The Mattaponi Indian Tribe is based in King William County on the banks of the Mattaponi River where the tribe has its reservation. This 150-acre reservation is part of land confirmed to the Indians in 1658. Today approximately 75 inhabitants live there, although there are 450 on the tribal register. The Mattaponi mission is to maintain a sustainable community on the Mattaponi River. Toward this end, the tribe has built a Fish Hatchery and Marine Science facility funded through numerous grants from foundations and organizations. The Mattaponi work with the shad, as this fish has always been an integral part of the Mattaponi diet and center of their culture. The facility supports programs such as fish tagging, water quality monitoring, and developing education materials for schools and communities about protecting water resources.
The Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe in King William County was known as the Adamstown Indians until 1921. The 1673 August Hermann map shows a concentration of Indians living near a town identified earlier by John Smith as Passaunkack. A reservation of Chickahominy and Mattaponi was established there in the late 17th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Upper Mattaponi were known as the Adamstown band because so many of them had the last name Adams. In 1919, the tribe built a one-room schoolhouse called the Sharon Indian School. Its 1952 replacement, now on the National Register of Historic Places as the only remaining public Indian school building in the state, is used for tribal meetings and other gatherings.
Mattaponi Tribe
The Chickahominy
Chickahominy Tribe
The Chickahominy Indian Tribe, whose name has been translated as “course ground corn people,” was officially recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia General Assembly on March 25, 1983. With approximately 875 Chickahominy people living in the vicinity of the Tribal Center, the Chickahominy are based in Charles City County near the many towns along the Chickahominy River where the tribe lived in 1600. The Chickahominy had early contact with the English settlers because of their proximity to Jamestown, and they taught early colonists how to survive by growing and preserving their own food. As the English prospered and claimed more land, the Chickahominy tribe was forced out of their homeland. The treaty of 1646 awarded reservation land to the Chickahominy and other tribes in the “Pamunkey Neck” area of Virginia where the Mattaponi reservation exists todays. After 1718, they were forced off this reservation, and over the ensuing years Chickahominy families moved to Chickahominy Ridge in present day Charles City County where they now reside. Here the tribe purchased land and established the Samaria Baptist Church, which remains an important focal point for the community.
The Chickahominy Indian Eastern Division (CIED) also originated with the historic Chickahominy tribe. This tribe, based in New Kent County, was established in the early 20th century and has approximately 130 members today. Their members established the Tsena Commocko Baptist Church, and in recent years have purchased approximately 40 acres as tribally held land.
Opossunoquonuske (d. 1610), Chesterfield County, Appamattuck Leader
Opossunoquonuske (died late in 1610) was a sister of Coquonasum, a weroance, or chief, of the Appamattuck Indians, one of several Powhatan tribes in league with the paramount chief, Powhatan. She was the weroansqua, or chief, of one of the Appamattuck towns near the mouth of the Appomattox River. The town was populous enough to put about twenty able fighting men into the field. Captain John Smith described her as young and comely.
Opossunoquonuske was one of the first Virginia Indian leaders the English met in 1607. Englishmen called her the queen of Appamattuck. On May 26, Captain Christopher Newport visited her at what Englishmen called "Queene Apumatecs bower." She made a majestic entrance with her attendants and would "permitt none to stand or sitt neere her." Dignified and dressed more elegantly than anyone else, she wore a copper crown, and other copper jewelry adorned her ears and encircled her neck. Her long black hair hung down to the middle of her back. Gabriel Archer intended it as a compliment when he called her "a fatt lustie manly woman." Opossunoquonuske did not flinch, as other Indian leaders did, when at her request one of Newport’s men fired his gun.
The Appamattuck were wary of colonists who remained in their vicinity. In the summer of 1610 Opossunoquonuske invited several of the Englishmen to come unarmed to her town, where her men killed all but one, who escaped. In retaliation, the English burned her town and killed several people. Mortally wounded, she reportedly died in the winter. About Christmas 1611, Sir Thomas Dale raided the granaries of an Appamattuck town, killed or dispersed the people, and renamed the area Bermuda Hundred.
1400—1460
By Louisa Woodville
Much of what we know about the Powhatan comes from the writings of Smith. Smith recalls how two hundred Powhatans kidnapped him and over the course of several days led him from village to village, culminating with Smith meeting Wahunsunacock:
Arriving at Werawocomoco, their Emperour proudly lying uppon a Bedstead a foote high upon tenne or twelves Mattes, richly hung with Manie Chaynes of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with a great Covering of Rahaughcums: . . . hee kingly welcomed me with such good wordes, and great Platters of sundrie Victuals, assuring mee his friendhips, and my libertie within foure days.
The leader made sure Smith saw the extent of the Powhatan dominion, estimated to have covered more than six thousand square miles and supported a population of about fourteen thousand people among more than thirty tribes. The Powhatan lived in separate villages led by their own chiefs, weroances, but they operated under Wahunsunacock's centralized political system, sharing a language, social structure, religious beliefs, and cultural traditions.
Smith would witness how Powhatan brought commanders under his aegis, sometimes by persuasion, but often by force; how at opportune times he provided the English at the James Fort with maize and provisions that kept them from starving; and how he carefully orchestrated events, rituals, and meetings to acquire followers' fealty and promote his political agenda.
"We are coming to see Powhatan as a very politically savvy individual. We see his actions in this process, understand that there are two competing cultures, each one trying to subjugate the other," says Brown. "Both Powhatan and John Smith are individuals who are powerful and charismatic in this story, and it is impossible to disassociate the two."
The archaeological team is uncovering clues to understanding what life was like for Powhatan society. Copper artifacts with the same chemical "signature" as those found at Jamestown provide evidence about the evolution of the Powhatan chiefdom. Before the English arrived, Wahunsunacock and his weroances obtained copper from the Monacan to the west. When tribal warfare cut off trade with that tribe, Wahunsunacok looked to Jamestown as a new source, and it is this Jamestown copper that today is found at Werowocomoco.
Soil analysis provides information about what the Powhatan grew and in what quantities, an important consideration when surplus crops such as maize could be bartered for copper, shell, and deerskins—items that would bestow prestige on their Powhatan owners.
It is, however, the ditches on the Ripley farm that have archaeologists excited. Long and narrow, they are located about one thousand feet back from the water, measuring more than seven hundred feet in length. Radiocarbon dating confirms they are of American Indian origin, 1400—1460. Their placement and construction suggest that the Powhatan deliberately created discrete regions to differentiate sacred space from secular. Supporting this theory are thin, delicate pottery shards found on the eastern portion of the site in contrast with thick, everyday pottery found in the western part.
American Indians (First Americans) were the first people who lived in Virginia. Forests, which have a variety of trees, covered most of the land. Because of this, Virginia’s Indians are called Eastern Woodland Indians.
There are 3 American Indian language groups in Virginia: Iroquoian, Siouan, and Algonquian. Many tribes were in each of these three groups. The groups lived in different areas of Virginia.
The Iroquoian group lived mostly in the southwestern Virginia near North Carolina. The Cherokee tribe spoke this language.
The Siouan language group lived in the Piedmont region of Virginia. The Monacan tribe belonged to this group.
The Algonquian language group lived in the Coastal Plain (Tidewater) region. The Powhatan tribe spoke Algonquian.
Powhatan's Words
Wahunsonacock (Powhatan), 1609
"Why should you take by force that from us that which you can have by Love?
Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food
What can you get by war?
I am not so simple as to not know it is better to eat good meat, lie well, and sleep quietly with my women and children; to laugh and be merry with the English; and being their friend, to have copper, hatchets, and whatever else I want, than to fly from all, to lie cold in the woods, and to be so hunted, that I cannot rest, eat, or sleep."
