Tribe Against Tribe Scenario:
Wolstenholme Towne
James River, Virginia
22 March, 1622
It is a frigid March morning on the James River, 1622. Over the past 15 years the English have slowly planted themselves here in their New World, and now have settlements up and down this stream as far up as the Falls at Richmond, some gotten with great trials and bloodshed, others with relatively little trouble. There is no Potosi here, no seven cities of Cebu, no rich sugar plantations or brazilwood groves, but there is land, plenty of it, in fertile, warm estate for most of the year, and fit for planting the best exported tobacco, a lucrative commodity indeed; and although the malaria and bloody flux is killing, yet new English - indentured servants, free husbandmen and cadet gentry alike - do keep arriving with each ship for this kingly prize.
The proud Powhatan Indians who once inhabited here, now "live not in great numbers together, but dispersed, and in small companies; and where most together, not above two hundred, and that very rare, in other places fifty or forty, or thereabouts" (Kingsbury III: 554-555).The last war, wherein Lord de la Warre, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Thomas Dale and the rest had wrought such execution and plunder, so that the English might eat without work, very nearly ruined Powhatan's empire, and displaced his people from many of their towns. Now under his son Opechancanough, they bow submissively, and any Englishman may travel and inhabit freely among them and trade with them without escort or ambassador. The old forts by the riverbanks lie largely vacant as the new settlers, no longer idle soldiers but now farmers and husbandmen truly, some with their women and children, have dispersed about the land to farm the tobacco weed and truck in peace and lordly isolation, rather to benefit from than to fear intercourse with the Indians. A few have even thought it safe to begin the ostensible mission of this colony, to convert and civilize the Powhatan, though only a few are so diligent.
"On the Friday morning (the fatal day) the 22 of March," the routine began as though it were any other. Some of the English went about the work of hoeing up the soil for Spring planting, others were at hewing wood and making bricks for fences, sheds and new habitations; some milking cows and goats and tending vegetable gardens, others merely at their breakfast tables entertaining the Indian guests who have been coming daily to help in the work, with "Deere, Turkies, Fish, Furres, and other provisions, to sell, and trucke with us, for glasse, beades, and other trifles," or else to read scripture or merely to share the latest from the lodges [Kingsbury III: 551].
"[Y]et were the hearts of the English ever stupid," the Colony's secretary Edward Waterhouse bitterly lamented later (Kingsbury III: 553), for today the visitors had an altogether darker purpose in mind. Coming in amongst the English unarmed as ever,
immediately with their owne tooles and weapons, eyther laid downe, or standing in their houses, they basely and barbarously murthered, not sparing eyther age or sexe, man woman or childe; so sodaine in their cruell execution, that few or none discerned the weapon or blow that brought them to destruction… they well knowing in what places and quarters each of our men were,in regard of their daily familiarity, and resort to us for trading and other negotiations, which the more willingly was by us continued and cherished for the desire we had of effecting that great master-peece of workes, their conversion. And by this meanes that fatall Friday morning, there fell under the bloudy and barbarous hands of that perfidious and inhumane people, contrary to all lawes of God and men, of Nature & Nations, three hundred forty seven men, women, and children, most by their owne weapons[.]" (Kingsbury III: 551).
It was an astonishing feat of surprise and planning for such a supposedly broken empire as Opechancanough's to pull off, happening simultaneously 140 miles up and down both banks of the James. Even more shocking to the survivors was the macabre spectacles their former friends and neighbors had made of the English dead that greeted them when they came to learn what had happened.
[N]ot being content with taking away life alone, they fell after againe upon the dead, making as well as they could, a fresh murder, defacing, dragging, and mangling the dead carkasses into many pieces, and carrying some parts away in derision, with base and bruitish triumph" (Kingsbury III, 551).
It seems truly, the latent anger of fifteen years of gunpoint bargaining, bloody war, tribute and subservience, crops ruined by wandering English livestock, land lost to armed squatters, and the depredations of unpunished criminals had at last brought Opechancanough, for years the witness of his father's slow humiliation at English hands, to extract his most bitter revenge.
Now, Wolstenholme Towne was the central settlement of Martin's Hundred, the plantation that suffered the highest toll from the Massacre, with perhaps 58 colonists dead and as many as 20 women and children carried off as captives by the war party of 22 March out of the plantation's original population of 140 (Hume 258).
This scenario reenacts the panic of those moments after the alarm had been raised and the settlers ran for the fort, to hold out, besieged, for the rest of the day until the Indians had finished their looting, with the possibility of sorties to rescue those in danger nearby. Though Martin's Hundred did suffer the highest losses, most of the real massacre has been assumed to have happened on the isolated outlying plantations - by their concentration and proximity to the stockade the 30- to 40-odd colonists at Wolstenholme Towne proper at least had a chance.
