Program Information

In 1607 Indians of Virginia’s Tidewater discovered they had new neighbors on the James River. Their leaders, Powhatan and Opechancanough, countered the English threat in different ways. "Jamestown: A Fruitful Soil" provides a historical overview of the people and events of 17th-century Virginia.

Transcript

In 1607 Indians of Virginia’s Tidewater discovered they had new neighbors on the James River. Their leaders, Powhatan and Opechancanough, countered the English threat in different ways.

I’m Steve Clark with Jamestown: A Fruitful Soil, a celebration of Virginia’s Quadricentennial sponsored by Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum in the Williamsburg area of Virginia.

In the last decades of the 1500s Wahunsonacock, or Powhatan, building on an inheritance from his mother, through warfare or intimidation, assembled a loose but impressively large chiefdom of some thirty Algonquian tribes in the Virginia coastal plain. He administered his holdings from his headquarters at Werowocomoco on the York River.

Initial Indian reaction, in fact on the first day of the English incursion, was to attack. Powhatan’s reaction was more deliberate. He urged negotiation and a wait and see policy. Perhaps the English would starve or just leave the region.

At first his younger brother, Opechancanough, one of the leaders of the powerful Pamunkey tribe, followed Powhatan’s lead, but gradually took a more hostile and aggressive stance toward the white invaders.

As relations deteriorated over disputes involving food and land encroachment by the English, Powhatan retreated up the river system and disengaged from direct confrontation with Jamestown. Opechancanough gradually inherited his brother’s popular support and the unofficial mantle of leadership.

Twice, in 1622 and 1644, Opechancanough organized and led devastating attacks against the English settlements, but disease, starvation and the flood of whites into Virginia gradually shattered Algonquian control of the region. Powhatan died in 1618; Opechancanough was captured and killed in Jamestown in 1646.

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