“The Battle of Weyanoke Creek”

A Story of the Third Anglo-Powhatan War in Early Carolina

Lars C. Adams

In early spring 1708, before the swampland foliage returned from the
winter, five men appointed by the Virginian government travelled by
boat down the Nansemond River. They had official orders to interview
certain people familiar with the boundary area between Virginia and
North Carolina. Given enough testimony they might amass evidence to
prove that the true boundary line of Virginia lay twenty miles farther
south than North Carolina claimed. Out of the boats, they mucked their
way through the marshes and bogs to their destination at Corapeak at
the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp. They had heard of an old swamp
rat who had been among the first Virginians to see the Carolinian wil-
derness in a military expedition very long ago. They finally reached the
ancient hermit’s shack, and were ushered inside. An eighty-six-year-
old Henry Plumpton offered his guests what hospitality he could, and
sat them beside the hearth. The logs crackled in the fireplace and quills
scratched at the parchment as Henry, to the appreciation of future his-
torians, began his story: “After the Right Honble Sr Wm Barkley [Berke-
ley] was made Governor of Virginia . . . [I] was among divers others at
sevll times sent out against the Southern Indians.”1
The Third Anglo-Powhatan War has been treated by only a few his-
torians, and none of them in particularly great detail. The war had a
much greater impact on the surrounding region than the previous two
Powhatan wars. The scholarship in general states that the war was the
Powhatan’s last desperate attempt to rid the land of the English. When
they failed they were subject to counterattack for two years, resulting
in the breakup of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom and the decima-
tion of their military capabilities.2 Another school of thought proposes

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that instead of trying to eliminate the Virginia colony, the Powhatans
were making an attempt to correct the behavior of the English, who had
overstepped their bounds both territorially and culturally.3
As for the Virginia expeditions to Carolina discussed in this article,
even less has been previously studied, although some note has been tak-
en. Samuel Ashe was the first to note them in his 1908 history of North
Carolina, although the expeditions are not put into the context of the
Powhatan War. They are assumed to have been against the Carolina Al-
gonquian people of the Albemarle Sound, whom Virginia militia en-
gaged in battle at Weyanoke Creek. Historians usually depict the vic-
tory at the Battle of Weyanoke Creek as having opened the doorway
for future settlement. This paradigm is based on the narrative by Hen-
ry Plumpton, but not on surviving Virginian court records, to which
Ashe did not have access. In 1985 Martha McCartney mentioned that
expeditions were planned against the Choanoac, and possibly Secotan,
which was followed by at least one historian.4 In 1990 Helen Rountree
increased our understanding of the Third Anglo-Powhatan War and
briefly commented on the Carolina expeditions submitting that a sin-
gle expedition was presumably against the Weyanokes, her supporting
documentation being Virginian court records, but not Henry Plump-
ton’s account.5 In 2002, Rountree wrote an essay that expanded her view
of the results of the expedition, correctly asserting that it was an attempt
to secure the Albemarle region as territory for Virginia, although still
giving no detail on the military action itself.6 Several other authors have
made brief reference to the battle using Samuel Ashe’s perspective; how-
ever, the detailing of long-term effects of the expeditions for either the
Powhatan or the English have not yet been established.7
Given that these expeditions have been little elaborated on and that
a detailed study on the Third Anglo-Powhatan War has not been forth-
coming (although much has been said of previous conflicts), this article
attempts to answer a general question: What exactly happened on these
expeditions and what were their long term effects for both the English
colonists and the Powhatan paramountcy?8 It will be argued here that
there were in fact two expeditions to Carolina in 1645, not one, and they
were against the Weyanokes—as Rountree pointed out—not the Caro-
lina Algonquians. Since Rountree’s remarks regarding them have been
brief, a more detailed description of the military action is herein giv-
en. They were not merely incidental, but critical to understanding fu-

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 ture events in Powhatan, Virginian, and North Carolinian history. They
represent the first time that common Virginians saw the Carolina fron-
tier and met its Native people, heavily influencing their later decision to
immigrate there. These expeditions also affected the terms of the treaty
of 1646, in which Virginia laid claim to the Albemarle region. Addition-
ally, the location of the battle would later become a point of extreme
contention between Virginia and Carolina during their border dispute.
These results themselves became critical factors influencing many other
aspects of both states’ history, and can be traced back to their origins
at Virginia’s assault against the Weyanokes in 1645 and the Weyanokes’
subsequent emigration south. Within the Powhatan paramount chief-
dom itself, the Weyanokes’ departure from the paramountcy under-
mined the entire polity, and was the first tangible indicator of the break-
up of Opechancanough’s control of the James River chiefdoms.
To demonstrate this I examine two sets of documents—Henry
Plumpton’s narrative and Lower Norfolk County court minutes in their
totality, as well as Native testimony recorded in the early eighteenth
century—to form a more detailed analysis of events than previously un-
dertaken. I hope to provide a needed contribution to the understanding
of the Third Anglo-Powhatan War. The wide-reaching effects of these
expeditions will then be demonstrated with various records and previ-
ous scholarship on early Carolina to show continuity between the sol-
diers of the Battle of Weyanoke Creek and the original settlers of the re-
gion as well as the later border dispute.9

Southern Algonquian History in Brief

In the early seventeenth century, the Native people of eastern Virgin-
ia and northeastern Carolina were many related chiefdoms who spoke
a common Algonquian language, although the two groups were sepa-
rated by the Great Dismal Swamp and appear largely to have been in
competition with each other by the historic period. They arrived in the
area in 200 ce at the latest—well over a thousand years prior to the
English—and with the gradually increasing dependence on cultigens
such as maize, squash, and beans, semi-permanent town sites appeared
at about 1300 ce.10
The Powhatans lived in a corridor to the east of the Appalachians
in which many trade and emigration routes reached from the south to

