ere
without protection against the superior weapons of their foes. On the
other hand, it was very difficult for the colonists to strike the
savages, because of the "advantages of the wood and the nimbleness of
their heels".[188] Even though they "chased them to and fro", following
them to their villages and burning their huts, they found it very
difficult to do them serious harm.

Finally the English hit upon the plan of bringing distress upon the
savages by destroying their corn. Although the Virginia tribes subsisted
partly upon game, their chief support was from their fields of maize,
and the entire failure of their crop would have reduced hundreds of them
to the verge of starvation.[189] Each year the white men, in small
companies, in various parts of the country, brought ruin to the corn
fields. Sometimes the savages, in despair at the prospect of famine,
made valiant efforts to defend their fields, but were invariably beaten
off until the work of destruction was done.

The natives retaliated with many sudden raids upon the more exposed
parts of the colony, where they burned, pillaged and murdered. The
planter at work in his fields might expect to find them lurking in the
high grass, while their ambushes in the woods made communication from
plantation to plantation very dangerous. "The harmes that they do us,"
wrote the Assembly, "is by ambushes and sudden incursions, where they
see their advantages."[190] In 1625 Captain John Harvey declared that
the two races were "ingaged in a mortall warre and fleshed in each
others bloud, of which the Causes have been the late massacre on the
Salvages parte.... I conceive that by the dispersion of the Plantations
the Salvages hath the advantage in this warre, and that by their
suddaine assaults they do us more harme than we do them by our set
voyages".[191]

When the English had recovered from the first shock of the massacre,
they planned four expeditions against the tribes living on the river
above Jamestown. Mr. George Sandys attacked the Tappahatomaks, Sir
George Yeardley the Wyanokes, Captain William Powell the Chickahominies
and the Appomatocks, and Captain John West the Tanx-Powhatans. The
savages, without attempting to make a stand, deserted their villages and
their crops and fled at the approach of the English. Few were killed,
for they were "so light and swift" that the white men, laden with their
heavy armor, could not overtake them.[192] In the fall Sir George
Y