the English promised to visit him within six weeks. Now it seems that their commerce with the Indians at this period was mostly carried on by the aid of one Thomas Savage, an interpreter, and the same man whom Smith had left with Powhatan fourteen years before. The visit took place according to promise, and it was then ascertained that Opechancanough had employed one of his Indians to kill Savage. The pretence was, "because he brought the trade from him to the easterne shore." The truth probably was, that the chieftain was jealous of the English influence among the tribes of that region.

But the storm which had been gathering ever since the death of the emperor was at length ready to burst upon the devoted colony. Ope. chancanough had completed every preparation which the nature of things permitted on his part, and nothing remained but to strike the great blow which he intended should utterly extinguish the English settlements forever. The twenty-second day of March, 1622— an era but too memorable in Virginian history-was selected for the time, and a certain hour agreed upon to ensure the simultaneous assault in every direction. The various tribes engaged in the conspiracy were drawn together, and stationed in the vicinity of the several places of massacre, with a celerity and precision unparalleled in the annals of the continent. Although some of the detachments had to march from great distances, and through a continued forest, guided only by the stars and moon, no single instance of disorder or mistake is known to have happened. One by one they followed each other in profound silence, treading as nearly as possible in each other's steps, and adjusting the long grass and branches which they displaced. They halted at short distances from the settlements, and waited in deathlike stillness for the signal of attack.

That was to be given by their fellow-savages, who had chosen the same morning for visiting the different plantations, in considerable numbers, for the purpose of ascertaining their strength and precise situation, and at the same time preventing any suspicion of the general design. This, it should be observed, had recently become too habitual a practice with the Indians, to excite suspicion of itself. The savages were well known to be in no condition for a war, and had shown no disposition for one. The English, therefore, while they supplied them generally with whatever they asked for, upon fair terms, neglected to prepare themselves for defence. They were so secure, that a sword or a firelock was rarely to be met with in a private dwelling. Most of their plantations were seated in a scattered and straggling mannez, as a water-privilege or a choice vein of rich land invited them; and indeed it was generally thought, the further from neighbors the better. The Indians were daily received into their houses, fed at their tables, and lodged in their bed-chambers; and boats were even lent them previous to the twenty-second, as they passed backwards and forwards for the very purpose of completing the plan of extirpation.

The hour being come, the savages, knowing exactly in what spot every Englishman was to be found, rose upon them at once.

The

work of death was commenced, and they spared neither sex nor age, man, woman nor child. Some entered the houses under the color of trade. Others drew the owners abroad upon various pretences; while the rest fell suddenly on such as were occupied in their several labors. So quick was the execution, that few perceived the weapon or blow which despatched them. And thus, in one hour and almost at the same instant, fell three hundred and forty-seven men, women and children; most of them by their own arms, and all (as Stith observes) by the hands of a naked and timid people, who durst not stand the presenting of a staff in the manner of a firelock, in the hands of a

woman.

Those who had sufficient warning to make resistance saved their lives. Nathaniel Causie, an old soldier of Captain Smith's, though cruelly wounded, cleaved down one of his assailants with an axe; upon which the whole party who had surrounded him fled, and he escaped. At another place, two men held possession of a house against sixty Indians. At Warrasqueake, a Mr. Baldwin, whose wife was so badly wounded that she lay for dead, by repeatedly discharging his musket drove off the enemy, and saved both her and himself. Ralph Hamer, the historian, defended himself in his house, successfully, with spades, axes and brickbats. One small family, living near Martin's Hundred, where as many as seventy-three of the English were slain, not only escaped the massacre, but never heard any thing of it until two or three days afterwards. Jamestown and some of the neighboring places were saved by the disclosure of a Christian Indian named Chanco, who was confidentially informed of the design by his brother, on the morning of the 22d.

