04:02.260 head of the Powhatan Confederacy, led an all-out surprise attack against the colonists. 38 00:04:02.260 --> 00:04:11.020 The colony survived, but the massacre of over 350 colonists, almost one-fourth of the colony, 39 00:04:11.020 --> 00:04:14.260 embittered the whites from that point on. 40 00:04:14.260 --> 00:04:19.460 Even though the colonists were very quick to wreak vengeance on the Indians, destroying 41 00:04:19.460 --> 00:04:25.480 as many crops, homes, and Indians as they could, the massacre was also seized as one 42 00:04:25.480 --> 00:04:30.740 of the crown's excuses for dispossessing the Virginia Company. 43 00:04:30.740 --> 00:04:37.260 During the crisis, every settled community was placed under absolute martial rule, and 44 00:04:37.260 --> 00:04:44.860 Any communication with an Indian was outlawed except by consent of the commander. 45 00:04:44.860 --> 00:04:50.800 Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the affair for its long-run consequence in poisoning 46 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:58.160 Indian-white relations in Virginia was the white aggression, later in 1622, against the 47 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:01.180 friendly Potomac Indians. 48 00:05:01.180 --> 00:05:07.400 The powerful Potomac tribe had refused to join the Powhatan Confederacy plot to massacre 49 00:05:07.400 --> 00:05:14.560 the whites and indeed had helped to save the colony from destruction by warning the colonists 50 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:18.060 of Opecuncano's plot. 51 00:05:18.060 --> 00:05:23.620 While on an expedition to the Potomacs to obtain corn, Captain Isaac Madison allowed 52 00:05:23.620 --> 00:05:31.020 himself to believe, without proof, the false tale of an exiled Potomac chief and of a renegade 53 00:05:31.020 --> 00:05:38.620 Polish interpreter Robert Poole that the Potomaks were planning to massacre the expedition. 54 00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:44.060 Madison then kidnapped the Potomac king and suddenly attacked and massacred any Potomac 55 00:05:44.060 --> 00:05:47.060 Indian he could lay his hands on. 56 00:05:47.060 --> 00:05:53.460 From then on, savage treachery marked the actions of both sides and relations were permanently 57 00:05:53.460 --> 00:05:54.960 embittered. 58 00:05:54.960 --> 00:06:01.360 Most vicious was the colonist's invitation to the Indians in 1623 for a peace parlay 59 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:09.840 at which the whites poisoned 200 Indian leaders and shot 50 others, taking home the scalps 60 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:12.760 of many Indians with them. 61 00:06:12.760 --> 00:06:18.380 Doubtless worst of all, the colonist adopted the barbaric policy of deliberately seeking 62 00:06:18.380 --> 00:06:23.240 out and destroying all Indian plantings of corn. 63 00:06:23.240 --> 00:06:29.400 Civil War by any means was now the watchword, and no peace was even contemplated. 64 00:06:29.400 --> 00:06:34.280 When the Virginia Company leaders expressed shock at this despicable method of making 65 00:06:34.280 --> 00:06:40.560 war by breaking treaties, poisoning peace negotiators, and so forth, the Virginians 66 00:06:40.560 --> 00:06:41.560 replied, 67 00:06:41.560 --> 00:06:47.400 Whereas we are advised by you to observe rules of justice, we hold nothing injustice that 68 00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:54.680 may tend to their ruin with these enemies. Neither fair war nor quarter is ever to be 69 00:06:54.680 --> 00:07:00.880 held. For years after the massacre, the attitude of the whites was continued aggression against 70 00:07:00.880 --> 00:07:07.880 the Indians who were simply considered unreconcilable enemies. Laws were passed prohibiting any 71 00:07:07.880 --> 00:07:13.680 trading with the Indians. Peace for a time was unthinkable. As we have seen, one of the 72 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:19.360 The main charges against Governor Harvey was making peace with the Indians. Finally, however, 73 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:25.920 the advantages of peaceful and mutually beneficial trade with the natives began to become evident, 74 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:31.120 and the law to be ignored by enterprising individuals in the colony. During the first 75 00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:36.760 Berkeley administration, a treaty of peace and friendship was made with the Indians in 76 00:07:36.760 --> 00:07:42.520 1642, and the laws against trading with the natives were repealed. 