Virginia.

Bacon must have resented Berkeley's monopoly of the fur trade. He
tells us that a desire to have a share in this lucrative business had
been one of his motives for settling on the frontier. But he made a
virtue of necessity and, in partnership with his neighbor, William
Byrd I, applied to the governor for a license. They would pay him 800
pounds of beaver fur for the first year and 600 pounds a year
thereafter. This looked good to Sir William. "I am in no such
plentiful condition that I should refuse a good offer," he replied,
"and therefore am likely to accept your and my cousin Byrd's offer."

With the opening months of 1676 there were ominous rumblings of
revolt. From New England came word that the English there were engaged
in a deadly war with the Indians, which Berkeley thought was not
merely a local affair, "but a general combination of all from New
England thither." The so-called allied tribes on the Virginia
frontiers were sullen and resentful. "They also would be rid of us if
they could," said Berkeley. Their efforts to wipe out the English in
previous wars had failed only because their bows and arrows were no
match for the muskets of the English. Now that they had firearms might
not their efforts be more successful?

It was the Marylanders who had given firearms to the Susquehannocks, a
fierce tribe living on their northern border. This they did so that
they could protect them from the Senecas, one of the tribes of the
Iroquois confederation. But in 1674, when the Marylanders made a
separate treaty with the Senecas, the latter fell on the
Susquehannocks, defeated them in battle, and swept them out of their
fortified villages. Fleeing through Maryland the remnant of the tribe
established themselves on the north bank of the Potomac directly
across from the site of Mount Vernon.

Here they were safe from their enemies, but not from hunger. They
might catch fish from the river, but they lacked space for corn
fields, and the plantations of the English spread out over what had
once been hunting grounds. It was inevitable that they would seek food
where they could find it, and having robbed nearby farms they could
not resist the temptation to commit a few murders. Associated with
them were the remnants of the Doegs who had been driven out of
Virginia a few years before because of the "execrable murders" they
had committed.

In the summer of 1675 a party of Indians paddled across the Potomac,
and a