Indian Massacre of 1622 - Aftermath

Aftermath

For more details on this topic, see Anglo-Powhatan Wars.

Opechancanough did not finish off the colony. Instead he withdrew his warriors, believing that the English would behave as Native Americans would when defeated: pack up and leave, or learn their lesson and respect the power of the Powhatan. Following the event, Opechancanough told the Patawomecks, who were not part of the Confederacy and had remained neutral, that he expected "before the end of two Moones there should not be an Englishman in all their Countries." He misunderstood the English colonists and their backers overseas.

The surviving English settlers were in shock after the attacks. As they began to recover, the men worked on a plan of action. “By unanimous decision both the council and planters it was agreed to draw people together into fewer settlements” for better defense. The colony intended to gather men together to plan attack, but this was difficult because of the survivors, “two-thirds were said to have been women and children and men who were unable to work or to go against the Indians”.

In England when the massacre occurred, John Smith believed that the settlers would not leave their plantations to defend the colony. He planned to return with a ship filled with soldiers, sailors, and ammunition, to establish a “running Army” able to fight the Powhatan. Smith’s goal was to “inforce the Salvages to leave their Country, or bring them in the feare of subjection that every man should follow their business securely”, but Smith never returned to Virginia.

The English took revenge against the Powhatan by “the use of force, surprise attacks, famine resulting from the burning of their corn, destroying their boats, canoes, and houses, breaking their fishing weirs and assaulting them in their hunting expedition, pursuing them with horses and using bloodhounds to find them and mastiffs to seaze them, driving them to flee within reach of their enemies among other tribes, and ‘assimilating and abetting their enemies against them”.

The 1622 massacre was used as a justification for ongoing seizure of Powhatan land by the colonists for the next ten years. Historian Betty Wood writes:

What is usually referred to as the "Massacre of 1622," the native American attack that resulted in the death of 347 English settlers and almost wiped out Jamestown, gave the colonists the excuse they needed to take even more of what they wanted from the indigenous population of the Chesapeake. As far as the survivors of the Massacre of 1622 were concerned, by virtue of launching this unprovoked assault native Americans had forfeited any legal and moral rights they might previously have claimed to the ownership of the lands they occupied.

Wood quotes a Virginian settler:

We, who hitherto have had possession of no more ground than their waste and our purchase at a valuable consideration to their own contentment. . . may now by right of war, and law of nations, invade the country, and those who sought to destroy us: whereby we shall enjoy their cultivated places.