Episode Details

On the morning of March 22, 1622, in roughly two dozen English settlements along the James River in Virginia, Powhatan men sat down to breakfast with English families they had known for years. By 1622 this was ordinary. In the eight years since the Peace of Pocahontas had ended the First Anglo-Powhatan War, the two cultures had grown together in ways that had no precedent in the colonial Americas. Powhatan visitors moved freely through English homes. English boys lived in Powhatan villages. A college for the education of Powhatan children was being built at Henrico, with ten thousand acres of company land set aside for it. Two cultures were merging.

This is the story of how a single coordinated attack ended that merging. Of the warrior-chief, possibly nearly a hundred years old by the end, who saw the trajectory of English settlement and decided to close the window before it closed on him. Of the three hundred and forty-seven colonists killed before noon. Of the religious paradigm shift that followed — Powhatan reclassified, in English understanding, from souls to be saved to devils to be destroyed. Of the poisoned wine at the 1623 peace conference. Of the Virginia Company losing its charter in 1624. Of Opechancanough captured in 1646, shot in the back by a guard while in custody. And of the door that closed on the morning of March 22, 1622, and never opened again — for the Powhatan, and for nearly every native nation the English would meet over the next two centuries.