By 1622, after repeated episodes like this, the Virginia Indians had
become convinced that the whites would kill them all. The murder of a
prominent Indian warrior triggered their first major counterattack. Led by
their war chief, Opechancanough, they determined to kill or drive out the
whites. They nearly succeeded. On the appointed day, unarmed Indians
infiltrated the settlements, bringing gifts of food and helping in the corn-
fields; then they grabbed the colonists’ own weapons and fell upon them,
killing 347 men, women, and children and burning down their new settle-
ments.
The Powhatan Uprising of 1622 was the first of a series of wars
between Indians and whites—wars that would rumble across the continent
for more than 250 years. Following it, the mask of fellow feeling dropped,
never to be replaced. The governor of Virginia, Sir Francis Wyatt, pro-
claimed in 1624, that “our first worke is expulsion of the Savages to gain
the free range of the countrey for it is infinitely better to have no heathen
among us, who at best were but as thornes in our sides, then [sic] to be at
peace and league with them.” In a declaration of policy, the emphasis on
taking over Indian lands was made explicit:
Our hands, which before were tied with gentleness and fair usage, are
now set at liberty by the treacherous violence of the savages, not untying
the knot, but cutting it. So that we, who hitherto have had possession of
no more ground than their waste... shall enjoy their cultivated places,
turning the laborious mattock into the victorious sword (wherein there is
more both ease, benefit, and glory) and possessing the fruits of others’
labors. Now their cleared grounds in all their villages (which are situated
in the most fruitful places of the land) shall be inhabited by us, whereas
heretofore the grubbing of woods was the greatest labor.To speed up the process of dispossession, the settlers at Jamestown
summoned the Indians to a peace conference. There, after speeches affirm-
ing brotherhood, one of the leaders of Jamestown proposed that they all
drink to good relations and brought out a barrel of wine. The barrel was
laced with toxin “to poysen them.” To reassure the Indian leader, the
whites pretended to taste it; when the others drank “some two hundred”
196 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA