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The Greatest: Paramount Chief Powhatan

Sunday, Dec 09, 2007 - 12:05 AM

Wahunsonacock - who took the name Powhatan sometime in the 1580s when he
formed a loose confederation of Algonkian-speaking tribes in the tidewater
region of Virginia - received a number of votes as the greatest or most
influential person in 17th-century Virginia. He was the paramount leader of
the Indians with whom the English colonists primarily dealt.

Powhatan's importance is manifest in the historical record. Karenne Wood
and Deanna Beacham nominated him because "he held his position not only
through military strength but also through great personal and spiritual
charisma, as well as a complex system of social rules not fully understood
by the English. The tribes under Powhatan's leadership paid tribute to his
treasury in food and goods, which were then used for redistribution, trade,
rewards, and ceremonial display.

"In the early years of the English colony, Powhatan's first intent was
probably to incorporate the English into his polity as another tribe.
Thwarted by the English, who had another agenda, he retired from leadership
around 1616 and died in April 1618.

"There is no possible doubt," they concluded, "that the fledgling colony
continued to exist at Jamestown with Powhatan's permission. For this
reason, he remains in some ways the most influential native Virginian of
all time."

Historian Sara Bearss pointed out also that Powhatan's importance in the
early years of the 17th century was possible only because he, of all the
residents of what became the Virginia whose name we now know, was certainly
the most influential person of the 16th century. "Through skillful
diplomacy and conquest," she wrote, he "turned his original inheritance of
six Algonkian chiefdoms into a powerful alliance of some 30 tribes."

Powhatan's life and importance spanned the artificial century mark. He was,
as Ben Campbell wrote, "the great transitional figure marking the change
from Tsenacomoco [then the name for the region where the Jamestown settlers
landed] to Virginia."

The paramount chief stood out as the 16th century's obvious choice for the
designation "greatest citizen" of the land later named for Elizabeth I, the
virgin queen. - Brent Tarter