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.

Jamestown

To 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 Slavery

The 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.

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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

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