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Powhatan Confederacy

 
US History Encyclopedia: Powhatan Confederacy
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Powhatan Confederacy, a paramount chiefdom in the coastal plain of Virginia, named for its leader at the time of English colonization. Powhatan had inherited the leadership of a group of six tribes in the sixteenth century and expanded his authority to more than thirty tribes by 1607. Much of this expansion was by conquest. The Powhatans had a system of dual leadership with a "peace chief" responsible for internal affairs and a "war chief" for external affairs, including warfare. There was also a powerful council, which included priests and other advisers. Powhatan led the confederacy from before 1607 to 1617; after that the war chief Opechancanough was most visible, although a brother, Itoyatin, succeeded Powhatan as peace chief.

The region of the Powhatan Confederacy was called Tsenacommacah. Its core lay in the area between the James and Mattaponi Rivers in the inner coastal plain; other territories, each with its own chief and villages, were predominantly east of this area. All of these constituent chiefdoms paid tribute to Powhatan as paramount chief. To the north and south were other groups not part of the confederacy but culturally and linguistically similar. The geographic fall line running through modern Richmond, Virginia, constituted a western boundary across which were other groups speaking different languages; relatively little is known of those people.

The Powhatans lived in villages, many fortified, that could have over a thousand inhabitants, although most were a few hundred or smaller. The daily lives of villagers included farming, fishing, hunting, and gathering wild resources. Paralleling their political organization, Powhatan cosmology featured two powerful deities and a number of lesser spiritual powers. Powhatan males bonded with these manitus through the huskanaw, a vision-quest ritual, and their lives were shaped by the particular manitu with whom they shared a personal connection. Chiefs, priests, and curers had access to the most powerful manitus, but most Powhatans could personally draw on the spiritual realm; women had an innate spirituality related to their reproductive capacity.

The Powhatans were vital to the English Virginia colony in its early years. Cultural differences precluded understanding, and each saw the other as inferior, but for some years the Jamestown colony survived on food traded (or stolen) from the Powhatans. In the winter of 1607–1608, Powhatan attempted to adopt the English colony through the well-known ritual in which Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas symbolically saved Captain John Smith; in October 1608, the English tried to crown Powhatan as subordinate to their king.

Although the Powhatans tolerated the English for their desirable goods, throughout the first half of the seventeenth century they had to attempt violent corrections for what they saw as inappropriate actions by the colonists. The colonists also responded with violence to what they considered inappropriate actions by the Powhatans. The marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe in 1614 brought a measure of peace to the area, but Pocahontas died in early 1617 while visiting England. Led by Opechancanough, the Powhatans conducted large-scale attacks on the colony in 1622 and again in 1644; after the latter, Opechancanough was captured and killed. The 1646 treaty was signed by "king of the Indians" Necotowance, but by then Virginia was firmly controlled by the English and the Powhatans were dependent "tributary Indians" confined to designated reservations.

Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, descendants of the Powhatan Indians remained in eastern Virginia, but they were relatively invisible—except for the descendants of Pocahontas, who were a proud part of white society. In the late nineteenth century, the Powhatans began the long struggle for recognition. The anthropologist Frank Speck promoted their cause beginning in 1919, and opposed racist policies directed against them. He aided a revival of the "Powhatan Confederacy" in the 1920s; another was attempted around 1970. While these reorganized confederacies did not last, individual tribes continued both on the two surviving reservations and in several other communities. Although they lacked federal recognition in the twenty-first century, most were recognized by the state of Virginia.

Bibliography

Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Rountree, Helen C. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

———. Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Speck, Frank G. Chapters on the Ethnology of the Powhatan Tribes of Virginia. New York: Heye Foundation, 1928.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Powhatan Confederacy
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Powhatan Confederacy, group of Native North Americans belonging to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). Their area embraced most of tidewater Virginia and the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. Wahunsonacock, or Powhatan, as the English called him, was the leader of the confederacy when Jamestown was settled in 1607. The Powhatan are said to have been driven N to Virginia by the Spanish, where their chief, Powhatan's father, subjugated five other Virginia tribes. With Powhatan's own conquests, the empire included, among some 30 peoples, the Pamunkey, Mattapony, Chickahominy, and others likewise commemorated in the names of the streams and rivers of E Virginia. They were a sedentary people, with some 200 settlements, many of them protected by palisades when the English arrived. They cultivated corn, fished, and hunted. Of his many capitals, Powhatan favored Werowocomoco, on the left bank of the York River near modern Purtan Bay, where Capt. John Smith first met him in 1608. The English soon seized the best lands, and Powhatan quickly retaliated. To appease him, he was given a crown, and a coronation ceremony was formally performed by Christopher Newport in 1609. Peace with Powhatan was secured when his daughter Pocahontas married (1614) John Rolfe.

