When the English began exploring and, later, colonizing North America, they were both aware of and fascinated by the native people they encountered. Fortunately for students of history, some of these explorers and settlers chose to commit their observations to paper. Although archeology and oral traditions play a role in our appreciation of the largely-vanished culture of the Powhatan Indians in Virginia, it is the accounts of such Englishmen as John Smith, William Strachey, Robert Beverley, and George Percy which provide the detail of the everyday life of these people.

Even though the English viewed the Powhatan Indian culture as savage and primitive, we can still utilize the facts and details presented by one group of people commenting on and describing another. Since the English found the Powhatans so different from themselves, they took great pains to record those differences for the education of their contemporaries.

The 104 Englishmen who landed at Jamestown on May 13, 1607 chose that settlement site partially because no-one else was presently occupying the small peninsula, an unhealthy, if highly defensible, area. This lack of inhabitants was hardly the case for most of Tidewater Virginia, as the English were soon to discover. Although it is difficult to estimate, modern historians number the native population of 1607 Tidewater Virginia at 13,000 to 14,000. Powhatan settlements were concentrated along the rivers, which provided both food and transportation; the folk who inhabited them spoke a now-extinct form of Algonquian, a language which was common to many native peoples from present-day New York south to Florida.

The undisputed ruler of Tidewater Virginia was Wahunsonacock, usually referred to by the title "Powhatan." John Smith describes Powhatan as "a tall well proportioned man, with a sower look, his head somewhat gray, his beard so thinne, that it seemeth none at all, his age (as of 1608) neare sixtie, of a very able and hardy body to endure any labour."

Powhatan had inherited six tribes located not far from present-day Richmond. By 1607, he had added considerably to his domain which, at its peak, numbered over 30 tribes. Each tribe was governed by a werowance, a chief who owed allegiance and tribute to Powhatan. Although Powhatan maintained residences amongst all the tribes, his usual dwelling-place was a Werowocomoco, on the north side of the York River.

In addition to his councilors, whom he kept about him always, Powhatan also had an extensive family. Because of the large amounts of tribute collected (estimated by one settler as eight parts out of ten of all that his people produced) Powhatan could support over a hundred wives and the resulting offspring, the most famous of whom was Matoaka, better known by her nickname "Pocahontas."

Powhatan's people lived in villages, which could number as many as one hundred homes. Some villages were protected by wooden palisades; each house boasted an extensive and carefully-tended garden, in which was sown such staples as corn, beans, peas, squash, pumpkin, sunflowers and maypops (passionflower). Tobacco, primarily used for ceremonial purposes, was grown apart from the rest of the crops.

Although the gardens were an important food source, the Powhatans' diet was far more extensive. John Smith remarked that for the bulk of the year, Powhatans relied on other sources of food. The waterways afforded a rich diet of fish and shellfish and the woods yielded nuts, fruits and berries. Since the dog was the only animal domesticated by the Powhatans, hunting was an important way to supplement the diet, and was a task relegated to the men of the tribe. At a very young age, a boy was taught the use of the bow. Rather than a recreational activity for the wealthy, as hunting was perceived by the English, Powhatans considered it a very serious business, an important way of securing food and clothing.

The hard work of Powhatan women was more often remarked upon by the English. Whether she was gathering wood, making pottery, preparing food, dressing hides, caring for the garden or making clothing, a Powhatan woman was seldom at rest.

Some of the most detailed descriptions of Powhatan people concerns their appearance. According to John Smith, the native Virginians were "Generally tall and straight," an observation confirmed by archeological analysis, which estimates that the average Powhatan stood at about six feet. William Strachey, another 17th-century author, recorded that Powhatans were "Generally of a cullour brown or rather tawny."

Costume varied according to sex, age and status. The most common article of apparel for men was a breech-clout of skin worn between the thighs. According to Smith, "The common sort have scarce to cover their nakedness but with grasse, the leaves of trees, or such like. . . The better sort use large mantels of deare skins not much different from the Irish mantels." A man of high status might wear a shirt-like garment made of fringed deerskin or a mantle of turkey feathers. The hair was shaven from the right side of the head (to reduce the risk of entanglement in the hunter's bowstring); the hair on the other side of the head was allowed to grow long and often pulled into a knot and decorated with everything from shells to the dead hand of an enemy. Men used body paint in preparation for war or games.

Werowances (chiefs) wore fine clothes and many ornaments of pearl, rare shell beads and copper, the precious metal of the Powhatans. George Percy described the headdress of one werowance: "a crown of deares haire colloured red, in fashion of a rose fastened about his knot of haire, and a great plate of copper on the other side of his head; with two long feathers in fashion of a pair of horns placed in the midst of his Crowne."

