We know this group as the Powhatan Confederacy. Powhatan and his people welcomed the English settlers in and helped them survive the first winter here by teaching them how to grow corn and tobacco, providing them medicine, and helping them hunt. But that relationship wasn't to last. Even so, for hundreds of years, people have told the story of a young Powhatan girl who was believed to have saved an English captain's life and established peace for a time between their peoples.
Pocahontas was only Powhatan's daughter's girlhood nickname. As she met the English when she was just 11 years old, that was how they knew her. Pocahontas has been interpreted to mean, among other things, "naughty one" or "spoiled child. She had another name after she was baptized and married: Rebecca Rolfe. According to the oral tradition of the Powhatans, she is believed to have been married to a Powhatan Indian named Kocoum and to have had a daughter before she was kidnapped and held for ransom in After her three months in captivity, she remained with the settlers.
She was baptized a Christian in and given a new name, Rebecca Rolfe before she was married to John Rolfe, a tobacco planter.
They traveled to England, where she received much attention and finally met John Smith again, who was alive and well, despite what she had been told by the English earlier. Her husband John Rolfe returned to the colony to become its secretary.
Meanwhile, their child Thomas was raised by English relatives, eventually returning to Virginia in the s. Her descendants through her son Thomas became prominent Virginia statesmen. The Powhatan were a matrilineal society, so his right to be chief was inherited from his mother. When he first became chief, Powhatan ruled about six tribes. In addition to the Powhatan, these were the Pamunkey, the Arrohateck, the Appamattuck, the Youghtanund and the Mattaponi.
Using both alliances and war, Powhatan would expand his influence to be the ruler of around 30 tribes. Each one had its own chief, known as a werowance , but they also answered to Powhatan. This meant that they fought on his side in conflicts and paid him tribute. The territory Powhatan controlled was called Tsenacommacah, or Tenakomakah. It had a population of about 14, people and covered about six thousand square miles.
Tsenacommacah was made up of what is now tidewater Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay's eastern shore and possibly southern Maryland. As its chief, Powhatan was wealthy, which allowed him to have many wives and many children one of which was a daughter, Pocahontas. While it is not known when Powhatan became chief, he was in power when the English who would form the Jamestown settlement arrived in April In June, Powhatan sent an ambassador to the colony to seek peace.
After the harvest, he also allowed food to be delivered, which helped keep the struggling colonists alive. In the winter of , Captain John Smith was captured and brought to Powhatan's capital of Werowocomoco. Smith later wrote that Pocahontas saved his life during this time.
Smith guessed him to be about sixty years old, which suggests an approximate birth date of Among the Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians, succession to the status of chief, or weroance , was matrilineal, meaning that Wahunsonacock must have been the son of a sister of a Powhatan weroance , taking his place as chief on the death of his uncle.
By and the arrival of the Jamestown settlers , Powhatan ruled Tsenacomoco, an alliance of twenty-eight to thirty-two tribes and petty chiefdoms anchored by the Powhatan Indians and five others: the Pamunkey , the Arrohateck, the Appamattuck, the Youghtanund, and the Mattaponi.
Powhatan inherited leadership of this group of six and, through some combination of force and diplomacy, dramatically expanded from there. While the core groups were situated along the James, Mattaponi, and Pamunkey rivers, by Tsenacomoco extended from north of the Rappahannock to the south side of the James, from the fall line to the Eastern Shore.
In , Powhatan ambushed the Piankatank Indians for reasons unknown to the English, who found it unnerving. They learned of the attack when visiting Powhatan at Werowocomoco, where they saw the hanging scalps of Piankatank men. It is clear, however, that Powhatan did not possess the absolute power of an emperor, and he controlled no standing army. Instead, he looked for other ways to maintain control. Historians have noted that Powhatan moved populations—placing the remnants of the Kecoughtan Indians in Piankatank territory, for instance—and installed sympathetic chiefs.
Powhatan, as paramount chief, also may have married the sisters of several of his subchiefs, making them his brothers-in-law and his sons the heirs to their chiefdoms. Powhatan marshaled impressive resources, but they were limited by the energies of himself, his family, and his people.
A good deal of his wealth came from tribute—he was offered annually as much as 80 percent of what his people produced, although he did not accept all of it; in the meantime, he and his family gardened, hunted, and made necessities like any other Powhatan family.
