Postcard for the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of the colony, transforms Chesapeake Bay into a portrait of Pocahontas. Illustration courtesy of Frederic W. Gleach

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November 2006

The Ritual World of Pocahontas

As Jamestown celebrates its 400th anniversary,
the dramatic rescue of John Smith turns out to have
been part of an elaborate piece of statecraft,
misunderstood by the English colonists.

By Frederic W. Gleach

In May 1607, during the reign of King James I of England, three small English ships sailed up what would soon be known as Virginia’s James River and reached a small peninsula. A few more than a hundred passengers disembarked and established the first permanent English settlement in the New World: Jamestown. Although the site they selected was uninhabited, it was in the territory of the Paspahegh people, one of some thirty-odd Algonquian-speaking tribes that owed allegiance to a paramount chief best known as Powhatan. The Powhatan Indians (as the English called those tribes collectively, after their leader) soon struck back against the unauthorized incursion. The battle for control was to continue for most of the seventeenth century, though neither side properly recognized or understood the other’s point of view.

It was during that struggle, in December 1607, that Pocahontas made her famous rescue of the English military captain John Smith. Smith described his experience of being brought before the paramount chief, writing of himself in the third person:

Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death: whereat the Emperour was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper.

Tercentennial postcard highlighting events in the history of Jamestown (click image for large detailed view) Illustration courtesy of Frederic W. Gleach

In the four centuries since that colorful episode took place, the story has been appropriated, mythologized, and often romanticized beyond recognition. Some scholars even doubt Smith’s account, published seventeen years after the event, construing it as a self-serving fabrication. Unfortunately, no comparable early documents relate the Native American’s side of the story. But given what is now known about Algonquian ritual forms and political philosophy, it is possible to reconstruct the true meaning of Smith’s capture and “rescue.” Today, on the eve of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, it is long past time to replace the fictional account of this signal event in American history with what can be discerned through documentary and other evidence. The living descendants of Powhatan’s people deserve no less.

The culture of the English colonists, of course, differed in many ways from twenty-first-century Anglo-American culture. Still, most people today find the English worldview more recognizable, hence much easier to grasp, than that of the Powhatans. The English were Christians—specifically, members of the Church of England—and their colony had been organized by the Virginia Company of London, chartered by the king. Accordingly, the colony was founded on both religious and mercantilist grounds, and both seemed to justify the taking of Indian lands.

For their part, the Powhatans were a confederation of tribes that, as local groups, appear to have inhabited eastern Virginia for several centuries. The confederation itself, however, probably came into being only a generation or two before the colonists’ arrival.

	Map of Tsenacommacah (click image for large detailed view) Map by Joe Lemonnier (www.mapartist.com)

Although most scholars characterize the alliance as a confederation of tribes or as a paramount chiefdom, in fact membership in the alliance was not entirely voluntary. Many of the tribes had been brought in by conquest, and all of them paid tribute to Powhatan. Their combined territory, which encompassed most of Tidewater Virginia south of the Potomac River, including part of the Eastern Shore peninsula, was known as Tsenacommacah [see map below]. (Other Native American groups lived to the north, south, and west of Tsenacommacah, but played relatively minor roles in the early history of the colony.)

In the English worldview, the universe was a “great chain of being,” with a fixed set of relationships. God headed both the spiritual and natural realms; within that larger structure was human society, also organized hierarchically, with the king as its head. Power flowed down from those special individuals, and respect flowed up.

The Powhatans, in contrast, understood the universe to be a dynamic system of relationships, always with the potential for radical change. The exercise of power tended to be less coercive and more persuasive than it was among the English, and it was based more typically on the respect personally earned by a powerful individual than on an abstract right of position or privilege. Individual authority flowed from one’s relationships with supernatural beings and forces (supernatural, that is, in Western terms; from an Algonquian perspective they were perfectly natural). Some Algonquian positions were inherited, but the powers of the people holding them depended on their individual qualities, which could change if they gained or lost connections with spiritual forces.

In addition to a chief, each tribe, as well as the confederation as a whole, had a council, and each chief’s authority derived from the respect accorded him by that council and, ultimately, by the people. In Powhatan, the confederation had a powerful and highly respected chief. He wielded economic, political, and religious authority that was both achieved and inherited, epitomizing the ideal Algonquian leader.

In spite of his power, Powhatan was not the only leader of his confederation. Just as the English political structure followed the religious structure of Western monotheism, the political structure of the Powhatans

Postcard from the Jamestown tercentennial prominently depicted Native Americans. Nevertheless, descendants of the Powhatan Indians were not invited to participate in any of the official attractions, but were relegated to the amusement area. (Click image for large detailed view.)

reflected the Indians’ dualistic religious system, which had two important creator beings. Two chiefs held power, each ruling in his own distinct domain. In anthropological literature, the terms peace-chief and war-chief have been applied to such figures; in practice, the division of leadership was based on the distinction between internal, domestic matters and foreign affairs—in this case, matters dealing with non-Powhatans. Although that structure was common among Algonquian groups as well as among other native peoples of what became the southeastern United States, it was never really understood by the English—or by most scholars—partly because it was so alien to Anglo-American culture.

