Massacre of the settlers in 1622

Book page with engraving, 1628, by Matthaeus Merian. Plate 7 from America, Part 13 (German edition, 1628). The page was printed twice, once for the copper-plate engraving, and once for the letterpress. Merian, by marriage the third generation of the de Bry workshop, did not intend this picture to be realistic but to illustrate in a single image the series of coordinated killings that happened in many isolated parts of Virginia in 1622. The composition is swarming with activity; the design emphasizes the poised weapons of the attackers and the helplessness of the victims. It is doubtful, however, that the Indians used the large knives they are shown wielding. Unlike Virginias, the landscape here is shown as barren of trees and undergrowth. Early colonial life was far cruder than represented: there were no milled-lumber houses, proper tables with cloth and plateware, or, as seen in the distance, moated and walled cities. And the Indians knew better than to make an assault in crowded canoes in the face of the colonists guns. What the image does effectively convey is the surprise and horror of the colonists. The historical importance of this image is not as a document of the 1622 Powhatan Uprising, which it at most only symbolizes, but as an expression of the European understanding of that event.