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Chief Powhatan

Chief Powhatan (c. June 17, 1547 – c. 1618), whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh or (in seventeenth century English spelling) Wahunsunacock, was the leader of the Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten), a powerful tribe of Native Americans, speaking an Algonquian language, who lived in Tenakomakah— which is now Tidewater Virginia—at the time of the first English-Native encounters. Wahunsenacawh was the father of Pocahontas.

Name

Powhatan was originally the name of one of the towns where he lived, a location now in the east end of the city of Richmond, Virginia, as well as the name of the adjacent river (today called the James River). When he created a powerful empire by conquering most of tidewater Virginia, he called himself the Powhatan, often taken as his given name, but actually a title. Another chief village was established at Werowocomoco on the north bank of the York River about from where "the river divides" at West Point, Virginia, according to Smith.

Life

Little is known of Powhatan's life before the arrival of English colonists in 1607. He apparently inherited the chiefdom of about 4-5 tribes, with the base at the fall line near Richmond, and through diplomacy and/or force, had assembled a total of about 30 into the Powhatan Confederacy by the early 17th century.

In December 1607, English soldier and pioneer John Smith, one of the colony's leaders, was fighting Opechancanough, the younger brother of Chief Powhatan and was taken to town. According to Smith's account (which in the late 1800s was considered to be fabricated, but since is believed to be mostly accurate—although several highly romanticized popular versions cloud the matter), Pocahontas, Powhatan's younger daughter, is said to have prevented her father from executing Smith. However, it is also believed by some that this was a ritual intended to adopt Smith into the tribe.

After Smith left Virginia because of an injury sustained in a gunpowder accident in 1609, the nervous tribe attacked and killed many of the Jamestown residents. The residents fought back, killing over twenty members of the tribe.

Although on the opposite side of the York River, Werowocomoco was only as the crow flies from Jamestown. For security reasons, around 1609, Wahunsunacock shifted his principal capital from Werowocomoco to Orapakes, located about west in a swamp at the head of the Chickahominy River, near the modern-day interchange of Interstate 64 and Interstate 295. Sometime between 1611 and 1614, he moved further north to Matchut, in present-day King William County on the north bank of the Pamunkey River, near where his younger brother Opechancanough ruled at Youghtanund. However, within a few years both Chief Powhatan and Pocahontas were dead from disease. The Chief died in Virginia, but Pocahontas died in England, having been captured and married to colonist John Rolfe, a leading tobacco planter. Meanwhile, the English continued to encroach on Powhatan territory. After the death of Wahunsunacock in 1618, his younger brother Opchanacanough became chief, and in 1622 and 1644 he attempted to force the English from Virginia. These attempts invited strong reprisals from the English, ultimately resulting in the near destruction of the tribe.

Through his daughter Pocahontas (and her marriage to the English colonist John Rolfe), he was the grandfather of Thomas Rolfe. As a result of Thomas Rolfe's birth, and his descendants, the Rolfe family is considered one of the First Families of Virginia, one with both English and Native American roots.

Appearance

In A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608), Smith described Powhatan thus: "...their Emperor proudly [lay] upon a bedstead a foot high upon ten or twelve mats, richly hung with many chains of great pearls about his neck, and covered with a great covering of Rahaughcums [raccoon skins]. At his head sat a woman, at his feet another, on each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men on each side [of] the fire, ten in a rank, and behind them as many young women, each a great chain of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and [he] with such a grave a majestical countenance as drove me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage.

Powatan's Mantle is a cloak made of deerskin and decorated with shell patterns and figures in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It allegedly belonged to Chief Powhatan although the evidence is questionable. The Mantle is, however, certainly one of the earliest North American artefacts to have survived in a European collection, and must have originally belonged to a Native American of high social status, given its manufacture from large numbers of valuable native shell beads.

In his 1906 work Lives of Famous Chiefs, Norman Wood also offered a description of the chief at the time the Englishmen were encountered. He was said to be a "tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke, his head somewhat gray, his beard so thinne that it seemeth none at all, his age neare sixtie, of a very able and hardy body, to endure any labor."

Names, titles, appellations

17th century English spellings were not standardised, so the problem of representing the sounds of the Algonquian language spoken by Wahunsenacawhlocation and his people is made doubly difficult by different spellings representing the same word. Charles Dudley Warner, writing in the 19th century, but quoting extensively from John Smith's writings, in his essay on Pocahontas states: "In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated with fighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names and titles; his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimes Mamauatonick, and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk." Many variants are used in texts:

The place, Powhatan

*Powhatan, Powatan, Powhaten, Pohetan, Powhattan, Poughwaton,

The description, weroance (chief?)

*weroance, weeroance, wyrounce, wyrounnces, werowance, wyroance, werowans

The name, Wahunsunacock

*Wahunsunacock, Wahunsenasawk, Wahunsenacawh, Wahunsenacock

The title, Mamanatowick (paramount- or great- chief, overlord?)

*Mamanatowick, Mamauatonick

Sites associated with Powhatan

Powhatan's burial mound is now supposedly located on the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in Virginia.
Powhatan County, although located somewhat to the west of their actual territory, was named for Chief Powhatan and his tribe.
In the independent City of Richmond, Powhatan Hill is believed, by tradition, to be located near Chief Powhatan's village, although the specific location of the site is unknown.
Chief Powhatan's other chief village, Werowocomoco, is an archeological site in Gloucester County, Virginia which has been listed as a National Historic Site.

Fictional representations

Douglass Dumbrille was casted as this Virginia chief in the 1953 live-action film Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. A fictional version of Powhatan was voiced by Russell Means in the 1995 Disney animated film, Pocahontas. This Native American chief was played by Canadian Gordon Tootoosis in Pocahontas: The Legend in that same year. He was played by Canadian August Schellenberg in the 2005 film The New World.