(Author’s note: Last fall, I erected a life-size bronze statue at Waterworks Visual Art Gallery here in Salisbury. We have had plenty of positive feedback on the statue but no one has asked about the historic story behind this very powerful Native American. This is a shortened version of that story, which happened, at the very beginning of our country.)

By Ray Moose

In the year 1607, three English ships sailed from the Atlantic and into the Chesapeake Bay.

They entered into a large river channel sailing northwest on a river that the English named the “James,” after their King. They sailed 40 miles up the James and planted the English flag on a peninsula, and named it Jamestown.

This move into a new world by the English would set off a chain of events between two distinctly different cultures that would change the American continent forever.

The Powhatan (Pow-a-tan) Indians of eastern Virginia were made up of around 30 towns covering approximately 100 by 100 square miles. They called this land Tesenacommacah, (T-sena- comm-a-cah.)

The residents of these towns were somewhat different in culture but spoke the same language. All of these towns were ruled by one Paramount Chief named Wahunsenacawh (Wa-hun-sena-cah). The English called him Powhatan. For convenience sake, I will do the same.

Chief Powhatan was a chief of chiefs. Each individual town was ruled by chiefs that were called Weroances, (Wher-ances) and all of these chiefs were under Chief Powhatan, the spiritual and political leader of the whole. He was a dynamic individual. English writings say that even in a large group, and not uttering a word, his presence was felt throughout.

Surprisingly enough, the English started off in the new world (new to the English) with a major blunder that followed them for several years.

The venture to the new world itself was funded by a group called the Virginia Company — well-to-do investors that put forth capital with the intention of receiving a healthy return from their investment.

They loaded up the ships with noblemen. Little emphasis was placed on food (farmers) and or a sufficient amount of craftsman for building and other necessities required for survival in this new and unfamiliar world.

America in the year 1600 was a beautiful, wild, majestic and primitive example of nature in her purist form. To leave London and come here for a common man was shock enough but for the noble class it was a full divorce from reality.

It was not long until their food ran out and their only source for food was the Powhatan people. The Indians themselves were good at growing corn and other crops as well as hunting deer, turkeys and other game, fishing the many rivers and gathering the oyster beds of the Chesapeake. Plus, there were abundant fruits and berries in the vast forests surrounding them.

This long story has entire books written on this encounter of early America. I plan to only skim the surface with a general outline and am putting it forward in two parts. The first chapter being the one of Captain John Smith.

John Smith basically saved the colony. His desire to stave off starvation started by trading with the neighboring tribes and Powhatan himself. The Indians quickly began to lose respect for people “that could not even feed themselves.” How do you have powerful weapons and metal tools and beautiful copper and all manner of trade beads and cannot feed yourself?

Powhatan himself had designs on being able to trade English goods to tribes west of his chiefdom and also help from the English arms of war in case they were ever needed in his battles with other tribes. He never imagined at this stage, that his entire chiefdom was in jeopardy.

Many of the problems began with the language and cultural divide. The food issue was exacerbated by a 100-year drought that happened during these years, making it hard even on the natives to grow enough for themselves. In Smith’s eyes, he saw no alternative than to take what he wanted in food by force because the colonists were starving and many dying. He burned the Indians’ houses and intimidated through force and as a general rule it worked and he got his food. At this time, Chief Powhatan had the men and the means to kill everyone at Jamestown, putting at least temporarily an end to the English in Virginia. Yet he did not.

Smith was a complex person. He studied the native language and did not in any way feel like he was above doing that. In the end it was a smart move. He earned both the respect of Chief Powhatan for his heavy handed methods and also complete disapproval of his methods to the point that the chief sentenced him to death. Smith was supposedly saved by the chief’s daughter Pocahontas. My disclaimer on this is the fact that there are opposing and controversial views about the Pocahontas story. On both sides.

As for Pocahontas. In the book “Tribe” written by combat journalist Sebastian Junger who studied tribes the world over in depth, made it clear that traditionally in tribal culture the individual placed himself or herself in service of the tribe. This is a generalization, but it is one of the reasons that tribal culture was basically successful over hundreds of thousands of years.

