Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma ONE Amonute's People Casa cunnakack, peya quagh acquintin uttasantasough? (In how many daies will there come hither any more English ships?) -Powhatan query, recorded 1608-1609, quoted in John Smith, A Map of Virginia (1612) T he canoe bearing the news skimmed rapidly over the water. It was a spring day in 1607, and the rivers and streams of Tsenacomoco were swollen with rain and melted snow that came cascading down to the tidewater from the western mountains. The boat's messengers were bound for the main settlement of Powhatan, their paramount chief, and they used the riverine network that connected his dominions to move with their customary speed. There may have been an added urgency to the well-timed dips of their paddles, though, for they carried important news. The strangers on the three great ships that had entered the bay near the place where the Chesapeakes lived were not leaving. On the contrary, they seemed to be seeking a water supply and a camping ground-in short, a place to stay.1 The messengers drew near Powhatan's village of Werowocomoco, or "King's House." It was on the north shore of the Pamunkey (the York River, in today's world).

Strangers unfamiliar with the area might have passed by without seeing anything other than a lovely bay, for the village was nestled back in the trees, but to these men the spot was well known, with a long history of power. It was a remarkable bay, like no other on the river: three creeks made their way in almost perfect symmetry down to the enfolded semicircle of water. To the left of the central creek, it was perfectly flat. But to the right, a knob of land rose up twenty-five feet, a fitting platform for a king.2 The men had to leave their canoe in a cove formed by the creek wrapping around the side of the village. Toward the rear a spring gushed, and beyond that lay the people's fishing weirs. Here the village land sloped gradually down to the water. But if, as often happened, several of the men sprang lightly off their craft right at the riverfront rather than entering the secluded cove, they had to follow a path up the twenty-foot bluff before they could see the village spreading out on either side, reaching into the ancient woods.

It covered at least fifty acres, spreading over a much larger territory than like numbers of people usually chose to claim. Normally it was impractical to live like this. Powhatan, however, was a chief of chiefs. He had a point to make to visitors. And he had prisoners of war to do some of the requisite work. If the messengers turned around, they could see the whole bay spread before them and, beyond it, the wide grayness of the slow-moving Pamunkey Herons stood patiently near the shore; ospreys swooped low, seeking unsuspecting fish.3 That evening the sky over the water glowed as it always did as the sun prepared to slip down behind the river. The summer light filtered into the woods, illuminating bits of stone or wood or leaf with low beams shot with gold.

Powhatan may have received the messengers in state, as was his wont, reclining on a low platform at one end of his eighty-foot longhouse, the wall mats pinned back to let the breeze carry away some of the smoke from the hearth, his wives and children listening. Or he may have spoken alone and outdoors to those who brought the tidings, leaving his family to learn what there was to learn through village gossip. Werowocomoco, with its constant activity, was a poor place to keep a secret. Sometime soon the chief's nine-year-old daughter, Pocahontas, would have heard the whole story.4 News of this magnitude invariably entered the rumor mill: great boats had come again, this time perhaps to stay. Even a nine-year-old child who had never seen a ship would have understood what was anchored in the bay-boats larger than any canoe, able to catch the wind with huge blankets more finely woven than any net, perhaps something like the ones wealthy chiefs acquired through long-distance trade. These boats were widely known, their arrival even anticipated, for at least one appeared off the coast every few seasons. Mostly they just passed by.

Some were driven by storms into the mouths of the four rivers of Powhatan's kingdom and sought shelter for a few days before departing. Twice before, though, in Powhatan's long memory, such strangers had come with the intent to stay. Both times it had boded ill. Over forty years ago, when he was young, a kinsman-the son of the chiefly family of a neighboring tribe-was kidnapped when he dared to board one of the great boats. The strangers returned with him ten years later, after he had traveled over the sea and back again. By then he was a full-grown man who spoke their tongue; he had acquired one of their names, "Luis." He told everyone that the strangers came from a land of thousands and should be killed, or many more would come. His tribe took his advice and killed them all, sparing only a child.

More came anyway. Vengeful, powerful, and ignorant, they attacked with deadly force, but wreaked their retribution on the wrong tribe. Then about twenty years ago, when Powhatan was already a chief and had begun to conquer many of the tribes he now ruled, more strangers arrived, this time to the south of his lands, where the Roanoke and Croatan lived. These coat-wearers, as his people began to call them, were from a different tribe-"English" they called themselves, insisting they were not "Spanish."5 It was said that they, too, took at least one chief's son hostage. And they, too, came and went, came and went. Once a group of them traveled northward and stayed for a few months with the Chesapeake tribe on the coast, just across the river from Powhatan's lands, before returning to their settlement at Roanoke. There they starved and declined until the few remaining fled the little colony and were probably sold as slaves among inland tribes.

Only four years ago, in 1603, there had been another incident that everyone still remembered, probably even those as young as Pocahontas. More English had come, this time to the place where the Rappahannock lived, right in the middle of Tsenacomoco. No one was foolish enough to board the boat, but the coat-wearers still managed to seize some men, killing others who tried to stop them. Powhatan and the werowance -the chief-of the Rappahannock wondered if these coat-wearers, too, would return. Now in April 1607 they asked themselves if those who had come this time were the same men. The relatives of the kidnapped Rappahannocks, remembering the story of the return of "Luis," would have heard the news of the ship with greater and more heart-stopping interest than did Pocahontas. They lacked information, had only some of the puzzle pieces. They could not know that the earlier ship had indeed come on a reconnaissance mission for the present expedition, but that its crew was composed of different men.

Nor could they know that their kinsmen had already died: in 1603 some "Virginia Indians" had been made to demonstrate their handling of canoes on the Thames, and their subsequent deaths had gone unremarked in a city where thousands were perishing of the plague.6 Indeed, there was much that the Indians could not then know about the Europeans' interest in them, and about how the short-lived Spanish mission, the failed colony at Roanoke, and the recent English arrivals were all part of a much larger geopolitical contest. Confusing the Indians' minimal knowledge of Europe, however, with no knowledge at all-or worse, with essential innocence-would be to misread the historical record and do them a disservice. Powhatan clearly knew there was more to the story; he undoubtedly would have given much to have had more information earlier on. Later Pocahontas and others interacting with the newcomers would learn the whole history. There had, as they knew, been dozens of European ships plying the continent's eastern seaboard in the preceding century. Perhaps Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524 was the first of them to pass the four rivers of Tsenacomoco (now the James, the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac), but the Spanish settling farther south had been the most frequent passersby as they worked to perfect their cartography of the New World. They recognized that the economic potential of this territory paled in comparison to that of the warm and resource-rich lands of Mexico, Peru, and the Caribbean, but they believed some sort of northern settlement could still be useful.

Colonists might discover a sea route to the Pacific, capture Indian slaves, and trade for valuable furs. And a settlement would provide a deterrent to French ambitions, as well as a port for beleaguered Spanish ships tossed by storms and chased by the much-feared English pirates. The Spanish had their own version of the story of the kidnapped Luis, which, combined with what the Indians knew, yields a much fuller picture. In 1561 a fleet on an exploratory expedition seized a young lord who was probably of the Chiskiak people and almost certainly a cousin of Powhatan, if not a nearer relation. Some of the Spanish claimed he had come with them of his own free will, to learn their language and their religion, but it is impossible that he could have understood all that was about to happen; other chroniclers said his family did not know he had been taken. He was taken to Spain, then sent to Mexico to be educated by Dominicans. There, li.