Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 90.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this in my bedroom closet on October 1st, 2022 in New Orleans.

We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the

beginning without presentism.

The key prerequisite for this episode is Opa Kan Kananaz War, episode 87 as Apple reckons them,

and three behind this one in other apps.

It's 1622, and we're back in Virginia.

Opa Cancana leads the group of tribes known as the Powhatan Confederacy.

He has masterminded an eight-year plan to lull the English into a false sense of security,

suffering their indignities,

and building the loyalty of the tribes in the region who had made separate treaties with the foreigners

at the end of the first Anglo-Powitan War in 1614.

Opaquankanaz carefully laid plans were almost exposed

in the fall of 1621.

When Esmei Sitchems, the so-called laughing king of the Achaemak tribe on the eastern shore,

alerted the English that Opaqankana was planning an attack.

Opaqancona denied it, saying,

The sky should sooner fall than peace be broken.

And then, on the morning of March 22nd, 1622, the sky fell.

Tribes from all over the region, now living casually in and around the English and productive peace,

attack simultaneously,

killing at least 347 non-Indians, mostly English,

...