[440] Bruce, Inst. Hist., Vol. I, p. 542.
[448] Bruce, Inst. Hist., Vol. I, p. 77; Hen. Vol. II, p. 356.
[449] Va. Mag., Vol. II, pp. 172, 289, 388.
[455] Va. Mag., Vol. III, p. 142; P. R. O., CO1-37-41.
[467] Mr. P. A. Bruce, in his Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, has shown that this statement is incorrect.
For many years Virginia had been at peace with the neighboring Indians.[472] The long series of wars which had filled most of the first half of the seventeenth century had broken the spirit and power of the Pamunkeys, the Nansemonds and the Nottoways.[473] The remnants of these nations had become dependent upon the English, paying them tribute and looking to them for protection from their enemies.[474] In 1675, however, these friendly relations were disturbed by a southward movement of some of the northern Indians. Large bodies of the warlike Senecas, pressing upon the Susquehannocks at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, were driving them down into Maryland and Virginia. Here their indigence and their restlessness became a menace to the whites and an element of disturbance to their relations with the other tribes.[475]
In the summer of 1675 a party of savages rowed across the Potomac river, committed several murders and made good their escape into Maryland.[476] In anger and alarm the planters of Stafford county seized their arms to protect their homes and to avenge their neighbors. A band of thirty or more, led by Colonel Mason and Captain Brent, pursued the savages up the Potomac into the Maryland woods.[477] Coming in the early dawn upon two diverging trails, "each leader with his party took a separate path". "In less than a furlong either found a cabin", one crowded with Doeg Indians, the other with Susquehannocks. The king of the Doegs, when he saw his hut surrounded by Brent's men, "came trembling forth, and wou'd have fled". But Captain Brent, "catching hold of his twisted lock, which was all the hair he wore", commanded him to deliver up the men guilty of the recent murders. "The king pleaded ignorance and slipt loos", whereupon Brent shot him dead. At this the savages in the cabin opened fire, and the Virginians answered with a deadly volley. "Th' Indians throng'd out at the door and fled." "The English shot as many as they cou'd, so that they killed ten ... and brought away the kings son." "The noise of this shooting awaken'd th' Indians in the cabin which Coll. Mason had encompassed, who likewise rush'd out and fled, of whom his company shot ffourteen."[478]