Powhatan

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Chief Powhatan in a longhouse at Werowocomoco (detail of John Smith map, 1612)

Flag of Powhatan Renape

The Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten), or Powhatan Renape^[1] (literally, the "Powhatan Human Beings"), is the name of a Native American tribe. It is also the name of a powerful confederacy of tribes which they dominated.

Also known as Virginia Algonquians, they spoke an eastern-Algonquian language known as Powhatan. They lived in what is now the eastern part of Virginia at the time of the first European-Native encounters there. The name is believed to have originated from a village near the head of navigation on a major river, each of which was also called "Powhatan."

In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a weroance named Wahunsunacock created a mighty empire by conquering or affiliating by agreement with around 30 tribes covering much of eastern Virginia, called Tenakomakah ("densely-inhabited Land"),^[2] He was known as Powhatan. Beginning with the arrival of English settlers at Jamestown in 1607, encroachment of the new arrivals, and their ever-growing numbers on what had been Indian lands, resulted in conflicts that became almost continuous for the next 37 years.

After Wahunsunacock's death in 1618, hostilities escalated under the chiefdom of his brother, Opechancanough, who sought in vain to drive the Europeans away, leading the Indian Massacre of 1622 and another in 1636. These attempts saw strong reprisals from the English, ultimately resulting in the near elimination of the tribe. The Powhatan Confederacy had been largely destroyed by 1646. As the colonial expansion continued, the Europeans were joined by growing numbers of African Americans, some of whom earned their freedom after serving as indentured servants, particularly in the period up to the mid-17th century.

Among the changes made by Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 was the practice of enslaving captive Indians. Indian slavery was again officially abolished by the House of Burgesses in 1691, only fifteen years later; however, many Powhatan continued under conditions of slave-like servitude well into the 18th century.^[3] Some remnant Powhatan assimilated into the colonial populations of persons of European and African origin.

In the 21st century, descendants in Virginia include seven recognized tribes recognized by the state as having ties with the original Powhatan confederacy.^[4] The Pamunkey and the Mattaponi tribes have reservations in King William County, Virginia.

Years after the Powhatan Confederacy no longer existed, and some miles to the west of its area, Powhatan County in the Virginia Colony was named in honor of Chief Wahunsunacock, the father of Pocahontas.

Although the cultures of the Powhatan and the European settlers were very different, through the union of Pocahontas and English settler John Rolfe and their son Thomas Rolfe, many descendants of First Families of Virginia can trace back to both Native American and European roots.

[edit] History

[edit] Source of name

The name "Powhatan" is believed to have originated as the name of the village or "town" that Wahunsunacock (who has become better-known as the Chief Powhatan) came from. It was located in the East End portion of the modern-day city of Richmond, Virginia). "Powhatan" was also the name used by the natives to refer to the river where the town sat at the head of navigation (today called the James River, renamed by the English colonists for their own king, James I).

"Powhatan" is a Virginia Algonquian word with an uncertain meaning: Po- or Pau- or Pow- + hatan. The ending of the word -hatan deals with outcrop of rocks, near the falls of the James River. A similar version of the word can be found in Manhattan, where -hatan refers to the craggy formation along the western portion of the island. The settlement of Powhatan was at the falls of the James River.^[5]

Powhatan Hill in eastern Henrico County is in the general vicinity of the Native American village. Powhatan County and its county seat at Powhatan, Virginia were honorific names established years later in locations west of the area populated by the Powhatan Confederacy.

[edit] Building the Powhatan Confederacy

Wahunsunacock had inherited control over just six tribes, but dominated over thirty by the time the English settlers established their Virginia Colony at Jamestown in 1607. The original six constituent tribes in Wahunsunacock's Powhatan Confederacy were: the Powhatans (proper), the Arrohatecks, the Appamattucks, the Pamunkeys, the Mattaponis, and the Chiskiacks.

He added the Kecoughtans to his fold by 1598. Some other affiliated groups included the Youghtanunds, Rappahannocks, Moraughtacunds, Weyanoaks, Paspaheghs, Quiyoughcohannocks, Warraskoyacks, and Nansemonds. Yet another closely related tribe in the midst of these others, all speaking the same language, was the Chickahominy, who managed to preserve their autonomy from the confederacy.

In his famous work Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-82), Thomas Jefferson estimated that the Powhatan Confederacy occupied about eight thousand square miles of territory, with a population of about eight thousand people, of whom twenty-four hundred were warriors. ^[6]

[edit] The English settlers in the land of the Powhatan

The Powhatan Confederacy is famous as those Indians among whom the first permanent English settlement in North America was made. This was also to be the downfall of the Native American empire. Conflicts began immediately; shots were fired the instant the colonists arrived (due to a bad experience they had with the Spanish prior to their arrival). Within two weeks of the English arrival at Jamestown, deaths had occurred.