77 00:07:42.520 --> 00:07:48.200 Unfortunately, the fair prospects for genuine peace were once again ruptured by the old 78 00:07:48.200 --> 00:07:55.400 chief Opec Uncano, the very man responsible for the tragic massacre twenty-two years earlier. 79 00:07:55.400 --> 00:08:01.480 Opec Uncano was a hard-liner who would settle for nothing less than total victory over the 80 00:08:01.480 --> 00:08:07.440 whites whom he regarded as invaders of the land. He certainly had a point. The whites 81 00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:13.200 Coexistence were indeed adept at land grabbing, but the point was not good enough. A genuine 82 00:08:13.200 --> 00:08:19.220 climate of peaceful coexistence could have permitted voluntary purchase of Indian lands 83 00:08:19.220 --> 00:08:25.360 and white settlement on lands which the Indians, while grandiously claiming them, were not 84 00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:32.480 really using. But Opec and Cano, hearing of civil war in England, decided that now was 85 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:40.120 It was his time or never to root out all the English and drive them into the sea. 86 00:08:40.120 --> 00:08:48.160 Again in April 1644, Opec and Cano organized a surprise massacre that killed 500 settlers, 87 00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:54.360 a greater number than earlier, but of course a vastly smaller proportion of the colony. 88 00:08:54.360 --> 00:09:00.160 One of the problems of a hard line is that it begets hard lining by the other side, and 89 00:09:00.160 --> 00:09:05.000 This massacre came at a time when genuine peace seemed at hand. 90 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:11.360 The English quickly counterattacked, burning Indian villages and destroying their corn. 91 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:17.960 Opec and Cano was taken prisoner and shot in the back by one of the Virginia soldiers. 92 00:09:17.960 --> 00:09:24.960 The Indians then sued for peace, but unfortunately the Peace Treaty of 1646, instead of providing 93 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:30.500 for Peaceful Trade and other contacts between the two peoples forced the Indians to cede 94 00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:36.960 territory and drew arbitrary boundaries beyond which the Indians were forbidden to come. 95 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:43.040 Moreover, neither the Virginians nor the Indians were permitted to go into each other's territory 96 00:09:43.040 --> 00:09:49.600 on pain of very heavy punishment and trading could only be conducted at certain specified 97 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:53.240 and therefore monopolized forts. 98 00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:59.360 This type of quasi-peace greatly restricted white exploration and settlement of Virginia 99 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:05.440 west of the fall line, as well as fruitful trade with the Indian people. Since a few 100 00:10:05.440 --> 00:10:10.960 military forts were given the monopoly privilege of all trade with the Indians, the commander 101 00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:17.480 of each fort now occupied a highly lucrative and privileged position in the colony. The 102 00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:22.840 Virginia government not only built the forts, but granted them and their surrounding land 103 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:29.840 to their commanders. Typical was Captain Abraham Wood, a former indentured servant of Samuel 104 00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:35.840 Matthews, who was placed in command of the most important of these forts, Fort Henry, 105 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:42.600 at the Appomattox Falls. Settling there for 30 years, Wood exploited his position as sole 106 00:10:42.600 --> 00:10:48.160 authorized trader for the area. Often he had to guard his pack trains against the use of 107 00:10:48.160 --> 00:10:55.160 was forced by rival traders, understandably resentful at Wood's compulsory monopoly of the Indian trade. 108 00:10:55.160 --> 00:11:04.160 The town at the fort took the name of Wood and Wood acquired over 6,000 acres of plantation land in the neighborhood. 109 00:11:04.160 --> 00:11:08.160 He was also for many years a counselor of the colony. 