Virginia – Mapping the Dragon: Towards an Indigenous History of Bacon’s Rebellion

Dragon Swamp and the waters of Dragon Run in the early Spring.

Jeff Wright

Recipient: St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Amount: $52,877

In August 1676, Cockacoeske, the weroansqua or leader of the Pamunkey nation, was with her councilors when she received word that an armed contingent of English colonists was nearby. Nathaniel Bacon, an English planter bent of removing Native peoples from lands claimed by the Virginia colony, headed the rebellion and, after leading a force of nearly 500 on Jamestown, took the fight to Virginia’s Native nations. Bacon was capitalizing on events on the Potomac River during the previous year, when members of the Virginia and Maryland militias, in search of Doegs who had murdered two English squatters on their lands, opened fire on Susquehannocks in a case of mistaken identity. Colonists demanding that the Virginia governor take action against Susquehannock retaliatory raids plantations along the Virginia frontier joined Bacon’s cause in arms.

As Bacon assembled his troops at the head of the Pamunkey River, indigenous communities, numbering perhaps as many as 700 people and led by Cockacoeske, withdrew into Dragon Swamp, a landscape of meandering blackwater streams impenetrable to outsiders. Bacon and his forces, unable to find the Native camps, managed to capture Cockacoeske’s nurse and demand that she lead them to the weroansqua. For several days, the nurse led the rebels away from Cockacoeske until Bacon’s men realized what was happening and killed her. The Natives followed centuries-old paths into the Dragon where, after dispersing, they established and moved camp as Bacon’s forces drew closer. These tactics served to evade, confuse, and delay Bacon’s unprovoked attacks in an effort to minimize the casualties and losses Native people suffered. The English rebellion dissolved after Bacon’s death that October; Virginia’s indigenous communities endured.

With support from a 2022 Preservation Planning Grant from the American Battlefield Program, St. Mary’s College of Maryland will reexamine Bacon’s Rebellion from an indigenous point of view. The project team will gather oral history, geographic, and archeological data from the Rappahannock and Pamunkey Tribes of Virginia to map the indigenous defensive strategies employed in Dragon Swamp. The Tribes contribution of their knowledge of the conflict will help preserve the stories and places of this unique landscape.

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Preservation Planning Grants are the American Battlefield Protection Program's broadest and most inclusive grant program, promoting the stewardship of battlefields and sites of armed conflict on American soil. In addition, the program administers three other grants: Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants, the newly authorized Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation grant programs. This financial assistance generates community-driven stewardship of historic resources at the state, tribal and local levels.

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