e company's Council in
London and realized that the goodwill of the aborigines could be
cultivated by giving only minor considerations for the land occupied by
the English. On other occasions the Indians voluntarily gave up their
land such as the present from Opechancanough in 1617 of a large body of
land at Weyanoke. At still other times land was seized by force. When
any attempt was made to justify the seizure, it was done on the basis of
an indemnity for damage inflicted upon the colony or for violations of
agreements by the natives. By 1622 settlements had been made along the
banks of the lower James River and in Accomac on the Eastern Shore, the
land having been obtained by direct purchase, by gifts from the natives,
or by conquest.

Any attempt to determine the extent of the areas acquired by purchase in
Virginia is hindered by the indefinite nature of the Indian holdings and
by the lack of complete records for the early periods. Thomas Jefferson
thought much of the land had been purchased. Writing to St. George
Tucker in 1798, Jefferson stated:

At an early part of my life, from 1762 to 1775, I passed much time
in going through the public records in Virginia, then in the
secretary's office, and especially those of a very early date of our
settlement. In these are abundant instances of purchases made by our
first assemblies of the indi[ans] around them. The opinion I formed
at the time was that if the records were complete & thoroughly
searched, it would be found that nearly the whole of the lower
country was covered by these contracts.

Jefferson overestimated the amount of land that was purchased by
Virginia during the early years. While the records now extant show that
the colony often purchased lands, they likewise indicate that frequently
land was appropriated without compensation. Especially during the years
following the first massacre of 1622, "The Indians were stripped of
their inheritance without the shadow of justice." The greater part of
the Peninsula between the York and James rivers was taken by conquest;
the right of possession was later confirmed by a treaty with Necotowance
in 1646, without, however, any stipulation for compensating the natives
for the land they relinquished.

The treaty of 1646 with the successor of Opechancanough inaugurated the
policy of major historical significance of either setting aside areas
reserved for Indian tribes, or establishing a