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the north and vice versa. This was a paramount chiefdom comprising
over thirty smaller chiefdoms that paid tribute originally to Wahunse-
naca, known as Powhatan to the colonists in the Chesapeake Bay region
of Virginia. In between distinct cultural areas, the Powhatans became
a cultural mixture of their Algonquian neighbors to the north and the
vast Mississippian world to the south. Although certain things charac-
teristic of a Mississippian society were absent from the Powhatan, such
as a centralized mound at the capital town, they did exact tribute from
subject simple chiefdoms and maintained hereditary leadership and
priestly classes in a highly stratified society. Likewise, Algonquian cul-
tural traits are observable in many religious and social customs of the
Powhatans as well, showing them to be a mixture of both worlds.11
Contact with Europeans came first to the Powhatans in Tsenaco-
moco (Virginia), when they encountered an attempt at a Spanish mis-
sion in the 1570s, which they destroyed.12 Jamestown was founded in
1607, and an increase in hostilities led to the first Anglo-Powhatan War
of 1610–1613. The Powhatans nearly decimated the English, destroying
their outlying settlements and laying siege to Jamestown, but with fresh
reinforcements the English were eventually victorious, expanding into
the defeated people’s territories as they received more settlers.13 This ex-
pansion came to a head in 1622, when the Powhatans were finding game
less plentiful and had experienced a severe epidemic.
Under chief Opechancanough, a massive assault was carried out on
March 22, 1622, killing about 330 colonists, a full 25 percent of the Eng-
lish population, perhaps more. The war that followed lasted a decade,
leaving the Powhatans battered and weakened.14 The colonial expansion
continued unabated and in fact gained momentum. Beginning in the
1630s at the close of the war, the beaver trade began among the Powhat-
ans and continued for two decades. During this time a new generation
of Powhatan young people grew up with trade items as a commonplace
thing, whereas to the previous generation such things were reserved
for the elite. This would serve to undermine the stratified leadership in
times to come.15
One last effort to expel the English occurred April 18, 1644, when the
remaining Powhatan chiefdoms killed over four hundred colonists. The
blow was not as severe as the previous one, however, because of a mas-
sive increase in the colony’s population. The English response through-
out that summer dealt the Powhatans a crippling blow. The Third
Anglo-Powhatan War had begun.16

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 The Third Anglo-Powhatan War
Records from the 1640s are very sparse, but what can be reconstructed
shows that even though Opechancanough was very aged, to the point
of being an invalid, he maintained control of the lesser chiefdoms to
such an extent that long-term planning and communication was pos-
sible. Opechancanough no doubt learned from the last similar attempt
that the April 18 attack was unlikely to dislodge the English, so it is dif-
ficult to ascertain his motives. It could be that because of Britain’s civil
war, he perceived weakness, and knowing that he was to die soon, he
would get no other chance—or as the anthropologist Frederick Gleach
suggests, he was attempting to discipline and correct the English who
had overstepped their physical and cultural bounds.17 As for the rest of
the Powhatans, it was a new generation of warriors since the last attack,
and perhaps they were eager for their own chance for martial glory and
to vent their anger on the English.
Unfortunately for the Powhatans, the English were swift in getting
back onto a war footing. A strategy of divide and conquer was estab-
lished, as it was later written, “it was by him [Governor William Berke-
ley] and the government thought the safest way setting all the lesser
nations at Liberty from that obedience they paid to the house of Pa-
munkey [Opechancanough’s people] to keep them divided and indeed
the effect may be more advantageous to us for they like to war with
each other and destroy themselves more that we can do it.”18 Retalia-
tion accordingly took the form of both foot marches and amphibious
assaults on Powhatan towns, done by county militias charged with at-
tacking whichever Indians inhabited their locality. The Pamunkeys and
Chickahominies were attacked first, followed by most chiefdoms along
the James River: the Nansemond, the Powhatan proper, the Appama-
tuck, and Weyanoke.19
Little is recorded to detail these attacks, but the militias likely burned
the houses and crops, dealing a deadly blow. The Weyanokes must
have experienced great loss, so much so that they faced the question
of whether it was worth it to remain any longer on the James River. If
they remained they would no doubt experience more crop loss, more
attacks, and more death. Of course to leave meant to undermine the au-
thority of the Opechancanough and potentially face his response. The
Weyanokes, probably under the leadership of the weroance Ascomowet,

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made the precedent-setting decision to break away from the Powhat-
an paramountcy altogether and relocate south, in what is today called
North Carolina. According to an interview with the Nansemond wero-
ance Great Peter decades later, “After the Appachanckanouk massacre
they went to settle at Towaywink upon the Roanoke River. The Tusca-
roras who possessed the lands demanded upon what they came there
for, the Wyanoke answering that they wanted a place to settle upon, the
Tuscarora sold them all ye land from thence to ye mouth of Moratuch
[Roanoke River] and up Chowan to Meherrin River, together with all
the beasts upon the land and the fish in ye water.”20
Opechancanough clearly understood the significance of the Weya-
nokes’ defection. They were not just a periphery group marginally in
his rule. They were part of his core, one of the firsts to come under con-
trol of the chiefdom under Wahunsenaca.21 If they could leave the Pow-
hatans, then any number of others could do the same, and his control
would come to an end—along with the rest of the paramount chief-
dom. He sent a strong force of eighty warriors in response. Possibly this
force comprised Nansemond warriors, who were the most powerful
chiefdom in the Weyanokes’ proximity; otherwise they may have been
Pamunkey.22 These “fourscore men [went] to look [for] them & bring
[them] back,” but the Weyanokes seem to have been prepared for such
a response, and “all which Indians the Eynokes killed and fled Lower
down Roanoke,” to an uninhabited portion of land on the west side of
the Chowan River, thereafter known to Virginia as Weyanoke Creek
(the Carolinian colonists would later call this creek Wiccacon, caus-
ing a well-documented border dispute).23 The Weyanokes were now es-
tranged from all their former allies and had a host of new neighbors to
reckon with (the Choanoacs, Meherrins, Nottoways, and Tuscaroras),
but perhaps they were consoled by the thought that at least there were
not any English there.
Thus, the first year of warfare went well for the Virginians. The Eng-
lish clearly had the upper hand and the first indications of the disso-
lution of the Powhatans were becoming evident with the departure of
the Weyanokes. After the first winter was over the associated counties
south of the James River (Upper and Lower Norfolk, with Isle of Wight
counties) met together in a “Court of Warre holden [held] at the howse
of Richard Bennett Esq: the 12 Mar” of 1645. Bennett himself was an
up-and-coming colonial official who would later be promoted to ma-

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 jor general and governor of the colony. Minutes of this meeting either
were not kept or were lost, but by examination of later references from
court orders an outline of the proceedings can be reconstructed. Those
attending the meeting decided that scouts were to be frequently de-
ployed for the defense of the settlements, indicating they felt there was
still a perceived threat from the Indians. Accordingly, “all persons what-
soever being inhabitants of this County for theire safeguard and defence
upon the salvages [savages] according the number of people in theire
severall famylyes were proporconably allotted to sett [out] and mayn-
taine men in manner of a scout.”24 These scouts were to be equipped and
financially supported by planters selected by Bennett’s war captains. The
soldiers seem to have been conscripts, but were nonetheless paid for
their services by those planters selected to support them. These scouts
were chiefly poor farmers, servants, and laborers.25 They were supplied
with “provisions of powder and shott and other necessarryes,” such as
“cheese” and “tob [tobacco, used as currency] or corne.”26
A critical issue facing the meeting seems to be the Weyanokes who
had migrated south of the Great Dismal Swamp, an effective barrier be-
tween Virginia and land not settled since the Roanoke colony over fifty
years earlier. Precisely why they took such an interest in the Weyanokes
is not explained. The Weyanokes had already been retaliated against
and had retreated to the unknown wilderness. Nevertheless plans were
drawn up to find and assault them, wherever they may be. Revenge
does not appear to be the motivation; retaliation for the April 18 attack
had already been carried out, and the expedition would be financially
quite costly. The Virginians may have understood that they would be
in a more advantageous position by attacking them. If the Weyanokes
used the southern land as a base to launch raids against the English—or,
worse yet, if they forged an alliance with the Carolina Algonquians—the
English could face a major roadblock to a successful outcome to the war
or future settlement of Carolina, which the Virginia government had
been contemplating for almost twenty years.
As reported by an exploratory party twenty years prior, the land was
prime for settlement and the local Natives were friendly.27 More intel-
ligence seems to have been needed before making a decision regard-
ing future military action to the south lands. Thus “it was ordered . . .
that everyone that setts out a man for the Southward March [a scouting
expedition] should paye & sattisfye unto him that went worke for his

