When morning came, the sun look’d down
Where many a cottage stood,
But he only saw black smouldering heaps,
And fields that smoked with blood.
The great massacre of the Virginia colony by the Indians in 1622, is thus described by Burk.
“Whilst the colony was thus rapidly advancing to eminence and wealth, she carried in her bosom and about her an enemy which was to blight her budding honors, and which brought near to ruin and desolation her growing establishment. Since the marriage of Pocahontas, the natives had lived on terms of uninterrupted and apparently cordial amity with the English, which daily gained strength by mutual wants and necessities. Each had something beyond their wants, which the other stood in need of. And commerce, regulated by good faith, and a spirit of justice, gave facility to the exchange or barter of their superfluous productions. The consequence of this state of things was, a complete security on the part of the English; a total disregard and disuse of military precautions and martial exercises. The time and the hands of labor were considered too valuable to be employed in an idle and holiday array of arms; and in this situation, wholly intent on amassing wealth, and totally unprovided for defence, they were attacked by an enemy, whose resentment no time nor good offices could disarm; whose preparations were silent as night; to whom the arts of native cunning had given a deep dissimulation, an exterior so specious, as might impose on suspicion itself.
“Opechancanough (who succeeded Powhatan in the government) possessed a powerful recommendation in the eyes of his countrymen. His hatred of the English was rooted and deadly. Never for a moment did he forget the unjust invasion and insolent aggressions of those strangers. Never did he forget his own personal wrongs and humiliation.
“Compelled by the inferiority of his countrymen in the weapons and instruments of war, as by their customs, to employ stratagem instead of force, he buried deep in his bosom all traces of the rage with which he was agitated.
“To the English, if any faith was due to appearances, his deportment was uniformly frank and unreserved. He was the equitable mediator in the several differences which arose between them and his countrymen.
“The intellectual superiority of the white men was the constant theme of his admiration. He appeared to consider them as the peculiar favorites of heaven, against whom resistance were at once impious and impracticable. But far different was his language and deportment in the presence of his countrymen.
“In the gloom and silence of the dark and impenetrable forest, or the inaccessible swamp, he gave utterance to the sorrows and indignation of his swelling bosom. He painted with the strength and brilliancy of savage coloring the tyranny, rapacity, and cruelty of the English; while he mournfully contrasted the unalloyed content and felicity of their former lives, with their present abject and degraded condition; subject as they were to the capricious control and intolerable requisitions of those hard and unpitying task-masters.
“Independence is the first blessing of the savage state. Without it, all other advantages are light and valueless. Bereft of this, in their estimation even life itself is a barren and comfortless possession. It is not surprising then, that Opechancanough, independent of his influence as a great Werowance or war captain, should, on such a subject, discover kindred feelings in the breasts of his countrymen. The war-song and war-whoop, breaking like thunder from the fierce and barbarous multitudes, mingling with the clatter of their shields, and enforced by the terrific gestures of the war-dance, proclaimed to their leader their determination to die with him or conquer.
“With equal address the experienced and wily savage proceeded to allay the storm which invective had conjured up in the breasts of the Indians. The English, although experience had proved them neither immortal nor invincible, he represented as formidable by their fire-arms, and their superior knowledge in the art of war; and he inculcated, as the sole means of deliverance and revenge, secrecy and caution until an occasion should offer, when, by surprise or ambush, the scattered establishments of their enemies might at the same moment be assaulted and swept away.