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along the Virginia coast. At the time, the Powhatan Confederacy may have been
the most powerful group of native peoples along the Atlantic coast. Focused on
raising corn and conquering their neighbors, they lived in ovalshaped houses
framed with bent saplings and covered with bark or mats. Their walled villages
included forts, buildings for storing corn, and temples. Chief Powhatan lived in
an imposing lodge on the York River not far from Jamestown, where he was
protected by forty bodyguards and supported by 100 wives. Colonist John Smith
reported that Powhatan “sat covered with a great robe, made of raccoon skins,
and all the tails hanging by,” flanked by “two rows of men, and behind them as
many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red.” The Powhatans,
Smith observed, were “generally tall and straight,” “very ingenious,” and
handsome. Some attached feathers and chains to their pierced

Chief Powhatan In this 1624 line engraving from John Smith’s "Generali
Historie of Virginia,” Cheif Powhatan holds court from a dominant, seated
position.

usahistorybriefll_ch02_046-093.indd 53 06/10/18 3:07 AM

54 CHAPTER 2 England’s Colonies

American Colonies 53
death. Virtually every colonist fell ill within a year. “Our men were destroyed
with cruel diseases,” a survivor wrote, “but for the most part they died of mere
famine.” In the colony’s desperate early weeks and months, the settlers struggled
to find enough to eat, for many of them were either poor townsmen unfamiliar
with farming or “gentlemen” who despised manual labor. All most of them did,
according to one colonist, was “complain, curse, and despair.” For fifteen years,
the Jamestown settlers blundered their way from one mishap to another.
Unwilling to invest the time and labor in growing their own food, they stole or
traded for Indian corn. The 14,000 Indians living along the Virginia coast were
dominated by the Powhatan Confederacy, which had conquered or intimidated
the other Indian peoples in the region. Powhatan, as the English called the
imperial chieftain, lorded over several hundred villages (of about 100 people
each) organized into thirty chiefdoms in eastern Virginia. When the colonists
arrived, Powhatan was preoccupied with destroying the Chesapeakes, who lived
ears, and many painted their bodies. During the winter, they wore fur skins; in
the summer, they were mostly naked. The Powhatans lived in family clusters.
Some villages had 20 huts; others had 200. The Powhatan men. Smith stressed,
avoided “woman’s work.” When they were not hunting, fishing, or fighting, they
sat watching the “women and children do the rest of the work”: gardening,
making baskets and pottery, cooking, and “all the rest.” Powhatan was as much
an imperialist as the English or Spanish. He forced the peoples he had conquered
to give him corn. Upon learning of the English settlement at Jamestown, he
planned to impose his will on the “Strangers.” When Powhatans discovered
seventeen Englishmen stealing their com, they killed them, stuffing their mouths
with ears of corn. Only too late did Powhatan realize that the English had not
come to Virginia to trade but “to invade my people, and possess my country.”
The colonists found a match for Powhatan in twentysevenyearold John Smith, a
canny, ironwilled international mercenary (soldier for hire). At five feet three
inches, he was a stocky runt of a man full of tenacity, courage, and overflowing
confidence. The Virginia Company, impressed by Smith’s exploits, had
appointed him to help manage the new colony. Smith imagined “abounding
America” as a land of freedom and opportunity. “Here every man may be master

(150 of 1356)

$ America A Narrative History Volume 1 ☆

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