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paynes equally and proporconably during the tyme of his absence from
home upon the said service.”28 Although the target of the Weyanokes
was not specifically mentioned, and veterans of the two expeditions lat-
er said simply that they marched “against the southern Indians”—it was
certainly the Weyanokes, as the events of the expeditions show.29

First Expedition—Scout by Land

Almost no detail is given for this first expedition, but because it was fi-
nancially backed in the same way as scouts were (the second expedition,
a full assault, was handled as a general levy), it can be established that
this was a scout and not a large troop movement. Likely this expedition
was for reconnaissance purposes to ascertain the location of the Weya-
nokes and their relationship to the surrounding Indians. Other scouts
ranged in size from fifteen to forty men, so it is reasonable to assume
that about twenty or thirty men made up this detachment.30
Once organized that spring, the detachment departed for the south-
ern wilderness “by land under the Command of Major Genll Bennett.”31
The fact that Bennett himself headed the scout clearly shows the interest
he took in the southern land. Later court cases involving two members
of the expedition detail that they departed overland on a “Southward
March” to the eastern side of the Chowan River, continuing south until
they reached the Yeopim River and presumably some of the Algonquian
peoples in the area. They returned to Virginia after taking enough time
to gather ample intelligence about the Weyanokes and this new south-
ern land, the scout taking just over a month to complete.32
Thomas Ward, surgeon on the march, later stated specifically that
they “serve[d] in an expedition against the Indians to Yawopyin als
Rawanoake as Chirurgeon [surgeon] to the whole company and did
divers Cures upon severall men in the said service.”33 This is significant
because this is the first recorded reference to the Yeopim River, at which
place lived the Yeopim Indians. Other records of that river are not men-
tioned until the 1657 Comberford Map.34 One can therefore reasonably
infer that the detachment learned the name of the river from the indig-
enous people, therefore interacting with them in some capacity. Quite
probably they gained information regarding the Weyanokes and their
location.
There is no record that indicates that there was any violence on this

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 first expedition. For example, a financial statement of the second expe-
dition shows expenses accrued for a wounded man, but no such record
exists for the first march.35 Also, Henry Plumpton, a member of both ex-
peditions, later gave a short narrative of his experiences. He only briefly
mentioned the scout, giving no detail, but he expounded on the second
since a battle was fought and a man was killed. Finally, a Bass family re-
cord written decades later shows that “Edward Basse sonne of Nathll
and Mary Basse  .  .  . took in marriage one virtuous Indian maydn by
the Christian name Mary Tucker and went to live amongst the Show-
anocs [Algonquians on the Chowan River, near the Yeopim] in Carolina
in 1644 ad” (fig. 1).36 Edward, a resident of Upper Norfolk, might have
been a member of this expedition; nevertheless, this marriage shows a
friendly relationship to the Natives of Carolina during this time period.
The presumed target of the “Southward March,” the Weyanokes,
turned out to be at Wiccacon Creek on the other side of the Chowan
River, which is extremely broad, and there was no way for the scout to
get to them in any case. Thus, with Ward’s statement, the explanation
that best fits the known facts is that they met with the local Natives (the
Choanoacs and Yeopims), learned that they were not allied to the Weya-
nokes and learned their location. They left the Carolina Algonquians,
apparently as friends, and returned to Virginia to plan the next assault
against the Weyanokes.37

Voyage by Sea
The intelligence that the detachment brought back must have been well
received in Jamestown. There existed no alliance between the Weya-
nokes and the other southern Indians. In fact, the Choanoacs and
Yeopims may have been eager to join forces to eliminate the Weyanokes
who had encroached on their territory. It is unlikely at that point that
the Virginians perceived the Weyanokes as a threat since firsthand in-
telligence had finally been gathered, yet plans for a further assault
continued.
The motives for this assault are difficult to discern at first glance, but
evidence indicates that it may have been a way for Virginia to extend its
southern boundary. It is clear from the treaty between Virginia and the
Powhatans at the end of the war—in which Virginia specified a claim
to Yeopim Creek—that the English had a keen interest in the south-

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Fig. 1. Bass family prayer book record. This record shows one Edward Basse having gone
into Carolina in 1644, and obtained a Choanoac wife named Mary Tucker. This almost
certainly occurred during the 1645 expeditions. Courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

ern lands and took the opportunity to extend their borders. As stated
by Helen Rountree, “[I]t is plain that the English had investigated and
were now staking a claim to some of the land south of the James Riv-
er drainage.”38 It may be said, therefore, that Virginia wanted to estab-
lish itself militarily in the Carolina region as an inroad to settlement.
Earlier reports and now firsthand experience attested to the quality of

