[mc4wp_form id=”123″]

Listen on: iTunes Subscribe on Android Stitcher and more

The defeat of the Powhatan

After five years of attrition warfare, Samuel Argall kidnapped Pocahontas.  Wahunsenaca couldn’t get her back, and the fact that he couldn’t get her back signaled to his entire empire that he couldn’t defeat the English.  He played his hand as well as he could, but Powhatan domains collapsed.  For the English, the end of the war meant Jamestown could finally begin to thrive.  Over the next few years, Jamestown grew into America’s first boomtown, got its first legislative assembly, experienced attempts to turn it into a stable colony full of families, got its first Africans, and witnessed its first worker’s strike. Wahunsenaca’s death brought even more peace with the Powhatan.

 

Transcript

Samuel Argall had explored the Chesapeake more than anyone except John Smith.  He had discovered and named the Delaware Bay, and he had surveyed the coast as far north as Cape Cod.  In September 1612, he returned to Virginia as admiral of the colony.  He fixed ships that were in disrepair, and joined in Dale’s expeditions against the Powhatans, but he also became a good friend to Iopassus, of the Patawomeck, an old acquaintance of John Smith.  They traded for corn, explored the entire length of the Potomac River, and enjoyed generally friendly relations.  It’s these connections that helped him put an end to five years of Powhatan war.

Introduction

While Pocahontas was visiting friends among the Patawomecks, Argall asked Iopassus to help kidnap her and trade her for English prisoners held by the Powhatan.  Iopassus was reluctant, saying that the Powhatan would attack his people in retaliation.  Argall replied that the English would defend them.  Furthermore, he said that if Iopassus refused to help him, they’d be neither brothers nor friends.  Iopassus agreed to talk to his brother Werowance of the Patawomecks, and his brother thought it was a great opportunity to gain an advantage over his enemies, the Powhatan.  Iopassus was still reluctant to take part, but he agreed.

One of Iopassus’s wives invited Pocahontas aboard Argall’s ship.  The next morning, they took her back to Jamestown, and Argall sent a message to Wahunsenaca saying he would only give her back if her father gave back the Englishmen and weapons he’d stolen, as well as corn.

This was a crushing blow for Wahunsenaca.  Forget the fact, for a minute, that the daughter he loved had now been kidnapped by his enemies.  This was the event that would show all his dominions that he couldn’t beat the English.  He couldn’t get her back by force.  He’d spent the last five years responding to military raids with hit-and-run attacks.  He had been waging a war of attrition because he simply couldn’t win in open combat.  Open combat would be the only way he could get his daughter out of the fort at Jamestown.  Worse, if he responded too readily to English demands, he would show his weakness to the world.  The vast majority of tribes in Tsenocomoco only paid tribute to him because he was stronger than them, and if he showed that weakness, his entire empire would fall apart.

The only thing he could do was stall, so, he didn’t respond for three months.  After that time, he sent some broken weapons to Jamestown and said he’d send 500 bushells of corn as compensation for tools and weapons that had been stolen and broken.  He said if he got his daughter back, he’d be forever friends with the English, but Dale refused the offer.  Dale had the upper hand, and he was going to use it.  Dale sent a response to Wahunsenaca saying that his shipment didn’t begin to account for all of the weapons that had gone missing.  Dale said it was Wahunsenaca’s choice whether he would establish peace or continue as enemies.  If he wanted to be friends, he would agree to all the demands.  If Wahunsenaca wanted his daughter back, he would have to show all of Tsenocomoco that the English were now in charge.  There would be no compromise.  If Wahunsenaca wanted anything, he’d have to fully submit to the English.

Wahunsenaca didn’t contact them for another year.

Dale put Pocahontas in the custody of Alexander Whitaker, an esteemed pastor and Cambridge-educated Protestant theologian, so she could learn to read and write, and could learn about the Bible.  To emphasize the puritan nature of this group of colonists, it’s worth noting that Whitaker’s father was John Pym’s friend and confidante.  Whitaker was deeply impressed with Pocahontas as a person, and came to respect the Indians through his interaction with her.  He hoped the natives could be converted, and under his guidance, Pocahontas spent time with many of the colony’s more respected citizens.  One of these was John Rolfe.