Such was the evidence which Opechancanough gave of his deeprooted hatred of the English. And yet, such was his profound dissimulation, that so late as the middle of March, he treated a messenger sent to him from the president with the utmost civility, assuring him he held the peace so firm, that the sky would fall sooner than it should be violated on his part. Mr. Thorpe, an excellent man, who had taken a peculiar interest in Christianising the Indians, supposed that he had gained the especial favor of Opechancanough by building him a very neat house after the English fashion; in which he took such pleasure, as to lock and unlock his door a hundred times a day. He seemed also to be pleased with the discourse and company of Mr. Thorpe, and expressed a desire to requite some of his kindness. Nevertheless, the body of this unfortunate man was found among the slain. Only two days before the massacre, the Indians guided a party of the English through the woods, and sent home one who had lived among them to learn their language. On the very morning of the fatal day, as also the evening before, they came, as at other times, unarmed into the houses of the English, with deer, turkeys, fish, fruits and other things to sell; and in some places sat down to breakfast with the same persons whom they rose up to tomahawk.

The particular occasion as the historians consider it--of the conspiracy, is too characteristic to be omitted. There was a noted Indian,

named Nemattanow, who was wont, out of vanity or some unaccountable humor, to dress himself up with feathers, in a most barbarously fantastic manner. This habit obtained for him among the English the name of Jack-of-the-feather. He was renowned among his countrymen both for courage and cunning, and was esteemed the greatest warcaptain of those times. But, what was most remarkable, although he had been in many skirmishes and engagements with the English, he had always escaped without a wound. From this accident, seconded by his own ambition and craft, he obtained at length the reputation of being invulnerable and immortal.

Early in 1622, Nemattanow came to the house of one Morgan, who kept and sold a variety of well-selected commodities for the use of the Indians. Smitten with a strong desire to obtain some of them, Nemattanow persuaded Morgan to accompany him to Pamunkey, on the assurance of an advantageous traffic at that place. On the way, he is supposed to have murdered the trader. Within two or three days, he returned again to the house of his victim, where were only two stout young men, servants of Morgan, at home. They, observing that he wore their master's cap on his head, inquired after him; and Jack told them frankly he was dead.

Confirmed in their previous suspicions by this declaration, they seized him, and endeavored to carry him before Mr. Thorpe, who lived at a neighboring settlement. But their prisoner troubled them so much by his resistance, and withal provoked them so intolerably by his bravadoes, that they finally shot him down, and put him into a boat, in order to convey him the remaining seven or eight miles of the way. But the Indian soon grew faint; and finding himself surprised by the pangs of death, he requested his captors to stop. In his last moments he most earnestly besought of them two great favors; first, never to make it known that he was killed by a bullet; and secondly, to bury him among the English, that the certain knowledge and monument of his mortality might still be concealed from the sight of his countrymen. So strong was the ruling passion in death.

Opechancanough was so far from being a particular friend of Nemattanow, that he had given the president to understand, by a messenger, some time before the transaction just related, that he should consider it a favor in him, if he would take measures to have Jack despatched. The popularity of the war-captain was the only reason why he forbore to take such measures himself. Nevertheless, with a consummate wiliness he availed himself of this same popularity, on the death of his rival-as Jack seems to have been-the better to inflame and exasperate the Indians against the whites. He affected to be excessively grieved at his death, and for some time was unusually loud in his declarations of resentment and his threats of revenge. A messenger came from the president, to ascertain what was intended by these demonstrations of hostility, and again all was quiet as before; nothing could induce the sachem to violate the vast regard which he had always entertained for the English. About the same time he gave them liberty, by negotiation, to seat themselves any where on the shores

of the rivers, within his dominions, where the natives had no villages. The treaty he had already made for the discovery of mines, as well as for mutual friendship and defence, was at his request engraven on a brass plate, and fastened to one of the largest oaks growing upon his territories, that it might be had always in remembrance.

For several years after the massacre, a war was waged between the colonists and the savages, so inveterate and ferocious as to transmit a mutual abhorrence and prejudice to the posterity of both. The former obtained at this period the name of the Long-Knives, by which they were distinguished to a very late day, in the hieroglyphic language of the natives. Every precaution and preparation was taken and made upon both sides, in view of a desperate conflict. Orders were issued by the government, from time to time, directing a general vigilance and caution against the enemy who now engrossed all thought; and especially prohibiting the waste of arms and ammunition. The remnants of the settlements were drawn together into a narrower compass. Of eighty plantations, all were abandoned but six, which lay contiguous at the lower part of James river; and three or four others, of which the owners or overseers, refusing to obey public orders, intrenched themselves, and mounted cannon for their own separate defence.

