Volume 16 , Issue 44

NW Okie's Journey

We are going to research the true history of Pocahontas and the Powhatan chief of Virginia this week. When I was in school they only taught one side of the Pocahontas story, and that was the white, European and English side of the story.

There is another side to the story: The True History of Pocahontas, that comes to us from the Native American's version handed down through their cultural.

We look back at the Native Americans and the treatment they received from the white European, English immigrants in the seventeenth century. The English immigrants who fled religious persecution back then forced their own christianity upon the Native Americans, who had to abandon their own cultural and language and conform to the White Anglo-Saxon cultural and language. Native Americans were forced off their lands and moved northward and westward. Eventually, pushed onto reservations on worthless lands that the white anglo-saxons did not want.

The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture

Helen C. Rountree wrote about The Powhatan Indians of Virginia, 230 pages, published by University of Oklahoma Press, September 1, 1992. Among the aspects of Powhatan life that Helen Rountree describes in vivid detail are hunting and agriculture, territorial claims, warfare and treatment of prisoners, physical appearance and dress, construction of houses and towns, education of youths, initiation rites, family and social structure and customs, the nature of rulers, medicine, religion, and even village games, music, and dance. Rountree's is the first book-length treatment of this fascinating culture, which included one of the most complex political organizations in native North American and which figured prominently in early American history.

John smith (1580-1631)

Smith was in Virginia from April 1607 to October 1609, when the English colony was getting started. He was involved in the major exploring and trading expeditions that took place, made extensive firsthand observations, and wrote voluminously about them afterward. His major description of Indian life is "A Map of Virginia," published in 1612 and reissued in 1624 as part of his "Generall Historie." His interests were primarily military and explorational, however, interests which limit the scope of his accounts of Indian life. Smith was a man of yeoman stock who, once in the New World, rose to the presidency of the Virginia Colony through sheer organizational ability. Unfortunately, while he was talented and energetic, he was also abrasive toward both Indians and Englishmen, making him a controversial figure then and now. His yeoman background did not help matters i his dealings with his fellow colonists, many of whom were gentlemen. Scholarly standards were loose then, and Smith was also decidedly egotistical; thus his writings cannot always be trusted, especially his later accounts, when he tended to rewrite history in his own favor.

William Strachey (1572-1621). Strachey was in Virginia from May 1610 to September 1611, a time of greatly worsening relations with the Indians. He spent most of his time in the Jamestown fort, making at least one expedition each to the falls of the James, to Kecoughtan at the mouth of the James, and to Quiyoughcohannock across the river from Jamestown. At the fort he apparently held extensive interviews with two Indian men, Kemps and Machumps. Keeps lived full time with the English until his death (sometime in 1611), and he spoke English very well; Machumps, who had been to England and returned to Jamestown with the same fleet (though perhaps not on the same ship) in which Strachey arrived, came occasionally. Strachey was a gentleman who had studied at the Inns of Court, after which he lived on in London, fraternizing with writers such as Ben Jonson and patronizing theaters. he was not prepared to be an ethnographer in the modern sense, but he had a wider and more detailed curiosity about Indian life than any other writer of his time. Unfortunately, when he came to write his account in 1612, he found that Smith had gotten there just ahead of him. Hurriedly he copied many passages from Smith's "A Map of Virginia" into his manuscript, adding his own embellishments, rather than writing a completely independent account that might have told us much more. We are left to assume, then, that when Strachey copies from Smith in speaking of an Indian practice, either he is corroborating Smith's information or he does not know any better than to repeat it.

The Algonquian speaking groups of Virginia's coastal plain were collectively called Powhatans. The alternative, preferred by Feest, is Virginia Algonuians, which we find accurate enough but cumbersome to use. At the time of which it was written, the Virginia coastal plain was occupied by peoples of very similar language and culture who either belonged to or were allied in some way with the paramount chiefdom created by Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas. It seems permissible to speak of a Powhatan population in eastern Virginia which had a Powhatan culture.

We find the name Powhatan was derived from a paramount chief's empire, not a confederacy at, which covered most of the Virginia coastal plain and which was organized by the man Powhatan, who had in turn taken his name from his natal town, Powhatan, near the falls of the James River. In addition to these three Powhatans (the collection of coastal plain people, throne name of the chief, and the name of his hometown), the Powhatan was also applied to the closely related Algonquian dialects spoken in the region.

Good Night & Good Luck!
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