Queen of the Damned
We found the Queen of the Damned.
We're not going to tell you the whole story.
You'll find out how big the story is on your own.
There's a lot more to it.
This is late September 1675, so you know there's a lot more to this story, because that's the year of Bacon's Rebellion.
That's the year
our Colonel George Washington's
Great Grandfather, John Washington ,
who, along with Major Truman from Maryland,
got accused of killing 5 or 6 Susquehannock Chiefs
who came to parlay peace.
That slaughter made the others hide in a fort they had made.
Thus began a 6 week siege by John Washington's Virginia men and Truman's Maryland men.
The Susquehannock escaped their potential Alamo after 6 weeks of being under siege.
They sought retribution.
They killed and burned and pillaged.
That retribution led to Bacon's Rebellion.
America's first colonist insurrection maybe?
And it led to the burning of Jamestown,
as depicted by Howard Pyle.
It almost sounds modern.
One side did not want to war against the Indians.
The other side was in rage against any Indian.
After that slaughter
of the Susquehannock Chiefs
and after that siege
and after the Susquehannock escaped
and after the Susquehannock wrought their retribution
against the colonists,
Washington and Truman sat
to hear a diatribe by
Virginia's Governor William Berkeley:
‘ ‘ If they had killed my grandfather and my grandmother, my father and mother and all my friends, yet if they had come to treat of peace, they ought to have gone in peace, ‘ ‘
.
See source:
The location of that Susquehannock fort?
Right on the coast opposite of a future Mount Vernon.
Next time you go to Mt Vernon, walk down to the Potomac.
Look across to the Maryland side.
Google that.
Enter the Queen of the Damned.
So after that condemnation by the Governor , in comes the Queen of The Damned.
For sure she was.
She walks in with her son to the House of Burgesses.
She is enlisted to help fight those other "offending" Indians.
Thomas Jefferson found this story.
Read how Thomas Jefferson found this story -- here.
He received this story written in 1705, about the events of 1675-1676 from a Rufus King in a letter dated 20 December 1803.
And we run in to this story because Colonel George Washington at Fort Loudoun Winchester VA had a nickname, Conotocaurius, meaning Destroyer of Towns. We wanted to know if his great grandfather, John Washington also had that nickname.
Many sources say GW's great grandfather had that nickname, but we could not ever find the original contemporary source for that claim.
In our search we ran smack into this story Jefferson found.
Thomas Jefferson was a detective of the past.
He found this story of a Queen.
She was the Queen of the Pamunkey.
Our white interlopers
to this continent
spelled it Pakunky,
making do in an age
of no dictionaries
and some languages
with no written alphabet.
Compiled by Jim Moyer
December 17, 2019 @ 12:54 pm – 1:54 pm,
updated 12/23/19, 10/24/2021, 10/29/2021, 10/30/2021.
This Queen of the Damned makes a visit.
She walks into the House of Burgesses.
Oh what a magical scene.
.
This story comes from a manuscript Thomas Jefferson owned.
The orange italics is the quoted text.
Although Thomas Jefferson owned the text of this story, he never knew who T.M. was.
T.M. was the author of this story Jefferson owned.
It was written by Thomas Mathew, an eye witness in 1675 and 1676
But he wrote it 30 some years later in 1705.
.
.
Summary:
This manuscript tells how the Queen of Pamunkey (misspelled Pakunky in the manuscript) walks into the House of Burgessess in 1676.
.
She tells her story of grief about her husband dying almost 20 years before in 1656 fighting for the English with no compensation for the loss.
.
The Burgess then coldly ignores her story even though admitting to themselves she is right.
.
Maybe they remember her father was involved in the 1622 massacre of their colony?
.
But they certainly do remember she lost her husband helping them in 1656.
.
So now, here it is 1675, and they need her help to fight other Indians.
They keep asking her for what?
They keep asking for her help.
Ignoring her ask to them.
and now finally . . .
Read this story.
.