Wahunsonacock, Chief Powhatan and Pocahontas' Father
Powhatan was named after his birth village, so Powhatan meant "shaman's village." One of his main residences was called Matchet. Tidewater, Virginia, was the home of the Algonquian nation. Wahunsonacock was his real name, but the English could not pronounce it, so they called him Powhatan. He was a mamanotowick or "great chief." Another home village was Werowocomoca, meaning "chief's town." Powhatan ruled about 15,000 people from thirty [30] tribes. This fact made many people wonder why the Powhatan Confederacy did not kill all of the colonists from day one. Wahunsonacock became a prominent warrior and local chieftain in the late 1500's. He defeated 30 local chiefs and took control of their people. The Powhatan Confederacy was founded on conquest and despotic personal authority. The large territory was called Tsenacommacah meaning "densely inhabited land." Each village of Tsenacommacah had its own werowance, who met the approval of Powhatan.
Powhatan had twenty sons and daughters. His most famous daughter was Pocahontas. To gain support for their settlement at Jamestown, the English placed a gold crown on his head and declared him "King Powhatan." Like native leaders elsewhere, on the eastern coast, he made every effort to help the newcomers survive the first winter with gifts of food. However, the gratitude of the colonists was short lived and they wanted more of everything, and used swords and guns to achieve that end.
Powhatan had three brothers and two sisters. Powhatan's war chief was his brother Opechancanough. Ketataugh and Itoyatan were his other brothers. Cockacoeske was his sister. She ruled from 1656 - 1686. Her son was Captain John West, after his English father, Colonel John West.
Paquinquineo
There are many who have written about Don Luis de Valasco or Paquinquineo (his native name). Paquinquineo was a youth in 1559/1560 (age 9?) when he was captured in the Carolina Sounds. He was named after the Spanish viceroy in Mexico (after his baptism into Christianity). The Spanish liked young children to learn Spanish. In 1525, a Spaniard, named Esteban Gomez, arrived on Powhatan soil to claim land for Spain (Thwaites, 251-52). Don Luis de Valasco, thought to be the son of a werowance or chief, was captured in the 1560's by the Spanish and educated in Mexico, Madrid, and Havana, Cuba. He was taken to meet King Philip II of Spain, and lived the life of a Spanish grandee (Woodward, 430). Powhatan "Don Luis" was a Kiskiack of Virginia, and a member of the family that ruled over the native towns of that area. In 1570, with eight missionaries and Father Juan Baptista de Segura, the native they now called Don Luis de Valasco, was brought back to his homeland. Upon his return, he took back his position as head of an eminent family and chief of his tribe, which he inherited from his father. He took several wives, which outraged the priests. They shamed him with verbal attacks and he (Don Luis) wiped out the mission. Only one boy survived (Alonzo de Olmos).
"After they arrived there, Don Luis abandoned them ... he was living with his brothers [his tribe] a journey of a day and a half away".
This quote was from a letter written by Juan Rogel to Francis Borgia from the Bay of the Mother of God on AUGUST 28, 1572, to Rome, Italy.
The letter, from Juan Rogel, goes on to say that Father Master Baptista of the Jesuits, sent a message to Don Luis, but the Don refused to come back. The letter pleaded that they were abandoned and had no way to communicate with the natives, without Don Luis. The only thing they could do was barter their possessions for food.
Since Don Luis did not answer their pleas, Father Baptista sent Father Quiros with two other brothers to bring back Don Luis. The Native was now back with his family, and sent the Jesuits back saying he would follow later. Don Luis came back on Sunday, during the Feast of the Purification, and killed all the priests with arrows. Each account is slightly different but all agree on the main points.
This legend was well-known among the natives. Later on, when a supply ship came from Spain, they discovered the death of their priest, so they sailed into Chesapeake Bay and killed thirty [30] tribesmen. However, since Don Luis had learned from the Spanish, he made sure that most of his braves escaped before the ship landed, as they saw it off on the horizon well before it could land.
Chief Powhatan was about twenty-five(25)years of age when this incident occured, in 1570. Tribal oral history, of the time, says that Don Luis was well-known to the Powhatan people. Chief Powhatan knew about the white man from neighboring branches of their confederacy. It was then that Chief Powhatan decided to protect his people from further invasions from the sea. He filled his warehouses with corn, venison, precious shells, pearls, and furs.
