When we last checked in with our friends the colonists they were mostly dead and the few that weren't were ready to go back to England and have a nice cup of tea by the fire. As they sailed down the James River back toward the ocean, they encountered Thomas West (also known as Lord de la Warr because British royals love to change their names to places which in my opinion is a little bit weird) who convinced them to return to the colony because he was really looking forward to being governor and thought being governor of nothing would be kind of lame. The good lord was known as a colossal douchewaffle which is why his name (restylized as Delaware) was eventually adopted by a state that is home to the PO boxes of corporations that want to evade taxes and literally nothing else. Anyway, de la Warr decided that instead of even feigning diplomacy he was going to start wars of conquest against the natives.
On August 9, 1610 the good lord launched his first attack against the Paspahegh people, killing around 70 and capturing the queen and her children. On the boat ride back to Jamestowne, the children were thrown overboard and shot in the water while the queen watched. She would later be slain by sword upon their return to the fort. This dickish act officially invoked war between the English and the Powhatan Confederacy. In early 1611 a new governor, Sir Thomas Dale arrived on the scene. Chipper Dale, as the colonists liked to call him because he was known as a morning person and because he founded Chippendales Male Revue, made a few solid policies that benefited the colonies. Perhaps his biggest one was doing away with the communist practice of communal farming land and dividing the land into private property. This would strongly benefit the character that we'll meet in the next paragraph. Dale was also much like the good lord in his desire for total domination of the native tribes. He continued the lord's wars and succeeded in claiming one metric fuckton of prime riverfront property from the local tribes. This may have been partially due to Chief Powhatan's advancing age and lack of desire to do anything except sit on his porch and yell at kids to get off his lawn. After almost three years of fighting, the English captured Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan in early 1613 which led to an immediate ceasefire.
While all of this was going, another pretty important dude by the name of John Rolfe was hanging out back in Jamestowne changing the course of American history. Before John Rolfe, American kids who wanted to rebel against their parents were forced to smoke local wild tobacco which apparently didn't do much for them. As a result not many people smoked, which really didn't make that much of a difference since everybody was still dying young of starvation and smallpox anyway. Still, Rolfe thought that the lack of lung cancer was a scourge on the American reputation and thought if only he could produce a more addictive tobacco then surely he could make billions of whatever they used instead of dollars. Rolfe had been part of the third supply effort that was stranded in the Caribbean while they built two new ships in 1609-1610. While there he picked up some seeds of a Spanish-Trinidadian strain of tobacco that he called Orinoco. The main difference between this strain and the local Virginia strain was an ingredient by the name of nicotine which the people seemed to not be able to get enough of. This new strain of tobacco, which he was able to grow on his private land thanks to Chippendales, made him lots of money and gave him the opportunity to meet and fall in love with the Indian Princess, Pocahontas. In early 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas (now known as Rebecca because she was converted to Christianity) which would lead to eight years of peace between the colonists and natives.
In 1622 Chief Opechancanough, the younger brother of Powhatan who took over in 1618 after Powhatan's death, acted as though he were ready to give into the English and convert to Christianity. This allowed his subjects to intermingle with the colonists. Finally, on March 22, 1622, with no warning, the natives massacred the colonists, killing approximately 350 of them (or nearly one third). Far more may have died had some of the natives not truly converted to the English ways and warned the settlers. The natives, relying on their traditional attack methods, decided to wait for a response instead of maintain their offensive. This was a really stupid move and allowed the colonists to regroup and ultimately win the second round of war which lasted ten years until 1632. After another dozen years of peace, the natives decided to attack again, this time killing 500 colonists which was a significantly lower percentage of the now much larger population than the previous massacre. Having not learned their lesson for whatever reason, they waited again, and this time wiped out in two short years. At the conclusion of this third war, the English enacted a harsh treaty on the losing natives. In addition to making the natives subjects to the English crown, they enacted a line of racial segregation (a close predecessor to the first Indian Reservations) which may or may not have included separate drinking fountains and separate bus seats. The silver lining of this whole ordeal is that it finally appears that the colonists may survive long enough to write another few chapters in this story.
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