What You Don't Know

Might Surprise You.

A Bookstore Find

On a languid afternoon last week, I stopped by my neighborhood bookstore on the way home from an errand across town. I was happily unhurried so inside I took my time window shopping for something to read. I thumbed through the new releases, skipped the cookbooks, then landed where I always do—history. It’s a small collection, half a bookcase wide, and easily explored. This time the title of a modest paperback caught my eye—Settler Memory, a title similar to the book I’m working on. My working title is Unsettled, or maybe The Unsettled—I’m undecided. I pulled it from the shelf and turned to the table of contents to find another coincidental heading. “Chapter One: The Settler Memory of Bacon’s Rebellion,” by Kevin Bruyneel. I know that guy, Bacon, not Bruyneel.

Until last year I had never heard of Nathaniel Bacon nor of Bacon’s Rebellion while researching America’s colonial period. History records that my Scots ancestor John Kimbrough served in Virginia’s colonial militia against Bacon’s rebel army. What I didn’t know was that the rebellion of 1676, is a topic of discussion on race and politics among today’s historians. Bacon’s Rebellion is but one chapter of Settler Memory, which itself is part of a series of books on Indigenous studies published by the University of North Carolina Press.

The captivating lure of history, is discovering what you don’t know.

Settler Memory

Settler Memory is an academic examination of how the Indigenous population has been overlooked, or “dropped” from memories, stories, and thus their place in American history. Bruyneel and others argue that the alliance of Slaves and poor and indentured white rebels alarmed the colonial planter class who saw the alliance as a threat to the planter way of life. In the end, colonial elites saw the political value of setting the two lower class groups—working-class whites and free and enslaved Blacks—against each other, dividing them by race to weaken their cause. Historian Kathleen Brown suggests that the elites “bribed” the white working class drawing them to into the fold with promises of property and elevating their “whiteness.” The newly formed alliance between the elites and the poor ended further talks of rebellion, at least until the Civil War.

And what of the Settler memories of the Indigenous people? They were “dropped” from historical memory as a people. They were instead labeled as savages, inferiors who stood in the way of western expansion. The Settlers saw the removal of the “savages” as crucial step for achieving economic success and settler safety. Settlers considered native American resistance as just cause for violent retribution. Blacks instead were valued for their economic benefit to the planter class. The failure of Bacon’s Rebellion also meant the end of the alliance between Blacks and working-class whites.

Bacon’s Rebellion:

An edited excerpt. Read the original post here.

Virginia was the largest tobacco producer in all the colonies, and as such its economy was tied to tobacco prices. But the market for Virginia’s tobacco was in turmoil, beset by low prices and increased competition from Maryland and the Carolinas. Plus, the colonial government had increased the export tax, which further cut profits. Even the weather worked against Virginia as hailstorms, floods, and hurricanes battered the region. Wealthier planters could withstand these downturns, but small planters, immigrants and indentured servants had no such cushion. They lived on subsistence farms located in the outlying frontier, which made them more vulnerable to attack from the Pamunkey Indians who lived in nearby villages. The frontiersmen not only feared the Indians, they blamed the Pamunkey for their woes, including the fact that the Indians occupied lands far superior to their own.

The Pamunkey were one of six Algonquian-speaking tribes who lived in settlements along the Pamunkey River. After fighting the British off-and-on for three decades, the two sides signed a peace treaty in 1677. Under the treaty the English agreed to “set aside” lands along the Pamunkey River for the six tribes and to protect them from “rebells [sic] or other enemies.” In exchange, the tribes agreed to pay tribute each fall of “twenty beaver skins at the going away of Geese yearly” to the Virginia government. (The Pamunkey people live on the same lands today and every fall honor their treaty obligation with a ceremonial tribute of fish and game.)

At the time the treaty was signed, Sir William Berkeley, a rice planter, playwright and soldier, was in his first administration as Virginia’s governor. When John Kimbrough and his family settled in Virginia, Berkeley, by then in his 70s, had again been named governor. Sir Berkeley, however, had little interest in governing, not to mention the burdensome responsibility of keeping the peace between the colonists and the Indians. About that time, his wife’s arrogant nephew Nathan Bacon, Jr. had been exiled to the colonies and in need of a job. The governor obliged the family by appointing the troublesome nephew to an important post in the Virginia Assembly. The elderly governor hoped Bacon would help him with the routines of governing and help improve relations between the colonists and the Pamunkey. Instead of flourishing under his uncle’s patronage, Bacon would make things worse and nearly burn the place down.