Chief Powhatan had many wives and they bore him twenty [20] sons and ten [10] daughters. His favorite daughter was wise beyond her years and she also knew of the world across the sea. It is thought that Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan's favorite wife who died giving birth. Pocahontas was thought to have reminded her of her mother.
The Spanish made the mistake of thinking that because Don Luis was educated in Spanish society, that he would remain loyal to them, but even though it was interesting to learn about Europe, Don Luis was first and foremost loyal to his own people.
When the first English colonists came in 1607, the natives were well aware of the ways of white men.
Many Kiskiasks were hung by the whites for minor crimes, which reminded the Natives of why they distained them. It is actually a miracle that they allowed them to land on shore at all. Remember other Native American Indians had been taken to Europe, not just Don Luis.
It is possible that Don Luis was Chief Powhatan's father or Don Luis' sister was Powhatan's mother, or that he was Powhatan's half-brother, Opechancanough. Mainly this is because the name, Openchancanough meant "he whose soul is white" in the Algonkian tongue. In 1622, fifty years after Mendendez hung the Kiskiacks, the aged Opechancanough almost wiped out the white men's colony at Jamestown, Virginia. Powhatan's half-brother, Opechancanough, was said to be 99 years old when he was shot in 1644, and some claim he was even older.
“sacred violence”
By J. Frederick Fausz
Susan Juster is one of the few historians researching “sacred violence” in colonial America. In the October 2005 issue of Common-Place, she noted how New England Puritans burned alive several hundred Pequot men, women, and children in 1637 and queried whether that atrocity was “a racial or a religious killing?” We can discount race, since Christian Europeans committed far more horrible atrocities against one another for generations. It is more important to determine how, when, and why such massacres made the transition from Britain to America and from Europeans to Indians. The answers will not be found in New England and not nearly as late as the Pequot War. The first fifteen years of Anglo-Indian relations in Virginia established all of the precedents of religious violence on our shores—including holy war, massacre, martyrdom, and terrorism.
The colony of Virginia was conceived in an atmosphere of Christian violence in the hate-charged aftermath of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, only recently acknowledged as the first modern terrorist conspiracy in England. Religious affiliation in that era connoted a host of ethnocentric prejudices designed to differentiate supportive in-groups from suspicious out-groups and to define loyalty and identity in secular as well as sacred contexts. The deadly quest for ideological dominance among divided camps of English Christians achieved a new level of depravity in 1605, because the Catholic conspirators planned the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians on the streets of Westminster when Parliament, government officials, and the royal family were blown to bits. Guy Fawkes allegedly justified the outrageous randomness of victims “under the pretense of conscience,” proclaiming that “a dangerous disease required a desperate remedy.” In 1610 Robert Herring described the abhorrent but aborted plot as the “quintessence of Satan’s policy . . . of inhuman malice and cruelty, not to be paralleled among the savage Turks, the barbarous Indians, [or] . . . brutish cannibals.” The shocking Gunpowder Plot gave militant Anglicanism new ideological ammunition with which to blast its persistently threatening religious enemies. Before the severed heads and quartered limbs of Fawkes and his fellow conspirators had even rotted, the same court officials who had exposed and executed them launched the Jamestown colony. As the final embodiment of old Elizabethan pride, prejudice, and paranoia, Virginia became the pet project of Anglican imperialists intent on exporting the Protestant Reformation to America.
To protect their colony in a Spain-dominated continent, London officials dispatched troops to Jamestown well trained in the vicious, anti-Catholic warfare in Ireland and the Low Countries. In England’s first Indian war between 1609-1614, those “New Israelites” became crusaders for religious conformity in a Chesapeake “Canaan,” sparing neither infants nor the infirm as they burned Powhatan villages, murdered native priests, assassinated chiefs, looted temples, conquered tribal territories, and starved a once-thriving population through harvest-time “feed fights.” Campaigning against “satanic evil” under “the banner of Jesus Christ,” the blood-red cross on the flag of St. George identified militant English “Angels” who merged ferocity with piety. After replicating the “Arms, Harms, Fights, Frights, Flights, [and] Depopulations” of Reformation Europe in Virginia, Anglican crusaders were rewarded with one convert—the captive, Pocahontas—but had succeeded far better in making “Savages and wild degenerate men of Christians.”