The English colonists always sought to deal directly with Powhatan, whom they understood to be an emperor over the chiefs (or “kings”) of the tribes. But Powhatan was actually the peace-chief, and so it was not his role to meet with outsiders. At least at the outset of contact, he wanted Opechancanough, the confederation’s war-chief, to deal with the colony.

For their part, as the Powhatans learned more about the colony, they took Smith, who appeared to be the leader of the first group of settlers, to be the colony’s war-chief. The colony’s peace-chief, they concluded, was the unseen Captain Christopher Newport, who actually had charge of the ships and had sailed back to England for more supplies and settlers. Hence the Indians deemed it inappropriate that Smith, a war-chief, should meet with Powhatan.

	Sheet music from the tercentennial Illustration courtesy of Frederic W. Gleach

Given the subsequent history of European dominance in the New World, and the widespread assumption that superior arms gave the English an inescapable advantage, it is easy to forget that in Virginia in the early 1600s, the Powhatans were in control. The colonists themselves could not conceive that fact, so convinced they were of their superiority over the “savages.” Yet, if it had been their intent, the Powhatans could readily have exterminated the English with a sustained campaign. Apparently, however, Powhatan saw advantages in having the colony remain. The greatest, perhaps, so long as the English could learn to behave as proper (Powhatan) people, was the access the colony afforded to English trade goods: having come from beyond the everyday world, they were imbued with spiritual power.

A settlement of outsiders on the outskirts of their territory need not have presented any special difficulties for the Powhatans, but Jamestown was planted firmly within Tsenacommacah. Some way of bringing the colony fully into the Powhatan world eventually had to be found. Had the colonists mastered the proper etiquette of chiefly relations, the means might have evolved on its own. But Smith’s constant prodding to meet the Indians’ “emperor” only demonstrated the urgency of normalizing what was an irregular situation. The solution was extremely creative: to conduct a ritual that redefined the English as Powhatan, and their settlement as a village of Tsenacommacah.

In December 1607, seven months after the English reached Virginia’s shores, Smith was captured while exploring near the headwaters of the Chickahominy River. According to his account, he was taken before Opechancanough, who, as war-chief, would have been the appropriate person to oversee affairs with outsiders. There, Smith was subjected to the first of what would be three apparent threats on his life during this captivity. He was tied to a tree, facing a body of archers, but Opechancanough held up the compass Smith had given him and spared his life. Then, surrounded by armed, three-man escorts, he was led to a hunting camp, where he witnessed (or, more properly, participated in, though he didn’t see it that way) an extended ritual, including a sequence of three dances. Smith was kept there for several days, and he talked often with Opechancanough, until another Indian—a man whose son Smith was accused of killing—threatened to kill him.

Pamunkey Indians at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition re-enact how Pocahontas intervened to save Captain John Smith from execution. The Pamunkeys were one of the tribes that formed the Powhatan Confederation at the time of the founding of Jamestown. They are accorded official recognition by the state of Virginia, and retain a small reservation. (Click image for large detailed view.) Photograph courtesy of Frederic W. Gleach

The Indians then marched Smith to several different villages, ending at Opechancanough’s home in Pamunkey. There he was subjected to three consecutive days of rituals, in which groups of three and threefold repetitions were prominent, and maps of the Powhatan world were created. As I interpret them, the rituals were intended to redefine the world with a place for the English colony, which in effect was to join the Powhatan Confederation.

With Powhatan’s brother Kekataugh taking over from the war-chief, Opechancanough, Smith was next marched to the periphery of Tsenacommacah. From there he was brought before Powhatan himself in his ruling town of Werowocomoco, on the York River. It was then that Smith underwent the ordeal at the hands of the chief that he famously described.

In the end, the dramatic events amounted to a symbolic death and rebirth, though from Smith’s point of view, the renewed threat on his life must have seemed quite real, and the intervention by Pocahontas, the chief’s playful daughter, then about twelve years old, a spontaneous act. But most likely it was all an elaborate drama. Two days later Smith was taken to a house in the woods, where Powhatan and 200 other tribesmen, all painted black, came to him and said they were now friends; that Smith should return to Jamestown and send presents—that is, tribute—to Powhatan; that Smith would be forever esteemed as Powhatan’s son; and that the colony would be left in peace.

Intriguingly, it is after those events that Powhatan first expressed a wish to meet with Captain Newport. His shift accords with the transformation of the colony’s status, and was one of the details that helped me to recognize the model of dual chieftaincy in the Powhatans. Now that dealing with the colony was an internal matter, it was appropriate from the Powhatan perspective to reach out to the colony’s supposed peace-chief, instead of dealing with the war-chief, Smith.

