Nathaniel Bacon was an English merchant adventurer who emigrated to the Virginia Colony, where he sat on the Governor's Council but later led Bacon's Rebellion. The Rebellion was briefly successful; but after Bacon’s death from dysentery the rebel forces collapsed.
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia. Thousands of Virginians from all classes and races rose up in arms against Berkeley, chasing him from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. The rebellion was first suppressed by a few armed merchant ships from London whose captains sided with Berkeley and the loyalists.
The Powhatan people are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands who belong to member tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, or Tsenacommacah. They are Algonquian peoples whose historic territories were in eastern Virginia.
Middle Plantation in the Virginia Colony was the unincorporated town established in 1632 that became Williamsburg in 1699. It was located on high ground about halfway across the Virginia Peninsula between the James River and York River. Middle Plantation represented the first major inland settlement for the colony. It was established by an Act of Assembly to provide a link between Jamestown and Chiskiack, a settlement located across the Peninsula on the York River.
Powhatan, whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh, was the leader of the Powhatan, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Native Americans living in Tsenacommacah, in the Tidewater region of Virginia at the time when English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607.
The Monacan Indian Nation is one of eleven Native American tribes recognized since the late 20th century by the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. In January 2018, the United States Congress passed an act to provide federal recognition as tribes to the Monacan and five other tribes in Virginia. They had earlier been so disrupted by land loss, warfare, intermarriage, and discrimination that the main society believed they no longer were "Indians". However, the Monacans reorganized and asserted their culture.
The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of Pamunkey people in Virginia. They control the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in King William County, Virginia. Historically, they spoke the Pamunkey language.
The Native American tribes in Virginia are the Indigenous peoples whose tribal nations historically or currently are based in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States of America.
The Mattaponi tribe is one of only two Virginia Indian tribes in the Commonwealth of Virginia that owns reservation land, which it has held since the colonial era. The larger Mattaponi Indian Tribe lives in King William County on the reservation, which stretches along the borders of the Mattaponi River, near West Point, Virginia.
Tsenacommacah is the name given by the Powhatan people to their native homeland, the area encompassing all of Tidewater Virginia and parts of the Eastern Shore. More precisely, its boundaries spanned 100 miles (160 km) by 100 miles (160 km) from near the south side of the mouth of the James River all the way north to the south end of the Potomac River and from the Eastern Shore west to about the Fall Line of the rivers.
Colonel John West, Jr. of West Point, Virginia (1632–1691) was an ancient planter, commander of the New Kent Militia in the Colony of Virginia and represented the county in the House of Burgesses, as would his sons. Complicating matters, while this man sided with Governor William Berkeley during Bacon's Rebellion and had his property at West Point severely damaged, his cousin of the same name who lived on Virginia's Eastern Shore sided with the rebels and briefly represented Accomack County as a burgess, and received a pardon after the conflict.
Cockacoeske was a 17th-century leader of the Pamunkey tribe in what is now the U.S. state of Virginia. During her thirty-year reign, she worked with the English colony of Virginia, trying to recapture the former power of past paramount chiefs and maintain peaceful unity among the several tribes under her leadership. She was the first of the tribal leaders to sign the Virginia-Indian Treaty of Middle Plantation. In 2004 Cockacoeske was honored as one of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History".
The Anglo–Powhatan Wars were three wars fought between settlers of the Colony of Virginia and the Powhatan People of Tsenacommacah in the early 17th century. The first war started in 1609 and ended in a peace settlement in 1614. The second war lasted from 1622 to 1632. The third war lasted from 1644 until 1646 and ended when Opechancanough was captured and killed. That war resulted in a defined boundary between the Indians and colonial lands that could only be crossed for official business with a special pass. This situation lasted until 1677 and the Treaty of Middle Plantation which established Indian reservations following Bacon's Rebellion.
Totopotomoi was a Native American leader from what is now Virginia. He served as the chief of Pamunkey and as werowance of the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom for the term lasting from about 1649 to 1656, when he died in the Battle of Bloody Run.
Necotowance was Werowance (chief) of the Pamunkey tribe and Paramount Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy after Opechancanough, from 1646 until his death sometime before 1655. Necotowance signed a treaty with the Colony of Virginia in 1646, at which time he was addressed by the English as "King of the Indians."
Kiskiack was a Native American tribal group of the Powhatan Confederacy in what is present-day York County, Virginia. The name means "Wide Land" or "Broad Place" in the native language, one of the Virginia Algonquian languages. It was also the name of their village on the Virginia Peninsula.
The Manskin Indians were a tribe of Indigenous Americans who were a part of the Powhatan Confederacy in historic Virginia. From 1620–1750 they are referred to as "Manskin", on several maps, a name derived from Manaskunt. The numerous separate Indian villages shown in the Zuniga Map combined under the rule of Opechancanough, as a result of the pressures of losses from infectious disease and encroachment by the English colonists. The Manskin lived in a two-mile stretch of the Pamunkey River near where today Rt. 360 crosses the Pamunkey River in King William County, Virginia.
The Appomattoc were a historic tribe of Virginia Indians speaking an Algonquian language, and residing along the lower Appomattox River, in the area of what is now Petersburg, Colonial Heights, Chesterfield and Dinwiddie Counties in present-day southeast Virginia.
Colonel Edward Hill was a Virginia planter, soldier and politician. In addition to representing Charles City County for many terms in the House of Burgesses, fellow members three times selected him as its Speaker, and he sat in the Virginia General Assembly's upper house, the Virginia Governor's Council in 1651 as well as from 1660 to 1663. Burgesses also sent Hill to Maryland to put down Richard Ingle's 1646 rebellion, and he acted as the colony's temporary governor before ceding to the proper governor, Leonard Calvert, but later contested nonpayment of monies promised to him and Virginia militia troops for that action. Col. Hill also led the Charles County and Henrico County militia and Pamunkey Native Americans against other tribes in Hanover County in 1656, with less success.
The Wicocomico were an Algonquian-speaking tribe who lived in Northumberland County, Virginia, at the head and slightly north of the Little Wicomico River.
