The Powhatan Confederacy, led by Opechancanough, launched a coordinated surprise attack, on March 22, 1622, on English settlements along the James River in Virginia. Known as the 1622 Indian Massacre or Uprising, it killed approximately 347 to 400+ settlers—roughly a quarter to one-third of the colony's population.
The attack led to a decade-long conflict—the Second Anglo-Powhatan War—in which English colonists retaliated with excessive violence, destroying crops and villages, fundamentally changing a wary peace to almost all out war. More