After a few months of no contact from Wahunsenaca, Dale decided to assess the state of Powhatan relations.  Clearly, Wahunsenaca was stalling, and he was tired of waiting for answers, so he provoked a fight.  He sent an ultimatum to Orpaks, demanding the terms of Pocahontas’ return be met immediately.  The Indians responded that Wahunsenaca was three days journey away, but Opechancanough accepted Dale’s demands.  They indicated that Opechancanough was in full control of Tsenocomoco, anyway.  Dale was pushing Wahunsenaca to back down, and Wahunsenaca was still trying to deflect the pressure.

As the English went ashore at Orpaks, a group of warriors attacked, so they killed them, burned the nearby villages and took their corn.  Wahunsenaca sent a message the next day saying that he would return the weapons, but that the English living in his territories had fled because they were afraid Dale would kill them.  They hadn’t been kidnapped, but had left voluntarily, and Wahunsenaca would allow them to remain.

The next day, there was a standoff, but neither side wanted to shoot.  The English didn’t need to shoot first, and the Powhatan knew they couldn’t win in a confrontation.  Instead of fighting, two of Pocahontas’s brothers came forward and demanded to see their sister, and the English agreed.  They found her in good health, and promised to persuade their father to redeem her and conclude a firm peace forever.

John Rolfe led the delegation to negotiate the peace, but instead of Wahunsenaca, the Indians sent Opechancanough.  Through Opechancanough, Wahunsenaca sent a message, saying that English weapons and tools would be returned, along with some corn, that Pocahontas could continue to live with the English, and that he would return any English people who ran away in the future.  He also said the English could punish any of his people who committed crimes against them.  He was beaten.  Dale accepted these terms, but threatened to burn villages after the harvest if the promises weren’t fulfilled.  Wahunsenaca kept his promise.

The Powhatan Empire had collapsed.  Wahunsenaca’s less loyal tribes were now willing to trade with the English and enter into peace agreements, and his more loyal tribes, including the Kekoughtans, Nansemonds, Appamatocs and Powhatans had been either defeated or subjected to devastating raids.  New English settlements were also beginning to appear outside of Jamestown.

This was the end of a war – five years of raids, ambushes, sieges, massacres, village destruction, livestock and crop destruction.  The peace meant the settlers might finally be able to become self-sufficient.  The English tried to offer reasonable terms to the Powhatan.  For instance, when negotiating peace with the Chicahominies, one of the more loyal Powhatan tribes, the English assured them freedom of movement, and gave each delegate a tomahawk and some copper.

At this time, Pocahontas was baptized and married John Rolfe.  She took the name Rebecca, the name of the Biblical woman who was the mother of two peoples.  It was a fitting name, because she had already had one Powhatan son, who many of the tribe’s descendants today claim as an ancestor.  Her half-English son, Thomas Rolfe, eventually married another half-English half-Powhatan, and became an ancestor to many of Virginia’s “first families,” which is the term for a group of families who acted as the leaders and elites of the colony who would remain prominent throughout the Colonial period and even after the Revolutionary War.  She truly was the mother of two peoples.

Wahunsenaca sent his blessings, and Hamer and Savage went to meet with him.  He greeted Savage warmly, but chastised him for not coming back for four years.  He was, after all, Wahunsenaca’s child in exchange for Namontock.  Namontock, by the way, had converted to Christianity and killed Machumps over the course of the war.  Savage and Hamor told Wahunsenaca that Pocahontas was happy enough she wouldn’t want to leave the English, and Wahunsenaca laughed and said he was glad to hear that.

Hamor and Savage then asked Wahunsenaca for his youngest daughter to go visit Pocahontas, and said that Dale wanted to marry her when she was old enough.  They said Dale saw what a wonderful wife she made for Rolfe, and he would like to solidify the peace even further – two daughters are better than one.  Wahunsenaca was justifiably disgusted.  He told them that he didn’t need the peace to be any more solidified than it already was, and that he didn’t wish to give the English two of his children at once, and said he’d already gotten much more for her from someone else, anyway.  This takes on a darker tone in light of accusations made by descendants of the Mattaponi tribe, who say in their oral histories that Dale had raped Pocahontas.  I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but regardless, Dale had stepped wayyy beyond the bounds of propriety, and into self-serving exploitation.  Wahunsenaca was feeling old, and he didn’t want to fight anymore.  He wanted peace, but he wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t weak.  He didn’t want closer social or political ties with the English, and he wasn’t reconciled to living alongside them in “perpetuall friendship.”  Wahunsenaca would do what he needed to keep the peace, but he was not inclined to give away one of his daughters just because Dale wanted her.

