Powhatan
By 1646, the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom had been decimated, not just by warfare but from the infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox newly introduced to North America by Europeans.
The English colonists named many features in the early years of the Virginia Colony in honor of the king, as well as for his three children, Elizabeth, Henry, and Charles.
It forms at the confluence of the Jackson and Cowpasture Rivers near the present-day town of Clifton Forge, flowing east to Hampton Roads.
Various tribes each held some individual powers locally, and each had a chief known as a weroance (male) or, more rarely, a weroansqua (female), meaning "commander".
[2] In 1607, when the first permanent English colonial settlement in North America was founded at Jamestown, he ruled primarily from Werowocomoco, which was located on the northern shore of the York River.
[citation needed] Wahunsenacawh had inherited control over six tribes but dominated more than 30 by 1607 when the English settlers established their Virginia Colony at Jamestown.
Another closely related tribe of the same language group was the Chickahominy, but they managed to preserve their autonomy from the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom.
The Accawmacke, located on the Eastern Shore across the Chesapeake Bay, were nominally tributary to the Powhatan Chiefdom but enjoyed autonomy under their own Paramount Chief or "Emperor", Debedeavon (aka "The Laughing King").
[14] In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781–82), Thomas Jefferson estimated that the Powhatan Confederacy occupied about 8,000 square miles (20,000 km2) of territory, with a population of about 8,000 people, of whom 2400 were warriors.
Captain Christopher Newport led the first colonial exploration party up the James River in 1607 when he met Parahunt, weroance of the Powhatan proper.
After Smith was captured the Natives had him ready for execution until he gave them a compass which they saw as a sign of friendliness so they did not kill him, instead took him to a more popular chief, followed by a ceremony.
To finish the "coronation", several English colonists 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.
[20] 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.
However, the arrival at Jamestown of a new Governor, Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, (Lord Delaware) in June 1610 signaled the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War.
The Powhatans were frightened by the influx of immigrants, the expansion of new villages on traditional farming lands, the subsequent need to purchase food from the settlers, and the enforced placement of Indian youth in "colleges."
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.
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.
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.
[citation needed] Educational programs established through the creation of the Indian School at the College of William and Mary in 1691 were a driving force behind cultural change.
[5] The region occupied by the Powhatan was bounded approximately by the Potomac River to the north, the Fall Line to the west, the Virginia-North Carolina border to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.
English colonial accounts 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 strong because of the hours they spent tending crops, pounding corn into meals, gathering nuts, and performing other domestic chores.
The inhabitants then moved on to allow the depleted area to revitalize, the soil to replenish, the foliage to grow, and the number of fish and game to increase.
Native people also used fire to maintain extensive areas of open game habitat throughout the East, later called "barrens" by European colonists.
After Virginia passed stringent racial segregation laws in the early 20th century, and ultimately the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which mandated every person who had any African heritage be deemed "black", Walter Plecker, the head of the vital Statistics office, directed all state and local registration offices to use only the terms "white" or "colored" to denote race on official documents.
Plecker oversaw the Vital Statistics office in the state for more than 30 years, beginning in the early 20th century, and took a personal interest in eliminating traces of Virginia Indians.
Over his years of service, he conducted a campaign to reclassify all biracial and multiracial individuals as Black, believing such persons were fraudulently attempting to claim their race to be Indian or white.
Attempts have been made to reconstruct the vocabulary of the language using sources such as word lists provided by Smith and by the 17th-century writer William Strachey.
[54] An attempt at a more historically accurate representation was the drama The New World (2005), directed by Terrence Malick, which had actors speaking a reconstructed Powhatan language devised by the linguist Blair Rudes.
