A Day at the Powhatan Indian Uprising, 1622
The Time Travel Series
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On the morning of March 22, 1622—Good Friday—the Powhatan Confederacy, under the leadership of Opechancanough, launched a coordinated assault on English settlements stretched along the James River in Virginia.
The attack exploited years of fragile peace following the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe, during which English colonists had grown complacent, living in dispersed plantations without adequate fortifications. That morning, Powhatan warriors arrived at settlements as they often did—to trade, to share meals, to work alongside the English. Thomas Ashby, a twenty-three-year-old indentured servant from Gloucestershire, begins his day. Thin from periodic famine, weathered beyond his years, Thomas bears the rough hands of a tobacco field laborer and the gaunt, angular face of a man who has buried too many companions to fever and flux in his two years in the colony.
March 22, 1622 — 5:47 AM — Wolstenholme Towne, Martin’s Hundred
Thomas wakes on a straw pallet in the communal laborers’ quarters, a wattle-and-daub structure with a packed earth floor. The predawn cold seeps through gaps in the daubing. Other servants stir around him. Outside, a rooster crows. The air smells of damp wool, unwashed bodies, and the lingering smoke of last night’s fire. He scratches at a flea bite on his wrist and swings his legs to the floor.
March 22, 1622 — 6:34 AM — The Common Well, Martin’s Hundred
Thomas hauls water from the settlement’s well, his leather bucket heavy on the frayed rope. Frost glitters on the mud. He wears his brown woolen doublet now, patched at the elbows, over his stained linen shirt. Several Powhatan men walk past toward Master Boys’ house, carrying baskets—a common sight, as they often come to trade venison and corn. Thomas nods to one he recognizes. The Indian does not meet his eyes.
March 22, 1622 — 7:52 AM — Master William Harwood’s Plantation House
Thomas eats a meager breakfast of boiled corn mush outside the main house with three other servants. Master Collins has invited two Powhatan visitors to eat, as is custom. Thomas can see them seated at a small table with the family. The sounds of a normal morning: children’s voices, the clatter of wooden spoons, a dog barking in the distance. Thomas scrapes his bowl clean. He does not know these are the last peaceful minutes of his life.
March 22, 1622 — 8:11 AM — Master Harwood’s Plantation
