Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

Camilla Townsend imagines a clear day in the spring of 1607. A canoe, paddled by messengers bearing news, heads down a tributary among the rivers of the Tsenacomoco—the region known today as the Virginia Tidewater. They are headed toward Werowocomoco, the main settlement of Powhatan, their tribe’s paramount chief (or mamanitowik). Strangers have arrived in the bay on three great ships, and they appear to be seeking a place to stay. The messengers soon arrive in the village whose name translates to “King’s House,” hide their canoe, and proceed toward the village, which is hidden away from the bay in the forest beyond, to deliver the message to their regent.

As fast as word ordinarily spread throughout the village, Townsend says, it likely wouldn’t have been long before the chief Powhatan’s nine-year-old daughter, Pocahontas, heard the news about the man in the great ships. Among the region’s tribes, boats like these are known and their arrival is even “anticipated.” Though they mostly just pass by or shelter in the bay’s calm waters for a few days before moving on, twice during chief Powhatan’s lifetime, strangers have come to stay. “Both times,” Townsend writes, “[their arrival] had boded ill.”

Forty years ago, the strangers kidnapped one of Powhatan’s kinsmen and did not return him until 10 years later: he came back bearing the new name Luis, speaking the strangers’ tongue fluently. He warned his tribe that the strangers came from “a land of thousands” and should be killed—in response to “Luis’s” warning, his tribe killed all the strangers swiftly. More strangers came anyway, and confusedly attacked another tribe as vengeance. Twenty years ago, even more strangers arrived south of the Powhatan lands, where the Roanoke and Croatan tribes lived. These strangers were English, whereas the others had been Spanish. Their settlement in Roanoke failed, and they fled.

Four years ago, in 1603, yet another incident occurred. An English ship arrived in the middle of the Tsenacomoco territory, where the Rappahannock tribe lived. They seized many Rappahannock men and left, and the werowance (chief) and Powhatan fretted together over whether they’d return with more men. Now, as the news of more ships comes to Powhatan, he and his people wonder if the same men have returned—and what they have in store this time. There is much, Townsend writes, that Powhatan did not and could not have known about the “larger geopolitical contest” motivating the arrivals of Spanish and English settlers.

In order to paint a “fuller picture,” Townsend relays the story of Luis in greater detail. Luis returned from his capture as leader of an expedition to establish a mission of Dominican friars. However, Luis rejoined his tribe and slaughtered the friars,  which led to a series of hostage-takings, punitive acts of vengeance, and slaughters en masse of both Native American tribes and Spanish settlers. Similarly, in 1584 at the English colony at Roanoke, a young Native American boy was taken prisoner by the English to be trained as a translator. He returned to Roanoke Island in 1585, turned on the English, and with his tribe slaughtered the majority of the Roanoke colonists.

For Pocahontas, Townsend writes, daily life would not have changed immediately in the wake of the news about the strangers’ return. The morning after the messengers delivered the news, Pocahontas, who lived a protected life in the heart of her father’s territory “surrounded by his personal army of at least forty warriors,” would have gone about her ordinary routine. Pocahontas’s father, Powhatan, born Wahunsenacaw, had made himself the paramount chief or mamanitowik of about 30 tribes, or 20,000 people. He did so over the course of many years through alliances of intermarriages, acts of war, and forced resettlement of survivors. Now, all of Powhatan’s chiefdoms pay him tribute in the form of goods, crops, hides, and pearls—in exchange, he and his army serve as allies for whoever needs them.

Pocahontas, meanwhile, was likely the daughter of a common prisoner of war, a woman from a family of little or no political significance. Born in about 1597, Pocahontas was just one of Powhatan’s many children. At birth she was given two names: Amonute, her public name, and a hidden name known only to her parents. By 10, as per her people’s traditions, she is given a new nickname: Pocahontas, a word meaning “mischief.” All the while, she is aware that her name will change again when she is older and has new experiences. 

Powhatan is a powerful, politically savvy leader who nevertheless is self-aware enough to know he is “no absolute monarch.” Though many of the tribes he rules show him fealty out of respect or fear, he knows he can’t make all of his subjects do his bidding. To consolidate power further in the Algonkian tribes’ matrilineal system of inheritance, Powhatan uses intermarriage to his advantage. He fathers children with powerful women from other tribes, knowing his sons by them will grow up “to rule with loyalty both to [their] father and [their] mother’s people.” The English, when they arrived, were “scandalized” by Powhatan’s marriage practices, unable to see the careful strategy behind them.

To this day, scholars remain uncertain about Pocahontas’s place in Powhatan’s “complicated web” of social politics. They are certain that her mother was not a “political pawn” but a common woman; Pocahontas, then, has no power of her own, and is not (contrary to popular myths about her) even her father’s most treasured daughter. She works alongside her siblings and their mothers, planting and harvesting daily, collecting berries, preparing fires, and cooking meals. She attends nightly dances and bonfires, listening to the stories of her elders and the creation myths of her people. 

Having lived in the region for 300 years by Pocahontas’s time, the Tsenacomoco tribes keep maps and notch sticks to denote quantities. Though there was is written language, 300 years earlier there was an agricultural revolution. This allowed many semi-nomadic tribes, with the help of the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash, whose seeds arrived through trade) to begin literally putting down roots, establishing chiefdoms, and becoming agriculturalists.

Understanding that these tribes had only been farmers for 300 years, Townsend writes, is “crucial” to understanding the advantages European settlers had over them. Sedentary farming yields higher population growth and faster technological advances in any society than a nomadic lifestyle does. Whereas the English and Spanish settlers had begun approaching the advances that come with agrarian life millennia earlier, the tribes of the Tsenacomoco were further behind on that timeline. Unbeknownst to both groups, Townsend writes, “something like a technological race” had been going on for centuries—and the Europeans had already won.

Several months after the strangers arrive on Tsenacomoco land in 1607, December arrives, and Pocahontas’s people prepare for the long winter ahead. Then, more news comes to Powhatan’s village: one of his kinsmen, a warrior named Opechankeno, has caught the strangers’ “werowance” and is bringing him to Powhatan. This man’s name, the messengers says, is John Smith.