Anglo-Powhatan Wars

First Anglo-Powhatan War

Fighting between the Powhatans and the colonists stretched across five years, from 1609 to 1614, in what became known as the First Anglo-Powhatan War. On August 9, 1610, De La Warr dispatched George Percy and James Davis, along with 70 men, to strike the Paspahegh settlement. Homes were set ablaze and cornfields destroyed in the assault. Somewhere between 15 and 75 villagers died in the raid, and the attackers seized one of Wowinchopunk's wives together with her two children. As they made their way back downstream, the colonists cast the children into the water and shot them there. Wowinchopunk's wife met her end by execution at Jamestown. This assault broke the Paspahegh permanently, and the survivors deserted their settlement altogether.

That same fall, colonists walked into an ambush at Appomattoc. Despite this setback, De La Warr succeeded in planting a garrison at the falls of the James, and these men remained through the winter months. February 1611 brought Wowinchopunk's death in combat close to Jamestown. His people repaid this loss within days, luring several colonists away from the safety of the fort and killing them there. Governor Thomas Dale reached the colony that May and set about scouting locations for fresh settlements. The Nansemonds drove him back, but he had better fortune against the Arrohattocs, wresting away an island in the James that would become the fortified stronghold known as Henricus.

Near Christmas of 1611, Dale's forces overran the Appomattoc settlement situated at their river's mouth, sealed off the surrounding neck of land with a palisade, and gave the place a new name, New Bermudas. Powhatan, by then elderly, offered no significant resistance to this steady colonial encroachment, and evidence suggests his grip on power was slipping toward his younger brother Opechancanough even as the colonists consolidated their gains. Peace came with the Patawomeck in December 1612 through Captain Samuel Argall, who also managed to capture Pocahontas, Powhatan's daughter. Her capture brought an abrupt halt to Powhatan attacks on the colony, since she was held as a hostage to secure peace terms. Meanwhile, settlers pushed further south beyond the rivers, establishing homes in what is now the area around Hopewell, Virginia.

At the outset of 1609, colonial holdings amounted to nothing more than Jamestown Island itself. By the war's close, however, the Powhatans had surrendered a great deal of their land along the James riverfront. The Kicoughtan and Paspehegh peoples had been all but wiped out, while the colonists had carved deep inroads into territory belonging to the Weyanoke, Appomattoc, Arrohattoc, and Powhatan themselves. Notably, both the Arrohattoc and Quiockohannock vanish from written records following this conflict, a silence that may point to their scattering or absorption into other tribal groups.

Peace of Pocahontas

Nearly a year passed with talks deadlocked over the release of hostages and the surrender of weapons before Dale took Pocahontas along with a sizable body of men to track down Powhatan in March 1614. Arrows rained down on them near what is now West Point, prompting them to land and burn the settlement to the ground. Powhatan was eventually located at Matchcot, his newly established seat of power, where terms of peace were reached and sealed through Pocahontas's marriage to the colonist John Rolfe. The wedding took place on April 16, 1614, and eight months afterward, on January 18, 1615, the couple welcomed their only child. Virginia had never before seen such a union across racial lines, and it ushered in a short-lived improvement in relations between the colonists and the native population. That same year brought another separate agreement, this one with the Chickahominy, who were granted the status of honorary "Englishmen" and thereby became subjects of King James I. Historians have come to know this era of calm as the peace of Pocahontas.

Aftermath

Until roughly 1649, Necotowance held the title of paramount chief over the remnants of the Powhatan Confederacy, though by then the constituent tribes had already been dispersed. His successor, Totopotomoi, inherited a diminished role, ruling only as chief of the Pamunkey rather than as head of the broader Powhatan people. Rather than resisting colonial authority, Totopotomoi chose cooperation, partnering with colonial officials to preserve stability. That alliance cost him his life in 1656, when he fell at the Battle of Bloody Run while fighting alongside colonists against hostile tribes pressing in from outside. Leadership then passed to his widow, Cockacoeske. Although historians often describe these years as relatively calm between the two peoples, colonists steadily pushed into territory the 1646 treaty had reserved for Indians.

Among the Patawomeck, Chief Wahanganoche attempted a similar strategy of accommodation, even signing over tribal lands to colonial settlers, but the gesture did not protect his people. By 1662 colonists, hungry for still more territory, leveled a false murder accusation against him. A special session of the House of Burgesses cleared him of any wrongdoing, yet colonists killed him anyway as he made his way home from the proceedings. Not long afterward, colonial authorities pressured the entire Patawomeck nation into "selling" its remaining land, and by 1666 they had formally declared war on the tribe, openly calling for its extirpation.

The result was the near total destruction of the Northern Neck tribes; those few who eluded settlers found refuge only by merging into other surviving native communities nearby. Fragile peace collapsed again after a handful of Doeg people killed two settlers notorious for cheating and abusing natives, then raided the surrounding countryside. The violence spiraled into wider conflict and confusion, eventually erupting into Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Out of that upheaval came the Treaty of Middle Plantation, which Cockacoeske signed after persuading neighboring tribes to join as well. Under its terms, each tribe received its own reservation along with the right to hunt beyond those boundaries. The treaty also declared all Indian leaders formally equal, while still recognizing that several scattered Indian groups owed allegiance to Cockacoeske.

Written by Aubrey Research from Anglo-Powhatan Wars on Wikipedia, cited as a reference and not reproduced.

Where these engagements were fought

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By decade

The tempo of the war, by decade.

Notable engagements

Plus 5 further documented engagements in the Anglo-Powhatan Wars record.

Engagements and locations are compiled from published sources: Wikipedia (text rewritten and cited as a reference, CC BY-SA 4.0).