Warraskoyak
(Powhatan villages (left) usually consisted of Algonkian long houses, enclosed within a palisade. The houses were made from poles, tied together and covered with bark or rush matting.)
The Warraskoyak were one of a number of about thirty tribes that formed part of the Powhatan empire under the domination of the Powhatan chief, Wahunsunacock, who John Smith referred to as Powhatan. These tribes were loosely knitted together into a tribal confederation and allegiance to Powhatan varied according to the strength of the individual tribes. Some tribes, like the Nansemond, were fairly independent but sent tribute to Chief Powhatan. Indeed this tribe was the eastern neighbour of the Warraskoyak and inhabited an area around the modern Nansemond river. They were a powerful tribe with a great 'werowance'(chief) and three subordinate ones, and an estimated two hundred fighting men. From John Smith's accounts , it would seem the Nansemonds were a fairly aggressive and independent tribe and he came into conflict with them several times, when he attempted to bargain with them for corn for the fledgling colony.
“Barbarous Massacre”
Friday, 22 March 1622, was the most lethal day ever experienced by British colonists in peacetime, as Powhatan warriors slaughtered almost 30 percent of Virginia’s entire white population, including at least 35 women and 30 children; destroyed many buildings and other property; and threatened the survival of England’s embryonic empire on this continent. “Besides them they killed,” wrote one of the nine hundred English survivors, the Indians “burst the heart of all the rest.” After fifteen years of tortured progress, Jamestown was “brought down again to the ground” in only a few hours and was once again like a “Child . . . exposed in the Wilderness to extreme danger, . . . fainting and laboring for life.”
That terrible, traumatic “Flood of Blood,” as John Donne so graphically described it, was immediately recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as a major watershed event, different from anything that English citizens had ever experienced. Contemporaries regarded the “devilish malice” and “unnatural brutishness” of killing unarmed innocents in their own homes as an unprecedented, exceptionally heinous deed, since honorable Powhatan warriors had always spared the lives of women, children, and even enemy chiefs in their traditional warfare
Opechancanough
After Powhatan died, he was ultimately succeeded by his younger brother Opechancanough.
Opechancanough led two attempts to force the English to abandon Virginia in 1622 and 1644.
In 1622,They killed nearly 347 English settlers, roughly one-third of the colonists. Jamestown was not attacked. (Not every Algonquian was comfortable choosing to follow Opechancanough's orders as they revealed the plans to Richard Pace, accounting for Janestown being saved)
28 tribes of the Tidewater region
Powhatan had inherited power over the
Arrohateck, Appamatuck, Orapaks, Youghtanund, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Werowocomoce, and Kiskiack
....Powhatan attacked and physically eliminated the Chesapeakes as an independent tribe about the time the English arrived, ensuring his authority over the Elizabeth River watershed where Norfolk and Virginia Beach are now located.
