during the starving time. In retaliation, the leaders of Jamestown
demanded tributes of corn and labor from the local native peo-
ples. Soldiers pressed these demands by setting Powhatan villages
on fire and kidnapping hostages, especially children. One of the
kidnapped children, Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas,
married John Rolfe in 1614. This lay the groundwork for a half-
hearted peace. However, the peace would not last, as colonists
continued to move further into Native American territory and
seize more land to grow tobacco.
By 1622, English settlers had worn out the patience of
Chief Opechancanough, Chief Powhatan’s brother and succes-
sor. In a well-planned attack, Powhatan raiding parties struck at
colonial villages up and down the James River, killing more than
340 colonists. The attack forced the Virginia Company to send in
more troops and supplies, leaving it nearly bankrupt. In 1624, James I,
disgusted by the turmoil in Virginia, revoked the company’s charter and
made Virginia a royal colony—one under direct control of the king. England
sent more troops and settlers to strengthen the colony and to conquer the
Powhatan. By 1644, nearly 10,000 English men and women lived in Virginia,
while the Powhatan population continued to fall.
Economic Differences Split Virginia
By the 1670s, many of the free white men in Virginia were former indentured
servants who, although they had completed their servitude, had little money to
buy land. Because they did not own land, they could not vote and therefore
enjoyed almost no rights in colonial society.
These poor colonists lived mainly
on the western outskirts of Virginia, where they constantly fought with Native
Americans for land.
HOSTILITIES DEVELOP
During the 1660s and 1670s, Virginia’s poor settlers
felt oppressed and frustrated by the policies of the colony’s governor, Sir William
Berkeley. More and more, Berkeley levied or imposed high taxes, which were paid
mostly by the poorer settlers who lived along Virginia’s western frontier.
Moreover, the money collected by these taxes was used not for the public good
but for the personal profit of the “Grandees,” or “planters,” the wealthy planta-
tion farmers who had settled along the eastern shores of Virginia. Many of these
planters occupied positions in the government, positions that they used to pro-
tect their own interests. As hostilities began to develop between the settlers along
Virginia’s western frontier and the Native Americans who lived there, the settlers
demanded to know why money collected in taxes and fines was not being used
to build forts for their protection.
In 1675, a bloody clash between Virginia’s frontier settlers and local natives
revealed an underlying tension between the colony’s poor whites and its wealthy
landowners and sparked a pitched battle between the two classes. In June of 1675,
a dispute between the Doeg tribe and a Virginia frontier farmer grew into a blood-
bath. A group of frontier settlers who were pursuing Doeg warriors murdered four-
teen friendly Susquehannock and then executed five chiefs during a peace confer-
ence. Fighting soon broke out between Native Americans and frontier colonists.
The colonists pleaded to Governor Berkeley for military support, but the governor,
acting on behalf of the wealthy planters, refused to finance a war to benefit the
colony’s poor frontier settlers.
BACON’S REBELLION
Berkeley’s refusal did not sit well with a twenty-nine-
year-old planter named Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon, a tall, dark-haired, hot-
tempered son of a wealthy Englishman, detested Native Americans. He called
The American Colonies Emerge 47
E
▼
Pocahontas as
she appeared
during her visit
to England in
1616–1617
Vocabulary
levy: to impose
or collect
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
E
Analyzing
Causes
Why were
the colonists in
conflict with
the Powhatan?
E. Answer
Still angry
because of the
Powhatan’s
treatment of
them during the
Starving Time,
the settlers
began demand-
ing tribute. Plus,
colonists kept
moving further
and further into
Powhatan terri-
tory.