Then, William Parker, an old Renegade, said he wanted to return to Jamestown, and Wahunsenaca was furious.  The English would take his daughter, but not leave one of their own men?  He told them he wouldn’t send a guide to see them safely back to Jamestown, and Hamor responded that it would essentially end the peace if he didn’t.  Wahunsenaca didn’t speak with Hamor for the rest of the afternoon.  Later, he told him that he’d give him a guide, but that he had a specific list of objects that he wanted to trade for, a list specific enough that he wanted Hamor to write it down.  That was the last remaining aspect of the English relationship that Wahunsenaca could exert any control over.  He was showing the same dedication to not showing weakness that John Smith had shown as a prisoner so many years before.

And that was the last formal meeting the English ever had with Wahunsenaca.

The peace allowed the English to thrive, and the switch to more private property had also helped rejuvenate the colony.  Dale had minimized the amount of time Jamestown’s longest-term residents had to spend working for the company, and this encouraged people to take a more proactive approach to their own welfare.  Writing about the privatization, John Smith reflected that under the old system, “glad was he who could slip from his labor or slumber over his task, hard work bringing no individual improvement or comfort to a life already full of peril and pain.”  Hamor agreed, saying “when our people were fed out of the common store and labored jointly in the manuring of the ground and planting corn, glad was that man that could slip from his labor, nay the most honest of them in a general business, would take so much faithful and true pains in a week as now he will do in a day.”

Private property also brought some level of social mobility to Jamestown.  That would only increase in coming years as Rolfe’s tobacco grew well, and the Powhatan taught the English to cure it.

When Dale returned to England in 1616, on Warwick’s Treasurer, it was full of tobacco, potash, sturgeon, and caviar.  Also on board was Don Diego de Molina, who had been a captive for five years, and who the English hoped to exchange for John Clark.  Molina’s English companion, Francis Lembry, was also there, but Dale ordered him to be hanged a few miles from the English coast, within sight of the land he’d betrayed.  Francis West, John Martin and James Davies had also decided to return home.

Also on board were Pocahontas and John Rolfe, along with their son and a bunch of Powhatans sent to accompany Pocahontas, including her sister Mattachana.  A priest and tribal elder also went, instructed to give a detailed account of what they saw to Wahunsenaca on their return, and Thomas Savage accompanied them as a translator.  The Company hoped the Indians would increase interest in Virginia, and therefore revenue, but they didn’t.  They took the Powhatan around the countryside, they were all evangelized, and some converted, and Pocahontas seems to have taken an active role in this.  Pocahontas met the queen.  Interestingly, John Rolfe was not invited to meet the queen, because he wasn’t of a high enough class.  She also met John Smith again, and chastised him.  We don’t fully know what about, but it seems from Smith’s recollection of her words and from Mattaponi oral account of the content, that she was berating him for the betrayal of her people, which she blamed on him.

By the end of the trip, Pocahontas was dead.  She had fallen ill, and when Rolfe returned to Virginia he left his infant son with some relatives.  The Mattaponi believe she may have been murdered because she was carrying information and suspicions back which would prompt the Powhatan to attack the colonists.  You really have to decide for yourself whether you believe this, or in fact any given historical account, but I feel that it’s important to let you hear all the different sides of the story so you can begin to decide.

Though the Virginia company was still poor, it was able to grow with the new peace and privatization.

Dale moved most of the population upriver, where the climate was considered healthier, and different settlements began to specialize in production of different goods – whether fish and salt, corn, livestock or industrial commodities.  He was encouraging the creation of a market economy within Virginia.

Ultimately, though, Jamestown couldn’t grow without more people.  1,500 settlers had sailed from England between 1609 and 1616, but only 351 survived.  The Company started guaranteeing land ownership to provide extra incentives to colonists, and Argall was appointed deputy governor.  This was enough to motivate the first major infusion of colonists in six years.  It was the promise of land which would be the primary motivation for settlers to move to Virginia for the rest of the century.  Privatization also ended the problem of food shortages.

