After 1620 , with growing demand for tobacco on the continent , the Company arranged to sell Virginia tobacco in the Netherlands , but the next year and despite company pleas to maintain the privilege of freedom of trade , the Privy Council forbade the export of any product of Virginia to a foreign country until the commodities had been landed in England , and English duties had been paid . By 1621 , the Company was in trouble ; unpaid dividends and increased use of lotteries had made future investors wary . The Company debt was now over £ 9,000 . Worried Virginians were hardly reassured by the advice of pragmatic Treasurer Sandys , who warned that the Company " can not wish you to rely on anything but yourselves . " In March 1622 , the Company 's and the colony 's situation went from dire to disastrous when , during the Indian massacre of 1622 , the Powhatan confederacy killed one-quarter of the European population of the Virginia colony
Indian massacre of 1622
Indian massacre of 1622
London Company