HIST 223 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Weroance, Opchanacanough, Class Discrimination
October 31st, 2016
Powhatan’s Virginia
Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake
•lush environment at the tidewater Chesapeake
•semi-sedentary villagers: maize (+beans+squash) agriculture
•houses built of poles and woven mats of reeds/grasses
•Chief (weroance) as central figure: collects tribute, distributes gifts
•could be a woman but usually a man
•had many wives and therefore lots of children giving him power
•one person personifies the community and redistributes goods
•wars fought to decide what chiefdom was the strongest, losers gave tribute
•Powhatan: chief of regional preeminence around 1600 (name applied to a man, a village and
a society/empire of which he dominated and collected tribute)
•This empire type society was promoted by casual colonial contact (epidemics, war, etc.)
Secotans, Croatans and the “Lost Colony of Roanoke”
•Roanoke Island home to a variety of Indigenous peoples but most notably the Secotans and
Croatans
•Kind of a random place for the first attempt at colonization
•1580s settlement developed
•preliminary expeditions run into conflict with a neighbouring village and the English sack and
burn it
•the English return a few years later with settlers (including women and children) seeking to
mend relations with Indigenous peoples
•over a year or so they run into more and more trouble with both the Indigenous neighbours
and the Spanish (can’t get relief efforts across the Atlantic)
•John White (governor of the colony) returns from England and the settlers are gone, with no
trace
•John White painted pictures of Indigenous ways of life (only good thing to me out of this
disastrous colonization attempt)
•paints them in a favourable light with a classism flavour to them
Jamestown and Virginia
•the Virginia Company, founding of Jamestown, 1607
•early conflicts and accommodations between English and Algonquians
•very reliant on the locals for food and survival
•lots of deaths of colonists
•during times of low food supply, many flee to live in Powhatan villages
•frequently move between violent skirmishes and gifts of food
•natives freely gave food, but when they didn't the English took it at gunpoint
•relations are tense, some natives lend aid seeing the colonizers as potentially helpful allies,
others don’t want to and urge resistance to the colonization
•Powhatan is part of the leadership of the pro-English faction
•Growth of English Virginia with Tobacco Boom from 1620s
•everything changes dramatically
•point in the 1620s where smoking became accepted in Europe and there’s a huge demand
for it (became widespread and popular)