For starters, the brash young man demanded to be named Commander of the Virginia Militia. Bacon who was “anxious to prove his mettle,” viewed the rank of militia commander as his opportunity to lead the fight to “ruin and extirpate [eradicate] all Indians.” He and his rebels also aimed to drive the natives out, then take their lands. The governor, on the other hand, only wanted to govern in peace, and to use the Indians to his own ends as useful “subjects” and unequal allies. The wealthy tobacco planters sided with the governor recognizing the economic benefits of keeping the peace. Besides, the planters already possessed most of lands that had once belonged to the Indians.

When the governor refused Bacon’s demands, Bacon raised a 300-man militia made up of disgruntled colonists, indentured servants and Indian fighters. Bacon gave himself the rank of colonel and named himself commander of the rebel forces. The ensuing insurrection would come to bear his name—Bacon’s Rebellion. In March of 1676, Bacon’s men attacked the Pamunkey, capturing and killing tribal members. Bacon’s actions forced Gov. Berkeley to call up the Virginia Militia, a colonial force of able-bodied men that included Pamunkey warriors and John Kimbrough.

On September 19, 1676, Col. Bacon’s forces attacked New Jamestown, marking another chapter in the colony’s ill-fated history. In final desperation Bacon torched the original Virginia Statehouse, and set fire to the church and more than a dozen homes.

A month after the raid, Bacon died suddenly, felled by an onset of dysentery. With Bacon gone, the rebellion began to fray. Then in October the Crown sent British soldiers to put an end to the insurrection. Meanwhile, Gov. Berkeley, despite the Crown’s direct orders against hanging, sent 23 rebel leaders to the gallows.

In the rebellion’s aftermath, Pamunkey leaders met with members of the General Assembly to reassert their treaty rights. They reminded the assembly of the losses the Pamunkey had suffered during the rebellion, including the deaths of several of their warriors. The leaders asked the General Assembly to release all Pamunkey captives, to remove squatters from their lands and to confirm Pamunkey ownership rights of their tribal lands, including lands within a three-mile radius of any Pamunkey village. The colonial government agreed to the terms and in return the Pamunkey renewed their pledge of loyalty to the Crown.

Virginia’s colonists suffered their own losses in the rebellion, including property damage, political upheaval, and tax increases taxes to pay for the fiasco. There’s no count of casualties and deaths, but records show that the Colony of Virginia did grant pensions to those in the militia who had suffered “bodily injuries.” The government also compensated colonists whose homes and properties had been damaged or destroyed in the rebellion. Although the charred capitol building was rebuilt, it lost its standing in 1699 when the Virginia colonial government built its new capitol in Williamsburg. In 1747 a disastrous fire also destroyed the Williamsburg capitol, along with its storehouse of Virginia’s official records, including early land transactions, deeds and tax records.

For more than a century, Bacon’s Rebellion was painted as a prelude to the American Revolution, with Bacon cast as its courageous leader. With time and scholarly scrutiny, however, the rebellion came to be viewed as a power struggle between competing factions. On one side were the elite planters, who had already confiscated the best Indian lands. They wanted peace and economic stability. On the other side were hardscrabble farmers, indentured laborers, Free Blacks and slaves, who shared common grievances against the Settler elites.

For disobeying orders, Berkeley was recalled to England where the governor-poet died in disgrace. The uprising had alarmed the white planters, especially when they saw that white indentured servants and rebellious slaves joined forces in the rebellion. The planters reacted by enacting a law making the slavery system “hereditary.” With lifetime slave labor guaranteed by law, plantation owners then rid themselves of their troublesome indentured servants by phasing out the system of servitude. As for Bacon’s surviving rebels, some shrugged off their defeat and headed farther into the frontier, thus fulfilling the aim of western expansion. Others settled in the hollows of Appalachia and on south where generations of festering resentments burst into the Civil War 150 years later.