POWHATTEN WARS The early struggle to keep the tribal cultures and ancestoral lands by whatatoodo

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Powhatan had inherited control control over just four tribes, but dominated over thirty by the time the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in 1607. Until the English arrived, he had been "on a roll..."

Powhatan's territory was called Tsenacommacah. It was roughly 80 miles long from Virginia Beach to Potomac Creek (in modern Stafford County), and extended 40 miles inland from the Eastern Shore to the Fall Line.

Powhatan's span of control, his "paramount chiefdom," was established by force as well as by diplomacy. He permitted some tribes to maintain a high level of independence, but he attacked and physically eliminated the Chesapeake tribe. He destroyed the independence of that tribe about the time the English arrived. This sealed his control over the Elizabeth River watershed, where Portsmouth/Norfolk/Virginia Beach are now located.

Powhatan may have attacked the Chesapeakes just to expand his area of control - or he may have been thinking ahead, and protecting the flank of his paramount chiefdom against a European threat. He would have known stories of the Spanish Jesuits arriving in 1570, and would have heard about of the Roanoke Colony on the Outer Banks 15 years later. In both cases, the Native Americans had destroyed the Europeans.

The Algonquian tribes lacked the military "over the horizon" sensor capability to know exactly when European ships were headed towards Virginia, but Powhatan must have considered the possibility that ships from Europe could arrive in his territory. He may have planned to keep the English at the periphery of his area of control, on the Atlantic Ocean shoreline.

Powhatan lacked the technology to block access to his lands, once the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery arrived. To the Algonquians, the English were "tassantassas" or trespassers in Tsenacommacah - but the Europeans were able to use their advanced technology (sailing ships) to go up Powhatan's Flu (James River) and settle right in the center of Powhatan's territory. From the English perspective, Tsenacommacah was completely within the area claimed by the London Company, through the First Charter issued in 1606.

In response to the English trespass, Powhatan practiced both crafty diplomacy and limited war. He carefully orchestrated his meetings with the English to establish his authority and to gain tactical advantages during negotiations. He did not mass his warriors and try to expel the English as soon as they arrived. He sought to take advantage of the new arrivals, and make the foreigners subordinate to his control. "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."1

One reason Powhatan did not try to destroy the Jamestown colony immediately: he saw value in having access to the European technology. He thought he could mitigate the dangers of having an independent power within his area of control, while gaining prestige and power within the Native American communities through acquisition of English weapons and trade goods. The Algonquians valued shiny objects, which were rare in their culture, while the English had polished copper and glass. In addition, the iron tools of the English were far more efficient than the stone/bone tools of the Native American culture.

Accomodation rather than direct conflict was not a new strategy for Powhatan. He had allowed the Chickahominy tribe to operate with semi-independent status in essentially the same area as where the English settled.

Powhatan tried to isolate the English from other tribes. If he could not expel the English from the banks of the James River, he could at least eliminate any possibility that they would find allies nearby. Most of what the English learned about the Manahoacs and Monacans came from Powhatan's people, and English explorations west of the Fall Line were very limited.

Powhatan's efforts to isolate the English were partially successful. John Smith and later Jamestown leaders were never able to build an effective alliance with the Monocans and Manhoacs. The colony remained heavily dependent upon supplies from England, both food and manufactured goods (guns, ammunition, clothes, etc.). Most of the English trade with the natives was limited to other Algonquian-speaking tribes who lived on the banks of the navigable rivers, where the English could use their ships to reach a town and carry away a heavy product such as corn. Only after the Powhatan Confederacy was destroyed did the English establish a long-distance fur trading business beyond the Fall Line, with Fort Henry (modern Petersburg) and Occoneechee (modern Clarksville) as the key trading centers.

Powhatan lacked guns and sailing ships, though Indian arrows were an effective weapon in the early 1600's. Native Americans could launch arrows faster than the first colonists could reload their guns, and the arrows penetrated the shields used by the English.

The Algonquians practiced what today we call asymmetric warfare. Powhatan knew the cultural as well as the physical territory, and struggled to shape the behavior of nearby tribes so the English remained dependent upon Powhatan's willingness to provide food. When the supplies from England did not arrive as planned, Jamestown settlers were unable to feed themselves. What Powhatan lacked in technology, he could make up for by controlling acess to corn and deer meat.

