The Indian troubles were not neglected. Arrangements were made for raising and maintaining an army of 1,000 men, and the aid of friendly Indians was solicited. There was a picturesque scene when the “Queen of Pamunkey” was brought before the House of Burgesses. That interesting squaw sachem appears to have been a descendant of the fierce Opekankano. Her tribe was the same that John Smith had visited on the winter day when he held his pistol to the old warrior’s head, with the terse mandate, “Corn or your life!” That remnant of the Powhatan confederacy was still flourishing in Bacon’s time, and indeed it has survived to the present day, a mongrel compound of Indian and negro, on two small reservations in King William County.[48] The “Queen of Pamunkey” in Bacon’s time commanded about 150 warriors, and what the assembly wanted was to secure their aid in suppressing the hostile Indians. The dusky princess “entered the chamber with a comportment graceful to admiration, bringing on her right hand an Englishman interpreter, and on the left her son, a stripling twenty years of age, she having round her head a plat of black and white wampum peag three inches broad in imitation of a crown, and was clothed in a mantle of dressed deerskins with the hair outwards and the edge cut round six inches deep, which made strings resembling twisted fringe from the shoulders to the feet; thus with grave courtlike gestures and a majestic air in her face she walked up our long room to the lower end of the table, where after a few entreaties she sat down; the interpreter and her son standing by her on either side as they had walked up. Our chairman asked her what men she would lend us for guides in the wilderness and to assist us against our enemy Indians. She spake to the interpreter to inform her what the chairman said (though we believed she understood him). He told us she bid him ask [her] son to whom the English tongue was familiar (and who was reputed the son of an English colonel), yet neither would he speak to or seem to understand the chairman, but, the interpreter told us, he referred all to his mother, who being again urged, she, after a little musing, with an earnest passionate countenance as if tears were ready to gush out, and a fervent sort of expression, made a harangue about a quarter of an hour, often interlacing (with a high shrill voice and vehement passion) these words, Totapotamoy chepiack! i. e. Totapotamoy dead! Colonel Hill, being next me, shook his head. I asked him what was the matter. He told me all she said was too true, to our shame, and that his father was general in that battle where divers years before[49] Totapotamoy her husband had led a hundred of his Indians in help to the English against our former enemy Indians, and was there slain with most of his men; for which no compensation at all had been to that day rendered to her, wherewith she now upbraided us.”
The chairman’s rudeness.
The candid member for Stafford calls the chairman of the committee morose and rude for not so much as “advancing one cold word towards assuaging the anger and grief” of the squaw sachem. Having once obtained a favour and so ill requited it, the white men in an emergency were now suppliants for further good offices of the same sort. But disregarding all this, the chairman imperiously demanded to be informed how many Indians she would now contribute. A look of angry disdain passed over the cinnamon face; she turned her head away and “sat mute till that same question being pressed a third time, she, not returning her face to the board, answered with a low slighting voice in our own language, Six! but, being further importuned, she, sitting a little while sullen, without uttering a word between, said, Twelve! ... and so rose up and walked gravely away, as not pleased with her treatment.”
Bacon’s flight.
His return.
Small wisdom was shown in this mean and discourteous treatment of a useful ally, but men’s thoughts were at once abruptly turned from such matters. “One morning early a bruit ran about the town, Bacon is fled! Bacon is fled!” and for the moment Indian alliances and legislative reforms were alike forgotten. Mr. Lawrence’s house was searched at daybreak, but his lodger had gone. Not only had the governor withheld the expected commission, but the air was heavy with suspicion of treachery. The elder Bacon, of King’s Creek, who was fond of “this uneasy cousin” without approving his conduct, secretly informed him that his life was in danger at Jamestown. So the young man slipped away to his estate at Curl’s, and within a few days marched back upon Jamestown at the head of 600 men. Berkeley’s utmost efforts could scarcely muster 100 men, of whom we are told that not half could be relied on. Early in the warm June afternoon Bacon halted his troops upon the green before the State House, and walked up toward the building with a little guard of fusileers. The upper windows were filled with peering burgesses, and crowds of expectant people stood about the green. Out from the door came the old white-haired governor, trembling with fury, and plucking open the rich lace upon his bosom, shouted to Bacon, “Here I am! Shoot me! ’Fore God, a fair mark, a fair mark—shoot!” Bacon answered mildly, “No, may it please your honour, we have not come to hurt a hair of your head or of any man’s. We are come for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often promised, and now we will have it before we go.”
The governor intimidated, June, 1676.
But we are told that after the old man had gone in to talk with his council, Bacon fell into a rage and swore that he would kill them all if the commission were not granted. The fusileers presented their pieces at the windows and yelled, “We will have it! we will have it!” till shortly one of the burgesses shook “a pacifick handkercher” and called down, “you shall have it.” All was soon quiet again. The assembly drew up a memorial to the king, setting forth the grievances of the colony and Bacon’s valuable services; and it made out a commission for him as general of an army to be sent against the Indians. Next day the governor was browbeaten into signing both these papers; but the same ship that carried the memorial to Charles II. carried also a private letter wherein Berkeley told his own story in his own way. The assembly was then dissolved.
Bacon crushes the Susquehannocks.
Berkeley flies to Accomac, and proclaims Bacon a rebel.