Word: opechancanough
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2007-2007
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rountree, an anthropologist, is the author of Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown
...colony flourished, its Powhatan neighbors became alarmed. Trading posts were one thing, permanent farms another. On March 22, 1622, the new leader of the Powhatan, Opechancanough, launched dawn raids on 28 plantations and settlements along the James River, killing 347 colonists, a quarter of the total population. Jamestown itself escaped, warned by an Indian boy who had converted to Christianity. "Besides them they killed," a survivor lamented, "they burst the heart of all the rest." Dispirited and disorganized, hundreds more colonists died the following winter, the second "starving time...
...attack was a brilliant tactical stroke, but it sealed the fate of the attackers. The survivors responded with all-out war. In July 1624, some 800 Indian warriors risked a two-day battle with 60 armored and well-armed colonists and lost. Twenty years later, Opechancanough, nearly a century old, was captured and shot in the back in a Jamestown jail. This too set a pattern: of conflict and expulsion, which lasted until the last Indians were beaten and settled on reservations in the late 19th century...
| 1 |