.... Chickahominy tribe operated with semi-independent status in essentially the same area as Powhatan, but the Chickahominy reconsidered the arrangement once the English arrived. The Chickahominy saw the English displace the Paspaheghs from their territory
.....The Potowomacks seize Powhatan's daughter to trade to an English sea captain for a copper kettle, and she became a pawn in peace negotiations
....Between the Warraskoyaks and the Nansemonds lay an area of creeks and marshes to the east of the Pagan River. To the west were Quiyoughcohannock, who, like the Warraskoyak, were a more peaceful and accomodating tribe than the Nansemonds. They were ruled by Tatahcoope, one of Powhatan's sons
.... the tribes south of the James River, with the exception of the Nansemonds, were relatively weak and were therefore more responsive to a show of force and consequently were more open to conciliation with the settlers
.... 1676, the Pamunkeys and Mataponi signed treaties with the colony
Powhatan Confederacy
Okeus
...more of an empire made up of several Algonquian tribes
by Pat Stevens
The Powhatan Confederacy stretched from the Potomac river south along the Virginia coast into upper North Carolina, and west to the fall line of the rivers. The Powhatans were a part of the late Woodlands culture of the southeastern part of the United States. Their tongue was a derivative of Algonquian on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay and the Hudson and Delaware river basins. They were polytheistic in their faith, with the major deities being Okeus, responsible for the evil in the world, and Ahone, a god of good. In her wonderful work "Pocahontas," Grace Steele Woodward writes that Okeus was annually appeased from his evil with human sacrifice; "the priests would gather the entire Powhatan community in the woods, and after chanting their supplications... around a great fire, would present two or three of the Powhatan children to the god. Okeus would then mysteriously communicate to the priests the names of those to be sacrificed, and not even the son of a werowance was spared from death on the sacrificial altar if he was unfortunate enough to be selected." The beneficent god Ahone was praised by the Powhatans bathing in the rivers or streams each morning at sunrise and then standing arms raised inside a circle of dried tobacco to call their prayers. Grace Woodward tells us the colonists reported these chants as the men howling "like wolves" and foaming at the mouth. They also practiced a ritualistic torture, she notes, dismembering the living bodies of captives and tossing the pieces on a fire, or sometimes bashing the captive's head on a stone block with a mallet or club. "Scalps salvaged from the ceremony were hung on a line stretched between trees-- to be admired and appreciated."
By the time of the arrival of the Europeans in the late 16th century, the Powhatan chief, Wahunsonacock (or Wahunsenacawh), was called by the tribe's name, Powhatan. He is described by Captain John Smith in his "General Historie...." in the early 1600s as "a tall well proportioned man with a sower look, his head somewhat gray, his beard so thin it seemeth none at all, his age near sixtye of a very capable and hardy body to endure any labor." Succession of the ruler passed from brother to brother and so on, then to sisters and their heirs.
Powhatan
In 1607 there was an Algonquian town at the falls called Powhatan. The paramount chief of the Algonquians of tidewater Virginia, whose name was Wahunsenacawh, was from that town. The local custom was to call a chief by the name of his or her town. Thus Wahunsenacawh was called Powhatan, and the people under his rule have come to be known as the Powhatans.
Powhatan began as the Werowance (often translated by the English as King) of the Powhatan Tribes which lived south of the falls of the James River. Through marriages between noble families of the pervious generation, Powhatan had inherited power over eight tribes. These were the Arrohateck, Appamatuck, Orapaks, Youghtanund, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Werowocomoce, and Kiskiack. In the 30 or so years after Powhatan assumed rule over these tribes, he had conquered about 20 more tribes. His title at that point was that of Mamanatowick (often translated by the British as Emperor) of the Powhatan Confederacey
Pocahontas and American history
Pocahontas and her relevance...May 1607, Englishmen landed at Jamestown lead by Capt. John Smith....Pocahontas befriends them as a little girl
..."As a compassionate little girl she saw to it that the colonists received food from the Indians, so that Jamestown would not suffer the fate of the "Lost Colony." She is said to have intervened to save the lives of individual colonists. In 1616 John Smith wrote that Pocahontas was "the instrument to save this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion." And Pocahontas not only served as a representative of the Virginia Indians, but also as a vital link between the native Americans and the Englishmen. Whatever her contributions, the romantic aspects of her life will no doubt stand out in Virginia history forever."
...To Powhatan, the presence of the small Jamestown colony was nothing more than a stone in his shoe compared to the threat from large, ambitious tribes on his western frontier."
Pocahontas
Pocahontas (translated at the time as “little wanton” or “mischievous one”).
Her father was Wahunsenacah, chief of the Powhatan empire, which consisted of some 28 tribes of the Tidewater region.
"Matoaka" - was her Indian name
"Rebecca" - is her christian name
She died March 1617 of illness while aboard ship a few miles East of London. She was bout 21 years old at this time
"....A Powhatan Indian woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them."