I have written the scenario for my own miniatures rules Why Must We Fight Tribe Against Tribe? because I understand that system best (having written it), but in truth this fight would work as well using Jon Lundberg's Matchlocks on the Warpath, or some modification of Chris Feree and Patrick Wilson's B'hoys!, the latter on account of the scarcity of weapons.
Terrain:
General Scene:
It's an early morning in March, in the so-called "Little Ice Age" too, so the scene is generally still a little frigid with patches of snow or frost here and there, the surrounding trees bare of leaves and the corn- and pease fields no more than furrowed soil awaiting sowing.
At Wolstenholme Towne, there was a palisaded fort enclosing the house of the governor of Martin's Hundred plantation, with a firing step and two flanking angles, though probably they were not large enough to mount ordnance, and outside it a company storehouse and workshop building, a church, a barn, and probably five houses.
The Fort:
The Fort consisted of a palisade 7 feet 6 inches high with an earth parapet all around the inside, 2 ft. 9 in. wide, the floor of which would haven been 2 ft. 10 in. above ground level, held up to the height of the parapet on the inside by a strong fence of split pales and horizontal rails. Diagonal wooden beams on the inside provided additional supports about every 8 feet. There were two small flanking angles, the landward one of which formed the base for a watch tower, which may have been roofed with thatch (Hume 220-224).
For Why Must We Fight Tribe Against Tribe? I should consider the palisades a high wall, hard cover for shooting purposes, and crossable at a cost of 10 inches of movement prior to melee contact, during which the defenders may shoot at will at them for however many turns it takes.
Inside the walls was a large irregular half-timbered thatched house roughly 40 ft. x 15 ft., with a light shed of some sort attatched about 10 ft. x 25 ft., two other smaller outbuildings, and a well (Hume 220-221). Hume's team called this tentatively the "governor's house," though it seems likely the plantation's governor William Harwood was in Jamestown until after the massacre.
Figures:
English Figures:
English Civil War Militia and civilians or "Three Musketeers"-era peasants or town mob would probably be best for most of the English, especially the refugees. Old Glory and Redoubt make a good selection of these. For the guards and other figures once armed, I use Essex 80 Years War Dutch and Foundry Thirty Years War generic musketeers, though English Civil War figures and some raggedy Elizabethan calivermen in floppy hats or helmets would work just as well.
Powhatan Figures:
The Eureka Miniatures Powhatans are probably your best bet for this in 25mm, but the old "Dogs of the Hot Moon" line for the Minnesota Sioux Uprising in the same scale once made by J & T Miniatures included some very interesting Indian figures with farm tools looting which might make good conversion-fodder for an ambitious modeller who can find them.
Deployments:
The English:
The English count as Indians with non-steel melee weapons with the additional ability to fire muskets if they can find them; the women likewise but unarmed to begin, unable to shoot even with a musket (though they may load), and with a close-combat penalty; and the children as completely helpless noncombatants. Bear with me: it sounds gamy, but under these conditions, I think either side would have behaved much the same.
Recorded{ Proposed starting totals for the scenario } Casualties { In Town Refugees }
Men and boys53{ 24 41}
Women and girls16{ 8 12}
Small children9{ 47}
______
Total persons:78{ 36 60} Why these
numbers?[1]
Out of the 36 in town, one is Lieutenant Richard Kean, left in charge of the plantation in Governor Harwood's absence, stationed somewhere at the Fort and counting as an average principal chief; one is Master Thomas Boise, the other Master John Boise, both numbered among the slain with their households and next in rank to Kean. For the purposes of the game, Master Thomas will start at or in the Church building and Master John at the Company storehouse plot, each counting as a poor subsidiary chief and armed like everyone else with makeshift non-steel weapons.[2]
In Town:
These English are "deployed" first, by the Games Master, in a sort of pastoral diorama, most of the men out tending to animals and mending fences, ploughing or hoeing up the thawed ground for the Spring maize crop, the women in their houses or yards milking the cows and doing the washing, a few men bartering furs with Indians in front of their houses and sixguards on the fort's walls, armed and ready with muskets watching the proceedings. In general, the English should be generally dispersed and carrying on "business as usual."
Refugees:
From their 3rd turn onward, the English roll two 6-sided dice of differing colours each movement phase for random refugees streaming to the table from outlying farms. One die is for determining the entry zone, the other for how many appear. Do this three times per movement phase. Thus:
Placement DieNumbers Die
1 = Entry Zone Apips = refugees in the party.