Finally, a decade after its founding, Jamestown was starting to thrive.  Slowly, but surely, the economy was improving.

Two years later, in 1618, for the first time ever, Virginia was able to send over 5,000 pounds worth of goods to England to help repay the investors.  Compared to the 50,000 which had been invested since financing the Sea Venture, it wasn’t much, but it was much better than before.

In 1618, they divided the colony into four cities, or boroughs – Kekoughtan, James City, Charles city and Henrico.  Each had 3,000 acres for company use, and 1,500 for local administration.  3,000 would support Jamestown and the governor, and a couple miles from Henrico, colonists set aside 10,000 acres for a university and college to educate Indian youth.

Even as Jamestown thrived, though, the London Company was causing problems.  Under a new policy, they were sending fewer supplies, charging more, and accepting only tobacco as payment.  For colonists, this meant they were demanding more tobacco, but sending fewer tools to help with cultivation.  It also meant that a massive black market emerged, with smugglers bragging they could recoup the cost of an entire voyage by selling just 4 casks of rotten wine.

Wahunsenaca also died 1619, and Opechancanough and his brother Opitchapam took control of the Powhatan.

Argall had replaced Dale as governor, but after he was caught helping the Earl of Warwick use Jamestown as a port for privateering, Yeardley replaced him.  He was going to investigate Warwick’s Treasurer and interrogate Argall, but the Treasurer didn’t return, and Warwick sent a pinnace to take Argall back to England before Yeardley could interrogate him.  Yeardley, though, became one of the more beloved governors in Virginia history.

Alongside changing London Company leadership, Yeardley ended nearly eight years of martial law, and replaced the Laws Divine, Moral and Martial.  He replaced it with a government based on magistracy, as well as introducing a General Assembly, a legislative body which was the predecessor to Virginia’s current state government.  There would be a six man council appointed in London, and a 22 person House of Burgesses elected by the inhabitants of every town and plantation.  It would convene once a year, and was authorized to consider all matters concerning the public wellbeing.  The governor had a veto right, and legislation could only be enforced with the approval of the company.

At their first meeting in July of 1619, they considered disputes between settlers, debated recommendations for relations with the Powhatan, ordered all settlers to attend Church in both the morning and afternoon of the Sabbath, set the price of tobacco, changed the name of Kekoughtan to Elizabeth city, encouraged diversification of the colony, regulated against idleness, gaming, drunkenness and excess of apparel, and drew up several humble petitions to be submitted to the London Company.  The legislation definitely leaned toward the Puritan side, with the emphasis on multiple sermons per Sabbath, regulating behavior and clothing standards.

Yeardley’s time as governor attracted hundreds of settlers.  Sandys in London had been trying to recruit the Leiden Pilgrim separatists to move to Virginia, though they were also considering Guiana and New England.  Though the Mayflower Pilgrims ultimately went to New England, hundreds of religious nonconformists did go to Virginia.  It was the first Puritan migration to America.  Christopher Lawne established a plantation at Warrascoyack named Lawne’s Creek, which became a Puritan center.

The first boat of women intended to be wives also arrived in 1619.  There had certainly been women in Jamestown before, but this was a move intended to change the nature of the colony to one emphasizing families, in a colony in which men outnumbered women seven to one.  Jamestown had been a struggling outpost, a military camp, a puritan dystopia, now it was a boomtown, and they wanted to make it a viable, sustainable, long-term colony.

The merchant roots of this generation of settlers had a very sinister side.  Many people, as we’ve discussed, came to Virginia involuntarily, and indentured servitude was becoming a staple of colony life.  Servants were exploited, and trading them became one of the most lucrative forms of trade in the colony.  John Rolfe noted that this practice was giving the colony a bad reputation in England.  95% of arrivals in this period were tenants and servants.