110 00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:14.160 Yet the inexorable march of settlement westward could not be halted 111 00:11:14.160 --> 00:11:18.160 and once again the English came to settle near the Indians. 112 00:11:18.160 --> 00:11:24.160 The arbitrary peace terms of the 1646 treaty clearly needed revision. 113 00:11:24.160 --> 00:11:33.160 Happily, after 1656, an Indian found without a badge in white territory was no longer liable to be shot 114 00:11:33.160 --> 00:11:37.160 and all free men were allowed to trade with the Indians. 115 00:11:37.160 --> 00:11:42.160 Other provisions of the new law constituted a rather limited advance. 116 00:11:42.160 --> 00:11:51.160 For example, Indian children, kidnapped as hostages, were not to be treated simply as slaves, but to be trained as Christians and taught a trade. 117 00:11:51.160 --> 00:12:00.160 Other policies were so arbitrary as to deal unjustly, not only with the Indians, but also with the white settlers. 118 00:12:00.160 --> 00:12:10.160 Thus in 1653, as supposed compensation to the Indians, lands in York County were set aside and reserved for them. 119 00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:17.160 Even though this meant that already existing white settlers had to be forcibly removed. 120 00:12:17.160 --> 00:12:23.160 However, peace and justice to the Indian, as always, went only so far. 121 00:12:23.160 --> 00:12:29.160 In 1656, several hundred Indians settled near the falls of the James River, 122 00:12:29.160 --> 00:12:35.160 which the whites had decided was to be barred from any Indians, even peaceful settlers. 123 00:12:35.160 --> 00:13:05.160 The assembly sent Colonel Edward Hill with an armed force to drive out the Indians. Though joined by Indian allies, the attacking force was smashed by Indian defenders near the present site of Richmond. Hill met not with sympathy for his defeat, but with an angry assembly that tried him and unanimously found him guilty of crimes and weaknesses and suspended him from his post. The relatively 124 00:13:05.160 --> 00:13:15.160 The compound peace of 1656 with the Indians was shattered by the onset of the second Berkeley administration. 125 00:13:15.160 --> 00:13:23.160 It is not surprising that Berkeley's onslaught on the liberties and rights of Virginians should have extended to Indian relations. 126 00:13:23.160 --> 00:13:33.160 His first step in 1661 was the suppression of free trade with the Indians and the reviving of tradie monopoly. 127 00:13:33.160 --> 00:13:53.160 The Assembly decreed that henceforth, no one might trade with the Indians without a commission from the Governor, who, of course, would license only persons of known integrity, rather than the diverse, ill-minded, idle and unskillful people currently engaged in the trade. 128 00:13:53.160 --> 00:14:07.160 The Assembly followed this with a decree outlawing all trade by Marylanders and Indians north of Virginia with the Virginia Indians, thus further tightening the trading monopoly. 129 00:14:07.160 --> 00:14:16.160 Ironically, the old trade monopolist, Abraham Wood, now a Colonel, was charged with the enforcement of this prohibition. 130 00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:23.680 The next year, Captain Giles Brint, one of the leading planters of the Northern Neck, 131 00:14:23.680 --> 00:14:31.600 hauled the chief of the Potomac Indians, Wahanganocchi, into court on the false charges of high treason 132 00:14:31.600 --> 00:14:37.120 and murder. And even though Wahanganocchi was acquitted and his false accusers forced 133 00:14:37.120 --> 00:14:43.400 to pay him an indemnity for the wrongs suffered, the assembly arrogantly proceeded to require 134 00:14:43.400 --> 00:14:50.280 by the Potomac and other northern tribes to furnish as hostages a number of Indian children 135 00:14:50.280 --> 00:14:54.340 to be enslaved and brought up by whites. 136 00:14:54.340 --> 00:14:59.740 It is no wonder that under this treatment the Indians of Virginia began to get a bit 137 00:14:59.740 --> 00:15:07.740 restive, a restiveness due also as the assembly admitted to violent intrusions of diverse English 138 00:15:07.740 --> 00:15:10.240 into Indian lands. 139 00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:13.240 But this was only the beginning of white aggression. 140 00:15:13.240 --> 00:15:21.000 In 1665-66, the assembly set further arbitrary bounds to Indian settlement, pushing back 141 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.400 the Indians once more. 142 00:15:24.400 --> 00:15:30.080 It also prohibited any white sales of guns and ammunition to the Indians and decreed 143 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:35.680 that the governor select the chieftains for the Indian tribes. 