The enraged Berkeley, finding his will thwarted, waited patiently for the return of the doughty three hundred, taking what grim satisfaction he could find in telling young Mistress Elizabeth Bacon that her husband would hang as soon as he came back, in issuing, upon May 10, another proclamation against the "young, inexperienced, rash and inconsiderate," general and his "rude, dissolute and tumultuous" followers, and in deposing Bacon from his seat in the "honorable Council" and from his office as a magistrate. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Bacon and his men, regardless of the anxiety with which Governor Berkeley watched for their return, were pressing on through the wilderness. When they had marched "a great way to the south"--had crossed into Carolina, indeed--and their supplies were nearly spent, they came upon a little island (probably in Roanoke River) seated by the Ockinagee Indians, one of the tribes said to have been protected by Berkeley for sake of the fur trade, and doubtless the same as the Mangoaks, rumors of whose great trade with the Indians of the northwest, for copper, had been brought to Sir Walter Raleigh's colony. These Ockinagees, who were very likely a branch of the great Dakota family of Indians, were evidently a most enterprising people, and their isle was a veritable center of commerce among the red-skin inhabitants of that region. It was described as "commodious for trade, and the mart for all the Indians for at least five hundred miles" around. Its residents had at that time on hand no less than a thousand beaver skins of which Sir William Berkeley and his partners would in due time, doubtless, have become possessed, and it was supposed to have been through trade with these Islanders that arms and ammunition were passed on to the fierce Susquehannock braves. When Bacon reached the island he saw at once that it would be nothing short of madness to pit his handful of foot-sore and half-starved men against the combined strength of the Ockinagees and the Susquehannocks, so, adopting a policy patterned after the savages' own crafty methods of warfare, he made friends with one tribe and persuaded them to fall upon the other. The result was a furious battle between the two tribes in which thirty Susquehannock warriors and all of their women and children were killed. By this time Bacon's men were in a sorry plight for the want of provisions. They offered to buy food from their new-made friends, the Ockinagees, who promised them relief on the morrow, but when the next day came put them off again with talk of still another "morrow." In the mean time, they were evidently making preparations for battle. They had reinforced their three forts upon the island, and were seen to grow more and more warlike in their attitude as the pale faces grew weaker in numbers and in physical strength. To add to the desperate situation, there came a report that the Indians had received private messages from Governor Berkeley.