[They Say 2] Bacon's Rebellion

In Bacon’s Declaration (1676), he states, “for having protected, favored, and emboldened the Indians against his Majesty’s loyal subjects…” (4.) Although Bacon does not say do directly, he is mad at the government for not letting the colonists expand on the Indian land. Moreover, the colonists didn’t like the way the colony was being run. Similarly, in Puglisi’s article, “Whether They Be Friends or Foes: The Roles and Reactions of Tributary Native Groups Caught in Colonial Conflicts” he explains, “The frontier colonists were apparently dissatisfied with government efforts to protect their new settlements.”(77) Instead of putting more attention on the colonists, the government tried keeping peace between the natives and the colonists, and at the same time feared rebellion. The times were hard for many colonists and they felt the government let them down. In Howard Zinn’s and Rebecca Stefoff’s book “A Young Peoples History of the United States,” Zinn and Stefoff say, “He probably cared more about fighting Indians than about helping the poor.”(37) In making this comment, the colonists felt that he was on their side.

The Indians have been mistreated for no reason most of the time. For example, in Document #2, the author states, “…Mathewes (whose hoggs hey had taken) had before abused and cheated them…” The colonists physically abused the Indians, so the Indians stole their hoggs to get revenge, and because of the Indians revenge, they, “beaten or kill’d and the hoggs retaken from them.” (Document #2) The people did anything possible to anguish the Indians. “They de-vised a hundred ways to torter and torment those poore soules…” (Document #5)