The nearer societies, particularly the Susquehannocks, had long
worked with whites as intermediaries to the more distant Indians in the fur
trade; some had been encouraged to think of themselves as allies of the
Virginians. Farther inland were tribes like the Senecas and other branches
of the Iroquois who were fiercely independent and were as apt to strike
against Indians as against whites. They remained a formidable military
force; even as late as 1750, they and the Atchatchakangouen (whom the
whites called the Miami) and their immediate allies, the Shawnees,
Delawares, and Wyndots, could muster 1,500 to 2,000 warriors.
Since the frontiersmen wanted the land and did not care about furs,
they blamed the coastal Virginians and specifically Governor Berkeley for
giving the Indians the means to defend themselves. Bacon put himself at
their head and led them successfully against the Indians. His courage and
decisiveness immediately made him a popular hero. On that base, he gath-
ered support by advocating lower taxes and a more open electoral fran-
chise. Governor Berkeley tried to resist but was defeated; he then fled
across the Chesapeake to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to gather forces for
a counterattack. Meanwhile, showing his and his followers’ hostility to the
coastal Virginians, Bacon captured and burned Jamestown. He had hardly
begun to organize his government when, apparently after a heart attack, he
suddenly died. Berkeley quickly took his revenge. From London, Charles
II remarked that the “old fool has hanged more men in that naked country
than I have done for the murder of my father.” In an effort to make peace,
the king recalled him. But the issue that Bacon illuminated would persist
down the years until, on the eve of the Revolution, it burst into a similar
rebellion in North Carolina known as the War of the Regulation.
Maryland differed from both Massachusetts and Virginia in two signifi-
cant and interlocking ways. First, it was a proprietary colony in which politi-
cal discord arose not between king and colony but between the colonists and
successive lords Baltimore. Second, while the population was overwhelm-
ingly Protestant, the government was Catholic and favored the Catholic
minority. The already volatile mix of religions was further complicated when
a group of Puritans “and other well-affected people in Virginia, being
debarred from the free exercise of Religion” moved over to Maryland. When
told that they must take an oath of fealty to Lord Baltimore, they refused.
“Mother England” Loses Touch 137