n on the spot or dragged off for the more dreadful
death by torture. There was no truce, no relaxation; it was war to the
knife.

Only when seed-time was at hand did necessity demand a temporary pause
in hostilities. The English now showed that they could be as treacherous
and lacking in honor as their savage enemy. They offered peace to the
savages, and in this way induced them to leave their hiding-places and
plant their fields. While thus engaged the English rushed suddenly upon
them and cut down a large number, including some of the most valiant
warriors and leading chiefs.

From that time on there was no talk or thought of peace. Alike the
plantation buildings of the whites and the villages of the Indians were
burned. The swords and muskets of the whites, the knives and tomahawks
of the red men, were ever ready for the work of death. For ten years the
bloody work continued, and by the end of that time great numbers of the
Indians had been killed, while of the four thousand whites in Virginia
only two thousand five hundred remained.

Exhaustion at length brought peace, and for ten years more the reign of
blood ceased. Yet the irritation of the Indians continued. They saw the
whites spreading ever more widely through the land and taking possession
of the hunting-grounds without regard for the rights of the native
owners, and their hatred for the whites grew steadily more virulent.
Opechancanough was now a very aged man. In the year 1643 he reached the
hundreth year of his age. A gaunt and withered veteran, with shrunken
limbs and a tottering and wasted form, his spirit of hostility to the
whites burned still unquenched. Age had not robbed him of his influence
over the tribes. His wise counsel, the veneration they felt for him, the
tradition of his valorous deeds in the past, gave him unquestioned
control, and in 1643 he repeated his work of twenty-one years before,
organizing another secret conspiracy against the whites.

It was a reproduction of the former plot. The Indians were charged to
the utmost secrecy. They were bidden to ambush the whites in their
plantations and settlements and at a fixed time to fall upon them and to
spare none that they could kill. The conspiracy was managed as skilfully
as the former one. No warning of it was received, and at the appointed
hour the work of death began. Before it ended five hundred of the
settlers were ruthlessly slain. They were principally those of the
outlying plan