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 the land in the south, and a growing colonial population would soon
need a new frontier to settle. This could not be done easily, however, if a
hostile Indian group blocked the way of progress, and so—in the effort
of removing this obstacle and staking a claim on the land—the Virgin-
ians planned their next assault on the Weyanokes. As in an assault car-
ried out against the Pamunkeys the previous summer, an amphibious
assault was favored, which could make for a clean entry and exit if skill-
fully handled. It also afforded an opportunity for further exploration.
Accordingly, eight riverboats were hired and fitted for the transport of
troops. The voyage was provisioned with plenty of powder and shot,
cheese, and other necessities. The supply requisitions mention no sta-
ples such as corn; it could be that the soldiers were expected to provide
their own. Finally, a force of eighty soldiers—a larger number of troops
than in the previous summer’s assault against the Chickahominy, mak-
ing this the second largest expedition of the entire war—were “hired”
(probably conscripted) into service, and launched their assault “by Wa-
ter under [the command of] Coll Dew.”39
So it was that the voyage departed the James River in early to mid-
summer 1645.40 The eight riverboats would have carried about ten sol-
diers each, along with provisions. The sheer distance to carry out the
attack was quite probably the longest range assault ever carried out
against any Indian group, including the Powhatans. About two hun-
dred miles were rowed battling the Atlantic waves and often the cur-
rent in this extraordinary action. Master boatmanship was required to
navigate into the Chesapeake Bay and out to the sea, hugging the coast
until “they had entered Corrotuck [inlet],” the entrance to what would
become North Carolina. They proceeded into the rear of the Outer
Banks until entering the Albemarle Sound, then called the Roanoke or
just “the Sound.” This was the first known time since the Roanoke col-
ony that English watercraft navigated the area. The entire voyage would
have taken some time; ten to fourteen days were needed to complete
their journey. As such they would have stopped to make camp at night
along the northern bank of the sound—probably in contact with the Po-
teskeet, Pasquotank, and Yeopim Indians who lived there. Not all went
well; it is noted that at one point a boat was cast away and the goods
lost with an unknown number of casualties, reducing the fleet to sev-
en boats. This may have happened during the tricky entrance to Cur-
rituck Inlet, or perhaps later during the battle. At another point a man

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was bitten by a venomous snake, although surgeon Christopher Ackely
was able to treat him successfully.41 Finally the boats “proceeded up the
Sound to [the] Chowan [River],” where the last twenty miles of the jour-
ney were made.42
Historian Samuel Ashe suggested that these expeditions were against
the Carolina Algonquians, the defeat of whom allowed for future settle-
ment. This view, sometimes still cited, is taken without the context of
the Third Anglo-Powhatan War. When put in the proper context, the
true target of the Weyanokes is much more obvious, as Helen Rountree
noted. Looking at Henry Plumpton’s narrative, he specifically names
their target and the place of their battle as Weyanoke Creek (known
today as the Wiccacon), stating that they went “as far as the mouth of
Weyanook Creek where they had a fight with the Indians and had a
man killed by them.”43 Rivers of this time are well known to be named
after whichever Indian group lived there. This is approximately the site
of the Choanoacs’ previous principal town, so the Weyanokes were in
all likelihood occupying the Choanoacs’ former town site. This is also
confirmed by the testimony of some Meherrin Indians interviewed dur-
ing the later border dispute, when they drew a detailed diagram of the
Weyanoke town and cornfields at Wiccacon in the dirt.44
The Virginians went up the Wiccacon Creek to “the Fork of the
Creek where the Weyanoake Town stood.”45 There was no official bat-
tle report, except for the few comments that Henry Plumpton made
about it. In truth it seems to have been a sharp skirmish, from which the
Virginians sustained several casualties. At least one man was killed on
the spot, and another critically wounded. There may have been others
wounded as well, but none that required enough prolonged medical at-
tention to accrue significant cost. The Weyanokes were at least partially
armed with English weapons, but they were outnumbered.46 They were
noted as having one hundred warriors at the first arrival of the English
in 1607, but in the face of much war and disease since then, they were
far reduced and no match for the eighty well-armed soldiers.47
Plumpton indicates that they buried the man who was killed at the
site of the battle, so it is probable that the English were victorious, tak-
ing the field. In keeping to English tactics, they probably burned the
Weyanoke houses and destroyed any crops, but nothing is specifically
noted about this. Because they had critically wounded men, they could
not tarry at the site, and returned with haste to James River in the same

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 way that they entered, where the wounded soldier and snakebitten man
made a recovery. Thus concluded military operations in the region of
Carolina during the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (fig. 2).
One more year of warfare passed before victory was claimed by the
English, although it was apparent nearly from the start that the Eng-
lish had the upper hand. Throughout the rest of 1645 and 1646 Virginia
raids continued on the various groups of Powhatans, who were broken
apart in their organization from the hostilities. The English offensive
was very effective and the Powhatans were described as being “so routed
and dispersed that they are no longer a nation, and we now suffer only
from robbery by a few starved outlaws.”48 Opechancanough lost his grip
on the various chiefdoms and his town was eventually stormed by Sir
William Berkeley; he was captured and imprisoned in Jamestown, and
shortly thereafter killed in prison by a soldier. He died, it is said, aged
over a hundred years and crippled. With him died the Powhatan par-
amount chiefdom.49 The lesser chiefdoms were briefly under the lead-
ership of Necatowance, Opechancanough’s successor, but within a few
years the various groups acted predominately as individually small poli-
ties as the English purposely set them “at Liberty from that obedience
they paid to the house of Pamunkey.”50 A treaty made with Necotow-
ance at the end of the war shows English interest in Carolina, in which
they staked a claim:

Art. 5. And it is further enacted that neither for the said Necatow-
ance nor any of his people, do frequent, come in to hunt, or make
any abode nearer the English plantations that the limits of Yapin
[Yeopim, italics added], the Blackwater, and from the head of the
Blackwater upon a straight line to the old Monacan town, upon
such pain and penalty as aforesaid [death].51

The English, as stated, appear to have carried the day against the
Weyanokes, after which the Weyanokes retreated farther south to the
Tuscaroras. An interview with an old Nottoway Indian named Thomas
Green decades later recalled that the Weyanokes retreated afterward be-
cause “the English [were] following them [so] they Removed to Roa-
noke River to a place called . . . Towaywink,” where they lived for three
years.52
The underclass settlers of southern Virginia did not forget their expe-
riences there. Henry Plumpton, along “with Thomas Tuke of the Isle of

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Fig. 2. Virginia expeditions against the Weyanokes in 1645. Native towns along the
Chowan River are taken from the 1657 Comberford Map (reprinted in “The Earliest
Settlement in Carolina: Nathaniel Batts and the Comberford Map,” American Historical
Review 45 [October 1939]: 82–89). Other town locations are approximations from later
records.

