to show that Native people had given newcomers permission to settle on or near their land, or had transferred sovereignty to them altogether, making them masters of the coast.
This chapter describes how different ways of making treaties came to support conflicting assertions of ownership and power in the Chesapeake Bay. Most of the bay was controlled by Powhatan, a hereditary sachem. Born with the name Wahunsunacawh, Powhatan had inherited power over several tribes and conquered several others. At some point during his conquests, he had assumed the name Powhatan as a title recognizing his supreme authority. By using this title as his name, the English showed their respect for his power, yet there was also strategy behind their choice. In calling him Powhatan, the English conflated the chief with his people, known as the Powhatans, and authorized him to make treaties on their behalf. In reality, Powhatan’s territory, known as Tsenacomoco to the people who lived there, was a turbulent and divided world. Powhatan was closely allied with the tribes nearest to his seat at Werowocomoco, but was frequently at odds with those on the periphery of his holdings. These friendships and conflicts were mediated by complex and evolving practices for marking alliance and affiliation. Powhatans formed political agreements through exchanges of gifts, elaborate speeches, and ceremonial feasts. These bonds were often described as symbolic kinship alliances between fathers, brothers, and sons. Yet even as kinship metaphors suggested intimate links between peoples, they masked a violent reality. Powhatan frequently used force to compel tribute or labor from subjects, even destroying entire families or kin groups when it suited his purposes.9
When settlers first arrived in the Chesapeake Bay, they were usually compelled to negotiate on Powhatan terms. They listened to orations, feasted and danced with Powhatans, offered gifts of tribute, including English goods and animals, and even exchanged captives, giving Powhatan an English boy, Thomas Savage, in exchange for a Powhatan boy named Namontack.10 In this chapter, I will describe how such exchanges led to conflicting accounts of Native consent to treaties. I begin by reprising my discussion of Gabriel Archer’s “A relatyon of the Discovery of our River, from James Forte into the Maine” (1607). In the “Relatyon,” Archer, the official “Recorder” or secretary of the Virginia Colony, documents Jamestown’s first diplomatic negotiations with the Powhatans. Archer depicts the New World as a political order of monarchies, much like Europe, and in many ways his relation resembles European diplomatic writings. Archer describes how the English make treaties with the peoples they encounter, entering into alliances with sovereign kings. Yet there is one key difference. Archer reports that Native people make treaties through acts of tribute rather than signatures or vows. While language barriers separate the English and the Powhatans, he claims that coastal practices such as exchanging gifts or standing in the presence of authorities can express consent to treaty arrangements. By describing such protocols, Archer tries to show that the Indians have granted legitimacy to the English presence. The embassy culminates in Powhatan authorities crowning Newport, an act Archer interprets as Powhatan recognition of English power.
Archer’s account reflected many of the assumptions about pliant Indians that were common during the Elizabethan era. However, his narrative arrived in London with stories of mismanagement, starvation, and war. In response to these developments, the colony’s governing council in London installed new leadership and commanded the colonists to take a new approach to coastal diplomacy. Now, the colonists would bring war against Powhatan, while seeking to form alliances with tribes at the outskirts of his control. This shift in policy required a new set of legal justifications, as well as new models of diplomacy that could secure treaties at the edges of Tsenacomoco while the colonists waged war against Powhatan and his allies. Among the most prominent colonists to respond to these new imperatives was Captain John Smith, a former president of the colony. In two books published together, A Map of Virginia and The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia (1612), Smith attacks the diplomatic approach to Indian treaties publicized by Archer and puts forward his own model of treaty making. While Archer depicts the Powhatans peacefully consenting to the English presence with welcoming gestures and gifts, Smith’s books argue that the Indians’ outward shows of welcome have only given cover to acts of pillage and ambush. Adopting a skeptical attitude toward diplomacy, Smith argues that the Powhatans’ ceremonial gestures offer little access to their true intentions. Assembling his book from reports by soldiers, Smith argues for a political order based on violent threats and forced subjection rather than mutual recognition. Paradoxically, Smith portrays threats as a way of achieving the forms of voluntary agreement that straightforward diplomacy cannot.
Anglo-Powhatan alliances were not just a subject of controversy in English colonial government. A number of England’s rivals spied on Jamestown and its negotiations with surrounding groups. Among the most vocal was Pedro de Zúñiga, Spanish ambassador to James I during the early years of the Jamestown settlement. In his letters, Zúñiga attacks the legality of English settlement by exposing what he believes is the fraudulent nature of Powhatan treaty ceremonies. In secret correspondence with the Spanish crown, he points to intercepted reports of Powhatan resistance as evidence that Jamestown is an illegal settlement and should be destroyed.
Parties with many different agendas told stories about Powhatan diplomacy. Standing behind all of them, however, were the words and gestures of the Powhatans themselves. While Europeans framed Native ceremonies for their own ends, Powhatan likewise told stories about his interactions with the English, which were occasionally recorded by English observers. In the concluding section of the chapter, I will consider what colonial records can tell us about Powhatan’s intentions.
Alliance and Discovery: Archer’s “Relatyon”
“[Pawatah] (very well understanding by the wordes and signes we made; the significatyon of our meaning) moved of his owne accord a leauge of fryndship with us.”11 Gabriel Archer’s “Relatyon” culminates with “the greate kyng Powatah” (Archer’s spelling of Powhatan) spontaneously offering a treaty alliance to Jamestown leaders.12 The moment dramatizes the great king’s consent to the English presence. But Archer also seems worried that his version of events might not be believed on the other side of the Atlantic. Archer’s narrative is interspersed with parenthetical asides that translate the Indian’s words into English and assure the reader that he means what he says. The scene concludes with a final act of tribute that provides added proof of his sincerity: “for concluding therof, [Pawatah] gave [Newport] his gowne, put it on his back himselfe, and laying his hand on his breast saying Wingapoh Chemuze (the most kynde wordes of salutatyon that may be) he satt downe.”13 If doubts about the “understanding” between Newport and the king remain, the gift of the gown, complete with dramatic embrace, surely removes them. Hand on his heart, the king makes plain his love for the English in his own language, helpfully translated by Archer. Who could be skeptical, even thousands of miles away?
The moment is a surprising conclusion for a document identified, in a neat secretary hand at the top of its first page, as the story of a “discovery.” Narratives of discovery were a common product of state-sponsored explorations of uncharted territory in the New World, Africa, and the Far East. Spanish and Portuguese settlers published discoveries to make claims to land unexplored by other Europeans. English travelers in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras imitated this literary tradition, circulating their own accounts of the discovery of the North Atlantic coast.14 But Archer departs from the conventions of the genre in a significant way. While the James River is not controlled by any Christian prince, it is far from empty. Indeed, Virginia is under the jurisdiction of a figure identified, familiarly enough, as a king. And while Archer describes river peoples as “Salvages,” he finds their king sitting in state and conducting diplomacy in much the same manner as the Christian princes of Europe.15 Archer’s “Relatyon” reveals a land that is both awaiting discovery and lively with the politics of its inhabitants.
Dispatched to London on a supply ship returning from Jamestown in 1607, Archer’s “Relatyon” was the first account of the Virginia Colony’s diplomatic interactions with the Powhatan peoples. The handwritten narrative tells the story of the settlers’ exploration of the James River and