One possibility: Powhatan may have imagined the English to be equivalent to a subordinate tribe, part of the "family" after a ritualistic ceremony that John Smith described as a "rescue" by Pocahonats before his brains were bashed in. Perhaps Powhatan made calculations of the pros/cons for expelling the English according to Western European thoughts, but he may also have applied Algonquian values and culture to the conflict. After the adoption ceremony/rescue, John Smith was no longer a foreign invader, but a lesser werowances who owed loyalty to the paramount chief. "Bringing the English tribe back into the fold" could be accomplished by pressure that demonstrated displeasure, and did not require sustained warfare.

In Jamestown, those willing to actually plant and work the fields were exposed to Indian attack. A war of attrition was to Powhatan's advantage, in the early years of English occupation. Algonquian warriors numbered in the thousands, while the English population in the colony rarely exceeded 100 for very long.

In actual battle, Powhatan and his successors relied upon swift surprise attacks. Those killed a few people, but rarely forced a wholesale retreat by other English settlers. The English relied upon larger search-and-destroy maneuvers, burning cornfields and towns to starve the assailants that they could not see. The English had no difficulty in destroying the traditional reed- or bark-covered huts in the Native American towns, but rarely were able to surprise and kill the residents. By blocking food production, the English could prevent the Algonquians from organizing a large number of warriors for attacks and ultimately force the tribes to abandon their territories.

Random assaults between Native Americans and the colonists had occurred since their very first meeting at Cape Henry. However, all-out war was not inevitable. Powhatan and John Smith might have reached a mutual agreement where they benefitted each other, at least in the short run. As described in a Richmond Times-Dispatch column 400 years later

The English and Native American cultures were unable to establish a basis for peaceful coexistence in the areas occupied by English settlers. Cultures who can't cooperate... fight. Since it was the colonial settlements that changed conditions by pushing into Native American territory, it's fair to say that the English precipitated the conflicts.

The English and Native Americans had dramatically different concepts of "appropriate land use," in areas occupied by both groups. English pigs and cattle were perceived as "game" to be harvested by some Native Americans, while the English considered themselves entitled by their charter and English law to appropriate land in Virginia without compensating the Algonquian inhabitants.

Native American town sites and cornfields were the most convenient areas to grow tobacco. The land was fertile and flat, and the trees had already been cleared - so the tobacco could grow in plenty of sunlight. On the other hand, the Native Americans could also trigger a fight. Killing English cattle was easier than hunting deer. Some of the English probably blamed every lost cow on the Native Americans, while some of the Native Americans probably blamed every hungry day on the English.

From Powhatan's point of view, the English were too hard to control. They kept trying to contact other tribes, evading Powhatan's schemes to steer all trade through him. In 1608 John Smith led two expeditions around the Chesapeake Bay,up the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers to contact rivals of Powhatan. That same year, Christopher Newport led an exploration party upstream of the falls on "Powhatan's flu" (site of Richmond) to visit with the Monacans. Powhatan's son Parahunt sold the English the right to occupy the land next to his village at the falls of the James, but the expansion of English occupation was a growing threat to Powhatan.

While most of the early colonists died from disease, more kept coming from across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1609, most of the ships in Lord de la Warr's Third Supply arrived at Jamestown with 200-300 new colonists (but without the leaders on the Sea Venture, which had wrecked on Bermuda).

The new colonists arrived in the Fall, with minimal supplies to feed them during the winter before new crops could be raised. In a strategic decision, John Smith determined that too many people were concentrated in one place. The English were overwhelming the capacity of local tribes to raise surplus corn and to hunt enough deer to feed both the Native Americans and the colonists. Rather than just expand Jamestown as new colonists arrived, Smith decided to spread out and create new settlements up and down the the James River.

In every war the other side can claim "he started it." The first Anglo-Powhatan war, starting in 1609, is no exception. Powhatan sought to achieve domination by starving the colony, once it became clear to him that Smith's strategy to shift the population out of Jamestown was incompatible with Powhatan's strategy of restricting settlement.

In 1609 the English sought to trade with, and then bluntly attacked the Nansemond tribe on the south bank of the James, downriver from Jamestown. After wrecking their shrines and villages, the English returned to Jamestown. Seventeen muntineers chose instead to sail to Kecoughtan. They disappeared, perhaps because their ship sank in the James River. Others who were living at Kecoughtan were killed. The Algonquians stuffed the mouths of the English dead with bread, showing contempt for the starvation that threatened the English. (Later in 1609, the English established a new settlement at the village of the Kecoughtan's on "Poynt Comfort," and buit Fort Algernon.)

During the winter of 1609-10, known now as the "Starving Time," all but about 60 colonists at Jamestown died. Smith's replacement (George Percy) failed to disperse settlers away from Jamestown. At Kecoughtan (Point Comfort), fish, oysters, and crabs were plentiful - but English leadership at Jamestown was not competent enough to move colonists to where food was available.

In 1609, after John Smith was incapacitated by by gunpowder bag catching fire and burning his thigh, John Ratcliffe led an expedition to Powhatan's new capital at Orapakes. It ended in disaster for the English. Powhatan maneuvered Ratcliffe so the English were vulnerable on land, then killed 34 of the 50 in the party. Ratcliffe himself was captured and tortured to death, and the ship returned to Jamestown without food.

The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates from Bermuda in May, 1610 led to a major decision. In early June, 1610, the English abandoned Jamestown and started to sail home. After three years, Powhatan had won the first round.

However, it was a short-lived victory. Before the retreating English ships reached the Atlantic Ocean, they met Lord de la Warre leading a relief mission from England, and returned to Jamestown with new leadership and new resources.

After the re-establishment of Jamestown, thomas Gates led an expedition that slaughted the Kecoughtan tribe. Powhatan could not win a stand-and-fight battle, but he still had corn, furs and information to trade. His decision to allow the Chickahominy tribe its independence caused a setback, however.

The Chickahominy reconsidered their semi-independent status with Powhatan after the English arrived. The Chickahominy saw the English displace the Paspaheghs from their territory, and chose to become allies with the English in 1613. As described by John Smith.

In 1622, Opechancanough ordered a coordinated assault on the English homesteads and settlements that killed nearly 347 English settlers, roughly one-third of the colonists. Jamestown received a last-minute warning and was not attacked, but Wostenholme Town in Martin's Hundred, the Henricus settlement with its iron furnace at Falling Creek, and many others were destroyed.

Not every Algonquian was comfortable choosing to follow Opechancanough's orders. Late on March 21, 1622, one of them (known in Virginia myths as Chanco) reportedly revealed the plans to Richard Pace. As John Smith later described i

Pace upon this [warning], securing his house, before day rowed to James Towne, and told the Governor of it, whereby they were prevented, and at such other Plantations as possibly intelligence could be given: and where they saw us upon our guard, at the sight of a peece they ranne away; but the rest were mostly slaine, their houses burnt, such Armes and Munition as they found they tooke away, and some cattell also they destroyed.

Pace's warning was the key to Jamestown itself surviving the 1622 attack, while those in undefended farmhouses suffered severely. Wolstenholme Towne at Martin's Hundred plantation was the English settlement that suffered the greatest number of casualties.

If Opechancanough had intended to exterminate the English, then he should have followed up with further attacks and ultimately have besieged Jamestown. He did not - expelling the English from Virginia required substantially more sustained warfare than Opechancanough could support. By 1622 he could not exterminate the colony, but tried instead to "reset" the balance of power.

The English retaliated with widespread destruction of Indian towns, destroying hard-to-replace crops as well as the easy-to-replace thatch buildings. Most "warfare" was a series of intermittent raidsIn one unusual battle in 1624, about 800 Indians battled 60 English soldiers for two days. The mismatch between arrows and guns determined the winner - the Indians suffered heavy casualties, but just 16 of the English were wounded.5

In 1632, the English reached some sort of peace agreement with the Pamunkey and Chicahominy tribes. In the 1630's, the English gradually expanded their settlements north of the York and then the Rappahannock rivers. A wooden palisade was built between the James and York Rivers, with a new community (Middle Plantation, later named Williamburg) located at the center. It was on the watershed divide, between College Creek on the James River and Queens Creek on the York River.

The palisade excluded Native Americans from much of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. Similar wooden barriers had been erected at Henricus and Bermuda Hundred.

In 1644, the Powhatans again attacked the English in a coordinated assault. The 1644 attack killed more colonists - but because the English population had grown so much, the percentage killed was far less than in 1622. The 1644 attack failed to force the colonists to either change their expansionist behavior. Instead, the English retaliated, and over the next two years destroyed the power of the tribes. In 1646, the Algonquians and English colonists agreed to a peace.

In 1677, after the English attacked several Indian settlements during Bacon's Rebellion, the Pamunkeys signed another treaty with the colony. The treaty established the Mattaponi and Pamunkey reservations in King William County. The treaty also required the payment of annual tribute to the governor, to show the tribes were subordinate to the power of the Europeans who had taken control of Virginia in the last 70 years. Every year around Thanksgiving, a ceremonial gift of deer and/or turkeys is presented to the Virginia governor to honor this treaty. (Because the Mattaponi and Pamunkey reservations were established 100 years before the United States was created, the legal basis for those Virginia reservations is based on state rather than Federal law.)