The story of the founding of Virginia is a truly painful one to think about. The story, as detailed by the first two chapters of Benjamin Campbell’s Richmond’s Unhealed History, is fraught with colonial greed, abject racism, and atrocities committed against indigenous people. Although Spanish settlers had explored the area in prior years, the first true settlement in Virginia came by way of a British expedition. And from the start, conflicts with Native Americans began to become a major part of life for the settlers. Peaceful relations between the English and chief Powhatan soon fell apart as the English settlers who founded Jamestown were attacked by the native people. A lack of respect for the rights of the indigenous people doomed the settlers to hostile raids and attacks throughout the early years of the Virginia colony.

The relationship between the English and the Native Americans didn’t improve with the multiple changes of governor that the colony underwent. In fact, it seemed they got even worse, with a horrifically matter-of-fact account by George Percy detailing the atrocities he committed against the Paspahegh tribe under the command of Lord De La Warr being particularly chilling. Of course, not all the settlers or Native Americans held hatred toward the other, but the terrifying actions of those who did overshadow those settlers that tried to treat the indigenous people with respect, and the indigenous people that attempted the same.

As a result of English settlement, Native American numbers dropped from close to twenty thousand to two or three thousand in around fifty years. The English-Powhatan war, and even the relations between the two groups prior, is a brutal example of the horrific treatment of Native Americans by early English settlers and it is the most painful, yet also most important thing to consider when trying to understand the foundation of Virginia.