Like later attempts to destroy the group-centered society of the Indians in favor of a self-centered society, this attempt of 1656 was not completely successful.
Early in 1656 word was received that six or seven hundred strange Indians from the mountains had come down and seated themselves near the falls of the James. The March Assembly, considering how much blood it had cost to "expell and extirpate those perfidious and treacherous Indians which were there formerly," and considering how the area lay within the limits "which in a just warr were formerly conquered by us," ordered the two upper counties under Col. Edward Hill to send 100 men to remove the intruders peacefully, making war only in self-defense. Messages were sent to obtain the aid of the Pamunkeys, Chickahominies, and other neighboring Indians. Tottopottomoy, the King of the Pamunkeys, joined Hill with 100 of his warriors, although only the summer before his brother had been murdered by an Englishman.
The western Indians had apparently come down to treat with the English about trade, bringing with them many beaver skins to begin the commerce. Col. Hill, however, despite the Assembly's command to avoid the use of force, perfidiously had five of the kings who came to parley with him put to death. "This unparalleled hellish treachery and anti-christian perfidy more to be detested than any heathenish inhumanity," a contemporary wrote, "cannot but stink most abominably in the nosetrils of as many Indians, as shall be infested with the least scent of it, even to their perpetual abhorring and abandoning of the very sight and name of an English man, till some new generation of a better extract shall be transplanted among them!" In the fight that ensued Tottopottomoy lost his life fighting bravely for the English. Despite his fidelity, neither he nor his tribe was honorably treated by the English, the very land he owned being extorted from him and his successors.
Hill himself was found guilty by the unanimous vote of the Burgesses and Council of "crimes and weaknesses" in his conduct of the campaign. He was ordered suspended from all offices, military and civil, and made liable for the charge of procuring a peace with the Indians with whom he had so treacherously dealt.