On Powhatan's death in 1618, Opechancanough, chief of the Pamunkey, became the central power in the confederacy, and he organized the general attack (1622) in which some 350 settlers were killed. English reprisals were equally violent, but there was no further fighting on a large scale until 1644, when Opechancanough led the last uprising, in which he was captured and murdered at Jamestown. In 1646 the confederacy yielded much of its territory, and beginning in 1665 its chiefs were appointed by the governor of Virginia. After the Iroquois, traditional enemies of the confederacy, agreed to cease their attacks in the Treaty of Albany (1722), the tribes scattered, mixed with the settlers, and all semblance of the confederacy disappeared. In 1990 there were about 800 Powhatan in the United States, most of them in E Virginia.

Bibliography

See F. G. Speck, Chapters on the Ethnology of the Powhatan Tribes of Virginia (1928).

Wikipedia: Powhatan
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This article is about the Algonquian tribe. For other uses, see Powhatan (disambiguation).
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 Virginia Indian[2] tribe. It is also the name of a powerful confederacy of tribes which they dominated. The confederacy is estimated to have been about 14,000-21,000 people in eastern Virginia, when the English settled Jamestown in 1607.[3] They were also known as Virginia Algonquians, as they spoke an eastern-Algonquian language known as Powhatan.

In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a mamanatowick (paramount chief)[4] named Wahunsunacock created a powerful chiefdom by affiliating 30 tributary peoples, whose territory was much of eastern Virginia, called Tsenacommacah ("densely-inhabited Land"),[5] He was known by his title, Powhatan. Each of the tribes within the chiefdom had their own weroance (chief), but all paid tribute to Powhatan.[6]

After Powhatan's death in 1618, hostilities with colonists escalated under the chiefdom of his brother, Opechancanough, who sought in vain to drive off the encroaching English. His large-scale attacks in 1622 and 1644 met strong reprisals by the English, resulting in the near elimination of the tribe. By 1646 the Powhatan Confederacy was largely destroyed, in part due to infectious diseases to which they had no immunity. By this time, the colonies were desperate for labor.

Almost half of the incoming whites arrived as indentured servants. As colonial expansion continued, the Europeans imported growing numbers of enslaved Africans for labor. By 1700 the colonies had about 6,000 black slaves, one-twelfth of the population. It was common for black slaves to escape and join surrounding Powhatan; white servants were also noted to have joined the Indians. Africans and whites worked and lived together; some natives also intermarried with them. After Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, the colony enslaved Indians for control. In 1691 the House of Burgesses abolished Indian slavery; however, many Powhatan were held under servitude well into the 18th century.[7]

In the 21st century, seven Indian tribes are recognized by the state as having ties with the original Powhatan confederacy.[8] The Pamunkey and Mattaponi are the only two peoples who have retained reservation lands from the 1600s.[6] The competing cultures of the Powhatan and English settlers were united temporarily through the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Their son Thomas Rolfe was the ancestor of many Virginians; thus, many of the First Families of Virginia have both English and Virginia Indian[2] ancestry.

Contents

History

Source of name

The name "Powhatan" is believed to have originated as the name of the village or "town" that Wahunsunacawh (whose official title Chief Powhatan was to be used) 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 refers to an outcrop of rocks, as 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.[9]

Powhatan Hill in eastern Richmond is in the general vicinity of the Virginia Indian 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.

Building the Powhatan Confederacy

Wahunsunacawh had inherited control over just six tribes, but dominated more than 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 8,000 square miles of territory, with a population of about 8,000 people, of whom 2400 were warriors.[10] Later scholars estimated the population of the paramountcy as 15,000.