In his History and Present State of Virginia (1705), colonist Robert Beverley opined that Powhatan Indian "women are generally beautiful, possessing an uncommon delicacy of shape and features." The skirt was the ubiquitous garment for women; those of higher-status swathed themselves in fringed deerskin. The hair of a married women was worn long and plaited in the back; a young girl had her head on the front and sides shaven close, with the rest of the hair growing long and braided down the back.

George Strachey remarked at length on the use of tattooed decorations by the Powhatan Indian women, commenting that they "have their armes, breasts, thighes, shoulders, and faces, cuningly ymbrodered with divers workes, for pouncing and searing their skyns with a kind of instrument heated in the fier. They figure therein flowers and fruits of sondry lively kinds, as also snakes, serpents."

Although early interaction between the English and Powhatans was sometimes violent and exploitive on both sides, leaders of both peoples realized the mutual benefit which could be derived from peaceful relations. Powhatan craved the trade goods brought by the English, which would give him increased status, make his peoples' lives easier and also help him to expand his empire to the west. The English needed food, allies and knowledgeable guides to help them locate raw materials, precious metals and the much-sought trade route to the Far East. The marriage of Powhatan's favorite daughter Pocahontas to settler John Rolfe in 1614 ensured a few peaceful years between the Powhatans and the English.

This brief time of peace ended in 1617 with the death of Pocahontas during a trip to England and, the next year, of her father. Opitchapan, Powhatan's brother, served briefly as chief, and then retired in favor of Opechancanough, the powerful and aggressive werowance whose land centered around present-day West Point. Opechancanough resented the English, and, although Powhatan had been assured the Jamestown settlement was merely a temporary one, the new chief saw all too clearly that the English were in Virginia to stay. Thanks to the introduction of a successful strain of tobacco by John Rolfe, the colonists had a way to achieve a profit and, consequently, the need for greater and greater tracts of land on which to grow their crop.

On March 22, 1622, Opechancanough's carefully-orchestrated plan to dismay and perhaps even rout his enemy was executed by his warriors throughout the small English settlements in Virginia. Although some areas, including Jamestown, escaped unscathed, within a few hours as many as 400 English settlers had lost their lives and the colony had received a near-fatal blow.

The surviving settlers' reaction to the Powhatan uprising was retaliation, and the English, better armed and organized than the Powhatans, set to with a vengeance. The Virginia Company instructed the settlers to wage a total war against the Powhatan people, doing whatever it took to subdue them utterly. For over a decade, the English killed men and women, captured children and systematically razed villages, seizing or destroying crops.

After the uprising, the colonists recovered and expanded their territory, even as the Powhatan empire declined both in power and population. Even so, in 1644, Opechancanough rallied his small forces to make a final attempt at routing the English from his people's land. The attack, launched on April 17, 1644, resulted in the death of hundreds of colonists, but, like the attempt made 22 years earlier, did not achieve its objective. The English captured Opechancanough, by then an old and feeble man, and brought him to Jamestown, where he was shot in the back by a soldier against orders.

As in 1622, the English retaliated. Finally, in 1646 and 1647, treaties were made with Opechancanough's successor which severely restricted the Powhatan people's territory and confined them to small reservations. Tribute was to be offered to the English king of "Twenty beaver skins att the going away of geese yearely." The Powhatan's land was further reduced in a treaty of 1677.

By 1669, the population of Powhatan Indians in Tidewater Virginia had dropped to about 1,800 and by 1722, many of the tribes comprising the empire of Chief Powhatan were reported extinct. Several tribes lost their reservations and some opted to blend into the colonial scene as best they could. By the beginning of the 20th century, only the Pamunkey and Mattaponi peoples retained their reservations.

Today, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi reservations, located near West Point, have endured as two of the oldest in the United States. Many Virginia Indians were encouraged by those tribes' example of courage and determination, and, in the early 20th century, began to reorganize their tribes. Crafts, dances, oral tradition and other almost-forgotten aspects of the Powhatan Indian culture were shared with other Virginians. In 1983, the Virginia Council on Indians was established, consisting of nine tribal representatives and three at-large members. In the same session of the General Assembly, six tribes were officially recognized; by 1990, two more tribes were given official status. Today, the Virginia Indian community is a strong one which takes pride in its heritage and responsibility for teaching others about its unique culture, which impacts on the life of every American today.

Bibliography

Egloff, Keith and Deborah Woodward. First People: The Early Indians of Virginia. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1992.

McCary, Ben C. Indians in Seventeenth Century Virginia. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1957.

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

Available online through the National Park Service is A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: THE FIRST CENTURY by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D.

Author - Lee Cotton
Park Ranger, Colonial NHP
July 1999