Occoneechee fur trading post, on the Roanoke River (now Kerr Reservoir)
Source: USGS National Atlas
At times the English chose to acquire their land through force, and at times the Virginia leaders preferred negotiations. In the General Assembly and in the taverns, the colonial leaders often debated the appropriate strategy - but in 1676, that debate erupted into civil war among the colonists.
The innocent victims included the Pamunkey tribe, because they were nearby and the rebels were indiscriminate in their attacks. The Pamunkey escaped by fleeing into the swamps near the headwaters of the York River. The equally-innocent Occoneechee tribe, at the western edge of the trading routes for furs, was less fortunate.
After the restoration of Charles II to the throne at the end of the English Civil War, Parliament passed the Navigation Acts of 1660-63. The tobacco planters in Virginia were no longer able to sell to customers in France, and Dutch ships were prohibited from trading with Virginia.
Throughout the 1660's, tobacco prices were painfully low and Virginia planters struggled economically. The House of Burgesses passed the first official codes to establish perpetual slavery for blacks, but the costs of producing tobacco remained too high compared to the prices paid for the annual crops. Governor William Berkely co-opted the gentry on the Council, and avoided calling a new election for the House of Burgesses between 1661-1676. As a result, there was no political outlet for the unhappy planters. Not surprisingly, the frustrations were vented in other ways.
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As described by Warren Billings, "Loss of the Dutch trade, war with the Netherlands, the breakdown of peace with the Indians, and the revival of proprietary land grants compounded Berkeley's troubles."1 Nathanial Bacon led "Bacon's Rebellion" in 1676, in which the House or Burgesses and Governor Berkeley were threatened at gunpoint and the colonial capital of Jamestown was burned.
Berkeley had refused to react to the claims that the Indians were committing murders and thefts on the frontier. The colonial governor was making a good profit from trading with the Indians, and was not willing to disrupt that business by triggering open war. After the 1644 uprising led by Opechancanough failed, the Algonquian-speaking tribes once controlled by Powhatan were defeated. However, other Native American groups remained powerful and in control of lands north of Potomac/Aquia creeks and west of the Fall Line. As the English pushed further inland, across the Fall Line and away from the Algonquians and the Tidewater rivers, the colonists came into conflict with the Siouan-speaking and Iroquois-speaking tribes. Displacing the Iroquois and Siouan-speaking tribes would protect farmers on the frontier - but that would not automatically benefit the Tidewater planters. After the end of the English Civil War and the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Governor Berkeley in Virginia sought to minimize the costs of frontier conflict. He wanted to accommodate rather than fight the Indian tribes. War would attract unwanted attention in London and upset the Tidewater planters. Governor Berkeley understood that England would not send troops to North America to fight Native Americans. Until the French and Indian War erupted in 1755, frontier defense always required the Virginia colonists to pay higher taxes to finance forts or patrols of rangers. An actual war with Native Americans might force them further away from the frontier and facilitate more land speculation as well as settlement - but a war would require recruitment of colonial troops. More troops might provide military protection for farmers and squatters on the frontier just west of the Fall Line - but they certainly would cost the Tidewater planters extra money. The economic competition between Tidewater and Piedmont Virginia was becoming clear by the 1660's. The Tidewater gentry did not share the same desire as the poor frontier farmers to "open up the Piedmont" for settlement - and competition. Tobacco grown on small frontier farms in the Piedmont competed with the Tidewater planters' crops. Whenever indentured servants completed their terms of labor and moved to the frontier to start small new farms, that reduced the labor force needed in Tidewater on the large plantations. Worse, the low-quality tobacco grown on the small farms, and shipped via terrible roads to Tidewater wharves, depressed the prices paid for all Virginia tobacco. |
 Nathaniel Bacon was a member of the gentry (the "elite" with political and economic power in the colony). Bacon and Berkeley negotiated unsuccessfully for an official colonial war to remove Native Americans from the frontier. Bacon finally instigated open conflict. His rebels burned the colonial capital of Jamestown, pillaged the houses of Berkeley's rich allies, and forced the governor to flee to the Eastern Shore. Source: Library of Congress Nathaniel Bacon engraving by T. Chambars |
Land prices in colonial Virginia were a function of the fundamental supply-and-demand equation of economics. Expanding the frontier westward in the 1670's would increase the quantity of cheap land and increase the amount of poor tobacco grown in the Piedmont, at the expense of those who lived in Tidewater. Paying higher taxes for colonial troops to minimize the Indian threat would reduce the value of the existing plantations along the Virginia coast. Governor Berkeley was intimately connected with the Tidewater families, and his policies protected their existing wealth rather than encouraged westward expansion.