The English settlers in the land of the Powhatan

The Powhatan Confederacy were the Indians among whom the English made their first permanent settlement in North America. This contributed to their downfall. Conflicts began immediately; the English colonists fired shots as soon as they 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 Virginia Indians for food. Captain Christopher Newport led the first English exploration party up the James River in 1607, when he met Parahunt, weroance of the Powhatan tribe. The English mistook him for Wahunsunacawh, the paramount Powhatan.

'John Smith taking the King of Pamunkey prisoner', a fanciful image of Opechancanough from Smith's General History of Virginia (1624). The image of Opechancanough is based on a 1585 painting of another native warrior by John White[2]

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 Englishman to meet the paramount chief, Powhatan. 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 17th-century Powhatan adoption ceremonies. They note that an execution ritual is different from known rites of passage. Other historians, such as Helen Rountree, have questioned whether there was any risk of execution. 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.

In 1608, Captain Newport realized that Powhatan's friendship was crucial to the survival of the small Jamestown colony. In the summer of that year, he tried to "crown" the paramount Chief, with a ceremonial crown, to make him an English "vassal."[11] They also gave Powhatan many European gifts, such as a pitcher, feather mattress, bed frame, and clothes. The coronation went badly because they asked Powhatan to kneel to receive the crown, which he refused to do. As a powerful leader, Powhatan followed two rules: "he who keeps his head higher than others ranks higher," and "he who puts other people in a vulnerable position, without altering his own stance, ranks higher." To finish the "coronation", several English had to lean on Powhatan's shoulders to get him low enough to place the crown on his head, as he was a tall man. Afterwards, the English might have thought that Powhatan had submitted to King James, whereas Powhatan likely thought nothing of the sort.[12]

After John Smith became president of the colony, he sent a force under Captain Martin to occupy an island in Nansemond territory and drive the inhabitants away. At the same time, he sent another force with Francis West to build a fort at the James River falls. He purchased the nearby fortified Powhatan village (present site of Richmond, Virginia) from Parahunt for some copper and an English servant named Henry Spelman, who wrote a rare firsthand 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. Soon afterward, the English established a second fort, Fort Algernon, in Kecoughtan territory.

In November 1609, Captain John Ratcliffe was invited to Orapakes, Powhatan's new capital. After he had sailed up the Pamunkey River to trade there, a fight broke out between the colonists and the Powhatan. 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 came only after the capture of Pocahontas, her baptism, and her marriage to tobacco planter John Rolfe in 1614. Within a few years both Powhatan and Pocahontas were dead. 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. In 1622 and 1644 he attacked the English to force them from Powhatan territories. Both these attempts were met with 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 in 1646, 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 marked the effective dissolution of the united confederacy, as white colonists were granted an exclusive enclave between the York and Blackwater Rivers. This physically separated the Nansemonds, Weyanokes and Appomattox, who retreated southward, from the other Powhatan tribes then occupying the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck. While the southern frontier demarcated in 1646 was respected for the remainder of the 17th century, the House of Burgesses lifted the northern one on September 1, 1649. Waves of new immigrants quickly flooded the peninsular region, then known as Chickacoan, and restricted the dwindling tribes to lesser tracts of land that became some of the earliest Indian reservations.

In 1665, the House of Burgesses passed stringent laws requiring the Powhatan to accept chiefs appointed by the governor. After the Treaty of Albany in 1684, the Powhatan Confederacy all but vanished.

Capitals of the Powhatan Confederacy

The capital village of "Powhatan" was believed to be in the present-day Powhatan Hill section of the eastern part of Richmond, Virginia. Another major center of the 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 conflict with each other. In 2003 archaeologists initiated excavations at a site in Gloucester County that have revealed an extensive indigenous settlement from about 1200 (the late Woodland period) through the early Contact period. Work since then has added to their belief that this is the location of Werowocomoco. The site is on a farm bordering on Purtain Bay of the York River, about 12 air miles from Jamestown. The more than 50-acre residential settlement extends up to 1000 feet back from the river. In 2004 researchers excavated two, 200-foot-long, curving ditches at the far edge, which were constructed about 1400 CE. In addition to extensive artifacts from hundreds of years of indigenous settlement, researchers have found a variety of trade goods related to the brief interaction of Native Americans and English in the early years of Jamestown.

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.

