United States or San Marino ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I will come to Jamestown soon, but not to-day nor to-morrow nor the next day. And Captain Percy must smoke the peace pipe in my lodge above the Pamunkey, and watch my young men and maidens dance, and eat with me five days. Then he may go back to Jamestown with presents for the great white father there, and with a message that Opechancanough is coming soon to learn of the white men."
For his aid in this trifling business the Governor gives him thanks." A smile just lit the features of the Indian. It was gone in a moment. "Does not Opechancanough love the white men?" he said. "Some day he will do more than this for them."
Edward Boynton and Richard Savage, who had been left with Powhatan, seeing the treachery, endeavored to escape, but were apprehended by the Indians. At Pamaunky there was the same sort of palaver with Opechancanough, the king, to whom Smith the year before had expounded the mysteries of history, geography, and astronomy.
Three hundred men, women, and children were killed by the Indians. With fury the white men attacked in return. They sent bodies of horse into the untouched western forests. They chased and slew without mercy. In 1646 Opechancanough, brought a prisoner to Jamestown, ended his long tale of years by a shot from one of his keepers.
He had been working hard, in secret, to enlist all the New England tribes in a league greater than the league of Opechancanough, and by one stroke clean New England of the white colonists. The time set was the next year, 1676. The Narragansetts had promised then to have ready four thousand warriors.
Henry Fleet, the colony's interpreter, and sixty men, to go out and try to make a peace with Opechancanough. If they could not make such a peace, they were to erect a fort on the Rappahannock River or between it and the York. The "break" in the war came with the daring capture of Opechancanough himself by Governor Berkeley.
Sending for the governor, he said, with a keen reproach that has grown historic, "Had I taken Sir William Berkeley prisoner, I would not have exposed him as a show to my people." Closing his eyes again, in a short time afterward the Indian hero was dead. With the death of Opechancanough, the confederacy over which Powhatan and he had ruled so long came to an end.
"You go with the next sunrise," he answered. "Opechancanough has given me his word." "I am glad to hear it," I said. "Why have we been kept at all? Why did he not free us five days agone?" He shook his head. "I do not know. Opechancanough has many thoughts which he shares with no man. But now he will send you with presents for the Governor, and with messages of his love to the white men.
I rose to greet him, as was decent; for he was an Emperor, albeit a savage and a pagan. "Tell the English that Opechancanough grows old," he said. "The years that once were as light upon him as the dew upon the maize are now hailstones to beat him back to the earth whence he came. His arm is not swift to strike and strong as it once was.
In 1617 the Indian chieftain Opechancanough, who later would master mind the massacre, presented Sir George Yeardley with a sizeable tract here later described as 2,200 acres. Two hundred acres were allowed for two shares of stock and 2,000 were allowed for services rendered.
Word Of The Day