In 1676, the conflict between Tidewater and frontier led to "Bacon's Rebellion." That civil war was fueled by the frontier settlers frustration with Governor Berkeley's policies.
Nathanial Bacon triggered the civil war (one century before the American Revolution...) by demanding a military commission that would authorize him to attack the Susquehannock Indians. Nathaniel Bacon, a new immigrant from England who was not caught up in the web of social alliances in Tidewater, demanded authority from Berkeley to attack Indians on the frontier. When Bacon threatened to shoot the governor unless he provided official commissions for Bacon's rebel army, Berkeley responded boldly "Here shoot me before God, fair mark shoot."2 (Leadership in colonial Virginia was not for sissies...)
When Bacon threatened to act without authorization, Berkeley declared him a rebel. The response was a public wave of support for Bacon, frightening Berkeley enough to trigger him to finally schedule an election for a new House of Burgesses. Bacon was elected, and Berkeley let him take his seat on the Council briefly. Bacon quickly left Jamestown, rallied a mob, and attacked innocent Occaneechi, Tutelo, and Saponi Indians at their trading base at modern-day Clarksville at the confluence of the Dan and the Roanoke (Staunton) River.
He forced them to surrender Susquehannocks that Bacon claimed were responsible for "outrages" on frontier farms, and then destroyed the Oconeechee village - even though the Native Americans there had done nothing to threaten frontier settlers. He then marched back to the capital where the House of Burgesses, intimidated by the mob, passed legislation demanded by Bacon. Governor Berkeley fled to the Eastern Shore, a organized resistance while at John Custis's Arlington plantation.
(In 1714, Governor Spottswood tried to restablish the fur trade near that site at Fort Christanna, hoping to control the business through friendly Native Americans that he enticed to live there.)
Berkeley rallied supporters while on the Eastern Shore. when Bacon sent a ship to attack Berkeley in his last refuge, the governor's forces surprised and captured it. Berkeley sailed back to the west side of the Chesapeake Bay, captured many of the rebels after Bacon died of a "bloody flux," and proceded to execute the rebel leaders. (Berkeley's harsh response may have been spurred in part by laws that allowed him to seize the wealth of the rebels.) Reinforcements did arrive fom England, but too late to affect the civil war.
Among Bacon's rebellious allies was William Drummond, a member of the gentry and a personal enemy of Berkeley. Drummond had been governor of North Carolina (Lake Drummond is presumably named for him). After Drummond was captured, Berkeley greeted him with a malicious "Mr. Drumond! you are very welcome, I am more Glad to See you, than any man in Virginia, Mr. Drumond you shall be hang'd in half an hour." In fact, Drummond's trial did not occur until six days later, but he was hung within several hours of his conviction.3
The officials in London were surprised by the vindictive retaliation. Charles II is reported to have been surprised at Berkeley's repression, saying "That old fool has hanged more men in that naked country than I have done here for the murder of my father." Charles recalled Berkeley to England, where the governor died.
(Bacon claimed to be a champion for those who lived on the frontier and were exposed to the threat of harm by Indians. Some who have chronicled Bacon's Rebellion present him as a revolutionary seeking liberty, fighting a benevolent despot who had turned into a tyrant and who, at the end, was a cruel reactionary.)