Chief Powhatan

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Chief Powhatan (detail of map published by John Smith (1612)

Chief Powhatan (c. June 17, 1545 – c. 1618), whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh or (in seventeenth century English spelling) Wahunsunacock, was the leader of the Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten), a powerful tribe of Native Americans, speaking an Algonquian language, who lived in Tenakomakah— which is now Tidewater Virginia—at the time of the first English-Native encounters. Wahunsenacawh was the father of Pocahontas.

Name

Powhatan was originally the name of one of the towns where he lived, a location now in the east end of the city of Richmond, Virginia, as well as the name of the adjacent river (today called the James River). When he created a powerful empire by conquering most of tidewater Virginia, he called himself the Powhatan, often taken as his given name, but actually a title.

17th century English spellings were not standardised, so the problem of representing the sounds of the Algonquian language spoken by Wahunsenacawh and his people is made doubly difficult by different spellings representing the same word. Charles Dudley Warner, writing in the 19th century, but quoting extensively from John Smith's writings, in his essay on Pocahontas states: "In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated with fighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names and titles; his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimes Mamauatonick, and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk." Many variants are used in texts:

• The place, Powhatan

• Powhatan, Powatan, Powhaten, Pohetan, Powhattan, Poughwaton,

• The description, weroance (chief?)

• weroance, weeroance, wyrounce, wyrounnces, werowance, wyroance, werowans

• The name, Wahunsunacock

• Wahunsunacock, Wahunsenasawk, Wahunsenacawh, Wahunsenacock

• The title, Mamanatowick (paramount- or great- chief, overlord?)

• Mamanatowick, Mamauatonick

Life

Little is known of Powhatan's life before the arrival of English colonists in 1607. He apparently inherited the chiefdom of about 4-6 tribes, with the base at the fall line near Richmond, and through diplomacy and/or force, had assembled a total of about 30 into the Powhatan Confederacy by the early 17th century.

In December 1607, English soldier and pioneer John Smith, one of the colony's leaders, was captured by a hunting expedition led by Opechancanough, the younger brother of Chief Powhatan, and was eventually taken to Werowocomoco, Powhatan's capital. According to Smith's 1624 account, Pocahontas (whose real name was Matoaka), Powhatan's younger daughter, is said to have prevented her father from executing Smith at this time. However, Smith's 1608 and 1612 reports omitted this entire relation, and many historians have cast doubt on its accuracy. It is also believed by some that this was a ritual intended to adopt Smith into the tribe.^[1]

In January 1609, Smith set some German builders to work on building an English-style house for Powhatan at Werowocomoco, in exchange for food supplies for the hungry colony. However, intrigue was in the air when Smith arrived with a company of men, as both sides looked for opportunities to surprise one another. Smith then proceeded up to Opechancanough's village and when ambushed, held the chief at gunpoint before his fellow tribesmen. When he returned to Werowocomoco he found the house unfinished and the place abandoned; even the Germans had deserted to the Powhatan side. The ruins of the incomplete building are still visible today, and are known as Powhatan's Chimney. Powhatan made his next capital at Orapakes, located about 50 miles (80 km) west 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, near where his younger brother Opechancanough ruled at Youghtanund.

By the time Smith left Virginia because of an injury sustained in a gunpowder accident in 1609, the fragile peace was already beginning to fray, leading to the First Anglo-Powhatan War, and further English expansion beyond Jamestown and into Powhatan's territory. Two of his constituent subtribes, the Kecoughtan and the Paspahegh, were effectively destroyed at the beginning of this war, and Powhatan sent the cackarous Nemattanew to operate against the English on the upper James River, though they held out at Henricus. With the capture of Pocahontas in 1613, Powhatan sued for peace, which finally came about with her alliance in marriage to John Rolfe, a leading tobacco planter.

Meanwhile, the English continued to expand along the James riverfront. The aged Powhatan's final years have been called "ineffectual" (Rountree 1990) as Opechancanough became more and more the real power.

Upon the death of Wahunsunacock in 1618, his younger brother Opitchapam officially became paramount chief, however the real regime now effectively belonged to Opechancanough, younger brother to both of them. In the Indian Massacre of 1622, and again in 1644, he attempted to force the English from Virginia. These attempts invited strong reprisals from the English, ultimately resulting in the near destruction of the tribe.

Through his daughter Pocahontas (and her marriage to the English colonist John Rolfe), he was the grandfather of Thomas Rolfe. As a result of Thomas Rolfe's birth, and his descendants, the Rolfe family is considered one of the First Families of Virginia, one with both English and Native American roots.

Appearance

In A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608), Smith described Powhatan thus: "...their Emperor proudly [lay] upon a bedstead a foot high upon ten or twelve mats, richly hung with many chains of great pearls about his neck, and covered with a great covering of Rahaughcums [raccoon skins]. At his head sat a woman, at his feet another, on each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men on each side [of] the fire, ten in a rank, and behind them as many young women, each a great chain of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and [he] with such a grave a majestical countenance as drove me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage."^[2]

Powatan's Mantle is a cloak made of deerskin and decorated with shell patterns and figures in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It allegedly belonged to Chief Powhatan although the evidence is questionable. The Mantle is, however, certainly one of the earliest North American artefacts to have survived in a European collection, and must have originally belonged to a Native American of high social status, given its manufacture from large numbers of valuable native shell beads.[2]

In his 1906 work Lives of Famous Chiefs, Norman Wood also offered a description of the chief at the time the Englishmen were encountered. He was said to be a "tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke, his head somewhat gray, his beard so thinne that it seemeth none at all, his age neare sixtie, of a very able and hardy body, to endure any labor." ^[3]

Sites associated with Powhatan

• Powhatan's burial mound is now supposedly located on the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in Virginia. The remains were relocated there by his brother, Opechancanough.
• Powhatan County, although located somewhat to the west of their actual territory, was named for Chief Powhatan and his tribe.
• In the independent City of Richmond, Powhatan Hill is believed to be located near Chief Powhatan's village. However, this was the capital of the Powhatan proper, one of the subtribes, and was ruled by a subject weroance called Parahunt, or Tanx ("little") Powhatan. The English on first meeting him mistook him for the Great Powhatan, and the confusion persists to this day.
• Chief Powhatan's first known chief village, Werowocomoco, is an archaeological site in Gloucester County, Virginia which has been listed as a National Historic Site.

Fictional representations

Douglass Dumbrille was casted as this Virginia chief in the 1953 live-action film Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. A fictional version of Powhatan was voiced by Russell Means in the 1995 Disney animated film, Pocahontas. This Native American chief was played by Canadian Gordon Tootoosis in Pocahontas: The Legend in that same year. He was played by Canadian August Schellenberg in the 2005 film The New World. The chief is also represented as a potential Continental Congress member in Civilization IV: Colonization.

External links

• The Anglo-Powhatan Wars
• Powhatan's Mantle in the Ashmolean Museum -Pictures and extensive description and history

Notes

1. ^ Horwitz, Tony. A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. Henry Holt and Co.. p. 336. ISBN 0-8050-7603-4. 
2. ^ Smith, John. A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as hath Hapned in Virginia. 1608. [1] Repr. in The Complete Works of John Smith (1580-1631). Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Chapel Hill: University Press of Virginia, 1983. Vol. 1, p.53.
3. ^ http://journals.aol.com/ondamitag/NorthernHistorically/entries/2008/08/01/powhatan-or-wah-un-so-na-cook.-part-1-of-2/5171

Further reading

• David A. Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of A New Nation, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003