Our co’mittee being sat,
.
the Queen of Pakunky
.
[ same as
the Queen of Pamunkey ]
[descended
from Oppechankenough
a former
Emperor of Virginia]
[same as Opchanacanough ]
.
was introduced,
who entered
the chamber
with a
comportment
graceful to
admiration,
.
.
English Interpreter
bringing on her right hand
an Englishman interpreter
.
.
Her Son
and on the left
her son a strippling twenty years of age,
.
.
Description of the Queen of Pamunkey enterring
.
Touch or Click to Enlarge. From Powhatan Museum link.
she having round her head
a plat of black & white wampum peague
three inches broad in imitation of a crown, &
was clothered in a mantle of dress’t deerskins
with the hair outwards &
the edge cut round 6 inches deep
which made strings resembling
twisted fringe
from the shoulders to the feet ;
thus with grave courtlike gestures
and a majcstick air in her face,
.
.
she walk’d up our long room
to the lower end of the table,
where after a few entreaties she sat down ;
.
th’ interpreter and her son standing by her on either side as they had walk’d up,
.
.
1st of 3 times this Question is asked:
How many Indian Allies will the Queen lend?
.
our chairman asked her what men she would lend us
for guides in the wilderness
and assist us against our enemy Indians,
.
she spake to th’ interpreter to inform her
what the chairman said,
[tho’ we believe she understood him]
.
.
he told us she bid him
as her son to whom the English tongue was familiar,
& who was reputed the son of an English colonel,
yet neither wou’d he speak
to or seem to understand the Chairman
but th’ interpreter told us
he referred all to his mother,
who being againe urged
.
THE HARANGUE
she after a little musing
with an earnest passionate countenance
.
as if tears
were ready to gush Out
.
and a fervent sort of expression
made a harangue
about a quater of an hour,
.
often interlacing
[with a high shrill .voice
and vehement passion]
these words
” Tatapatomoi Chepiack,
i. e. Tatapamoi dead :
.
Note: Tatapamoi was her husband who died in the 1656 Battle of the Bloody Run, helping the English.
.
.
The 1656 Battle of Bloody Run
.
Col. Hill being. next me, shook his head,
.
I ask’d what was the matter,
he told me all she said was too true to our shame,
and that his father was general
.
.
in that battle,
[ 1656 Battle of Bloody Run ]
where diverse years before
Tata- patamoi her husband
had led a hundred of his Indians
to help in th’ English
against her former enemy Indians,
and was there slaine with most of his men ;
for which no compensation [at all]
had been to that day rendered to her
wherewith she now upraided us.
.
[ See location of this 1656 Battle of Bloody Run. ]
.
Her discourse ending
and our morose Chairman
.
not advancing one cold word
towards asswaging
the anger and grief of her speech
and demeanor manifested under her oppression,
nor taking any notice of all she had said,
neither considering that we (then) were in our great exigency,
supplicants to her for a favor of the same kind
as the former,
for which we did not deny
the having been so ingrate
.
.
2nd Time Question asked:
How Many Indians will the Queen lend?
he rudely pushed againe the same question
‘ ‘ what Indians will you now contribute &c ?
.
of this disregard
she signified her resentment
by a distainful aspect,
and turning her head half aside,
sat mute
.
.
3rd Time Question asked:
How Many Indians will the Queen lend?
till that same question
being press’ t a third time,
she not turning her face to the board,
answered with a low slighting voice
in her own language
.
“six,
Only Six?
Only Six, the House of Burgesses thought?
but being further importun’d
she sitting a little while sullen,
without uttering a word between said,
.
twelve,
tho she then had
a hundred and fifty Indian men, in the town,
and so she rose up
and gravely walked away,
as not pleased with her treatment.
.
.
.
.
The Susquehannocks
Truman did not wait for Washington and on Sunday, September 25 or 26, he arrived at the Susquehannock Fort and asked for a parley.