Wight County and severall others” who had been a part of the expedi-
tions, (or were inspired by those who were), returned to Weyanoke, this
time coming in peace:

About two years after a peace being concluded with the Indi-
ans . . . [they] made a purchase from the Indians of all the Land
from the mouth of the Morratuck River [Roanoke] to the mouth
of Weyanook Creek [Wiccacon] aforesaid which the Indians then

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 shewed them, Which the deponent knew to be the same place
where the man above mentioned was Killed and lyes.53

The Weyanokes, who originally lived there by permission of the Tus-

caroras, sold the land, the purchase price being unknown. They seem to
have honored the transaction, for in 1649—about the same time as the
abovementioned purchase—they moved north. Their weroance, Asco-
mowet, was among other Powhatan weroances to be granted land tracts
for their people; the Weyanokes being on the south side of the James
River in Virginia. They seem to have abandoned or sold this land short-
ly thereafter, however, and removed away from English settlements into
Carolina yet again.54

Weyanoke and Carolina

Algonquian Postwar Behavior
It might be said that the lack of description of Natives involved in the two
expeditions still leaves open the possibility that Virginia troops attacked
the Carolina Algonquians, and that any information garnered from them
about the Weyanokes may have been given under duress. However, not-
withstanding the statement from the Nottoway Thomas Green confirm-
ing English harassment, behavior of both the Weyanokes and the Caro-
lina Algonquians after the war belies this argument. As it stands there is
nothing in the long- or short-term behavior of both Indian groups in the
following decade that would indicate that the Carolina Algonquians had
recently received bad treatment from Virginia and every reason to believe
that the Weyanokes had a rocky relationship with them.
In 1650, just five years following the expeditions, Edward Bland de-
parted Virginia on an exploratory expedition into the wilderness of
Carolina. His mission was to establish contact with the Tuscaroras for
trade purposes and to contact several English rumored to be living
among them. Throughout the entire expedition he reported that the
Weyanokes attempted to foil the expedition by sending out emissaries
to all the surrounding Indians with news that the English were coming
to kill them and cheat them in trade. Weyanoke spies were constant-
ly watching them so that they slept in shifts, watching in the dark for
signs of trouble. This is obviously not the behavior of those who have
had friendly relationships with the English.55

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 He also recorded information demonstrating that some of the Car-
olina Algonquians were in enmity with the Powhatan people (which
would have included the Weyanokes), suggesting that the Carolina Al-
gonquians had some common ground with Virginia. In addition, the
Carolina Algonquian mindset at this time is exemplified in a letter
from colonial official Francis Yeardley. He writes that in 1653 a Euro-
pean trader found himself on Roanoke Island near the mouth of Albe-
marle Sound. Once there he met a local chief and arranged a friendly
series of meetings between the Indians and Francis Yeardley in Virgin-
ia. Yeardley’s letter is very enthusiastic about settlement possibilities in
Carolina. Likely he was influenced at the outset by positive reports from
Colonel Dewe and Richard Bennett, who had been on the expeditions
eight years earlier. Massive delegations on the part of the Carolina Al-
gonquians (in the form of the weroances of all the Algonquian towns,
and even some Tuscaroras) traveled north to Virginia to meet at Yeard-
ley’s house to forge an alliance. The Roanoke weroance even wished his
son to be brought up a Christian and be taught to read and write. Yeard-
ley dispatched craftsman to Carolina to build the weroance an English-
style house equipped with English goods, and at the end of the letter
expressed his hope in future settlement of the region and good relations
with the people. Clearly the Algonquians of Carolina had, at that point,
a friendly mindset toward the English. This behavior would be difficult
to explain if they had suffered a series of attacks without warning less
than ten years previous.56
All would not be well forever. Yeardley’s hopes of settlement were re-
alized, but relationships with the Indian people eventually deteriorated.
In 1676 the Chowan River War broke out as the Choanoacs struck at
passing travelers in response to violence during Bacon’s Rebellion. The
counterattack by the English cleared all Choanoacs along the Chowan
River, confining them to a reservation, where a remnant persisted until
the early 1800s.57 The small groups that formerly made up the Weap-
emeoc communities were the most inundated by English settlement. A
lack of records makes their fate unclear past the 1740s. Those south of
the Albemarle Sound also entered into war with the English during the
Tuscarora War, when they joined their Iroquoian neighbors in battle.
Even when the Tuscaroras surrendered in 1713, the Algonquians con-
tinued their war until 1715, when the colony sued for peace. Like the
Choanoacs, they were given a reservation until it was sold in the 1760s,

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 although descendants of the Choanoacs, Croatoans, and Mattamuskeet
people are known to live in the area to this day.58
The Weyanokes found little respite, and traveled from river to river,
never seeming to make friends among other Indians. Several times they
found themselves at war with their neighbors—namely the Tuscaroras,
Nottoways, and Nansemonds. Ironically they would often be forced to
seek refuge among English settlements. Eventually they became too few
in number to carry on independently, and the remnant was absorbed
by the Nottoway Indians, an Iroquoian-speaking people who persist in
southern Virginia.59 This story is similar to many of the Powhatan chief-
doms; as Thomas Ludwell noted in 1678, “I never thought it in the inter-
est of this Colony to hinder them from cutting each others throats so we
had no hand in it and its plain that upon the conquest of Apechancoe-
noe and the setting all the tributary nations to that house at Liberty they
have weakened themselves more by Intenstine Broyls than we could doe
by all the Warrs wee have had with them.”60 Despite this period of de-
cline, several groups of Powhatans, both on reservations and off, per-
sisted throughout the historical record and today are recognized by the
state of Virginia.

Conclusions
It would be easy to brush over these expeditions as insignificant, be-
ing that there were only a handful of English casualties and no appar-
ent strategic advantage was gained at first glance. However, besides the
fact that the expeditions influenced the terms of the 1646 treaty as pre-
viously noted, the precise location of this battle would come under great
scrutiny in later years during the border dispute between Carolina and
Virginia, significantly affecting state history. The real significance, how-
ever, resulted from those eighty conscripted soldiers. For the first time
since the founding of Jamestown, they had gazed on the Carolina land-
scape, and are truly the ones who benefited from these events. They are
the ones who would make history as a result. They were indentured ser-
vants, laborers, and poor farmers. As shown by a few individuals con-
nected to the expeditions, such as George Rutland, many carried debts
that were not easily repaid. It was these eighty soldiers that truly began
the colonial history of North Carolina, for it was they who would first
settle it.

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 It has been repeatedly shown that the first settlement of Carolina
was not a corporately backed colonial effort, but a trickling of settlers
from southern Virginia, particularly Nansemond County. The first set-
tlers were debtors, servants, and all in all the bottom rung of Virginian
society—exactly the same as the soldiers who participated in the “south-
ward march.” Virginia was very quickly becoming an imitation of Eng-
land, with a clearly stratified social order of gentry and servants, and no
way for those of the lower order to break the chain and better themselves.
When the eighty soldiers approached Weyanoke Creek, they not only saw
a new and beautiful land, they found the possibilities of a fresh start.61
The land was isolated from the reach of Virginia by the Dismal
Swamp to the north and the shoals of the Outer Banks in the east. To
the south the Albemarle Sound offered a barrier against any hostile In-
dians in that direction. The ground was fertile, the winters mild, and
game plentiful. Truly the first settlers of Carolina had found a place of
seclusion that favored their purposes, and it all started with those eighty
soldiers. After all, only three years had passed before “divers” former
soldiers returned to Carolina to purchase the land they saw. The first
definitely known resident, Nathaniel Batts, set up his trading post on
that very land that was purchased from the Weyanokes, just above the
Moratoc (Roanoke) River. The oldest deeds that survived show several
transactions conveying land from Chief Kilcocanen of the Yeopim peo-
ple, who lived on the river of the same name. It will be remembered
that the first scouting expedition traveled to this same river as stated by
Thomas Ward. Even if the members of that expedition did not directly
settle Carolina, they certainly brought back information about the land
to their friends, family, and fellow laborers, and it was only a decade
later that the underclass of southern Virginia began their descent into
Carolina.62 As historian Jonathan Barth recently stated, “the Proprietors
increasingly shifted their attention to the South Carolina Lowcountry
and its lucrative rice staple, leaving a vacuum of power in the Albemarle
region of North Carolina and attracting ‘undesirables’ from Virginia, in-
cluding runaway slaves, former indentured servants, religious dissent-
ers, and debtors.” He went on to say that “the original inhabitants from
the previous decade [1650s] reacted bitterly to government interference,
detesting the aristocracy that many of them had intentionally left be-
hind in Virginia.” This is a view agreed upon by virtually all scholars on
the region, and now it can be said that the first time such a class of peo-

