After the collapse of Bacon’s Rebellion, two royal commissioners — Sir John Berry and Francis Moryson — sought to understand the complaints and divisions among English colonists and to rectify the situation with the Native tributaries. These negotiations and the resulting May 29, 1677, Treaty of Middle Plantation reveal the extent to which Cockacoeske attempted to turn the tragic events of the rebellion to her favor. Articles 12 and 18 highlight how Cockacoeske attempted to return the Pamunkey leadership to the paramount chiefdom.
The arena in which she was most successful was with the royal commissioners. They labeled Cockacoeske a victim of the event and called her the “faithfull friend to and lover of the English” and made recommendations that she should be compensated for her suffering and losses with gifts. Herbert Jeffreys, the royal governor, reported on June 11, 1677, about the treaty and the signing process including the Queen of Pamunkey signing “on behalf of herself and Severall Nations now reunited under her Subjection and Government as anciently.” According to scholar Martha McCartney, article 12 of the treaty “committed several smaller, unspecified Indian nations to Cockacoeske’s rule, tangible evidence of her success in manipulating the treaty agreement to her own people’s advantage.”
By October 1677, the Lords of Trade and Plantation recommended an expansion of the treaty to include Maryland, and the king commissioned gifts for the Native leaders who signed the original treaty, including Cockacoeske. As a sign of English goodwill towards their Native tributaries, they commissioned crowns and royal robes for the four Indian leaders. Fashioned for each were crimson velvet hats trimmed with ermine fur and coronets or crowns of “thinne silver plate, gilt and adorned with false stones of various colours, with the inscription ‘A Carolo Secondo Magna Brittaniae Rege.”
Cockacoeske and her son John West, however, received additional recognition. Berry and Moryson, noted that Cockacoeske “was robbed of her rich matchcoat by the rebels,” and therefore they asked for a “crown and robe, together with a stript [striped] Indian gown of gay colours and a Bracelet of falce stones” in addition to a silver pendant to be made for Cockacoeske. Her son was to receive a scarlet coat with gold and silver lace, breeches, shoes, stockings, hat, sword and belt, and a pair of pistols.
The gifts arrived with Gov. Thomas Culpeper in June 1680, but by then the treaty had expanded to include some 12 Native leaders that represented seven Indian groups. The Executive Council of Virginia asked that the gifts be delayed, “fearing those people may be heightened thereby especially by such Marks of Dignity as Coronets, wch as they conceive ought not to be prostituted to such mean persons.” The Council further explained their reasoning on behalf of the colonists who suffered “fatal returnes for considerable presents given unto” Native peoples, as the Council argued that presents of this nature were “a wrong way of manageing of those people they esteeming presents to be the effects of fear, and not kindness.”
The Council also took issue with the preferential treatment of Cockacoeske, indicating that there were several other neighboring and foreign Indian groups that “deserved of the English at least as well as the called Queen of Pomunkey” and that they “will shew their Resentment at least against them which is almost as bad.”
It was not only the Executive Council that took exception to the adornment of Cockacoeske and the power granted to her and the Pamunkey in articles 12 and 18 of the treaty. Article 12 gave Cockacoeske dominion over “several scattered Indian nations,” and article 18 placed several of the tributaries under Pamunkey rule. Cockacoeske attempted to return the Pamunkey leadership to the “chiefly dominance.” The Chickahominy and Rappahanock resented this intrusion and the colonial secretary, Thomas Ludwell, indicated in his letters that the several Nations under Cockacoeske were “dissatisfied” and “contemptible at their new subjection.”
Ultimately, the Chickahominy and Rappahannock retained their independence while they upheld their commitment to the terms of the Treaty of Middle Plantation. Despite her efforts, Cockacoeske did not successfully re-create the Powhatan chiefdom’s paramountcy, but the Pamunkey did maintain the matrilineal line of inheritance by not passing power onto her son. The Pamunkey interpreter George Smith reported to the governor on July 1, 1686, that Cockacoeske was dead and her heir was her niece, named in 1702 as “Ms. Betty Queen ye Queen.”