Still, in many respects his was a life apart. He had a house in Werowocomoco and in each of his subject territories, visiting his residences from time to time in a kind of royal progression. So did a dozen or so of his numerous wives. Wherever he slept, four men stood guard on each side of the house and called to each other at intervals throughout the night; failure to respond resulted in a severe beating.
Archaeological excavations at Werowocomoco have uncovered an area of the capital, set apart by a double ditch, that contained a very large house, likely the dwelling of a chief. Such an area was, apparently, unique among Tidewater Indian towns. During the winter of —, an expedition from the English colony at Roanoke that included John White and Thomas Hariot ventured north to the Chesapeake Bay, visiting Skicoac, the principal town of the Chesapeakes.
The Jamestown colonists dropped anchor in the Chesapeake Bay on April 26, , and after a brief skirmish with local Indians, began to explore the James River. They met various weroances who identified themselves as subjects of Powhatan and who undoubtedly sent the paramount chief reports of these visits. In any event, after nearly a month, Smith was brought before the paramount chief at Werowocomoco.
And again: Sitting upon his bed of mats, his pillow of leather embroidered … with pearls and white beads, his attire a faire Robe of skins as large as an Irish mantle, at his head and feet a handsome young woman; … Powhatan carried himself so proudly, yet discreetly in his Savage manner as made us all admire his natural gifts considering his education. At this meeting in late December , Powhatan feasted Smith and attempted, in spite of the language barrier, to interview him.
Long after this episode entered into American legend, most historians have concluded that it probably never happened, or at least not as Smith described.
Rather than trying to kill Smith, Powhatan likely was trying to adopt him through a ritual of mock execution. When it was over, Powhatan offered him the nearby town of Capahosic to rule as a subchief. He also promised to supply the English with food, wives, and anything else they might need. Powhatan calculated that moving Smith and his men to Capahosic would keep them nearby and better under his control.
Powhatan also hoped the English could supply his people with copper and weapons. However, once Smith understood the proposal, he refused, citing his allegiance to James I. Despite initial problems crossing a bridge into the capital, they counted the meeting as a political success. Powhatan fed them and their party lavishly, and Newport presented the mamanatowick with a suit of clothing, a hat, and a greyhound.
He repeatedly urged Newport not to trust him, advice that Newport ignored. Relations between the Jamestown settlers and Powhatan quickly soured, with colonists reneging on their promises of metal tools for foods already sent, and the Indians acquiring them by way of theft. Powhatan custom demanded gifts be rewarded with gifts. Newport dispatched Smith to Werowocomoco to invite Powhatan to Jamestown, but the chief refused to go, telling Smith: If your king have sent me presents, I also am a king, and this my land, 8 days I will stay [at Werowocomoco] to receive them.
Your father [Newport] is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort, neither will I bite at such a bait [fearing capture if he came to Jamestown]. By , drought, starvation and disease had ravaged the colonists and they became increasingly dependent on the Powhatan to survive.
Desperate and dying, they threatened to burn Powhatan towns for food, so Chief Powhatan suggested a barter with Captain Smith. Soon after, Smith was injured and returned to England; however, Pocahontas and her father were told he died. While in captivity, Pocahontas lived in the settlement of Henricus under the care of a minister named Alexander Whitaker where she learned about Christianity , English culture and how to speak English.
During her imprisonment, Pocahontas met widower and tobacco planter John Rolfe. They sent word to Chief Powhatan that they wanted to marry; he consented as did the Virginia governor, Sir Thomas Dale. Pocahontas married Rolfe in April The match was considered an important step towards re-establishing positive relations between the colonists and the Indians.
Indeed, the marriage brought a season of peace to the region. In , Sir Thomas Dale sailed to England to rally financial support for the Virginia Company, the company owned by wealthy Londoners that had financed the Jamestown colony. The company also wanted to prove they had met their goal of converting Native Americans to Christianity, so Rolfe, Pocahontas, their infant son Thomas born in and a dozen Powhatan Indians accompanied Dale on the trip. Much to her surprise, Pocahontas encountered Captain Smith whom she thought was dead in London.
In March , Pocahontas, her husband and son set sail for Virginia. But they had hardly made progress when she became gravely ill and was taken ashore at Gravesend, England. Some speculate it was tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery or smallpox; others believe she was poisoned.
Pocahontas was buried at St. Rolfe returned to Virginia, but her son Thomas remained with relatives in England. He returned almost two decades later at age 20 to claim inheritances from his father and grandfather and became a successful gentleman tobacco farmer.
He died about a year later and relations between the Powhatan and Virginia colonists declined rapidly.
0コメント