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 ple from Virginia viewed what would become Albemarle was during the
Third Anglo-Powhatan War in 1645.63
The entire reason the narrative of Henry Plumpton is available is be-
cause of the scrupulous investigating of Virginian authorities concern-
ing the true location of Weyanoke Creek after a failed attempt at survey-
ing a boundary in 1710. Prior to a surveying team’s running a final line
in the upper waters of the Chowan and settling the matter, the agree-
ment based on the 1665 charter was that the border between Virginia
and Carolina would be from “the north end of Currituck river or in-
let, upon a straight westerly line to Wyonoak creek.”64 The trouble was
that multiple rivers bore that name, since the Weyanokes had moved
from place to place, leaving their name at several locations. The Virgin-
ians, of course, viewed the southernmost river, today’s Wiccacon Creek
(the battle site), as the true location, whereas the Carolinians viewed
it as where the Weyanokes settled later on at the time the charter was
written, at present-day Nottoway River. Plumpton was among sever-
al “old timers” interviewed to give testimony to Virginia’s perspective.
This borderland became a no man’s land where various “undesirables”
from English society came to live. Abused Native groups such as the
Meherrin, Nansemond, and Nottoway sought refuge there as well. This
border dispute became extremely heated for decades, and was a major
factor in the enmity between the two colonies throughout the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries. The dispute was finally resolved with a
new survey in 1728 that favored North Carolina’s argument for the Not-
toway River.65
In short, the expeditions into Carolina may, at first glance, seem tri-
fling affairs in the context of the Third Anglo-Powhatan War, but the
effects on North Carolina history are wide ranging and many. In truth,
the Battle of Weyanoke Creek is remarkable as the first event to trig-
ger the wave of settlement to Carolina from Virginia. To the poor farm-
ers frustrated with Virginian society, this land had everything they were
looking for: isolation, natural barriers of defense, good tillage, fishing
and game, and opportunities for lucrative trade; little was to be want-
ed. These expeditions introduced the land to the future settlers for the
very first time. Additionally, a large body of documentation shows that
the decades-long border dispute had many of its roots in the Battle of
Weyanoke Creek, with the precise location of Weyanoke Creek becom-
ing a great controversy—and as Rountree noted, “did much to set the

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stage for the major trading efforts that occurred later.”66 In all, the Third
Anglo-Powhatan War, in particular the Weyanoke Indians’ decision to
immigrate south, clearly deserves its proper place as a major factor in
the birthing of North Carolina.

Notes
1. Deposition of Henry Plumpton, March 25, 1708, in William Saunders, ed.,
Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh nc: P. M. Hale, 1886), 1:676. Henry
Plumpton’s property was located in Orapeak Swamp (called Corapeak today).
Ironically this would eventually fall within the bounds of North Carolina when
the boundary dispute was finally resolved. For Henry Plumpton’s property loca-
tion, see Weynette Parks Haun, Old Albemarle County, North Carolina, Miscel-
laneous Records, 1678–1737 (Durham nc: W. P. Haun, 1982).
2. Christian Feest, The Powhatan Tribes (New York: Chelsea House, 1990),
54–57; Helen Rountree, Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virgin-
ia through Four Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 86;
Frederick Fausz, “The Powhatan Uprising of 1622: A Historical Study of Ethno-
centrism and Cultural Contact” (PhD diss., College of William and Mary, 1977).
3. Frederick Gleach, Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of
Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 174–77.
4. Martha McCartney, “Seventeenth Century Apartheid: The Suppression
and Containment of Indians in Tidewater Virginia,” Journal of Middle Atlantic
Archeology 1 (1985): 51–80; Randolph E. Turner III, “Native American Protohis-
toric Interactions in the Powhatan Core Area,” in Powhatan Foreign Relations,
1500–1772, ed. Helen Rountree (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1993), 81.
5. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 86.
6. Helen Rountree, “Trouble Coming Southward: Emanations through and
from Virginia, 1607–1675,” in The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians,
1540–1760, ed. Robbie Ethridge and Charles Hudson (Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 2002), 65–78.
7. For specific references to the Carolina expeditions, see Samuel A’Court
Ashe, History of North Carolina: From 1584–1783 (Greensboro nc: C. L. Van
Noppen, 1908), 57; Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 86; John Bennett Boddie,
Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight County, Virginia: A History of the County of
Isle of Wight, Virginia, During the Seventeenth Century, Including Abstracts of
the County Records (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1973), 130–
31; and Frank Roy Johnson, Tales From Old Carolina: Traditional and Histori-
cal Sketches of the Area between and about the Chowan River and Great Dismal

