After some English killed one of Opechancanough’s most celebrated warriors, Nemattanew, in the belief that he had killed an English trader, the great chief Opechancanough reassured Sir George Yeardley, the governor of the English in Virginia, that “the Sky should sooner fall than Peace be broken.” This was part of Opechancanough’s extraordinarily disciplined eight year campaign to lull the overconfident English into complacency, and then ambush them.

The sky would indeed fall on March 22, 1622, and the Powhatan Confederacy would kill 347 English, other Europeans, and Africans in an all-out push to eject the English from their lands. It almost succeeded.

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Selected references for this episode

James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America

David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation

Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown

Jamestowne Society