Leadership of the Powhatan Confederacy after the…
March 1622 CE
Leadership of the Powhatan Confederacy after the death of Wahunsonacock in 1618 had passed to his half-brother Opechancanough, who does not feel that peaceful relations with the colonists can be maintained.
Having recovered from the defeat of his earlier command of the Pamunkey warriors at the end of the First Anglo-Powhatan War, he plans the eventual destruction of the English settlers.
After the murder of his adviser, Nemattanew, by an Englishman in the spring of 1622, Opechancanough seizes his moment, and launches a campaign of surprise attacks upon at least thirty-one separate English settlements and plantations, mostly along the James River.
Jamestown, the capital and primary settlement of the colony, is saved when an native boy named Chanco, who had been assigned to slay his employer, Richard Pace, awakened Pace during the night and warned him of the imminent attack.
Pace, who lives across the James River from Jamestown, had secured his family and then rowed across the river to Jamestown in an attempt to warn the rest of the settlement.
As a result, some preparations can be made for the attack in Jamestown.
Outlying settlements, however, have no forewarning.
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