Note the name of the river leading to Jamestown...
Source: John Smith map, from the Library of Congress
The arrival of the English was a total surprise to Powhatan. He 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.
Powhatan's span of control was established by force at times. For example, he attacked and physically eliminated the Chesapeakes as an independent tribe about the time the English arrived, ensuring his authority over the Elizabeth River watershed where Norfolk and Virginia Beach are now located. (This attack may have occurred just as the English were catching sight of the Virginia coastline. If so, the timing of the attack was not triggered by Powhatan's desire to defend the flank of his empire against a European threat.)
Powhatan lacked the military capability to know the English were coming, or to block access to his lands and keep the English at the periphery of his empire. The Europeans used their sailing ships to settle right in the center of his territory, a.
Powhatan did not try to expel the English immediately. He sought to take advantage of them, and make them 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
He saw value in having access to the European technology, and Powhatan thought he could mitigate the dangers of having an independent power within his area of control. He had allowed the Chickahominy tribe to operate with semi-independent status in essentially the same area. Powhatan, but the Chickahominy reconsidered the arrangement once 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:2
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The Chicahamanias desire frienship.
Besides this, by the meanes of Powhatan, we became in league with our next neighbours, the Chicahamanias, a lustie and a daring people, free of themselves. These people, so soone as they heard of our peace with Powhatan, sent two messengers with presents to Sir Thomas Dale, and offered him their service, excusing all former injuries, hereafter they would ever be King James his subjects, and relinquish the name of Chickahamania, to be called Tassautessus, as they call us, and Sir Thomas Dale there Governour, as the Kings Deputie; onely they desired to be governed by their owne Lawes, which is eight of their Elders as his substitutes. This offer he kindly accepted, and appointed the day hee would come to visit them. When the appointed day came, Sir Thomas Dale and Captaine Argall with fiftie men well appointed, went to Chickahamania, where wee found the people expecting our comming, they used us kindly, and the next morning sate in counsell, to conclude their peace upon these conditions:Articles of Peace.
All this they concluded with a generall assent, and a great shout to confirme it: then one of the old men began an Oration, bending his speech first to the old men, then to the young, and then to the women and children, to make them understand how strictly they were to observe these conditions, and we would defend them from the furie of Powhatan, or any enemie whatsoever, and furnish them with Copper, Beads, and Hatchets; but all this was rather for feare Powhatan and we, being so linked together, would bring them againe to his subjection; the which to prevent, they did rather chuse to be protected by us, than tormented by him, whom they held a Tyrant. And thus wee returned againe to James towne. |
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 their own explorations west of the Fall Line were very limited.
Powhatan lacked guns and sailing ships, though Indian arrows were an effective weapon in the early 1600's. He practiced asymmetric warfare; his main weapon was control over the English settlers' access to food, and his forces knew the territory. When the supplies from England did not arrive as planned, Jamestown settlers were unable to feed themselves. Those willing to actually plant and work the fields were exposed to Indian attack, and a war of attrition was to Powhatan's advantage. His people numbered in the thousands, while the English population in the colony rarely exceeded 100 for long during the first three years. In 1610, the English even abandoned Jamestown and started to sail home, but were intercepted by a relief mission at the Chesapeake Bay.
Powhatan had corn to trade (as well as furs and information), and he carefully orchestrated his meetings with the English to establish his authority and to gain tactical advantages during negotiations. At times the English evaded his constraints and traded for corn with those towns willing to risk Powhatan's displeasure. The edges of his authority were mapped by John Smith as he explored the Potomac River in 1608, and the Europeans understood the limits of Powhatan's power. The somewhat-independent Potomacks were easily accessible to the early English settlers, who could sail up the Potomac River and bypass Powhatan's land forces north of Jamestown.
Trade with the Potowomacks, at the mouth of Potomac Creek in today's Stafford County, helped the English to evade Powhatan's efforts to starve the Europeans. One leader of the Potowomacks even went to far as to seize Powhatan's daughter when she was there on a "state visit." He traded pocahontas to an English sea captain for a copper kettle, and she became a pawn in peace negotiations.
Had Virginia been completely dominated by Powhatan, with the power to block the English from crossing outside his political boundaries, then Pocahontas would not have been captured or held captive. Powhatan did not trade for the hostage, even though she was supposedly his so-called favorite daughter. (If you watched the TV show "West Wing" at the end of the 2002 season, you saw the character of President Bartlett face a parallel situation when his daughter was kidnapped by terrorists...)
Pocahontas' imprisonment in Virginia/English culture led to her decision to marry an Englishman - John Rolfe of tobacco planting fame. That marriage led to peace talks, and the end of the Anglo-Powhatan War of 1609-13.
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 Monocana and Manhoacs. Most of the English trade with the natives was limited to those who lived the banks of the navigable rivers, where the English could use their trips to reach a town and carry away a heavy product such as corn. A long-distance fur trading business did develop, however, with modern Petersburg and Clarksville (Occoneechee) as the key trading centers.
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 other was destroyed.
The English response was not to submit to Opechancanough. Instead, they retaliated with widespread destruction of Indian towns, destroying hard-to-replace crops as well as the easy-to-replace thatch buildings. In 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.3
Not every Algonquian was comfortable choosing to follow Opechancanough's orders. Late on March 21, 1622, one of them revealed the plans to Richard Pace. As John Smith later described it:
After Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, the Pamunkeys and Mataponi signed treaties with the colony, requiring 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 70 years. Their reservations in King William County were established 100 years before the United States was created, and the legal basis for all Virginia reservations is based on state rather than Federal law.
 APVA sign |
 top of bluff |
 view of Grays Creek |
 Grays Creek |
 shell layer in bluff |
 Grays Creek |