Postcard depicting an aerial view of the Jamestown Exposition: The original intent of the tercentennial was to return the Jamestown colony and Virginia to their place of historical precedence over the Plymouth colony in New England. As the exposition was developed, financed, and marketed, however, it became more of a celebration of American military and naval might. (Click image for large detailed view.) Illustration courtesy of Frederic W. Gleach

If the colonists had kept to their allotted territory around Jamestown, if they had not constantly encroached into fresh Indian lands, and if they had sent tribute to Powhatan as did the other tribes of Tsenacommacah, good relations might have endured in perpetuity. But that was not to be. The English understanding of their relations with the Native Americans, their view of themselves as superior, their drive to increase their economic base, and their goals of converting the “heathen” Indians to Christianity all worked against an amicable relationship with the indigenous groups. Instead, the colonial territory continued expanding for years, triggering violent responses that were intended to remind the colonists of their place, but were perceived as irrational and barbaric attacks.

As for our protagonists, Smith himself was forced to return to England in 1609, following an injury. And Pocahontas, while visiting the Potomac Indians in 1613, was taken prisoner by the English. Housed in the colony with a devout minister, she soon converted to Christianity and, in 1614, with her father’s blessing, married one of the colonists, John Rolfe. In 1616 she and Rolfe sailed to England, where she became a court favorite. Unfortunately, as she and Rolfe were setting out on the return voyage to Virginia in early 1617, she died of causes left unrecorded. She was buried at Gravesend. Deeply grieving for his daughter, Powhatan left the government of the confederation to his brother Itoyatan and to Opechancanough, and died not long thereafter.

By then, the balance of power was beginning to shift. The Powhatan population was declining from disease and stress, and the ranks of the colonists were steadily growing. In March 1622 and again in April 1644, Opechancanough

Mattaponi Indians Autumn Custalow, left, and Chief Carl Custalow, at the podium, participate in the Virginia Tax Tribute ceremony in November 2005. At the annual ceremony, which honors the treaties of 1646 and 1677, game and other presents are given to the governor of Virginia by the Pamunkey and Mattaponi tribes, both of which still live on state reservations. The gifts are given in lieu of taxes on the lands held by the tribes. Photo by Michaele White

led massive assaults against the colonists, killing hundreds. I believe those attacks were not intended to destroy the colony, but to impress upon them yet again that they were supposed to be living as Powhatans, keeping to their territory—rules they had never understood in the first place. In 1622 the Powhatans could still have destroyed the colony, had that been their desire, but by 1644 the tide had changed; destruction was no longer an option. By the second attack, according to the account published in 1705 by the Virginia historian Robert Beverley, Opechancanough “was now grown so decrepit, that he was not able to walk alone.”

Taken prisoner in 1646, Opechancanough was killed by a soldier who “basely shot him thro’ the Back.” A peace treaty was signed the same year, officially establishing the remaining Powhatan Indians as a subject people and setting territories aside for them. But the colonists hardly paused in their expansions, and they repeatedly violated the 1646 treaty and its 1677 successor. The set-aside territories were reduced and in many cases eliminated. Only two small reserved areas have survived to the present, at Pamunkey and Mattaponi, Virginia; several other recognizable descendant communities remain, though without reservation lands.

For much of the three centuries after the founding of Jamestown, the Powhatans and other Virginia Indians remained largely invisible in the broader sweep of colonial and U.S. history. They farmed, fished, hunted, made pots, traded with their neighbors, worked as hunting and fishing guides, and regularly paid their annual tribute to the governor, typically in deer and turkeys. Disregarded by most Virginians, they gradually abandoned many of the old ways and incorporated many aspects of the surrounding culture. But they never forgot their part in history or lost their desire to be treated as equals.

	Faux inscription on a tercentennial postcard advertises Headley’s chocolates. (Click image for large detailed view.) Illustration courtesy of Frederic W. Gleach

Following the American Revolutionary War and throughout the nineteenth century, European Americans put considerable effort into rediscovering the roots of the nation’s history. Scholars in elite northern institutions, however, emphasized Plymouth and the Puritans rather than the earlier southern colonies, and challenged the accounts from Virginia. The tale of Pocahontas was one episode, however, that seems never to have been forgotten. The story of the rescue was retold in plays and epic poems throughout the nineteenth century. In the late nineteenth century the Powhatan Indians themselves began to perform recreations for public gatherings.

