Trouble began when the Doeg Indians raided a Virginia plantation. The colonists retaliated. But they attacked the wrong tribe -- which meant that that tribe retaliated. Before long, large scale raids and attacks were coming from all sides.

Virginia Governor William Berkeley tried to calm everyone down by launching an investigation. But the governor’s cousin Nathaniel Bacon wouldn’t listen. He insisted on fighting the Indians, which Berkeley refused. Bacon got together a group of disgruntled colonists, and a civil war broke out between Berkeley’s loyalists and Bacon’s rebels.