#194 Bacon’s Rebellion 2: The Susquehannocks Strike Back

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Susquehannocks, having successfully escaped from their beseiged fort on Piscataway Creek in Maryland, fled through the Virginia Piedmont to set up winter quarters on the James and Roanoke Rivers. In January 1676, they launched a measured counterattack. The settlers on the frontier panicked and evacuated. Rumors of war spread. The horrors of King Philip’s War loomed large, especially in the thinking of Sir William Berkeley, the governor. A fundamental debate over how to respond to those Susquehannock attacks set up the confrontation between Nathaniel Bacon and his populist – and it should be said, hard-drinking – frontiersmen on the one hand, and Berkeley and his loyalist supporters on the other. Along the way we consider Governor Berkeley’s background and the experiences that shaped him, and the political challenges that he now confronted. The episode ends with Bacon’s massacre of the Occaneechees (Occaneechis), heretofore allies of Virginia, on their island in the Roanoke River.

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Matthew Kruer, Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom

James D. Rice, Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America

Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia

Various authors, for the National Park Service, “Mapping the Dragon:
AN INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF BACON’S REBELLION” (pdf)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 194.
0:11.2	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on September 24th, 2025, in Austin, Texas.
0:20.3	We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning
0:26.0	without intentional presentism.
0:29.5	We're also telling that history recovering from a bit of a cold, so if I sound congested,
0:35.2	that would be the reason.
0:38.5	It is January 1676 in Virginia.
0:42.6	It has been two months since the forces of John Washington, Isaac Allerton, Jr., and Thomas Truman
0:49.0	woke up to find ten of their men dead, and the Susquehanna Fort at the mouth of Piscataway Creek,
0:56.3	which flows into the Potomac on the Maryland side just south of Washington, empty.
1:03.3	Last time we briefly described the flight of the Susquehannics, but as I've thought about it,
1:09.2	a little more geographical detail might be both useful and
1:12.6	interesting, especially if you know the Virginia Piedmont. The 500 or more Indians had escaped
1:19.5	during the night and headed north into today's Washington, D.C. They eventually crossed the
1:26.4	Potomac into Virginia, safely beyond the edge of English settlement.
1:31.0	This they may have done before crossing the Anacostia River, but my guess is that they walked on the left
1:38.3	bank of the Potomac until roughly the point at which I-495, the infamous Washington Beltway, crosses from Virginia
1:48.0	into Maryland. If you do that drive as I did a week ago, driving from Charlottesville to Philly,
1:55.0	you can easily see that the Potomac is very shallow there, with large rocks breaking the surface for the breadth of the river.
2:03.4	It struck me as a good place to ford the Potomac, the walk of only 25 miles or so from the
2:09.3	mouth of Piscataway Creek. Easy peasy, if you're a Susquehannock in 1675. So my moderately informed guess is that they crossed roughly there,
2:22.3	or maybe a little bit downriver, where the Potomac's also fairly narrow.
	...

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