[…]Indian retaliations of one nature or another caused the English settlements that had reached Hunting Creek to recede to Aquia, where they stayed for the next ten years. Sir William Berkeley in order to help the frontiersmen, unwisely, and at great expense to the people, commanded a fort to be built at the mouth of each head river; e.g., one was built at Colchester on the Occoquan. These forts proved of no value, being made of mud and dirt. Other precarious forts were built in place of the mud[…].