In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Chief Powhatan built a powerful organization of 30 tributary peoples across much of eastern Virginia, and at the time of Jamestown's founding the Warraskoyack lived along this stretch of the James River shoreline, where in 1608 they gave Captain John Smith and the starving colonists 30 bushels of corn. As the colony expanded onto Indian lands north and south of the river, relations deteriorated, and after the March 22, 1622 attack that killed hundreds of settlers, including 52 at Bennett's Welcome and Basse's Choice on this side of the James, colonists built a triangular earthen fort called The Castle as a lookout against future attacks; the Warraskoyack were then largely driven from their lands in the reprisals. During the Revolutionary War, local militia refortified and enlarged the moated earthwork and renamed it Fort Boykin for Major Francis Boykin, though no engagements occurred there. In the War of 1812, it was expanded into an irregular five-pointed star to defend the James River from British gunboats, and although local militia foiled a British landing attempt nearby, HMS Plantagenent remained anchored near the fort for months. In 1861 the site was selected for Confederate gun batteries to help protect Richmond, 55 miles upriver, as part of Major General John Magruder's defensive line across the Virginia Peninsula and along the James. Between June 1861 and May 1862, Confederate forces cleared, refurbished, and refortified the fort under Captain T.M.R. Talcott and Lt. W.G. Turpin, using enslaved people and free blacks described as a force of at least 1000 hands, with free blacks unloading boats carrying army supplies. After Magruder abandoned his line on May 4, 1862, Union naval forces attacked Fort Boykin and Fort Huger on May 8; Fort Boykin received the heaviest fire, but its guns could not damage the ironclad USS Galena or reach the other ships, and the forts were abandoned. U.S. Marines occupied Forts Boykin and Huger on May 17 and 18 and found most guns spiked, the carriages burned, and interior structures destroyed, opening the James River to the Union fleet's advance toward Drewry's Bluff.