144 00:15:35.680 --> 00:15:41.120 Militarism was imposed on the white settlers by ordering them to go armed to all public 145 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:47.840 meetings including church services. Even collective guilt was imposed on the Indians, it being 146 00:15:47.840 --> 00:15:53.000 provided that if an Indian murdered a white man, all the people of the neighboring Indian 147 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:59.400 town would be answerable for it with their lives or liberties. But this law taxed even 148 00:15:59.400 --> 00:16:06.760 the often elastic consciences of the Virginians of the day and was soon repealed. During the 149 00:16:06.760 --> 00:16:15.720 In the same year, 1666, Governor Berkeley declared war on the Dogue and Potomac tribes, 150 00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:20.900 as an even more massive form of collective guilt and punishment for various crimes committed 151 00:16:20.900 --> 00:16:26.600 over the years by individual Indians against individual whites. 152 00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:32.080 But since this act of slaughter was called war, even its far greater magnitude did not 153 00:16:32.080 --> 00:17:02.080 by the end of the sixties the Indians had been so effectively cowed and suppressed that the administration believed the situation well in hand in the words of Berkeley the Indians are absolutely subjected so that there is no fear of them but Governor Berkeley was soon to learn that the use of terror and 154 00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:06.400 Objection does not always quiet fears. 155 00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:11.560 Particularly aggrieved was the Doag tribe, which had been attacked and expelled from 156 00:17:11.560 --> 00:17:14.880 its lands by the Berkeley administration. 157 00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:21.080 The Doags found new compatriots in the Susquehannocks, a powerful tribe that had been expelled from 158 00:17:21.080 --> 00:17:27.000 its land at the head of the Chesapeake Bay by the Seneca Nation, and had then settled 159 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:32.420 on Inadequate Lands on the Potomac River in Maryland. 160 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:38.720 In July 1675, the doves who had also settled across the Potomac found that a wealthy Virginia 161 00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:44.700 planter, Thomas Matthew, refused to pay them a debt, which they were not allowed to collect 162 00:17:44.700 --> 00:17:46.760 in the Virginia courts. 163 00:17:46.760 --> 00:17:52.520 They decided therefore to collect the debt themselves, and a party of doves crossed the 164 00:17:52.520 --> 00:17:55.880 river and took some hogs from Matthew. 165 00:17:55.880 --> 00:18:01.080 The Virginians immediately pursued the Indians upriver and not only recovered the hogs but 166 00:18:01.080 --> 00:18:07.240 killed the Indians. Again, the Indians had no recourse against this murder in the Virginia 167 00:18:07.240 --> 00:18:13.060 courts and so they decided to exact punishment themselves. They raided and devastated the 168 00:18:13.060 --> 00:18:19.580 Matthew plantation, rough if in exact justice, in the course of which one of Matthew's herdsmen 169 00:18:19.580 --> 00:18:21.360 was killed. 170 00:18:21.360 --> 00:18:27.540 Errant self-righteousness and flagrant double standard of morality are often characteristic 171 00:18:27.540 --> 00:18:33.540 of the side with the superior weapons in any dispute, for its one-sided version of morality 172 00:18:33.540 --> 00:18:38.580 can be supported by force of arms, if not by force of logic. 173 00:18:38.580 --> 00:18:44.120 Such was the case with the white Virginians, murdering a group of Indians whose only crime 174 00:18:44.120 --> 00:18:49.560 was the theft of a few hogs, and this justified as the only available means of collecting 175 00:18:49.560 --> 00:18:56.280 in a Debt was, well, just one of those things, whereas retaliatory retribution against the 176 00:18:56.280 --> 00:19:03.000 one white largely responsible for the whole affair was apparently considered so monstrous 177 00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:08.040 that any method of vengeance against the Indians was justified. 