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 Swamps (Murfreesboro nc: Johnson Publishing Company, 1965), 13. Rountree
also notes the Weyanoke migration south, although she does not mention the
expeditions, in “Ethnicity Among the ‘Citizen’ Indians of Tidewater Virgin-
ia,” in Strategies for Survival: American Indians in the Eastern United States, ed.
Frank Porter (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 175. For general information
on the Third Anglo-Powhatan War, see Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 84–88;
Spencer Tucker, The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890
(Santa Barbara ca: abc-clio, 2011), 165; Martha McCartney, “Cockacoeske,
Queen of Pamunkey: Diplomat and Suzeraine,” in Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians
in the Colonial Southeast, ed. Gregory A. Waselkov, Peter H. Wood and Tom
Hatley (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 244; and Feest, The Pow-
hatan Tribes, 54–57.
8. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early Amer-
ica (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 2000), 212–40; Fausz, “The Powhat-
an Uprising of 1622”; Feest, The Powhatan Tribes, 43–54; Rountree, Pocahontas’s
People, 54–81; James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of
America (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 183–90, 255–62, 267–72.
9. Alice Granbery Walter, ed., Lower Norfolk County, Virginia Court Records:
Book “A” 1637–1646 & Book “B” 1646–1651/2 (Baltimore, Reprinted for Clearfield
Company, 2002); deposition of Henry Plumpton, .
10. Martin Gallivan, James River Chiefdoms (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2003), 22, 34.
11. Gleach, Powhatan’s World. Gleach argues at length for the cultural simi-
larities between the Powhatan and other Algonquians further north, success-
fully utilizing northern Algonquian parallels to cast light on Powhatan culture.
12. Clifford Lewis and Albert Loomie, The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia,
1570–1572 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953).
13. J. Frederick Fausz, “‘An Abundance of Blood Shed on Both Sides’: Eng-
land’s First Indian War, 1609–1614,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
98 (1990): 3–56.
14. Fausz, “The Powhatan Uprising of 1622,” 399; J. Frederick Fausz, “The
‘Barbarous Massacre’ Reconsidered: The Powhatan Uprising of 1622 and the
Historians,” Explorations in Ethnic Studies 1 (1978): 6–36.
15. Stephen R. Potter, “Early Effects on Virginia Algonquian Exchange and
Tribute in the Tidewater Potomac,” in Waselkov, Wood and Hatley, Powhatan’s
Mantle, 215, 221.
16. For further reading on the Powhatan Indians and their relationship with
the Jamestown Colony, see Rountree, Pocahontas’s People; Helen Rountree, The
Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1989); Helen Rountree and Randolph E. Turner III, Before
and After Jamestown: Virginia’s Powhatans and their Predecessors (Gainesville:

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University of Florida Press, 2002); Feest, The Powhatan Tribes; Christian Feest,
“Virginia Algonquians,” in Handbook of North American Indians, ed. Bruce G.
Trigger (Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978), 15:253–70; Horn,
A Land as God Made It; Kupperman, Indians and English; David Price, Love
and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Na-
tion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); and many others. Less has been writ-
ten about the Carolina Algonquians, but recent scholarship has brought more
to light, mostly surrounding the time of contact. See Christian Feest, “Carolina
Algonquians,” in Trigger, Handbook of North American Indians, 15:270–81; Mi-
chael Oberg, The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Lee Miller, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost
Colony (New York: Arcade, 2001); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The
Abandoned Colony (Lanham md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007); James Horn,
A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke
(New York: Basic Books, 2010); and Michelle Lemaster, “In the ‘Scolding Hous-
es’: Indians and the Law in Eastern North Carolina, 1684–1760,” North Carolina
Historical Review 83 (April 2006): 193–232.
17. Potter, “Virginia Algonquian Exchange,” 221; Gleach, Powhatan’s World,
174–177.
18. McCartney, “Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey,” 258.
19. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 85–86; Gleach, Powhatan’s World, 174–77.
20. Lewis Binford, Cultural Diversity among Aboriginal Cultures of Coastal
Virginia and North Carolina (New York: Garland, 1991), 109.
21. Rountree, “Emanations through and from Virginia,” in Ethridge and
Hudson, The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 66.
22. The Nansemonds clearly regarded the Weyanokes as enemies by the
1660s, enforcing the likelihood that the attack on the Weyanokes in response
to their departure was comprised of Nansemonds. It was said that fourscore
(eighty) warriors were sent after the Weyanokes, and the Nansemonds are one
of the few that could support this amount, as they were not named specifically
however, this cannot be proven.
23. The Weyanokes probably didn’t actually kill all eighty warriors sent
against them, but clearly from this account they defeated Opechancanough’s
detachment. See Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 88; Miller, Roanoke, 255n61.
24. Court order, November 3, 1645, in Walter, Lower Norfolk County Court
Records, 198.
25. Few members connected with the expeditions are named, but the few
that are were noteworthy as being chronically in debt. Thomas Ward, for ex-
ample, was a surgeon and attorney, however five separate lawsuits were carried
against him for a collection of massive quantities of debt. He was jailed at one
point for an unknown misdemeanor and all his wages from the Carolina expe-

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 dition and a former Chickahominy march were garnished to pay some of his
lenders. Walter, Lower Norfolk County Court Records, 83, 138, 145, 201, 202, and
208. George Rutland, a foot soldier, was considered so financially unstable that
he was forced to put up a security to the court so that his children would not
fall under the care of the parish. Four other lawsuits were brought against him
to collect on his debt. Walter, Lower Norfolk County Court Records, 136, 146, 194,
and 195. Information on other soldiers is not available, though lack of informa-
tion on them may simply have meant that many of them were indentured ser-
vants. Truly, the fact that soldiers were only paid ten pounds of tobacco total for
the several weeks’ long expedition certainly shows that they were not the upper
crust of society. These were the same type of settler who would first colonize
North Carolina. See Noeleen McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People: The Struggle
for North Carolina, 1660–1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2009), 15–27; Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations, Sex, Race and Resistance in Co-
lonial North Carolina (Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 2002), 19–29; Milton
Ready, The Tar Heel State (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005)
39; Jonathan E. Barth, “‘The Sinke of America’: Society in the Albemarle Bor-
derlands of North Carolina, 1663–1729,” The North Carolina Historical Review
87 (January 2010): 2.
26. Court order, November 3, 1645, in Walter, Lower Norfolk County Court
Records, 198.
27. William Powell, John Pory: 1572–1636, The Life and Letters of a Man of
Many Parts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 101. John
Pory made it known that the land was full of ample lumber and good land. He
met with the Choanoac people and expressed that the Choanoac weroance de-
sired to enter into a league with the English.
28. George Rutland v. John Cole and Geoffrey Wight, August 14, 1645, in
Walter, Lower Norfolk County Court Records, 180. Both Cole and Wight were
selected by Captain Edward Windham to equip and pay George Rutland for the
scout.
29. Deposition of Henry Plumpton; deposition of Thomas Ward, November
3, 1645, in Walter, Norfolk County Court Records, 201.
30. In Rutland v. Cole and Wight, George Rutland brought forth suit against
two defendants who had neglected to pay him for service on the land expedi-
tion. In a similar case for a separate and unrelated scout, thirty-nine men were
selected to “sett our [sic] a man” for service, and finally, a court order was is-
sued relating to the fact that many of the men selected to support these scouts
were negligent in paying and equipping the soldiers. Because the march into
Carolina was handled in this same way and because of the short duration of the
march, it can be concluded to have been a small detachment in the manner of a
scout. See George Rutland v. John Cole and Geoffrey Wight, August 14, 1645—

