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, sometime 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 sometime 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. [FN]
[FN] Belknap's Am. Biog. p. 64, Vol. II.
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. [FN]
[FN] Purchas V. 1792.
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 Patowomekes,) 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 returned by the messenger.