e over from the Virginia encampment,
and charged the chiefs with the murders that had been committed on the
south side of the Potomac. On the next day the Virginia officers renewed
the charges against the Susquehannock chiefs; at this juncture a
detachment of rangers arrived, bringing with them the mangled bodies of
some recent victims of Indian cruelty. Five of the chiefs were instantly
bound, and put to death--"knocked on the head." The savages now made a
desperate resistance; but their sorties were repelled, and they had to
subsist partly on horses captured from the whites. At the end of six
weeks, seventy-five warriors, with their women and children, (leaving
only a few decrepid old men behind,) evacuated the fort during the
night, marching off by the light of the moon, killing ten of the militia
found asleep, as they retired, and making the welkin ring with the
war-whoop and yells of defiance. They pursued their way by the
head-waters of the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the York, and the James,
joining with them the neighboring Indians, slaying such of the
inhabitants as they met with on the frontier, to the number of
sixty--sacrificing ten ordinary victims for each one of the chiefs they
had lost. The Susquehannocks now sent a message to Governor Berkley,
complaining of the war waged upon them, and of the murder of their
chiefs, and proposing, if the Virginians, their old friends, would make
them reparation for the damages which they had suffered, and dissolve
their alliance with the Marylanders, they would renew their ancient
friendship; otherwise they were ready for war.[286:A]

At the falls of the James the savages had slain a servant of Nathaniel
Bacon, Jr., and his overseer, to whom he was much attached. This was not
the place of Bacon's residence; Bacon Quarter Branch, in the suburbs of
Richmond, probably indicates the scene of the murder. Bacon himself
resided at Curles, in Henrico county, on the lower James River.[286:B]
It is said that when he heard of the catastrophe he vowed vengeance. In
that time of panic, the more exposed and defenceless families,
abandoning their homes, took shelter together in houses, where they
fortified themselves with palisades and redoubts. Neighbors banding
together, passed in co-operating parties, from plantation to plantation,
taking arms with them into the fields where they labored, and posting
sentinels, to give warning of the approach of the insidious foe. No man
ventured o