Chanco
|
|
Chanco or Chauco was an Native American Indian emissary between Opechancanough, chief of the Pamunkeys tribe, to and from Jamestown, Virginia. He is the subject of a semi-historical story about the warning of an English settler before an attack.
Chief Opechancanough planned a coordinated surprise attack against the Tidewater settlements on 1622-03-22 – during the assault, approximately 350 settlers, or one-fourth of the English population, died.
As the story goes, Chanco, a Christian convert in the employ of Richard Pace, was assigned by his chief, Opechancanough, to kill Pace and his family in the Jamestown uprising of 1622. Chanco couldn't bear to take Pace's life so, risking his own, he warned Pace of the pending slaughter.
Pace had situated his family along with others on the south side of the James River, opposite and upstream some distance from the Jamestown fort. Although he had to navigate down a tall, steep embankment and row a canoe some two miles downstream, he did so after securing his family and his neighbors. Chanco will long be remembered as the Indian lad who helped save Jamestown.
For the next ten years, the conflict between the settlers and the Indians, dragged on.
Evidently, Mr. Pace did not reveal Chanco's heroic deed to the Indians, for the vicious king surely would have put him to a slow and painful death. Chanco's own brother took part in the Massacre, yet even he was unaware of Chanco's warning. For some years following that dreadful Good Friday, Chanco continued to take messages from Opechancanough to the Governor and the Council and from those officials to Chief Opechancanough. We read from a letter dated 4 April 1623, from the Governor and Council to the Company (in London), " The great king sends Chanco ( a person that revealed the plot to divers the day of the massacre & so served them)"