Characteristics

The Powhatan lived east of the fall line in Tidewater Virginia. They built their houses, called yehakins, by bending saplings and placing woven mats or bark over top of the saplings. 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 led by a chief (weroance/werowance or weroansqua if female). They paid tribute to the paramount chief (mamanatowick), Powhatan.[4]

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." [13]

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 became unusable as soil productivity gradually declined and local fish and game were depleted. The inhabitants then moved on. With every change in location, the people used fire to clear new land. They left more 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 migrated to this area by the early 15th century.[14]

Powhatan today

As of 2009, the state has recognized seven Powhatan Indian-descended tribes in Virginia. They have approximately 2,500-3,000 people enrolled as tribal members.[15] It is estimated that 3 to 4 times that number are eligible for tribal membership.[11] Two of these tribes, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey, still retain their reservations from the 1600s; both are located in King William County, Virginia. 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 17th-century writer 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 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 which Chief Powhatan was originally from. The specific location of the site is unknown.

Since the 1990s the Powhatan Indian tribes that have state recognition, along with the one other Virginia Indian tribe that is state recognized, have been seeking federal recognition. It has been a difficult process. They have been hampered by the lack of official records and misclassification of family members through the years in Virginia. While head of Vital Statistics in the stae for decades in the early 1900s, Walter Plecker conducted a campaign to reclassify as black, people of mixed race whom he believed were trying to pass as Indian or white. Tribal members describe his work as "paper genocide". A white supremacist and a follower of the eugenics movement, Plecker thought that years of intermarriage with other "races" meant there were no "real" Virginia Indians left. After Virginia passed more stringent segregation laws defining as black anyone with any African blood Racial Integrity Act of 1924, Plecker directed local offices to use only the terms "white" or "colored" on official documents, such as birth, death and marriage certificates, tax documents, etc. The Virginia tribes efforts to gain recognition have also encountered resistance because of fears they would establish gambling on their lands.

In March 2009 five of the state-recognized Powhatan Indian tribes and the one other state-recognized Virginia Indian tribe introduced a bill to gain Federal recognition through an act of Congress. "The Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act" went first to the House Committee on Natural Resources. The Committee voted on April 22 to pass the bill on the US House of Representatives, who approved the bill on June 3. On June 4, 2009 the bill was sent to the Senate. They referred it to their Committee on Indian Affairs. This is where the bill is as of July 16, 2009, the furthest it as gotten in the process. The bill has a section forbidding the tribes from opening up casinos, even if casinos were to be allowed in Virginia.[16]

Powhatan and film

The Powhatan people are featured in the Disney animated film Pocahontas (1995). An attempt at a more historically accurate representation was the drama The New World (2005), but it still relied on the myth of a romance between Pocahontas and John Smith.

Some of the current members of Powhatan-descended tribes complained about the Disney film, claiming that the Disney movie "distorts history beyond recognition," as Chief Roy Crazy Horse said.[citation needed] He is a Powhatan descendant.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The word "Renape", which means human[1], is cognate with Lenape, the name of another Algonquian-speaking tribe of what is now New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
  2. ^ a b http://indians.vipnet.org/resources/writersGuide.pdf
  3. ^ Egloff, Keith and Deborah Woodward. First People: The Early Indians of Virginia. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992
  4. ^ a b Wood, Karenne. The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail, 2007.
  5. ^ http://www.wm.edu/niahd/journals/index.php?browse=entry&id=4965
  6. ^ a b Waugaman, Sandra F. and Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D. We're Still Here: Contemporary Virginia Indians Tell Their Stories. Richmond: Palari Publishing, 2006 (revised edition).
  7. ^ Rountree 1990
  8. ^ Matchut
  9. ^ Powhatan Indian Chiefs and Leaders
  10. ^ http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefVirg.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all
  11. ^ a b Rountree, Helen C. and E. Randolph Turner III. Before and After Jamestown: Virginia's Powhatans and Their Predecessors. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.
  12. ^ Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005
  13. ^ "The Chesapeake Bay Region and its People in 1607"
  14. ^ Brown, Hutch (Summer 2000). "Wildland Burning by American Indians in Virginia". Fire Management Today (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service) 60 (3): 30–33. 
  15. ^ Kimberlain, Joanne. "We're Still Here", The Virginian-Pilot, June 7-9 2009.
  16. ^ H.R. 1385: Thomasina E. Jordan Indian tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act of 2009, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1385

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

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