She grew up around this ideal. Her father supposedly had a lot of children (I have read as few as 20 children and as many as 100) that were spread through the towns for unifying purposes. The chief of the town would pick out a woman to live with the chief. She was to become pregnant and when born, take the baby back home to be raised there. This is the kind of example of self sacrifice for the good of the whole that Pocahontas grew up with, which makes her story even more complex.

In 1609, two things happened that changed the tide. Smith was hurt badly in an accident and went back to London. After his departure, things began to get worse with English-Powhatan relations. Chief Powhatan left his home and ceremonial grounds on the York river at Werowocomoco (Wear-o-wah-comb-e-co) and moved west and away to the town of Orapax, well away from the English threat. In 1618, Chief Powhatan died and the responsibility of head chief went to Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough (Op-e-chan-can-ough). He turned out to be of different character.

Smith had developed a reputation among the English elite as being too rough in his ways. The Virginia Company policy had been all along for an assimilation of native peoples with the English, and for them to learn English and Christianity. 

The Virginia Company had learned their lesson about food and increased shipments of food and a massive increase in the import of people of different skill levels as plantations began to develop along the James River.

The company put forth reconciliation policies in hopes of assimilation into the “English way.”

They laid aside a sizable amount of property for a college to educate the native people and they (the Indians) were encouraged to convert to Christianity. The company also encouraged the Indian people to feel free to travel, and come and go as they pleased — quite a different approach than the heavy-handed tactics of John Smith.

Yet plantations lined the James River and were continuing to grow. Africans had been introduced in 1619 to work the fields and the fine food-growing gardens of the Powhatan Indians began to have the look of the Antebellum South. It was clear by this time what the English intent was — convert to our ways and we take your land. Not much of a choice.

Had the English any awareness that the Powhatan people may resent strange people from a strange place slowly taking their land? Land that they had occupied and depended on for more than 1,000 years. Would the English have allowed this to happen in their homeland? Not for a minute. They would have taken every measure available to throw off that type of domination.

The progressive trust policy began to unravel when an Englishman and a Powhatan leader went to another town to trade. The white man did not return. It was made clear by the Powhatan man that had accompanied him that he was dead. There was an incident and the Powhatan man (who was very popular) was killed.

Everything seemed fine on the morning of March 22, 1622. On this seemingly normal morning, the Indians began to show up at the farms to trade and work. They brought no weapons. Using the tools and weapons that were normally used around the farms, they attacked the whites and killed 347 of them. Men, women and children. Opechancanough had played a closely guarded hand. One with the intent of driving the English out forever. The dogged English were not about to give up now.

Of course, the Indians did not know the complex and brutal history of European warfare, which in its extreme forms, did not compare to the skirmishes that are generally associated with American Indian warfare. The attack that day had triggered something deep within the English subconscious.

The company immediately sent forth 42 barrels of gunpowder, 1,000 halberds (spears with ax-like blades), 1,000 light muskets, 300 pistols, 100 brigantines (armored vests), 400 chain-mail shirts and coats, 400 bows, 800 sheaves of arrows and 2,000 iron helmets.

Several years later after receiving and utilizing their war arsenal, there was a peace treaty signed. Under the treaty, the white population began to grow even more, requiring more Indian land. Along with that, the whites let their guard down again and Opechancanough played his hand for a second time, this time killing between 400-500 people. With this, the English put forth its full war machine and declared war on the Powhatan Indians.

The next 40 years would set off a long series of unfortunate and tragic events between Europeans and the Powhatan.

The General Assembly of Virginia boasted in 1646 that the natives were “so routed and dispersed that they are no longer a nation, and now we suffer only from robbery by a few starved outlaws.” I am sure that this statement is exaggerated, but impossible to deny that this was one of the most brutal and destructive campaigns in American Indian history.

This first chapter in the story of early America would set off events that would spread across America between American Indians and Euro-Americans, becoming a powerful dynamic in which both sides tried at times, or not at all in others. Only to be ended with a forced outcome.

Some 280 years later when the last shots were fired at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, these great nations of the Earth Mother laid down their arms. U.S. Army officers that conducted the plains Indian wars all agreed that if they were in the exact same position as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and others they would also fight and die in an attempt to save family, land and culture.

A full-size statue of Paramount Chief Powhatan is on display outside of Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury.