The First People of Caroline
The second in a series this Holiday Season relating Caroline’s role in the Colony and future Commonwealth of Virginia-Part 2
Last week we looked at Jamestown and the first explorations of what would one day be Caroline County and the “gateway” to the Virginia frontier. The entrance to the future Caroline, through the Pamunkey River Valley was just 60 miles as the crow flies from Jamestown. It should be noted that there was some movement to patent land in the early 1600’s through what historians call the “back door.” This referred to the coastal land to the northeast, along the Rappahannock, because the peace loving Indians there were more accepting of white settlers. Most of Caroline, however remained closed to European settlement. All over Virginia and on the Atlantic Coast for 11,000 years, the Algonquian people had lived here in the shadow of the ancient forest and they were not about to give up their homeland easily.
Today it is difficult to imagine the true raw and pristine wilderness of Virginia and the land Caroline’s Native Americans knew as home before the coming of the white man. There were waterways reaching in all directions overflowing with fish, turtle and beaver. John Smith and others wrote of the size of the gigantic trees so thick the light of the sun barely reached the forest floor. The world of the Algonquin Indians was alive with the sounds of wildlife. Every Spring they saw the return from their winter migration of thousands of noisy geese filling the sky with their cries above the Rappahannock. In the Fall, the forests echoed with the sounds of great snorting bucks, the size of which have long since vanished from Caroline forests. The woodlands held large numbers of creatures, of all kinds, opossum, rabbits squirrel, turkey and bear.
When the English came to Jamestown in 1607, there were five Algonquian tribes living in the area that is now Caroline County, ruled by the great chief, Powhatan. There were three tribal seats and at least six other villages which included the people of the Pamukeys, Matttaponis, Youngtamunds, Secobecs and Nantangtacunds. In addition, there were two tribes here who were not Algonquian. The warlike, Mannahocs were Siouan and thus the enemies of Powhatan. The other tribe, the Dogues, lived in the area that is now known today as Milford and put themselves under the protection of Powhatan to prevent their destruction by the Mannahocs.
Wahunsunacawh, who took the name, “Powhatan” which means “waterfall” in honor of one of his most important empire boundaries was a great leader of his time. Through marriages, conquests and alliances, the number of tribes under this empire grew from six to thirty-two. Historians disagree on the number of people within his domain placing the numbers between 14,000 and 21,000. This territory, known as “Tsenacomoco” which means in the Algonquian language, “densely populated land,” encompassed the entire coastal plain of Virginia from the fall line at Richmond, to the ocean and from the Potomac to the North Carolina border.
Powhatan had three brothers Opitchapan, Kecatough and Opechancanough who were great Weroances or Chief Lieutenants. Opechancanough commanded for him the Pamunkey region, which would have included lower Caroline. Here, there were two Pamunkey Villages, one called Myghtuckpassu and the other, just a few miles away on the confluence of the North and South Anna River called Cattachiptice.
Powhatan was in the process of enlarging and consolidating his empire precisely when the English entered the scene in 1607. The Chief and his people certainly knew about Europeans. Since 1520 when the Spaniards began their conquest of the Native Americans in other parts of the continent, stories of white men in their big canoes who burnt villages and captured the inhabitants would have been passed up the coast and into Virginia. An active trading culture existed between most of the native peoples of North America and word traveled this way from tribe to tribe. By 1607, the French and Portuguese explorers had been snatching Native American for years, not for slaves but for souvenirs to take back to their European countries.
Powhatan would have called together his counselors and priests at the sighting of the ship in April of 1607. Within his hierarchy, he had chiefs responsible for peace or internal affairs and those responsible for war or external affairs. His capital, Werowocomoco lay just fourteen miles from where the English landed. The familiar story of his sending his favorite daughter, not only as an emissary, but with food to save Jamestown is well known. He exercised tremendous caution in dealing with the settlers and he is recorded as expounding on the advantages of peace over war. It is clear however, he was under no real illusions and understood well their intent. In 1609, he told John Smith, “No doubt I have of your coming hither…for many do informe me, your coming is not for trade, but to invade my people and to possess my country.”
The Powhatans like all other Native Americans, were a deeply spiritual people. They thought of themselves as a part of the natural universe, and lived their lives around the changing of the seasons. They had five seasons similar to our winter, spring and summer but they divided “Fall” into the “Earring of the Corn” and “The Harvest and Fall of Leaf” Prayer and thanksgiving heralded the changing of the seasons. Their most joyous celebration was the Harvest Festival in November. The Tidewater Algonquians had learned to store and preserve their food allowing them the type of time and existence needed to refine their culture. The security of Powhatan’s empire and the natural bounty of the Chesapeake had made it possible for them to all but abandon their semi-nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle.
They had two ways of hunting, one in large groups whereby fires were lit in a clearing or near a cliff or other boundary and multiple deer were driven from all sides into this area. John Smith observed that in this way, they could take as many as fifteen at a time. The other was a method of hunting alone or in pairs, which called for the wearing of an actual deer skin with a stuffed head made to look as lifelike as possible. In this way, they stalked the deer very closely which made for a successful hunt. They lived in settled, secure villages. They used the waterways as roads in huge canoes made from the equally huge primeval trees in the forests, and those conveyances could hold up to 40 people. With this method of transportation, they had developed a vibrant trading network. Their society was by no means primitive, but complex and sophisticated with class distinctions and social order.
Religion and medicine were closely related. Their Holy Men were thought to be able to see the future, control the weather and cure diseases. Sadly there was nothing they could do to cure the diseases the Europeans brought with them from the old world. With no natural resistance, thousands upon thousands died of measles, small pox, cholera, typhus, tuberculosis and influenza.
The Powhatan Indians recognized a number of Gods and spirits, but the two most important were Ahone, the maker of all good things and Oke, an evil spirit. They worshiped thunder, lighting, fire and water. All nature was treated with respect and this was manifested in everyday life, with acknowledgement to plants and animals that provided sustenance. Hunters approached the slain deer with reverence, as a beloved friend, asking for forgiveness and thanking it for providing food and clothing for his family.
This philosophy and this way of life would contrast sharply with the coming Europeans. While Native Americans took from the earth only what was needed, the white man was not so easily satisfied. He was concerned only with what the earth could produce for him, while the Natives were content to leave the earth as it was. The European concept of owning land was not known in the New World. Obsessed with ownership and progress, tobacco farmers required huge tracts of land and quickly depleted the soil. Instead of clearing woods, colonists found it much simpler to steal the already cleared fields of the Native Americans. By 1622, the Europeans had taken over all of the prime agricultural land surrounding the James River, pushing the native inwards. They had no access to the rivers where they had been gathering food for centuries.
Upon Powhatan’s death in 1618, his half brother Opechancanough, chief of the large and influential Pamunkeys, became ruler of the empire. He, unlike Powhatan did not favor appeasement of the whites. Unable to accept the continuing encroachment upon the land, his tribe attacked Jamestown in 1622 and killed over 300 settlers, a third of the population.
It is not clear why the Powhatans did not completely overrun the Jamestown settlement and kill all the inhabitants. They certainly had the capacity to do this. Instead they sent the English a message. They killed settlers with their own tools reminding them not to work the land to death. They stuffed dirt in the mouths of some of the dead to remind them not to eat up all the land. In the mouths of others, they stuffed bread. This has been interpreted to mean that some deserved to choke to death on their insatiable appetite
Over the nest fourteen years, Opechancanough destroyed every English settlement in Virginia except Jamestown. The two sides agreed upon a truce and the House of Burgesses passed a law that under penalty of death, no white man was to settle north of the Pamunkey River. This made it illegal to enter the land which would one day become Caroline County.
In 1644, Opechancanough violated the treaty by murdering settlers on the south bank of the Pamunkey. The law was then repealed, but this still did not open the way into Caroline. Except for those Indians who lived along the Rappahannock, the Native Americans throughout Caroline territory remained bent on defending their homes and hunting grounds. The land they occupied was both the Mattaponi River Valley and the Pamunkey River Valley and was the natural way for European settlement.
After the attack of 1644, the new Governor, Sir William Berkeley, set about to subdue the Native Americans. In 1646, he learned the whereabouts of the Pamunkey Chief, Opechancanough. A raiding party was sent from Jamestown to capture the elderly man who was blind and nearing a 100 years of age. Opechancanough was unable to walk and had himself carried into battle in order to inspire his braves. He was found by the raiding party and brought into Jamestown as a prisoner. Despite the orders of the Royal Governor to treat the Chief with respect, the old man was shot in the back by one of the guards.
A type of peace was reached with the next chief who came to power after Opechancanough. In 1646, the King of the Indians” Necotowance, signed a treaty to end the third major war between the Indians and the colonists. This is the actual origin of the annual payment of tribute to the Virginia Governor still carried out today—20 beaver skins “att the goeing away of Geese.” While it would be reiterated in a later treaty in 1677, this is the first mention of tribute between Native Americans and the Colony of Virginia.
Necotowance accepted his dependence upon the English King. Boundaries were set between the Native American villages and English settlements, and each was forbidden to enter the other except by permission of the Royal Governor. This was also the first treaty to set aside land for the Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Nottoway, Chickahominy, Nansemond, and Accomac Indians
In the years following the death of Opechancanough, a very different kind of tribe began to plague both the Algonquians and the settlers. The Iroquois, who came from the north, were by far the craftiest and most war-like natives to oppose the English. They kept the frontier in an upheaval with their constant, sporadic attacks. They also organized criminals who lived among the settlers to harass the citizens. The Iroquois attacked the homes of whites as well as those of Native Americans living in villages in the Mattaponi and Pamunkey River Valley. In real fear, the Mannahocs, a branch of the Sioux began to move eastward, pressing into white settlements and the land of the Pamunkeys.
In 1656, the Pamunkey Indians and the English formed an alliance and set out to destroy their mutual foes. This was a disaster as the leader of the Colonial troops was mortally wounded and the successor of Necotowance, a Chief named Totopotomi was killed. The wife of this chief, a truly remarkable woman, became Great Werowance of the tribe. A granddaughter of Opechancanough, her given name was Cockacoeske, but she would reign for thirty years as “Anne” Queen of the Pamunkeys.
Her first real appearance in Colonial History is in 1675, when the Royal Governor tried to force the Queen to provide warriors to fight with the colonists during the early rumblings of Bacon’s Rebellion. What is highly interesting is how adept the Indians already were in political manipulation with the English. By this time in her life, Cockacoeske had already experienced a romantic liaison with an English Colonel, John West, an important Virginia official and grandson of Lord De La Warr. Her relationship with him (the rumor was she had stolen him from his wife) certainly educated her and gave her insight into the machinations of Colonial politics. While she understood English well, she wisely brought with her to this meeting with the government, the son of her relationship with West in the official capacity of her interpreter. The appearance of the junior John West was a subject of great interest to the members of the royal council and reminded them of her connection to an Englishman of influence, and was certainly a deliberate strategic move on her part.
Through him, she arrogantly at first refused to provide the warriors and upbraided the council for their forgetfulness and neglect of her people for 20 years, in spite of their having joined forces in the wars in which she lost her husband fighting against the Iroquois. This was a bold confrontation between the Indians and the English but Anne kept the upper hand. They were highly impressed with her dignified appearance which they described as “majestic.” Later renderings of her likeness often show her wearing black pearls which were a symbol of high adornment in the Pamunkey tribe. It was only after strong promises of better treatment by the colonists that Queen Anne agreed to provide the fighting men to help the Governor. Just a year later, she would become a major player in the saga of Bacon’s Rebellion and would sign the agreement for lasting peace with the English King. This agreement opened wide the door to Caroline and the Virginia frontier.
Next week- Bacon’s Rebellion and the Treaty of Middle Plantation Opens The Way to Caroline and the Virginia Frontier
