Looking back 400 years, we often read about events that were defining moments in the history of our earliest American settlements, be they the Plymouth Plantation founded by the Pilgrims, New Netherland founded by the Dutch, the Jamestowne Colony, founded by English “adventurers,” and other lesser-known settlements in the frontiers of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Southern territories of North America. By the time of the American Revolution, the Virginia Colony had become the largest and most prosperous of our 13 original colonies—but its first few decades were punctuated by moments of terror, death and destruction that we can’t really comprehend today, much less understand how the Jamestowne Colony ever recovered. Most Americans know something about the “Starving Time” of the winter of 1609-10, when colonists resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. That defining event has gone down in history as one of the most sensational moments in early American history. During that horrific winter, most of the population of Jamestowne died, and the Colony was decimated by disease and starvation.
But the worst was yet to come. Over the next decade, the Virginia Company back in England, which held the royal charter to establish a settlement in North America, decided to continue its efforts despite the setback of the Starving Time. Over the next few years, the Company continued to send larger and larger numbers of settlers to the Jamestowne Colony, and those settlers began to take up residence in areas occupied by neighboring Native-American tribes. Tensions mounted as it became increasingly clear to the ruling Native-American tribes in the region, led by the Powhatans, that there would be no stopping the English colonists in their quest for more lands to settle and cultivate. For a time, the white settlers and Native-Americans were able to live in a semblance of peaceful co-existence, and they engaged in various forms of trade for their mutual benefit. Yet, the period from 1610 to 1622 was also a period of apprehension and mutual mistrust. Led by Chief Powhatan (father of the famous Indian princess Pocahontas), several of the neighboring tribes began to quietly prepare for war, and to build up an arsenal by trading their food & furs for the white man’s guns and ammunition.
(contemporaneous engraving of the Massacre of 1622)
By the end of 1621, the tribes were ready to make war, and so they did: in March 1622, they executed a well-orchestrated attack on Jamestowne settlements, killing hundreds of men, women and children, destroying buildings, burning crops, killing livestock and otherwise unleashing mayhem on the colonists. Historians have noted that the warriors were well-armed with muskets and other weapons acquired from the colonists—not just bows and arrows. As was typical of Indian warfare of that time and place, scalpings also occurred. It was a devastating day for the Jamestowne Colony—yet another defining event in the history of early Virginia. Time would tell if the Colony could recover, or whether new immigrants would be willing to sail to Virginia to join a Colony that has just been overrun by blood-thirsty “savages.” When news traveled back to England of the Massacre, many people viewed the situation was hopeless. But the investors in the Virginia Company did not give up: they continued to support the colonization effort, despite the many accusations that the Company’s alleged mismanagement and corrupt practices were somehow responsible for the disaster.
When demands for an investigation of the Virginia Company were made in 1622-23, the Crown decided to appoint a committee to conduct such an investigation. In the meantime, the surviving Jamestowne colonists began the slow effort to recover and rebuild. The scarcity of food and other needed provisions was a major stumbling block. Despite many pleas for assistance, the Virginia Company told the colonists that it was not in a position to help, having drained its financial resources over the course of the past decade, and having the dimmest of prospects of raising new funds from its investors (who had experienced nothing but losses on their investments). By now, the Company was on its last legs.
And so it was that the Jamestowne colonists decided to take stock of their situation, beginning with compiling lists of “the Livinge and Dead in Virginia.” While it’s unclear when the work began on the lists, it likely took some time, as a group of appointed persons painstakingly went from settlement to settlement along the James River, identify who were killed in the Massacre, who had died after the Massacre either as a result of injuries suffered in the attack or otherwise, and who were still living as of the time the lists were created.
The lists were finally issued on February 16, 1623, and they make for chilling reading. The List of the Dead in particular offers a vivid picture of the devastation caused by the Massacre, while the List of the Living gives a glimpse of what life was now like in the various settlements—new colonists who had arrived, new families started, new territories settled, and new plantations established. The List of the Living also reflects that a number of plantations had essentially disappeared—either destroyed or abandoned following the Massacre. To say the least, the colonists who survived and stayed at Jamestowne showed tremendous courage and perseverance. No doubt, one factor in the decision of some of those colonists to stay was that they had nowhere to go, no families to return to in England (some had been sent as young indentured servants, for example), and no hope of a better future back home. And so they stayed. Sadly, today, most of them are no more than names on a list, forgotten souls who lived through the mayhem of the Massacre of 1622, and perhaps died shortly thereafter anyway. Indeed, the death and destruction did not end with the Massacre: the events of 1622 were just the start of the Second Anglo-Powhatan War, which lasted for the next ten years.
Looking at the Lists of the Livinge and the Dead in Virginia,
one can see the vast scope of the killings that took place at various settlements in the Jamestowne Colony. The List of the Dead is arranged by the name of the plantation, settlement, or location of the killings, then the names of the individual settlers who were killed at that various locales. In some cases, there are just first names, or descriptive words such as “negro” (there were not a large number of enslaved persons at Jamestowne in 1622, however). Many of the settlements included families, so one can see husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and other family members listed. Depending on the size of the settlement, the list of names in some cases was quite long, and in others quite small. Below is an example of one of the longer lists of names, for the Martins-Hundred Plantation:
Persons slaine at Martins-Hundred, some seven miles from James-Citie:
Lietuenant Rich: Kean,
Master Tho: Boise &
Mistris Boise, his wife &
a sucking Childe,
4 of his men,
A Maide,
2 Children,
Nathanael Jefferies wife,
Margaret Davies,
3 servants,
Master John Boise,
his wife,
A Maide,
4 Men-servants
Laurence Wats,
his Wife,
2 Men servants
Timothy Moise,
his Man,
Henry Bromage,
his Wife,
his Daughter,
his Man,
Edward How,
his Wife,
his Childe,
A child of John Jackson,
4 Men servants,
Josua Dary,
his wife,
Richard Staples,
his wife
and Childe,
2 Maides,
6 Men and Boyes,
Walter Davies &
his brother,
Christopher Guillam,
Thomas Combar,
A Man,
Ralphe Digginson,
his Wife,
Richard Cholser,
George Jones,
Cisby Cooke,
his wife,
Dauid Bons,
John Benner,
John Mason,
William Pawmet,
Thomas Bats,
Peter Lighborrow,
James Thorley,
Robert Walden,
Thomas Tolling,
John Butler,
Edward Rogers,
Maximilian Russel,
Henry, a Welchman
Note that in almost all cases, the “servants” are unnamed, perhaps reflecting the low value placed upon mere servants in the early years of the Colony. We know, however, that some of these indentured servants were teenage boys with some learning, and some with needed skills, not worthless human beings. Sadly, their names were not preserved, and they are truly forgotten.
What does this defining event mean for us today? First, that the settlement of early America was as much a story of death and destruction as it was a story of conquest. Second, that life was fraught with peril, and tragedy could be visited upon innocent people (Native-Americans included) at any moment. Third, that a clash of cultures was often a root cause of these tragedies, in this case, the clash of Indian and European cultures. Can we learn from this? One hopes that the Jamestowne example can teach us to seek common ground, and not resort to violence. This is certainly true in the case of our current American politics and culture.
So this month, we remember the tragedy of the Massacre of 1622 and its aftermath, as vividly captured in the Lists of the Livinge & Dead in Virginia. And we hope that all of us can pause for a moment in our busy lives and remember those forgotten people who died so violently, and so pointlessly, 400 years ago.