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and the November 3, 1645, court order to “those 39 men . . . allotted with Mr:
Burroughs”—in Walter, Norfolk County Court Records, 180, 197–98. For refer-
ence to a fifteen-man march, see the court order of July 17, 1639, in Walter, Nor-
folk County Court Records, 19.
31. Deposition of Henry Plumpton. Richard Bennett was not a major general
at the time; he was promoted in later years.
32. Rutland v. Cole and Wight, 180. Rutland was owed wages for two and
one-half days each from both Cole and Wight, for a total of five days’ wages
owed for the time he was absent on the march. At this time, however, a total of
fourteen tithable persons would pool resources to support one soldier, so Cole
and Wight would be the only two out of the fourteen who failed to pat. When
two and a half days’ wages per supporting tithable is tallied, an expedition of
thirty-five days can be calculated. This was ample time to explore the eastern
shore of the Chowan River south to the Yeopim, establish contact with the Cho-
anoac and Yeopim people, and gather intelligence on the whereabouts of the
Weyanokes.
33. Deposition of Thomas Ward, November 3, 1645, in Walter, Norfolk Coun-
ty Court Records, 201.
34. William P. Cumming, North Carolina in Maps (State Department of Ar-
chives and History, 1966).
35. Thomas Ward did perform “diverse cures” upon men in the first march,
but there is no indication that these were wounds caused by violence. If they
were, then most likely they would have been noted in county financial state-
ments to compensate them for missed work, as is seen with a later levy toward
costs for the assault later that year.
36. Bass Family Prayer Book Record, photocopy from original, 8 leaves, call
number 26371, Library of Virginia, Richmond. As this record was written de-
cades later, seemingly by Edward’s brother, John Basse, the date of 1644 may
have been mistaken in recollection for the true date of 1645. Note that Henry
Plumpton, from whom much of this information has come recalled “to the best
of his remembrance” that the expedition was in 1646, which is easily proven to
have been actually 1645. Edward Basse eventually returned to Virginia with his
Choanoac wife, renamed Mary, and moved back to Carolina with Mary and
their children sometime before 1696, shortly before his death. In Native cul-
ture, a marriage such as this one was used in much the same way as a treaty of
peace, unifying two peoples. This was the first Anglo-Indian marriage recorded
in Carolina and only the third instance since Virginia’s founding, although cer-
tainly other unrecorded marriages occurred.
37. There is no record of the Weyanokes ever being east of the Chowan River.
They appear to have travelled west and north of the Chowan, at odds with most
of their English and Native neighbors. See Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 84–
88, 100.

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 38. Rountree, “Trouble Coming Southward,” 71.
39. For a basic list of some of their provisions and the number of boats and
soldiers, see “Councell of Warre for the Associated Countyes,” October 25, 1645,
in Walter, Norfolk County Court Records, 195–96. Thomas Dew was actually a
captain in 1645. Plumpton related this account when he was eighty-six years old
and the leaders he mentioned had undergone promotions since the war ended.
Deposition of Henry Plumpton.
40. Estimate of early to midsummer derived from the last expedition ending
in March, and a later financial statement of accrued costs of the voyage record-
ed in October. Taking into account time to fit out the expedition and to prepare
the financial statement, this was probably a summer voyage.
41. For the castaway boat and snakebite victim, see “Councell of Warre for
the Associated Countyes.”
42. Deposition of Henry Plumpton.
43. Deposition of Henry Plumpton.
44. Philip Ludwell and Nathaniel Harrison, “Journal of the Proceedings of
Philip Ludwell and Nathaniel Harrison [1710]” in Saunders,, Colonial Records,
1:740.
45. Ludwell and Harrison, “Journal of the Proceedings,” 1: 740.
46. The Weyanokes had been in frequent trade contact with the Virginia col-
ony prior to the war, and just five years after the war ended, Edward Bland not-
ed their firearms during his expedition. See Edward Bland, “The Discovery of
New Brittaine,” in Narratives of Early Carolina, ed. Alexander Salley (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 5–19.
47. William Strachey, The History of Travaile into Virginia Britannia (1612)
(London, Hakluyt Society, 1849), 59.
48. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown, 220–21.
49. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 87–88.
50. McCartney, “Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey,” 258.
51. William Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the
Laws of Virginia, From the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (New
York: R. & W. & G. Bartrow, 1823), 323–26.
52. “The Indians of Southern Virginia, 1650–1711: Depositions in the Virgin-
ia and North Carolina Boundary Case (Concluded),” The Virginia Magazine of
History and Biography 8 (July 1900): 8.
53. Deposition of Henry Plumpton.
54. Ascomowet was recorded to be the weroance of the Weyanokes when
they were assigned a reservation in 1649. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 88, 100.
55. Bland, “The Discovery of New Brittaine,” 5–19.
56. Francis Yeardley, “Discovery of South Virginia or Carolina,” in Salley,
Narratives of Early Carolina, 25–29.

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 57. Lawrence Lee, Indian Wars in North Carolina, 1663–1763 (Raleigh: North
Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1997), 16; Lars Adams, “Sundry
Murders and Depredations: A Closer Look at the Chowan River War, 1676–
1677,” The North Carolina Historical Review 90 (April 2013): 149–172.
58. For the Tuscarora war see Lee, Indian Wars in North Carolina, 21–38. For
histories concerning the North Carolina Indians and their persistence through
the eighteenth century and survival to the present day, see Lemaster, “In the
‘Scolding Houses’”; Shannon Lee Dawdy, “The Meherrin’s Secret History of the
Dividing Line,” The North Carolina Historical Review 72 (October 1995): 386–
415; Marvin Jones, “Leading Edge of Edges: The Tri-Racial People of the Win-
ton Triangle,” in Carolina Genesis, Beyond the Color Line, ed. Scott Withrow
(Palm Coast fl: Backintyme, 2010), 187–216; and Patrick Garrow, The Matta-
muskeet Documents: A Study in Social History (Raleigh nc: Archeology Branch,
Division of Archives and History, Department of Cultural Resources, 1975).
59. Rountree, Pocahontas’s People, 94, 100–101.
60. McCartney, “Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey,” 258.
61. McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People, 15–27; Fischer, Suspect Relations,
19–29.
62. McIlvenna, A Very Mutinous People, 15–27; Fischer, Suspect Relations, 19–
29; Catherine Albertson, In Ancient Albemarle (Raleigh nc: Commercial Print-
ing Company, 1914); William P. Cumming, “Earliest Permanent Settlement in
Carolina: Nathaniel Batts and the Comberford Map,” American Historical Re-
view 45 (October 1939): 82–89.
63. Barth, “‘The Sinke of America,’” 2; Ready, The Tar Heel State, 39; Fischer,
Suspect Relations, 19–29.
64. Charter granted by King Charles II to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina,
1665, in Saunders, Colonial Records, 1:103.
65. McIlvenna, The Struggle for North Carolina, 18, 122, 136; Fischer, Suspect
Relations, 68–69.
66. Rountree, “Trouble Coming Southward,” 70.

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