Chanco
Chanco, or Chauco, was a Native American emissary between Opechancanough, chief of the Pamunkey tribe, to and from the settlers of Jamestown in the Royal Colony of Virginia. He lived south of the James River in the area that is today Surry County.
Chanco is the subject of a semi-historical story about him warning an English settler before a coordinated attack of the Powhatan Confederacy upon multiple locations in the Virginia Colony on March 22, 1622, a Good Friday. The attacks came to be known as the Indian Massacre of 1622.
History
Tension and hostilities had existed between the Indians and the English settlers of the ever-expanding Virginia Colony beginning within a fortnight of the establishment of the settlement at Jamestown in May 1607. After Wahunsunacock, better known as Chief Powhatan died, his brother Opechancanough became head of the Powhatan Confederacy.
Chief Opechancanough planned a coordinated surprise attack against the Tidewater settlements on March 22, 1622 – during the assault, approximately 350 settlers, or one-fourth of the English population, were killed.
Warning Jamestown
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 could not 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 who betrayed his people.
After the attacks
A year later, Captain William Tucker and Dr. John Potts worked out a truce with the Powhatan Native Americans and proposed a toast using liquor laced with poison. 200 Native Americans were killed by the poison and 50 more were killed by the colonists by hand. Also, many colonists died in wars against the other local Indians.
Evidently, Mr. Pace did not reveal Chanco's deed to the Indians, for Opechancanough 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 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 April 4, 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),"
For the next ten years, the conflict between the settlers and the Indians, dragged on.
Other uses
"Chanco" is also used in the name of "Chanco On the James," a retreat center on the banks of the James River in Surry County, Virginia, which is owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia.