THE POWHATAN REMNANTS
By: HELEN CAMPBELL
Prior to the white man's
arrival in America, a chain of separate but interacting
Algonquian communities thrived along the Atlantic coastline.
The Indians thrived in communities from the Chesapeake to
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. When warm weather arrived, the
Indians used the coastline for fishing and hunting. In the
southern regions Indians turned to the planting of crops for
foodstuff. Some of the Southeastern Indians tribes became
extinct almost immediately upon contact with the explorers
from the Old World; the contact with the Indians was
catastrophic because the foreign ships carried a plague of
diseases. The Native Americans didn't have any immunity to
the diseases, which resulted in epidemics and the deaths of
millions of Native Americans. The first African slaves were
transported to the Americas in 1510 thus transmitting new
diseases from Africa to the Native Americans. In 1551, the
English voyagers reported that the Roanoke Islands' natives
were dying by scores.
The First European Settlements
In 1584, an Englishman, Walter Raleigh, led an expedition to
look into Spanish defenses in the Caribbean Islands and to
explore for a perfect site to build a new settlement. His
men explored in Albemarle Sound and landed on the Virginia
coastal island (now North Carolina), of Roanoke Island. In
1585, Walter Raleigh tried to establish a settlement on the
newfound island. It was the ideal location to plant and grow
wild sassafras, an herb prized for it's medicinal qualities
in England. Raleigh sailed back to England to purchase
provisions for the coming winter. During a skirmish with the
Indians, the settlers killed an Indian chief and the Indians
were infuriated. This first group of immigrants abandoned
the undeveloped settlement after a year when Sir Francis
Drake rescued the settlement from disaster.
In the spring of 1586, an English fleet of twenty- five
ships, under the command of Sir Francis Drake, sailed into
the harbor. Drake was returning to England from his
successful victory over the Spanish. In 1585, Drake and his
mighty fleet went on a marauding expedition against the
Spanish settlements. He and his men attacked major
fortifications on the Spanish settlements in the West
Indies, taking prisoners and anything of value. Then Drake
sailed to Florida's Spanish fortifications at St. Augustine
and plundered the settlement and took more captives.
The Spanish and Turks were constantly at war in the
Mediterranean. The Spanish enslaved their Turkish,
Portuguese, Arab and Moorish captives, to use them as galley
slaves. These prisoners also did slave labor at Cartagena in
the West Indies. Galley slaves were men who were enslaved or
convicts who were severely punished for their illegal deeds
by pulling the oars on galleys. Galleys were long ships with
one deck and had twenty to thirty oars on each side. The
ship was driven across the waters by the oars with six or
seven men per oar. When
Drake offered the scared and stranded Roanoke settlers a
safe passage home, they accepted. Drake had freed five
hundred Ottoman (Turkish and Black Muslims), Levants
(sailors), from their Spanish captors in the West Indies.
Some researchers believe that Drake left about 500
Portuguese and South American captives on Roanoke Island.
Drake had plans to ransom about one hundreds Turks back to
the Ottoman Empire Resent
research suggests that Portuguese and Native Americans from
South America were included in Drakes prisoners of war.
Another two hundred came from an invasion on Spanish
Florida, at St. Augustine. These captives were left on
Roanoke Island to make room for the Roanoke settlers. They
left the freed captives at the mercy of the infuriated
Indians. Perhaps these men were absorbed into the American
Indian population. Drake was
the first Englishman to sail around the world. In 1577 he
left England aboard the Golden Hind and returned in 1580.
Drake and his men raided Spanish settlements along the way.
He presented the Queen with tropical plants, birds, gold,
and American Indians. One of the Indian captives was an
Aztec. Drake presented the illustrated log of his successful
voyage to Queen Elizabeth. This top-secret log documented
the voyage around the world. They were very careful that the
illustrations and maps didn’t fall into enemy hands. Maps in
this era were kept from the public they were available only
to a select few. In 1587,
Raleigh sent replacements to reestablish the abandoned
Roanoke settlement. The second group of about one hundred
men, women and children began to rebuild Roanoke. The
settlers needed provisions for the coming winter. John
White, the governor of the settlement, sailed back to
England to purchase the needed provisions. Governor White
and his small crew departed leaving behind the settlers,
including his daughter and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare.
Virginia was the first English child to be born in America.
Spain was at war with England, which prevented John White's
speedy return to Roanoke. After three very long years, he
managed to return in the year 1591. The settlers were
nowhere to be found. There were no signs of battle, no
bodies and no destruction of property. The only possible
clue was the word "CROATAN" carved in a tree bark near the
fort's entrance. On another nearby tree the bark was
stripped off and carved into the tree the letters "CRO."
About one hundred miles inland, from Roanoke Island, and
adjacent to the South Carolina border, was an area called
Robinson County, North Carolina. In 1719, a group of hunters
and trappers strayed into the hilly landscape and stumbled
upon a tribe of Indians. The Indians had light skin,
gray/blue eyes and light brown hair. But most astonishing
was the fact that they spoke nearly perfect Elizabethan
English. These Indians said that their ancestors "talked
from a book." Their customs were similar to the early
English Roanoke Colony. This sighting brought about a theory
that the starving colonists at Roanoke took refuge with the
Croatan Indians during the first winter when Governor John
White didn't return. To this day the descendants still live
in Roberson County, North Carolina. They are known as the
Lumbee Indians. The surviving remnants of the Roanoke
settlement may have been assimilated into the indigenous
tribes. The existence of fair skinned Indians in Roberson,
North Carolina substantiates the theory that the Roanoke
colonists and perhaps the abandoned Turks and Portuguese and
Moors blended in with the Croatan and other Tidewater,
Virginia Indian tribes, including the Powhatan and Lumbee
Indians. Dr. Robert Gilmor, a Melungeon researcher, suggests
the people of the legendary "Lost Colony of Roanoke"
intermarried with the Powhatan Indians who had already
intermarried with Jamestown Colony. Adding the surnames
White and Dare to the Indian population. Other surnames
common to the Lumbee Indians are; Applewhite, Atkins,
Braveboy, Bridger, Caldwell, Chavers and it’s variants,
Cole, Cumbo and it’s variants, Cummings, Drake, Goins, and
it’s variants, Humpreys/Humprey, Kearsy, Kitchens, Locklear,
Manuel, Morison, Moore, Mainer, Newsom, Oxedine, Ransom,
Revels, Thompson, and Wood. The remnants of this mixed raced
population were ultimately pushed together in the mountains
of south-central Virginia, western North Carolina and upper
South Carolina where they became known as the Tri-racial
isolates.
The Spanish and the Powhatan
The Powhatan came into contact with the Spaniards when Juan
Ponce de Leon of Spain arrived at Florida during the years
1513-21. In 1513, Spain’s explorers claimed Florida but they
made no permanent settlement. A group of one hundred and
fifty French Huguenots fleeing religious persecutions,
settled on the St. Johns River in 1562. The refugees built a
fort on the St. Johns River and named the fort,
Carolinefort. When Spain found out they sent a fleet to
Florida under the command of Pedro Menendez de Aviles.
Carolinefort was seized by Aviles and he renamed the fort,
San Mateo. It is written that Aviles and his men massacred
the French Huguenots; Only God knows if any of the French
Huguenots from Carolinefort settlement found shelter amongst
the local American Indians.
In 1566, Juan Pardo, a Spanish navy officer with Portuguese
origins, strategically positioned five garrisons in the
backcountry of Carolina. These soldiers were recruited from
the mountains of Northern Spain and Portugal. Pardo led his
expedition of two hundred soldiers into the interior of the
southern Appalachians. Leaving small garrisons along the
way. Each garrison was made up about fifty Spanish and
Portuguese soldiers. In
1566, the Spaniards built the town Santa Elena, a settlement
with a small fort, Fort San Salvador. Santa Elena was built
over the former settlement of the defeated French Huguenot
refugees Charlesfort.
About twenty years
later, the Spanish retreated from Santa Elena about the same
time John White landed at Roanoke Island. Those settlers,
who survived, burned the town and sailed south to St.
Augustine. The garrisons in the backcountry of the Carolinas
were cut off from their Spanish command post. These Spanish
forts are thought to have been located near the present day
cities of Rome, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina;
Asheville, North Carolina; and Johnson City, Tennessee. The
remnants produced a mix raced population that inhabited the
Deep South. The evidence suggests that the first Santa Elena
settlers fled westward away from the coast of South
Carolina. Then the displaced group traveled north along the
Pee Dee River. The migrating remnants of the Portuguese,
Moors and Spanish men may have intermarried with Indian
women from various Southeastern Indian tribes.
Later Roman Catholic missionaries came to convert the
Indians into Christians. Military garrisons protected these
Roman Catholic missionaries. To finance the missions, the
Spanish missionaries taught the Indians to manufacture raw
material into products that could be sold. They also grew
food crops to support the missions. The mission Indians
dressed in Spanish fashion and they were taught to read,
write and play musical instruments.
Virginia Tide Water Indians
These first early attempts by European settlers in North
America were no more than foot holds. As the European
colonies along the Atlantic Coast grew, the few surviving
Indians were forced off their ancestral lands and pushed
inland. The remnants were left with no choice but to
encroach on other Indian Nations' ancestral homelands. This
led to warfare amongst the Native Nations for trespassing on
other tribe's ancestral lands. The entire situation was a
dilemma for all Native Americans. Coastal Indians swarmed
the Indians in the inland seeking sanctuary. Some tribes
resented the onslaught and killed or captured those who
dared to trespass on their tribal lands. The people from the
Old World had an advantage over the New World Indians, a
lack of tribal unity. The Europeans would conspire to
instigate such skirmishes among the many diverse ethnic
Indian tribes. The Powhatan
and Pamunkey of Virginia were two of many Appalachian tribes
speaking the Algonquian language. These Appalachian Indian
tribes shared a common culture, customs and had similar
religious beliefs too. Other Eastern Algonquian tribes are
Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, Pequot, Mohegan, Lenape, Nanticoke,
Miami, Kickapoo, and Shawnee to name a few. Muskhogean
Indians was another linguistic group of the Southeastern
Indians and included the Creek, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw,
the Seminole tribes and other smaller clans. But the
Powhatans of Virginia consisted of many tribes and became a
sizable powerful empire.
The Founder of the Powhatan Empire
The "Powhatan" word is not the name of a particular tribe
but rather a generic name for a group of Algonquian speaking
tribes that formed an alliance. The man who gave the
Powhatan Empire its actual foundation was a native Ruler in
Virginia who is historically known by the name the Spanish
gave him, Don Luis Valasco. One day, during the 1560s, the
Spanish along the Virginia coast had abducted the teenage
Pamunkey Ruler away from his homeland. While a captive of
the Spanish, he was highly educated in Mexico, Madrid and
Havana. Molding him into a "proper Christian Spaniard " Don
Luis was to be an example for the other Indians to follow.
In 1570, the Catholic priests brought their Spanish educated
captive back to Virginia in the area of the York River. The
Jesuits, along with the help of Don Luis, founded a mission
for the Indians assuming their efforts would improve the
relations between the Spanish and Indians. These Spanish
priests thought they had an honorable plan to convert the
Indians into Roman Catholics and then dominate their
communities. Don Luis resumed his previous position as the
ruler of his prominent family and King of his people. The
Powhatan Indians believed in many deities, and although
polygamy was practice it appears to have been uncommon. It
is said that when Don Luis practiced polygamy, the Jesuit
priests became enraged because Christianity denounces such
practices. The Jesuits severely degraded and disgraced Don
Luis in public, humiliating him in front of his people. Don
Luis could not take this painful humiliation so he organized
and led an attack and obliterated the mission he had helped
to build. Three Jesuits were spared, Rogel, Alonso and
Carrera. The Spanish retaliated the following year by
massacring many Indians.
JamestownTo understand the
history of the Powhatan and Pamunkey Indians, one has to
understand the history of the English settlement at
Jamestown. Modern historians number the Native population of
1607 Tidewater Virginia at 13,000 to 14,000. Powhatan
villages were thick along the rivers. By 1669, the estimated
population of the Powhatan Tidewater in Virginia had dropped
to about 1,800 and by 1722; many of the tribes belonging to
King Powhatan were reported extinct. Many tribes lost their
reservations lands assigned to them and some of these
displaced Indians tried to adapt to Colonial America. Those
who could pass as white were absorbed into the European
population. Those who couldn't pass for white fled their
lands to escape enslavement.
The English mercantile shareholders believed that precious
metals existed in the Americas. They spent about ten
thousand dollars to send three groups of emigrants to settle
the New World. The first voyage set sail from England just
before Christmas, December 20 in the year 1606. The convoy
left England aboard three ships that carried about 105
colonists and supplies for their journey across the ocean.
The sponsors of this New World voyage expected these
colonists to develop business enterprises. Some of the
colonists were skilled in silk making, glassmaking and other
skills. The spirited people embarked on a new venture to a
New World with dreams of finding prosperity.
The names of the ships were, the Susan Constant, the
Godspeed and the Discovery. The three ships
sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 and named their
English settlement Jamestown, in honor of their king, King
James I. Jamestown was located on the confluence of the
James and Chickahominy Rivers. Jamestown became the first
permanent English settlement in the New World.
They were not prepared for the hardships that lay ahead of
them. Diseases, malnutrition, poor organization and
environmental ignorance all play a part to the large numbers
of deaths in Jamestown. One main problem was they built the
town on swampland and soon became plagued by malaria and
distasteful drinking water. All these harsh conditions
resulted in bad blood among the men and endless quarreling
over how to stay alive. But the major crisis was a lack of
food supplies. Jamestown settlement almost starved to death
and would have if not for the support of the Powhatans
during their first terrible winter in 1607-1608. The
Powhatans were initially friendly to the English colonists.
Many Englishmen married women from the various tribes living
in the area. John Rolfe and Pocahontas are the most
remembered because Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the
favorite daughter of King Powhatan. By the spring of 1608,
disease and accidents had taken all but 38 of the one
hundred and five men who had come to Jamestown so full of
hope the year before. The
Powhatans and Pamunkey Indians were under constant pressure
to provide food for the English. This became a serious
problem after the settlement grew. In 1609 England sent four
hundred English immigrants to reinforce the original group
at Jamestown. But the town relied on trade with the local
Indians for their food supplies. The new group didn't bring
enough food provisions for themselves. The English were too
frightened of the environment to go out and hunt for food in
the forest. When deep winter arrived, the helpless colonists
were eating rats and mice along with dried up roots. A few
of the most desperate turned to cannibalism and even opened
fresh graves for food.
Within several years after the establishment of Jamestown
conflicts between the Indians and the English settlements
had reached a breaking point. In 1610, the Appamattock,
Arrowhatecks, and the Weyanocks, tried to expel the English
settlers from further encroachment. The Nansemond attacked
the English settlement along the James River. The major
culprit in the conflict was tobacco, a harvest that was
addicting and had immense popularity in Europe. The
Jamestown settlers realized the addictive tobacco crops were
a way to make a fortune. Thus began the large-scale
cultivation of tobacco. In 1612 John Rolfe introduced a
tropical tobacco from Trinidad and by 1614 the first
Virginia tobacco was being sold in London. After five years
it was Jamestown's leading export. As the Virginia Colony
expanded farther inland, the Powhatans and Pamunkey Indians
were forced off of their ancestral lands.
To cultivate tobacco the Englishmen required huge tracts of
land, more so than other crops because the tobacco plants
depleted the soil at a rapid rate. There was of course, in
Englishmen's eyes, plenty of land in Coastal Virginia but
the region was heavily wooded and full of unfriendly
Indians. So the English implemented a plan to seize the
fields that the Indians had already cleared for their own
survival thus began the mass departure process of pushing
tribes farther and farther inland. These tribes were pushed
out of the Tidewater area of Virginia and Maryland. The
estimated population of Powhatan Indians was 9,000 in the
year 1600. By the late 18th century the Tidewater Indians
had nearly disappeared as a result of warfare, disease, and
intermarriage with Africans, Europeans and the assimilation
amongst other Indian tribes.
Robert Rich, a very influential man, was an investor to the
Bermuda Company and the East Indian Company, and also the
Guineas Company, which traded primarily in African slaves.
The name of his ship was The Treasurer, and his ship brought
the first cargo of twenty Africans to Virginia in 1619
establishing the way for the establishment of slavery in
English America. These twenty Africans are recorded as being
the first of 10,000 other captives who came to the American
Colonies in the 17th century. Their languages were of the
Niger-Congo family. These unfortunate African captives had
religious and cultural traditions. They were skilled in the
cultivation of, tobacco, rice and indigo. These skills
completed the foundation for the Tidewater economy in
Carolina and Georgia. In South Carolina, over forty percent
of African slaves came from the rice growing area of Upper
Guinea and Senegambia. Another forty percent came from
Angola. The Chesapeake area Africans came from the Bight of
Biafra controlled by the Ibo people. Many of these enslaved
African people intermarried with the Powhatan Indians.
In Africa, the slave trade was connected to warfare among
rival kingdoms. The victorious forces brought back captives
as spoils. Often these unfortunate captives were sold or
traded from one ruler to another as well as to European
traders. The African Rulers valued the European's trading
merchandise. These captives were packed into ships and sent
into the world slave market. By 1725, the African population
in the Chesapeake area numbered forty-five thousand.
Africans were imported to fill the requirements for laborers
when English cultivators found that they could not force
Indians to work in their fields. The first Africans were
indentured servants, and they worked on tobacco plantations
alongside white indentured laborers. But as the number of
Africans in North America grew, the plantation owners began
to fear their potential power and implemented regulations,
which made slaves of these African indentured servants.
Sold into SlaveryThe
French, English and Spanish all carried on extensive trade
in Indian as well as African slaves. The Spanish were
dominant in slave trade early on. In 1675, there were only
4000 Africans scattered across Maryland and Virginia; in
1708, there were just 4000 in Carolina. West Indian natives
worked beside Africans in the West Indies on sugar
plantations. In Virginia captive Powhatans and other Indian
tribes were put to labor in the English tobacco plantations.
Slavery of the Indians in the Southeast tribes was
difficult. After all it was their ancestral lands and this
gave them an edge. But the settlers had weapons that put
them at an advantage. The
English needed armed forces to hold off the Spanish
settlement in the New World. Pine, oak, cypress and cedar
trees grew plentiful along the Carolina coastline. This gave
the British navy an endless source of supplies to build a
navy base in the New World. Cutting down these trees and
boiling tar required a multitude of workers to complete the
hard backbreaking work. The English tried to enslave the
Indians to do the arduous labor. Most Indian slaves were war
captives who had been spared from death. Eventually some of
these captive Africans and Indians were accepted into
another tribe by adoption and marriage.
To satisfy the demand for slaves European traders encouraged
Indians to wage war against one another for the captives.
Afterwards, the Southeastern Indians would be exchanged for
trade goods or money. Pitting tribe against tribe not only
produced slaves for the market but also reduced the threat
of Indians would unite in large numbers against the white
population. The English
raiding gangs from Carolina besieged thousands of
Appalachian Indians including the Timucus, who had been
converted to Christianity and were taught to be farmers by
the Spanish missions in the 16th century. These merciless
men made shocking assaults on the Christian farming towns in
Northern Florida. The purpose of these raids were to seize
the sedentary Indians and ship them back to the Carolina
slave markets where they were sold into slavery and deported
to the West Indies and New England. As a result of such
raids, as many as 12,000 American Indians had been auctioned
off and deported out of Charleston to the Caribbean Islands
in the West Indies. Some of these Native Americans were
shipped to Africa too. It was a profitable market and many
European men became wealthy and dominant.
After slavery was established at the port of Charles Town,
later named Charleston, slaves entered in a steady stream.
It was usual to see an advertisement for slave auctions. One
such poster read: "To be sold, on Thursday the third day of
August next, a cargo of ninety-four prime, healthy, Negroes,
consisting of thirty-nine men, twenty-four women, and
sixteen girls, just arrived, in the Brigantine Dembia.
Francis Bare Mafter from Sierra Leon, by David and John
Deas." Other slave ports were; New Orleans; Savannah; New
York, Boston and Newport. Those bought and sold on the
auction block of Charleston were shipped off in wretched
bunches to New England or the West Indies.
In 1670, Barbados sent cultivators who were very experienced
with African slavery, to the Carolinas to help establish
plantations. They brought with them the first slaves both
Black and White. Also, the settlement's proprietor had an
economic interest in the slave trade and was very pleased to
find such a market as existed in the Carolinas. Barbadians
had been enslaving the Indians to work on sugar plantations
since the Pequot War in 1637. Pequot Indians were one of
many Algonquian tribes. The Puritans parsons, who called the
Pequot Indians "friends of hell, and children of Satan,"
incited the war. The outraged settlers stormed the Pequot
village located on the Mystic River in Connecticut,
massacring and burning to death more than six hundred
Indians. Surviving captives became slaves of New England
settlers; others sold to West Indies sugar plantations. Thus
began the mass deportation of the American Indians out of
their ancestral homelands to a life of slavery in the West
Indies.
Chief Powhatan - Wahunsonacook 1550s-1618
It is not certain but probable that Don Luis was the father
of Wahunsonacook, born in the 1550's and later became the
legendary Chief Powhatan of the Powhatan Confederacy.
The English called Wahunsonacock, Chief Powhatan, King of
the Powhatans. Wahunsonacook was a member and chief of the
Pamunkey Indians. The Pamunkey were the largest of the many
Virginia Tidewater tribes. Their political system was
Chiefdom, a sovereignty and supreme power with a king and a
province. Some researchers have written, that Wahunsonacock
inherited the Chiefdoms of the Powhatans, Arrowhateck,
Appamattock, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and the Chiskiak Indians.
The Powhatans lived in a 9,000 square mile area. Chief
Powhatan and his people lived on the North side of the James
River in Henrico County. It was a custom for the Ruler of
the Powhatans to acquire the name of the tribe, thus Chief
Powhatan. There were
hundreds of Indian villages near the Chesapeake Bay. The
inlets and rivers that flow into the Chesapeake Bay, were
vital, they were used for transportation and were a major
source of food. The rivers and bay provided the Indians with
an abundant source of fish, oysters, clams and waterfowl.
The Powhatan villages were strategically placed enabling the
Indians to have a commanding view of the waterways and the
people traveling them, especially their enemies. Historian
James Mooney estimated the Powhatan population at nine
thousand Indians in the sixteen hundreds and by the end of
the eighteenth century they had nearly disappeared as a
result of warfare, disease, and inter-marriage with Africans
and Europeans. Some were fortunate enough to be adopted
among other Indian tribes thus becoming another mixed raced
people. In 1685 the Powhatans were said to be extinct, but
in reality their survivors continued to move inland,
intermarrying with other mixed-race exiled people. In 1691 a
law was made to end the intermarriage of Whites to Indians
and Blacks. The remnants of this mixed raced population
eventually fled to the isolated mountains in the Southeast.
The English settlers began to transform the forests into
tobacco plantations ruining the hunting grounds by massive
deforestations; forever changing the Virginia Indian lands
to cultivate the addicting tobacco plantations. The once
plentiful food supply became nearly extinct, leaving the
Indians without a means of survival. King Powhatan ordered
about forty warriors to permanently expel the settlers from
his province for what they had done to the Indian lands.