When Jamestown planned its tercentennial celebrations, the Indians hoped to use that stage to reclaim their heritage. The original intent of the 1907 Jamestown Exposition was to return the Jamestown colony and Virginia to their place of historical precedence. Had the exposition retained that emphasis, the Powhatans’ participation might have enhanced their public recognition. But as the exposition was developed, financed, and marketed, it became more of a celebration of American military and naval might. Not part of the official attractions, the Virginia Indians were obliged to perform Pocahontas’s rescue of Captain John Smith in “The Warpath,” a large area of the fair grounds devoted to amusements. There they had to compete with the image of Indians presented by the “101 Ranch Wild West Show,” whose Native American participants came from Oklahoma and the Plains. The one contemporary account that mentions the Virginia Indians’ performance is derisive.

In September 2003, six Virginia Indian chiefs attended a House hearing regarding federal recognition of their tribes. They are: Chief Barry Bass, Nansemond; Chief Stephen Adkins, Chickahominy; Chief Ken Branham, Monacan; former Chief Marvin Bradby, Eastern Chickahominy; Chief Anne Richardson, Rappahannock; Chief Ken Adams, Upper Mattaponi. Photo by Deanna Beacham

The Powhatans’ circumstances soon got even worse. In 1924, Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act was passed, defining and separating “white” and “colored” persons. Walter A. Plecker, the state registrar, made it his mission to have all Indians defined as “colored.” He even went so far as to hunt out families identified as Indian and alter their birth certificates. The Virginia Indians had intermarried, as had most eastern tribes, with other peoples regardless of race, and Plecker set out to convince the public and to establish legally that no “pure,” “true” Indians remained in Virginia. (The law was less scrupulous about “purity” in declaring that Virginians were “white” if they had no more than one-sixteenth Indian ancestry and no other racial mixing—a loophole to accommodate those who were proud to claim descent from Pocahontas through her son Thomas Rolfe.)

Only well after Plecker’s retirement in 1946, and with the rise of Native American activism in the 1960s and 1970s, did conditions begin to improve. In the 1980s the state began to recognize nonreservation communities of Indians as tribes; added to the two reservation communities that had already long been recognized, the total number has reached eight. Yet none of the tribes has gained federal status. Like most other eastern tribes, the Powhatans and the other Virginia tribes made treaties with seventeenth-century entities that predated the federal government. Those treaties have never been recognized at the federal level—though several times in the past century various groups of Virginia Indians have explored the possibility.

Today six of the eight state-recognized tribes have renewed their efforts to get federal recognition. Their aim is to reverse their marginalization and improve their access to high-quality education. The proposed King William Reservoir, which would divert water from the Mattaponi River and threaten both the natural environment and the Mattaponi Indians’ fisheries and way of life, has helped galvanize their determination. The tribes feel they might have more negotiating power

	Variation in women’s traditional regalia is exhibited by Monacan Karenne Wood, Chair of the Virginia Council on Indians, Weapomeoc Deanna Beacham, and other dancers at the Monacan powwow in May 2006. Photo courtesy of Deanna Beacham

if they had federal recognition. But some Virginians oppose recognition for fear that the tribes might then develop casino gambling. And some Virginians still seem to accept Plecker’s view that no real Native Americans are left in Virginia, anyway.

With the approaching 400th anniversary, there has been another renewal of interest in the Indians of Virginia, and particularly in the Powhatan peoples whose ancestors met the Jamestown colony. Archaeologists are excavating not only at the site of Jamestown but also at Werowocomoco, Powhatan’s chiefly seat. Historians and anthropologists are revisiting the old accounts. Perhaps most important, the Indians themselves are still striving to regain some recognition and appreciation.

This past July, a delegation of Virginia Indians traveled to England. They met with school groups and government officials, conducted a dance and drum exhibition, led a seminar on “Culture and Identity Today,” and held a private ceremony for Pocahontas at the church where she was buried, in Gravesend. Their English hosts received the group warmly, and, for their part, the visitors found the experience deeply moving and rewarding. It was the first time an official delegation of Virginia Indians had made such a journey.

Some Web links of interest:

• Prince William County Public Schools/Virginia Department of Education, a site developed for Virginia educators
• Schooner Sultana John Smith 400 Project
• The Virginia Council on Indians
• Library resources on Virginia Indians
• The National Museum of the American Indian

How Native Americans perceived and interacted with Europeans shortly after the first contact, as well as how they have since maintained their ethnic identity, are prime research interests of Frederic W. Gleach. Initially trained as an anthropological archaeologist, Gleach emphasizes visual and material culture and the use of archival sources in his research. His most extensive work has been on the Powhatans of Virginia, but he also pursues similar investigations in Puerto Rico and in Alaska. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and he is a senior lecturer and curator of the anthropology collections at Cornell University. Gleach is the author of Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (University of Nebraska Press, 1997) and founding co-editor of Histories of Anthropology Annual, also published by the University of Nebraska Press. His current projects include documenting the silversmiths of Ithaca, New York, and the life of the legendary Latina performer Diosa Costello.

Copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 2006

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