The Susquehannocks were accused of the murders on both sides of the Potomac but they denied them and accused the Senecas.
The next morning the Virginians arrived and there was another parley.
This time the Susquehannocks brought with them a silver medal on a black and gold ribbon that a Maryland governor had given them as a pledge of eternal friendship.
There is a great deal of conflicting testimony as to what happened.
Apparently Truman ordered the great men of the Susquehannocks bound and murdered and Washington did nothing to prevent it.
The siege of the fort began immediately. The Susquehannocks had only about a hundred fighting men but all accounts agree that they put up a magnificent resistance.
The siege lasted for six weeks,
the Colonists lost between fifty and a hundred men and the fort was never taken.
During the siege the Susquehannocks made frequent sallies and captured some of the colonists' horses to replenish their food supply.
At the end of the six weeks the Susquehannocks escaped through the colonists' lines with their women and children and crossed over into Virginia. They raided the heads (falls) of the Rappahannock and York rivers, killing as they went. When they came to the head of the James they killed Bacon's overseer. This led direcly to Bacon's Rebellion.
The Map?
Bacon's Rebellion was primarily a rebellion against an indolent and inept royal governor but it was also a rebellion against the Crown and in 1677 there was a Royal Commission of Investigation.
In 1910 Professor Wertenbaker found a map of the Susquehannock Fort (Fig. 1) in the British Public Record Office. This map was probably made for the investigation and many of the accounts of the siege were written for the same purpose.
Source:
MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE PUBLISHED
UNDER THE AUTHORITY
OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
VOLUME XXXVI BALTIMORE 1941
Page 3
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Notes:
Thomas Jefferson was governor during the Rev War when James Wood, the son of the founder of Winchester, took Hessian and British prisoners, interred in Charlottesville, on a long hike to Fort Loudoun and Round Hill in Winchester VA.
.
.
Bacon's Rebellion story
.
Nathaniel Bacon dies at Gloucester Hall
Historical sign to be dedicated in Gloucester
OCT 15, 2012 AT 12:13 PM
Source:
A state historical marker commemorating a 17th-century manor house called Gloucester Hall will be dedicated on Oct. 27.
The sign will be located near the intersection of Route 17 and Bacons Fort Road, about 7 1/2 miles north of Gloucester Court House.
Gloucester Hall was built around the 1660s by Col. John Pate on a 2,100-acre plantation, said a Department of Historic Resources spokesman. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, who led a rebellion of frontiersman and planters against colonial authorities, died at Gloucester Hall of a fatal illness that brought the uprising to an end.
The whereabouts of Bacon's remains endures as a mystery.
Gloucester Hall served in 1684 as the first Virginia residence of Royal Governor Francis Howard, baron Howard of Effingham, whose wife, Lady Philadelphia Pelham Howard, died there in 1685.
Advertisement
00:0002:46
Keynote remarks during the ceremony will be provided by Warren M. Billings, a visiting professor at the College of William & Mary. Other speakers include Gloucester archaeologists David Brown and Thane Harpole, co-directors of The Fairfield Foundation; A.J. Pate, sponsor of the marker; the Rev. Theodore H. McConnell, interim rector of Ware Episcopal Church in Gloucester, and a representative of the Department of Historic Resources.
Here is the text of the marker:
Gloucester Hall
Near here stood Gloucester Hall (built ca. 1660s), where Bacon's Rebellion effectively ended with the fatal illness of its leader, Nathaniel Bacon, in 1676. In 1684, this house served as the first Virginia residence of Royal Governor Francis Howard, baron Howard of Effingham, whose wife, Lady Philadelphia Pelham Howard, died there in 1685. Col. John Pate, a member of the Council of State, built the house on his 2,100-acre plantation, including 1,141 acres that his uncle Richard Pate had patented in 1650. Col. Thomas Pate inherited the plantation in 1672. Both Richard Pate and Col. Thomas Pate represented Gloucester County in the House of Burgesses.
.
Source:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
