The onslaught fell severest on the south side of James River and on the heads of the other rivers, but chiefly on the York River, where Opechancanough had his residence.[24] The massacre of 1622 shook the colony to its foundation, and it is surprising to see how little that of 1644 affected the current of life in Virginia.

Berkeley seemed to think so little of the attack that after making William Claiborne general of an expedition against the Pamunkey tribe he left the colony in June, 1645.[25] He was gone a whole year, and on his return found that Claiborne had driven the Indians far away from the settlements.

In 1646 he received information which enabled him to close the war with dramatic effect.

At the head of a body of cavalry he surprised old Opechancanough in an encampment between the falls of the Appomattox and the James, and brought him, aged and blind, to Jamestown, where, about three weeks later, one of his guards shot him to death.[26] A peace was made not long after with Necotowance, his successor, by which the Indians agreed to retire entirely from the peninsula between the York and James rivers.[27] One of the most remarkable results of the massacre was the change it produced in Rev.Thomas Harrison, Berkeley's chaplain at Jamestown, who had used his influence with the governor to expel the Nonconformist ministers of New England.

He came to the belief of John Winthrop that the massacre was a Providential visitation and turned Puritan himself.