A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 1: Colonialism and NationhoodPart 4: The Powhatans

SMITH AND THE POWHATAN TRIBES

• In December 1607, Smith was captured and taken to meet Chief Powhatan. The chief ordered Smith to be executed, but it was later said by Smith that the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, threw herself across his body to save his life.

• Pocahontas may have saved Smith a second time, in 1608, by warning him that her father planned to kill him during a brief visit he made to her village.

• Smith left Virginia in late 1609 after he was injured by an explosion of gunpowder.

FIRST ANGLO-POWHATAN WAR

• Lasted from 1610 to 1614.

• Began when settlers killed the queen of one of the tribes under Powhatan’s leadership and kidnapped her children.

• Skirmishes occurred between settlers and Native Americans until Pocahontas was captured in December 1612.

• After a year of negotiations, peace was struck when Pocahontas was forcibly wed to the settler John Rolfe in 1614.

TRANSITIONS OF POWER IN VIRGINIA

• John Rolfe took Pocahontas back to England, where she was exhibited as a curiosity. She died in England in 1617.

• Chief Powhatan died in 1618.

• Leadership of the Powhatan Confederacy was assumed by Opchanacanough, the younger brother of Chief Powhatan.

• In 1619, an assembly of churchgoers known as the House of Burgesses began to govern the Chesapeake Bay.

In 1619, about twenty African slaves were brought to Jamestown to work on the settlement’s tobacco plantation.

SECOND ANGLO-POWHATAN WAR

• Lasted from 1622 to 1632.

• Began with the Indian Massacre of 1622, at which warriors loyal to Opchanacanough attacked settlers without warning and slaughtered one third of the population of Jamestown.

• Every year for the next decade, settlers marched out to attack the Powhatan tribes and destroy their crops.

• After peace was made in 1632, trading resumed between the settlers and the tribes.

SECOND ANGLO-POWHATAN WAR

• King James I revoked the First Charter of Virginia in 1624.

• The Virginia Company lost the land around Chesapeake Bay, from which the King created the Royal Colony of Virginia.

• The King retained sovereignty over the colony, but the daily government of colonial affairs was divided between the House of Burgesses that nominally represented the people of the colony and a Crown Governor who represented the interests of the reigning monarch.

THIRD ANGLO-POWHATAN WAR

• Lasted from 1644 to 1646.

• When Opchanacanough tried to expel the settlers from Virginia, his warriors killed five hundred Englishmen — but this was only one tenth of their population.

• After the construction of three military forts, the Chesapeake Bay settlers captured and killed Opchanacanough.

• In 1646, Opchanacanough’s successor signed a peace treaty that formalized the boundaries of the settlement.

A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 1: Colonialism and NationhoodPart 4: The Powhatans