A considerable space of territory between the Virginians and the savage tribes was wasted with fire, for the sole purpose of laying bare the stealthy approaches of the enemy, who, under cover of the long grass and underwood, and the gigantic shield of the oak and cypress, had heretofore been able to advance unperceived, and rise up in attack almost from under the very feet of the English. But even a boundary of fire could not always restrain the fury, nor elude the skill of the Indians. Wisely content with short and sudden incursions, for plunder and revenge rather than conquest, they frequently succeeded in carrying off the corn and cattle of the colonists, and sometimes their persons into captivity. They were themselves, on the other hand, hunted like beasts of prey. No prisoners were made; no quarter was given.

From the time of the massacre, Opechancanough seems no longer to have taken the least trouble to conceal his hostility. He returned a haughty answer to the first demand made upon him for the redemption of the English captives; and trampled under foot the picture of the English monarch, which was sent to him as a compliment. Late in 1622, when Captain Croshaw was trading on the Potomac, with the only tribe which was now willing to carry on commerce, he had scarcely landed from his vessel, when a messenger arrived from Opechancanough to Japazaws, (king of the Patawomekes,) bearing two baskets of beads as a royal present, and soliciting the king to murder his new visitants on the spot. He was assured, that whether he did his part or not, before the end of two moons, there should not be an Englishman left in the whole country. Japazaws first disclosed the message to his guest; and then, after thinking and talking of it two days, made answer that the English were his friends, and Opitchipan

(the Powhatan emperor) his brother; and therefore there should be no more blood shed between them by his means. The beads were re. turned by the messenger.

After this, the colonists had their season of success; and more Indians are said to have been slain during the autumn and winter of 1622-3, than had ever before fallen by the hands of the English, since the settlement of Jamestown. But the course adopted by the civilised party sufficiently indicates the desperate state of their affairs. They availed themselves of a stratagem worse than barbarous in its principle, however circumstances might be supposed in this case to justify it. A peace was offered to the enemy and accepted; but just as the corn, which the latter were induced to plant, was beginning to grow ripe, the English fell upon them in all directions at a given hour of an appointed day, killed many, and destroyed a vast quantity of provisions. Several of the greatest war-captains were among the slain; and for some time Opechancanough himself was reported to be one. This rumor alone, so long as believed, was equal to a victory; "for against him," says the historian, "was this stratagem chiefly laid."

Such language furnishes evidence enough of the apprehension which his movements and reputation had excited. But he gave more substantial reasons for the respect which he still wrested from his enemy, by his prowess. A battle took place at his own village of Pamunkey, in 1625, in which the main body of the savages numbered eight hundred bowmen, independently of detachments from remote tribes; and though the English, led on by Governor Wyatt in person, succeeded in driving the enemy from the field, they were unable to pursue them as far as Matapony. That town was their principal depot and rallying point, and the acknowledged inability to reach it, though but four miles distant, proves that the battle was by no means decisive. It appears from this affair, too, that all the efforts of the English, during an inveterate war of three years, had not driven the tribes even from the neighborhood of their own settlements. What was more discouraging, Opechancanough was not to be deceived a second time by the arts of diplomacy. In 1628, the governor's proclamation, which announced the appointment of commissioners to negotiate with the enemy, declared expressly an intention to repeat the stratagem of 1622; but the plan failed of success, and the Pamun, kies and Chickahominies-most immediately under the influence of Opechancanough—were more troublesome at this period than ever

before.

Four years afterwards, the same tribes made an irruption so furious and alarming, that every twentieth man was despatched, under the command of the governor, to parley with them—a term in the records which shows forcibly, as Burk observes, the respect this brave people had inspired. But Opechancanough was still implacable; and when, in the course of 1632, a peace was at last formally concluded, so little dependence was placed on that circumstance, that even while the com. missioners on both sides were adjusting the preliminaries, a proclama.