178 00:19:08.040 --> 00:19:13.000 When the raising of the Matthew Plantation became known, Major George Brant and Colonel 179 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:19.960 George Mason, leading persecutors of Chief Wohanga Nochi a decade before, gathered an 180 00:19:19.960 --> 00:19:27.760 armed force and invaded Maryland. Upon finding the Indians, Brent asked for a peace parley, 181 00:19:27.760 --> 00:19:35.760 at which he seized and then shot the dog chief, thus continuing a white tradition of treachery 182 00:19:35.760 --> 00:19:41.560 in dealing with Indians. Brent followed this up by shooting ten other Indians who had then 183 00:19:41.560 --> 00:20:11.560 Berkeley completely ignored the protest of the 184 00:20:11.560 --> 00:20:18.560 by the Maryland Governor Against the Virginia Invasion of Its Territory and the Killing of Innocent Indians. 185 00:20:18.560 --> 00:20:29.560 Instead, on August 31, 1675, Berkeley called together the militia officers of the northern Neck counties led by Colonel John Washington 186 00:20:29.560 --> 00:20:39.560 and armed them with powers to organize the militia and to demand satisfaction or take any other course necessary against the Indians. 187 00:20:39.560 --> 00:20:46.560 This could include attack and such executions upon the Indians as shall be found necessary and just. 188 00:20:46.560 --> 00:20:52.560 The officers duly organized the militia and secured aid from the Maryland government. 189 00:20:52.560 --> 00:21:00.560 A full-fledged war of aggression against the Indians was then unleashed by Virginia and Maryland. 190 00:21:00.560 --> 00:21:13.560 On September 26, the Joint Virginia Maryland Force besieged the main fort of the Susquehannocks on the Maryland side of the Potomac and sought to starve the Indians into submission. 191 00:21:13.560 --> 00:21:20.560 An army of 1,000 whites surrounded 100 Indian braves and their women and children. 192 00:21:20.560 --> 00:21:30.560 On the invitation of Major Thomas Truman, head of the Maryland force, five of the Sesquihannock chiefs came out to parley and seek peace. 193 00:21:30.560 --> 00:21:41.560 When the chiefs asked what the army was doing there, Major Truman declared that they were retaliating for various outrages and he proceeded to murder them on the spot. 194 00:21:41.560 --> 00:21:54.560 Even a silver medal held up by one chief, a token of a supposedly permanent pledge of protection by a former governor of Maryland, was of no avail in saving his life. 195 00:21:54.560 --> 00:22:09.560 The starving mass of Indians finally escaped their tormentors by rushing out at night in a surprise breakout and fled into Virginia, where during January they retaliated against many of the frontier plantations. 196 00:22:09.560 --> 00:22:18.560 One of the plantations rated was that of Nathaniel Bacon Jr., a leading planter and one of the counselors of the colony. 197 00:22:18.560 --> 00:22:23.560 Some writers attribute to this incident Bacon's hostility to the Indians. 198 00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:29.560 But already the previous fall Bacon had seized some friendly Appomattox Indians, 199 00:22:29.560 --> 00:22:36.560 charging them falsely with stealing corn, even though the corn in question was neither his nor his neighbors. 200 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:55.560 Ready to send out an even larger armed force against the Indian party, Berkeley received word from the Indians that, having killed ten whites for each of their chiefs murdered at the Peace Parley, they were ready to make peace and ask for compensation for damages. 201 00:22:55.560 --> 00:23:01.560 Grateful for a chance to stop the spiraling bloodshed, Berkeley disbanded his new army. 202 00:23:01.560 --> 00:23:31.560 Army. But when Berkeley categorically rejected the peace offer as violating honor and self interest, the Indian raids continued. Instead of peace, Berkeley and his assembly decided on an uneasy compromise, a declaration of war not only against all Indians guilty of injuring white persons or property, but also against those who had refused to aid and assist the whites in uncovering and destroying the 203 00:23:31.560 --> 00:23:38.560 The Large Force needed to garrison these forts was financed by burdensome new taxes, which aggravated Virginia's grievances against the Berkeley regime. 204 00:24:01.560 --> 00:24:20.560 It is another common rule that militarization of a society, ostensibly to bring force majeure against an enemy, often succeeds also, or even only, in bringing that force against the very society being militarized. 205 00:24:20.560 --> 00:24:29.560 Thus soldiers conscripted into the garrisons were to be subject to highly rigorous articles of war. 206 00:24:29.560 --> 00:24:38.560 Any blasphemy, for example, when either drunk or sober, was punished by forcing the soldier to run the terrible gauntlet. 