Massacre Medallion

The bearded settler at center, sword in hand, motions to other Jamestown residents to flee the violent scene unfolding during the so-called Jamestown Massacre of 1622, an event Indians call the Great Attack. At his feet, a fellow settler lies gravely injured  and is tended to by a woman. The building in the background is the first university in America, established at Henrico in 1619 with the mission of Christianizing Indian children and training them in "true Religion moral virtue and Civility." The university was destroyed during the Indian attack.

This medallion was commissioned in 1901 by the Baltimore chapter of the Colonial Dames of America as a prize for graduates of Johns Hopkins University who created distinguished work in the field of colonial history. The bronze plaque was created by Adalbert Johann Volck, a German-born artist and dentist who worked in Baltimore. Volck was a noted sympathizer of the Confederate cause during the Civil War, and is best known for the political drawings and etchings he produced during that conflict.

Description courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society.