2 = Entry Zone BRoll a "6" and two of the figures have muskets and swords
3 = Entry Zone CThen roll again - on a "5" or "6" one of the
4 = Entry Zone Dmusketeers is a subsidiary leader (chief)
5 = Entry Zone ERoll a "4" and one of the figures has a musket, two a sword each
6 = roll again Roll anything else and the figures are either unarmed women and
children or men with improvised weapons (count as non-steel)
Half of a refugee group may always be adult men. Include the rarer (armed, female, or infant) types only until they run out (see table on previous page).
Once on-table, the Refugee groups behave normally as all the other English.
The Powhatan
Having the advantage of surprise, the Powhatan may deploy second. I suggest giving them a small war party of 30 braves and 3 subsidiary chiefs at Wolstenholme Towne - 1 Bold, 2 Poor. Another Bold principal chief with 20 braves will appear later as reinforcements from Entry Zone A to join the same war party.
Most of the 33 Indians at the beginning must start from Entry Zones A and D, with a minimum of at least six figures needing start from Zone A. All these are armed in the usual fashion with bows, monocock wooden swords, etc. Why these Numbers?[3]
The rest are infiltrators of a number determined by each chief rolling a six-sided die, halved and rounded up. These braves may start deployed singly or in groups of any size in any of the buildings they like except the Church and the fort, with the restrictions (a) that there must also be one adult Englishmen present within 2 inches of each infiltrator or group of infiltrators together, and (b) that none of them may have bows.
At least of one of each party of the infiltrators must be at the outset locked in melee with their English "escort" in the first turn, both sides counting as having only melee weapons, with any free braves being able to either join the combat or do something else as command and control dice dictate.
Powhatan Reinforcements:
On their 6th turn the Indian players receive a reinforcement of 19 braves and a Bold Principal chief, armed with improvised hand-to-hand weapons and fresh from the killings on the outlying farms. These enter from Entry Zone A.
Victory Conditions:
In many ways this is something of a Turkey shoot for the Indians - a massacre, after all. Seen this way the Indian's goal is to destroy all they can before casualties oblige them to retire. However, there are two restrictions: the Indians must avoid losses, and try to capture enemies rather than kill them when possible.
To win, the Indians have to gain 50 points. Whenever they do, they may retire and it's their game. If they cannot, or retire because of casualties before then, they lose.
Powhatan Victory Points:
Each Englishman killed: +1
Each English woman or child killed:-3 Did they really care?[4]
Each Indian killed: -5Did they really care?[5]
Each Englishman killed and his scalp taken:+2
Each Englishman killed and his corpse mangled:+3
Each English captive taken:+4
Lieutenant Kean captured:+10
Master Boise or the Deacon captured:+5
The fort stormed and burnt:+10
Special Rules:
Captives and Noncombatants:
All adults on the table are considered armed with improvised weapons unless they have picked up something better (although Englishwomen have a -1 in close combat, no matter what); the children are always unarmed.
Captured Englishmen move at the same speed as Indians, but the women and kids only as fast as European Regulars in Close Order.
The English players, once they have armed enough men, may attempt to take back (recapture) prisoners being dragged away by the Powhatan.
To capture or recapture an unarmed figure, assuming no opposition from enemy warriors, a warrior need merely walk up to within 4” it without fighting or shooting, becoming its guard next turn.
To capture an armed figure, one of these two circumstances must occur:
1. The figure is beaten by 4 or more in a close combat roll.
2. A group is completely surrounded and fails its morale check
A guard must be within 4” of the captives to control them. Each can handle at most 24, treating young men and captured warriors as six ordinary figures. He may not fight or fire his weapon.
If on any turn there are more captives than the guards can handle and there is any chance at all of them getting away, the captive figures farthest from the guard beyond his maximum each roll a die at the beginning of the movement phase to see if they can escape. On a 5 or 6 they do, and may be moved by the nearest enemy player for the rest of the game or until recaptured, using his command dice. Otherwise they do as the other captives in the group. If there is no guard, the prisoners all escape for free.
Only English adult men captured by the Powhatan may be executed, though he need not really take them at all to win. To execute prisoners takes a number of figures equal to the number of prisoners a melee phase in base to base contact with them. No need to roll.
Stored Weapons:
All of the English weapons not in use by the guards, who have 6 muskets, are stored in the buildings as follows:
Swords / MusketsIn the Governor's house within the fort / 3 / 6
In the main storehouse on the Company plot / 2 / 3
In each cottage / 1 / 1
To pick up and make ready a stored musket, an English figure must stand in the builiding for 3 moves (or 1 move if merely fetching a sword) uninterruptedly, doing nothing else.