1676
Bacon’s Rebellion targets Indigenous communities
Virginia; Susquehannock and other Native peoples
In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon’s followers attacked Indigenous communities while rebelling against Governor William Berkeley. The rebel forces also included free men, servants and enslaved people. A contemporary account of the West Point surrender describes promises of freedom followed by the return of servants and enslaved people to their masters.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Cooperation across labor and racial divisions did not make the rebellion a movement for Indigenous freedom or universal emancipation. Its place in the development of racial slavery is a historical interpretation, not a single-cause explanation.
Sources
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (2014), chapter 4
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 2, pp. 37–38; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Bacon’s and Ingram’s Rebellion: contemporary account of the West Point surrender, in Andrews, Narratives of the Insurrections ↗
- James D. Rice, Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677): Indigenous attacks and colonial civil war ↗