the
County of Prince George, the seat of the revolutionary patriot Richard
Bland. Beggar's Bush, as already mentioned, was the title of one of
Fletcher's comedies then in vogue in England. (_Hallam's Hist. of
Literature_, ii. 210.)

[164:D] Martin's Hist. of North Carolina, i. 87.

[165:A] Smith, ii. 79; Chalmers' Introduction, i. 19; Belknap, art.
WYAT.

[165:B] Beverley, 43.

[165:C] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 343; Smith, 139; Stith, 233.

CHAPTER XVII.

1622.

Crashaw and Opechancanough--Captain Madison massacres a
Party of the Natives--Yeardley invades the Nansemonds and
the Pamunkies--They are driven back--Reflections on their
Extermination.

DURING these calamitous events that had befallen the colony, Captain
Raleigh Crashaw had been engaged in a trading cruise up the Potomac.
While he was there, Opechancanough sent two baskets of beads to
Japazaws, the chief of the Potomacs, to bribe him to slay Crashaw and
his party, giving at the same time tidings of the massacre, with an
assurance that "before the end of two moons" there should not be an
Englishman left in all the country. Japazaws communicated the message to
Crashaw, and he thereupon sent Opechancanough word "that he would
nakedly fight him, or any of his, with their own swords." The challenge
was declined. Not long afterwards Captain Madison, who occupied a fort
on the Potomac River, suspecting treachery on the part of the tribe
there, rashly killed thirty or forty men, women, and children, and
carried off the werowance and his son, and two of his people, prisoners
to Jamestown. The captives were in a short time ransomed.

When the corn was ripe, Sir George Yeardley, with three hundred men,
invaded the country of the Nansemonds, who, setting fire to their
cabins, and destroying whatever they could not carry away, fled;
whereupon the English seized their corn, and completed the work of
devastation. Sailing next to Opechancanough's seat, at the head of York
River, Yeardley inflicted the same chastisement on the Pamunkies. In New
England it was said: "Since the news of the massacre in Virginia, though
the Indians continue their wonted friendship, yet are we more wary of
them than before, for their hands have been embrued in much English
blood, only by too much confidence, but not by force."[166:A]

The red men of Virginia were driven back, like hunted wolves, from
their ancient haunts. While their fate cannot