One day Chief Powhatan implemented a plan that united thirty
or more Algonquian speaking tribes of coastal Virginia and
Maryland into one single province ruled by Powhatan and his
family. The alliance was well known as the all-powerful
Powhatan Confederacy. King Powhatan extended the name to all
the tribes within his newly united province. The capital of
his province was located on the modern day Pamunkey River in
Virginia. King Powhatan named the capital of his province,
Werowocomoco. The settlement was located on the north bank
of the York River. The
earliest estimate of Powhatan-Pamunkey-Chickahominy people
was 40,000. The Pamunkeys united with Powhatan. They lived
near West Point Virginia. The Pamunkeys are the first
Indians that Englishman Captain John Smith encountered. They
had an estimated three hundred warriors. Other tribes that
united with Powhatan are: Mattoponis, this tribe lived on
the banks of the Mattoponis River, they had about forty
warriors, (they still live in King County); the Arrohatecks
lived on the Appomattox River in Chesterfield County, and
had about sixty warriors; the Youghtatucks, they lived on
the Pamunkey River probably in Hanover County and they had
only seventy surviving people; the Weanocks of Charles City,
Prince George and Surrey counties; the Paspaheghs of James
City and Charles County; the Orzinies of the north bank of
the Chicahominy River in James City County; the Chicahominy
of Chicahominy River in New Kent County; the Tappahannas of
Surry and Prince George Counties; the Warascoyacks of the
Isle of Wright; the Nansemond of Nansemond County (now
Nansemond City, Isle of Wright and Southampton Counties);
the Chesapeakes of Norfolk County (now the City of
Chesapeake and Prince Anne County; the Kecougtans of
Elizabeth City County (now City of Hampton); the
Werowocomocos of Gloucester County; the Kiskiacks of the
south side of the York River. The Rappahannock of the north
side of the Rappahannock River; the Tauxent of Fairfax
County and Stanford Counties; the Potomac of the Potomac
River; the Mattapanients of the Potomac River; the Nanticoke
of the eastern shore of Maryland; the Accowmack of
Northampton and the Pawtuxents and other small tribes that
lived on the Patuxent River.
Opechancano the brother of King Powhatan became the king of
the Powhatan Confederacy after his brother's death in 1618.
He led an attack on the Virginia colonies in 1622. The
attack was a complete surprise to the English settlements
and back woods plantations along the James River. The
Indians massacred over three hundred men, women and
children. Every one of the settlements and plantations was
destroyed and burned, except for Jamestown. This was the
commencement of warfare that lasted for fourteen years. The
remnants of the Virginia Indians were finally forced to make
peace in 1636. But six years later, Opechancano, King of the
Powhatans, launched another surprise attack. More than five
hundred English settlers were massacred in another surprise
attack in the backcountry. Each time the English retaliated
severely. Opechancano died in 1644 in captivity. The
Powhatans again were forced to make peace with colonies. The
oldest treaty written in this land is with the Powhatan
Nations in the year 1646. The King of England declared the
area between the York and James Rivers for English colonies.
The Powhatan Reservation
Small reservations were set aside for the exclusive
residence and use of the once great Powhatan Empire. These
Virginia reserves have been more reduced over the centuries.
The lands remain in Native ownership to this day.
Our Melungeon Forefathers
The Melungeon peoples could be the remnants of North
America's very first Old World explorers and settlements.
Only the indigenous people were here to record the early
voyagers arrivals. The majority of the indigenous people of
the Americas died soon after their first contact with the
explorers. These first Old World contacts lead the way for
the extinction of many millions who witnessed the
foreigners’ arrivals. In this new millennium we only have
clues to remind us of our forefathers. Such clues can be
found in the oral histories of the American Indians, in
their language, in their customs, in their music, in their
dance, in their traditional fashions, and the westerly
migratory path of the Melungeons. After many centuries the
genetics of these earliest forefathers still remain within
the Melungeons. God has preserved a written record of our
forefathers' existence; the evidence can be found in the
chemical makeup and the physical features that have been
passed on to their descendants over the centuries. The
Melungeons truly are God’s mysterious peoples.
Elder, Pat Spurlock.
(1999). Melungeons: Examinating An Appalachian Legend.
Continuity Press. Erdoes,
Richard, and Ortiz, Alfonso. (1984). American Indian Myths
and Legends. Pantheon Books, a division of Random House,
Inc. Graff, Henry Franklin
and Krout, John A. (1959, 1960). The Adventure of the
American People. Rand McNally
Kennedy, N. Brent. (1994). The Resurrected Melungeon, The
Resurrection of a Proud People, An untold Story of Ethnic
Cleansing in America. Mercer University Press.
Kennedy, N. Brent. (May 21, 2000) Lecture at the Third Union
at the University of Virginia College at Wise. Recorded by
Wayne Winkler, Director, WETS-FM
The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (1995). Through Indian
Eyes. Hornbeck, Helen
Tanner (Ed.). (1995). The Settling of North America.
Swanston Publishing Limited.
Salazar, L. E. (200) Love Child: A Genealogist Guide to the
Social History of Barbados. Family Find.
© 2001 by Helen Campbell |