The settlers had hoped for friendly relations and had planned to trade with the Native Americans for food. Captain Christopher Newport led the first English exploration party up the James River in 1607 and first met Parahunt, weroance of the Powhatan proper - whom they initially mistook for the paramount Chief Powhatan, Wahunsunacawh.

Opechancanough

On a hunting and trade mission on the Chickahominy River in December 1607, Captain John Smith, later president of the colony, was captured by Opechancanough, the younger brother of Wahunsunacawh. Smith became the first to meet the paramount chief. According to Smith's account, Pocahontas, Wahunsunacawh's daughter, prevented her father from executing Smith.

Some researchers have asserted that a mock execution was a ritual intended to adopt Smith into the tribe, but other modern writers dispute this interpretation. They point out that nothing is known of seventeenth-century Powhatan adoption ceremonies, and that this sort of ritual is different from known rites of passage. Other historians, such as Helen Rountree, have questioned whether the event occurred at all. They note that Smith failed to mention it in his 1608 and 1612 accounts, and only added it to his 1624 memoir, after Pocahontas had become famous.

Newport crowned the paramount Chief with a ceremonial crown and presented him with many European gifts to gain the Indians' friendship. Newport realized that Powhatan's friendship was crucial to the survival of the small Jamestown colony.

After John Smith had become president, he sent a force under Captain Martin which occupied an island in Nansemond territory, driving the inhabitants away. At the same time, he sent another force with Francis West to build a fort at the falls, then purchased the nearby fortified Powhatan village (present site of Richmond, Virginia) from Parahunt for some copper and an Englishman named Henry Spelman, who wrote a rare first-hand account of the Powhatan ways of life. Smith then renamed the village "Nonsuch", and tried to get West's men to live in it. Both these attempts at settling beyond Jamestown soon failed, due to Powhatan resistance,. Smith left Virginia for England in October 1609, never to return, because of an injury sustained in a gunpowder accident. A second English fort, Fort Algernon, was established soon afterward in Kecoughtan territory.

In November 1609, Captain John Ratcliffe was invited to Orapakes, Powhatan's new capital. When he sailed up the Pamunkey River to trade there, a fight broke out between the colonists and the Powhatans. All of the English ashore were killed, including Ratcliffe, who was tortured by the women of the tribe. Those aboard the pinnace escaped and told the tale at Jamestown.

During the next year, the tribe attacked and killed many Jamestown residents. The residents fought back, but only killed twenty. However, arrival at Jamestown of a new Governor, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, (Lord Delaware) in June of 1610 signalled the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War. A brief period of peace only came after the capture of Pocahontas, her baptism, and her marriage to tobacco planter John Rolfe in 1614.

However, within a few years both the Chief and Pocahontas were dead from disease. The Chief died in Virginia, but Pocahontas died while in England. Meanwhile, the English settlers continued to encroach on Powhatan territory.

After Wahunsunacawh's death, his younger brother, Opitchapam, briefly became chief, followed by their younger brother Opechancanough, who in 1622 and 1644 attempted to force the English from Powhatan territories. Both these attempts saw strong reprisals from the English, ultimately resulting in the near destruction of the tribe. The Second Anglo–Powhatan War that followed the 1644 incident ended after Royal Governor of Virginia William Berkeley's forces captured Opechancanough, thought to be between 90 and 100 years old. While a prisoner, Opechancanough was killed, shot in the back, by a soldier assigned to guard him. He was succeeded as Weroance by Necotowance, and later by Totopotomoi and by his daughter Cockacoeske.

Red line shows boundary between the Virginia Colony and Tributary Indian tribes, as established by the Treaty of 1646. Red dot shows Jamestown, capital of Virginia Colony.

The Treaty of 1646 ending this conflict marked the effective dissolution of the united confederacy, as white colonists were granted an exclusive enclave between the York and Blackwater Rivers, physically separating the Nansemonds, Weyanokes and Appomattox, who retreated southward, from the other Powhatan tribes now occupying the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck. While the southern frontier demarcated in 1646 was respected for the remainder of the 17th century, the northern one was lifted by the House of Burgesses on September 1, 1649. Waves of new immigrants quickly thereafter flooded the peninsular region, then known as Chickacoan, restricting the dwindling tribes to ever more dwindling tracts of land that became among the earliest reservations.

By 1665, the Powhatan were subject to stringent laws enacted that year, which compelled them to accept chiefs appointed by the governor. After the Treaty of Albany in 1684, the Powhatan Confederacy all but vanished.

[edit] Capitals of the Powhatan Confederacy

Besides the capital village of "Powhatan" in the Powhatan Hill section of the eastern part of the current city of Richmond, another capital of this confederacy about 75 miles (121 km) to the east was called Werowocomoco. It was located near the north bank of the York River in present-day Gloucester County.

Werowocomoco was described by the English colonists as only 15 miles (24 km) as the crow flies from Jamestown, but also described as 25 miles (40 km) downstream from present-day West Point, measurements which are in conflict with each other. Therefore, the long-lost location of Werowocomoco is in some dispute. Long thought to have been near Wicomico, near Gloucester Point, roughly 25 miles (40 km) downstream from West Point, substantial archaeological evidence discovered in the early 21st century locates the site on Purtan Bay, about 12 air miles from Jamestown, but much less than 25 miles (40 km) below West Point.

Around 1609, Wahunsunacock shifted his capital from Werowocomoco to Orapakes, located in a swamp at the head of the Chickahominy River, near the modern-day interchange of Interstate 64 and Interstate 295. Sometime between 1611 and 1614, he moved further north to Matchut, in present-day King William County on the north bank of the Pamunkey River, not far from where his brother Opechancanough ruled at Youghtanund.

[edit] Characteristics

The Powhatan lived east of the fall line in Tidewater Virginia. They built their houses of poles, rushes, and bark, and they supported themselves primarily by growing crops, especially maize, but they also fished and hunted in the great forest in their area. Villages consisted of a number of related families organized in tribes that were led by a king or queen, who was a client of the Emperor and a member of his council.

According to research by the National Park Service, Powhatan "men were warriors and hunters, while women were gardeners and gatherers. The English described the men, who ran and walked extensively through the woods in pursuit of enemies or game, as tall and lean and possessed of handsome physiques. The women were shorter, and were strong because of the hours they spent tending crops, pounding corn into meal, gathering nuts, and performing other domestic chores. When the men undertook extended hunts, the women went ahead of them to construct hunting camps. The Powhatan domestic economy depended on the labor of both sexes." ^[7]

All of Virginia's natives practiced agriculture. They periodically moved their villages from site to site. Villagers cleared the fields by felling, girdling, or firing trees at the base and then using fire to reduce the slash and stumps. A village gradually became untenable as soil productivity gradually declined and local fish and game were depleted. The inhabitants then moved on. With every change in location, a village used fire to clear new land and left an even larger amount of cleared land behind. The natives also used fire to maintain extensive areas of open game habitat throughout the East, later called "barrens" by European colonists. The Powhatan also had rich fishing grounds. Bison had arrived to this area by the early 15th century.^[8]

[edit] Powhatan today

Almost 5,000 Powhatan people remain in Virginia. Some of them live in the two tiny reservations, Mattaponi and Pamunkey, found in King William County, Virginia. However, the Powhatan language is now dormant. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the vocabulary of the language; some of the sources are word lists provided by Smith and by William Strachey.

Powhatan County was named in honor of the Chief and his tribe, although located about 60 miles (97 km) to the west of lands ever under their control. In the independent city of Richmond, Tree Hill Farm in the city's east end is traditionally believed to be located near the village Chief Powhatan was originally from, although the specific location of the site is unknown.

The Powhatan Confederacy have complained against the workings of Walt Disney, claiming that the Disney movie "distorts history beyond recognition," quoted from Chief Roy Crazy Horse, a Powhatan descendant.

The American entertainer Wayne Newton is of mixed Powhatan [Potomac], Cherokee, Irish, and German ancestry.

[edit] Powhatan in film

The Powhatan people are featured in the Disney animated film Pocahontas (1995). An attempt at a more historically accurate representation of them appears in The New World (2005).

[edit] See also

• Black Indians
• Native Americans in the United States
• Native American tribe
• One-drop rule

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Gleach, Frederic W. (1997) Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• Gleach, Frederic W. (2006) Pocahontas: An Exercise in Mythmaking and Marketing." In: New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations, ed. by Sergei A. Kan and Pauline Turner Strong, pp. 433-455. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• Karen Kupperman, Settling With the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580-1640, 1980
• A. Bryant Nichols Jr., Captain Christopher Newport: Admiral of Virginia, Sea Venture, 2007
• James Rice, Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson, 2009.
• Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries, 1990

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:Powahatan

• The Anglo-Powhatan Wars
• Powhatan Renape Nation — Rankokus American Indian Reservation
• A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: The First Century
• National Geographic Magazine Jamestown/Werowocomoco Interactive
• UNC Charlotte linguist Blair Rudes restores lost language, culture for 'The New World'
• How a linguist revived 'New World' language
• Princess Cleopatra
• The Indigenous Maps and Mapping of North American Indians