207 00:24:38.560 --> 00:24:57.560 Public prayers were to be read in the field or garrison twice a day, and any soldier refusing or neglecting to attend the prayers or the preaching or to show proper diligence in reading homilies and sermons was to be punished at the whim of the commander. 208 00:24:57.560 --> 00:25:05.400 A great many Virginians, driven forward by war hysteria, by ingrained hatred of the Indians, 209 00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:13.000 and by the desire to grab Indian lands, began to accuse Berkeley of being soft on the Indians. 210 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:18.020 The softness was supposed to be motivated by economic interest, as Berkeley's monopoly 211 00:25:18.020 --> 00:25:23.520 of the fur trade was supposed to give him a vested interest in the existence of Indians 212 00:25:23.520 --> 00:25:25.540 with whom to trade. 213 00:25:25.540 --> 00:25:31.420 The common expression of the day was that no bullet would pierce beaver skins. 214 00:25:31.420 --> 00:25:37.220 The charge, if charge it be, was probably partially correct, at least insofar as trade 215 00:25:37.220 --> 00:25:44.720 between peoples generally functions as a solvent of hatreds and of agitations for war. 216 00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:50.620 At any rate, in deference to these charges, the Assembly took the Indian trade from Berkeley 217 00:25:50.620 --> 00:25:58.420 and his licensees, and transferred the authority for licenses to the county justices of the peace. 218 00:25:58.420 --> 00:26:06.820 The middle of the road policy of defensive war, however, was probably the most un-politic course that Berkeley could have taken. 219 00:26:06.820 --> 00:26:17.820 If he had concluded peace, he would have ended the Indian raids and thus removed the constant spark plug for war hysteria among the whites. 220 00:26:17.820 --> 00:26:29.320 As it was, the expensive policy of constructing mighty, defensive forts prolonged the war and hence the irritant and did nothing to end it. 221 00:26:29.320 --> 00:26:39.320 The only result, so far as the Virginians were concerned, was a highly expensive network of forts and higher taxes imposed to pay for them. 222 00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:45.320 Furthermore, Berkeley reportedly reacted in his usual tyrannical fashion against several 223 00:26:45.320 --> 00:26:51.320 petitions for an armed troop against the Indians by outlawing all such petitions under threat 224 00:26:51.320 --> 00:26:53.960 of heavy penalty. 225 00:26:53.960 --> 00:26:59.720 With peace still not concluded, the frontier Virginians found themselves suffering Indian 226 00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:05.240 raids and yet being refused a governmental armed force by Berkeley. 227 00:27:05.240 --> 00:27:11.920 They finally determined in April to raise their own army and fight the Indians themselves. 228 00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:17.820 While three leaders of this effort were frontier planners on the James and Appomattox rivers, 229 00:27:17.820 --> 00:27:20.360 they were hardly small farmers. 230 00:27:20.360 --> 00:27:25.160 On the contrary, they were among the leading large planners in Virginia. 231 00:27:25.160 --> 00:27:32.120 The chief leader was the eloquent 28-year-old Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., descendant of Francis 232 00:27:32.120 --> 00:27:38.280 Thomas Bacon, a cousin of Lady Berkeley and a member of the Select Council of Virginia. 233 00:27:38.280 --> 00:27:43.920 The other leaders were William Byrd, founder of the Byrd planter dynasty, and Captain James 234 00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:49.200 Cruz, another large planter and neighbor of Bacon. 235 00:27:49.200 --> 00:27:55.400 The effort quickly emerged, however, not as a new armed force, but as a mutiny against 236 00:27:55.400 --> 00:27:58.160 the Virginia government. 237 00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:03.000 When the three founders and their friends went to visit a nearby force of militiamen 238 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:10.200 at Jordan's Point in Charles City County, the soldiers decided to mutiny and follow, 239 00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:17.920 bacon, bacon, bacon, and swore damnation to their souls to be true to him. 240 00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:20.320 The Mighty Bacon's Rebellion had begun.