the Rappahannock Indian town and demand and receive "such
satisfaction as he shall thinke fitt for the severall injuries done unto
the said inhabitants not using any acts of hostility but defensive in
case of assault." The charge of the war was to be borne by the three
counties concerned. This expedition was like many others that both
preceded and followed it. In each case, enormous authority and
responsibility were given to local officials who were themselves
frequently the leading oppressors of the Indians. Such expeditions not
infrequently took on the character of private wars between the big
landowners of the frontier and the Indian towns in the vicinity. The
Governor, Council, and Burgesses frequently heard the complaints of the
local settlers, but rarely the complaints of the Indians. The
authorization to the local community to administer justice to the
Indians often proved a cover for their expulsion or extirpation.

The usual grievances of the settlers against the Indians were not the
violent murders and massacres so often associated in the public mind
with Indian-white relations, but minor irritations concerning property
and animals. The settlers let their hogs run wild. The hogs would get
into the Indians' corn. The Indians would kill the hogs. The settlers
would demand satisfaction. Many acts of the Assembly testify to the fact
that shooting of wild hogs was one of the most frequent points of
dispute not only between the English and the Indians but among the
English themselves. It was one reason why early Assemblies provided
strict rules for erecting adequate fences around cultivated fields and
establishing lines of responsibility for damage caused by straying
cattle or hogs. On the frontier, however, such refinements of
civilization as fences were long in coming. What was more natural than
that the same conflicts which arose among the English in the early years
of settlement should arise between the English and the Indians on the
frontier. The tragedy was that English-Indian conflicts were not
normally settled in the courts as were conflicts between Englishmen. The
courts did deal with Indian-white conflicts to a certain extent, but, as
noted before, the local justices were often the very persons the Indians
accused of oppressing them. Sometimes the Indians were able to bring
their complaints before the General Court in Jamestown. But often the
dispute was settled in the wilderness in the traditional frontier