Early Virginia

Sources

Wahunsunacock. In 1607, after early attempts to establish English colonies in Virginia failed, the Powhatans and other native peoples of the Chesapeake region helped the settlement at Jamestown to survive, providing food and helping colonists find hunting and fishing spots. Even with their help the English suffered from high mortality and endured periods of starvation. When Capt. John Smith paid a visit to the Powhatan leader, or werowance, known as Wahunsunacock, the Indians engaged in a welcoming ritual in which the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, played a role. Smith interpreted this ceremony as an attempt to kill him, thwarted by Pocahontas’s “rescue.”

Powhatan Confederacy. Wahunsunacock used the British to enhance his position in native politics significantly. With British support he transformed what had been a loose confederacy of native peoples into a paramount chiefdom. The alliance was peaceful until 1609, when the English attempted to dictate unfavorable terms of trade and colonization. The Powhatans retaliated by withholding corn, and war broke out. By 1611 the English had forced all native peoples out of their immediate area, and in 1614 they captured Pocahontas and converted her to Christianity. Wahunsunacock reluctantly agreed to a truce, and Pocahontas married the planter John Rolfe and sailed to England, where she died of a respiratory illness in 1617. Her marriage probably helped to seal the uneasy peace. In the years following, however, the English started to grow tobacco, a field crop requiring huge tracts of land, and large-scale immigration put additional demographic pressure on the Powhatans.

Opechancanough. In 1622 the new werowance, Opechancanough, led a revenge raid against the English, killing more than three hundred colonists in retaliation for the execution of a Powhatan convicted of murdering a settler. In the ensuing conflict the colonists sought to exterminate the Powhatans or drive them as far inland as possible. The wars lasted until 1646, when the English finally captured the elderly Opechancanough and took him to Jamestown, where a guard shot him to death.

Sources

Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (London: Robert Robinson, 1588);

Helen C. Rountree, ed., Powhatan Foreign Relations 1500–1722 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993).