The first group of Africans was brought to North America in 1619.  32 Angolans arrived on none other than Warwick’s Treasurer, stolen from Portuguese traders who were planning to take them to Latin America.  Instead, they ended up in Jamestown.  They weren’t legally much worse off than servants.  There was no institutional slavery at this point.  We’ll discuss how that came about later.  Non-English people were given fewer legal protections, but they weren’t alone in that, either.  Foreign artisans had come from France, Germany, Poland and Italy, and they also faced legal discrimination.

Unhappy with their treatment in the colony, this led Polish craftsmen to implement the first strike in American history, in 1619, protesting that they didn’t have the right to vote.  John Smith had brought them to the colony, and they had been with the colony through its hardest times.  They had contributed to the economy of the colony, and been there longer than most of the newcomers who now ran the colony.  They’d survived the starving time, martial law, poverty and war, and they were still some of the only workers in Virginia proficient in making glass, pitch, tar and soap ashes.  They had always been respected among the colonists and now, 11 years later, they were being pushed out as Jamestown entered its era of prosperity.

They marched with a slogan of “no vote, no work,” and within a couple weeks, the Virginia Assembly recommended they be allowed to vote.  The Colony couldn’t survive financially without selling the products the Poles made, and they certainly didn’t want to send any empty ships back to England.  In addition, the Assembly decided that apprentices would work with the Poles to learn their trades, so that their skills didn’t die with them.

By 1622, Jamestown had become the first American boomtown.  1200 settlers now occupied more than 24 settlements.  Some struck it rich, many stayed poor, and a huge number just passed through for a short stay.  People drank, gambled, lived beyond their means, and tried to make money.  They set up temporary plantations, and temporary towns, and went back to England when they’d made enough for a comfortable living.  This brought people from all backgrounds and all walks of life back into the colony.  The colonists were a less and less homogenous group.  In fact, many were coming whose backgrounds were closer to those of the settlers before the Sea Venture.

It wasn’t sustainable growth, though.  The London Company was still being mismanaged, and there was still price gouging by colony officials.  The economy was wholly reliant on tobacco, which made it vulnerable to fluctuating tobacco prices.  75% of servants died within a year, mostly from seasoning sickness, and landowners didn’t fare all that well either.

Still, the colony was growing, experimenting with various crops and commodities, and it was experiencing an unprecedented era of peace since the death of Wahunsenaca.  A peace treaty signed between Yeardley and Opechancanough allowed Indians to freely enter and leave English towns.  They traded for Indian land and rapidly expanded English land ownership to over 10,000 acres.  Opechancanough openly courted English leaders, even supporting them in a clash with the Chicahominies.  He even visited Jamestown, which Wahunsenaca had never done.

He allowed the English to open schools to educate Powhatan youths, and the English raised 3,000 pounds for that purpose.  Yeardley and he agreed on a system where the English would build houses and set aside grounds for planting corn in their settlements so that families chosen by Opechancanough or his Werowances could live there, among the English.  This would allow settlers to teach the children without taking them from their parents, and incentivize adults to stay with the English, too.  They would also establish a college for Indian children.  They would live together, intermingled.

George Thorpe was perhaps the best representative of the new era.  He was a member of a gentry family in Gloustershire, and closely connected to the Berkeley family who had led the region since the Norman conquest of England.  The same family had set up a plantation in Virginia and would produce future governors of the colony, who we’ll discuss later.  Thorpe lived on their plantation, though, and he represented a return to that early idea of peaceful Protestant conversion.  In England, he’d adopted one of Pocahontas’s companions, and in Virginia, he was so supportive of the Indians that some settlers criticized him for being too kind and unsuspecting of them.  He worked personally to convert Opechancanough, and even paid to have an English-style house built for him, complete with a lock and key.  Thorpe blamed the English for the lack of conversion, saying that they hadn’t forgiven the Indians for past conflicts the way that Christians ought to, and that the Powhatans were of a peacable and virtuous disposition.  If the English would show love and affection, the Powhatan might respond to conversion the way that they had adopted other aspects of English culture.  They should communicate with the Powhatans, help the Powhatans understand the Bible from their own sensibilities and background, and they should work to improve the Powhatans’ material lives, not just their spiritual ones.  Thorpe even believed Opechancanough was near to being converted, and both Opechancanough and his brother Opichapam had changed their names, though not to English names.

This isn’t the end of the Jamestown story, though.  There’s just a little bit more.