Don Luis
1561-1571 Early Modern Spanish: [doŋ ˈlwis d̪e beˈlasko]), also known as Paquiquino (or Paquiquineo), and also simply Don Luis, was a Native American, possibly of the Kiskiack or Paspahegh[1] people, from the area of what is now Tidewater, Virginia.
Carl Bridenbaugh is one of the historians who have speculated that Don Luís was the same person as Opechancanough, younger half-brother (or close relative) of the Powhatan (Wahunsonacock), paramount chief of an alliance of Algonquian-speakers in the Tidewater.
They lived in towns and villages located along the rivers feeding the Chesapeake Bay, and were ruled by chiefs, or weroances that were part of the Powhatan confederacy.
During an exploratory voyage in June 1561, ordered by Luís de Velasco, the second viceroy of New Spain, the caravel Santa Catalina, captained by Antonio Velázquez, entered the Chesapeake.
[9] Upon accepting baptism and taking the name of New Spain's acting viceroy, Don Luís de Velasco, he received care and recovered.
Don Luís remained in Mexico until 1566, when King Philip commanded that he depart to Cuba and take part in an expedition to the Delmarva Peninsula.
[10] In 1570, Father Juan Baptista de Segura, Jesuit vice provincial of Havana, wanted to establish a mission in Ajacán without a military garrison, which was unusual.
On garrison duty, not challenged by the prospect of fighting, they were apt to seek an outlet for their boredom in drunkenness, thievery, bullying, and sexual license.
In the spring of 1571, after the massacre at the Ajacán Mission, a Spanish supply ship arrived and found natives wearing the missionaries' garments and ornaments.
[13] In August 1572, Pedro Menéndez de Aviles arrived from Florida with thirty soldiers and sailors to take revenge for the massacre.
After gaining a fuller picture of the massacre from Olmos, Menéndez de Avilés attempted to use other natives as hostages to bargain for the hand-over of Don Luís.
While both men are believed to have been born about the same time, and both have a reputation for being violently opposed to European settlers, Murrin suggests that Opechancanough was more likely the nephew or cousin of Don Luis.
When discussing a treaty between the English and Powhatan Confederacy, Ralph Hamor records that Powhatan's father had arrived in Virginia from the Spanish West Indies, a curious fact that matches the life of Don Luís:"Thirdly they should at all times be ready and willing to furnish vs with three or foure hundred bowmen to aide vs against the Spaniards, whose name is odious amongst them, for Powhatans father was driuen by them from the west-Indies into those parts..." - Ralph Hamor, A TRVE DISCOVRSE of the present estate of Virginia, and the successe of the affaires there till the 18 of Iune.
[16]Based on this possibility, Frank T. Siebert Jr. speculates that Don Luis' experience observing Spanish rule contributed to the later founding of the Powhatan Confederacy by uniting six tribes before of his presumable death around 1583-1585, at which point Wahunsonacock could have succeeded him.
[17] Additionally, the Powhatan Indians were a matrilineal society, Wahunsonacock explained to the English that he inherited his right to rule from his mother, and that his siblings, not his own children, would succeed him.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond has designated St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in New Kent County as the new shrine of the Jesuit martyrs.
