Native rights.
According to Zúñiga, the farcical nature of the crowning of Powhatan boys undercuts the legal rationale of the English crown. Amusing though they may be, such performances provide a cover for mayhem, with the English plotting the murder of their Indian neighbors just as they plan assaults on Spain. With the same letter that describes the English conspiracy against Powhatan, Zúñiga encloses a map that shows English settlements and fortifications.124 Though the English crown has offered legal rationales for this expansion, Zúñiga warns that the English conquerors are threatening to engulf New Spain after they finish with the Indians. He offers the official recommendation that the colony should meet the same fate as the French Huguenot settlement at Fort Caroline, which had been destroyed by Spanish agents: “Your Majesty should command that this be summarily stopped,” Zúñiga urges darkly.125
Though Zúñiga pleads for Philip III to act, his letters implicitly concede the English colonists’ position on treaties. Unlike the Spanish ambassadors who negotiated the Treaty of London, Zúñiga does not deny the Powhatans’ standing. Rather, he seeks to prove that the English have staged treaty agreements and coached Native people into supplying words and gestures that establish English possession. The English are pacifying coastal people with offers of treaty only to spring violence on them later. By pulling back the curtain on Anglo-Powhatan treaty negotiations, Zúñiga seeks to furnish the Spanish crown with legal arguments for razing Jamestown. Philip III did not act on Zúñiga’s recommendations. Zúñiga was replaced by Alonso Velasco in 1610, but returned in 1612 in a failed attempt to arrange a royal marriage. Given Zúñiga’s interest in the protocol of hat honor and its meaning for diplomacy, his departure from London was accompanied by an irony. While Zúñiga was crossing Holborn Bridge, he doffed his hat to an approaching cavalier, who snatched it away and galloped off, much to the amusement of onlookers.126 While the colony struggled during its early years, they no longer had Zúñiga to worry about.
Powhatan’s bow, Ocanindge’s speech, Namontack’s refusal to remove his hat: colonists and diplomats recounted such words and acts in writing in order to support claims to territory. Debates about who had rights to the coast involved competing representations of Powhatan consent. None of the Europeans I have written about so far cared about recognizing the Powhatans in a way consistent with modern understandings of international law. Their letters and reports were entirely strategic, part of a violent struggle over land. The English and their rivals needed the bow, the chiefly oration, and the donning of the hat as support for their claims. But what of Powhatan himself? Somewhere, behind all the letters and printed pages, were the words and gestures that formed the basis for so many conflicting stories. Why did the Powhatan leader agree to make treaties with the English? Europeans made so much of their treaties with him, but what did he do with the objects he received from the newcomers? Can the writings of the colonizers provide an answer to that question?
Crowns and Manitou: Treaty Objects in Powhatan Politics
Powhatans and English people made treaties in many ways, offering promises, exchanging gifts, and even resorting to violence to compel agreement. While some of these practices were unfamiliar to Europeans, it was easy for them to imagine analogies between Powhatan acts of tribute and their own rituals. The English shouted their respect for sovereigns, and bowed in the presence of princes, just as the Powhatans seemed to do. However, coastal diplomacy was different from its European counterpart in at least one significant way. While European politics involved many kinds of performances (not to mention a heated traffic in rumors), Europeans nevertheless viewed writing as the most powerful and permanent way of expressing political agreement. To many historians, this fact has seemed to leave Native people at a disadvantage when it comes to treaty negotiations. And there is much truth to this claim. While the speeches of Powhatan and other Indians fill the pages of Smith’s books, Powhatan could not read those books or respond to them. But as I will suggest now, this does not mean that he was a passive participant in the debates about territory and sovereignty that occupied Europeans. Nor does it mean that he was necessarily a victim of English treaties.
As I have argued so far, the English did not just establish possession by citing European legal authorities. They also looked to Native acts of consent, which could come in many forms. The English solicited some sign of agreement and then framed it in a way that supported their claims. For them, treaties were primarily about words, gestures, or other acts that showed agreement. As Smith’s Proceedings shows, however, for the Powhatans, treaties were primarily about acquiring trade goods, such as beads, metal tools, textiles, and decorative items. While the English recorded treaties in writing, the Powhatans symbolized them in objects.
To modern-day readers, these treaty objects have lost much of their legibility. Colonists like Archer cared about Powhatan expressions only to the extent that they confirmed particular visions of English power. They generally omitted any description of what treaties meant to Native people. Smith, for example, portrayed Powhatan as desiring blue beads purely out of a mindless fascination with decorative objects and a treacherous desire to conquer the English. But there are many accounts of treaties from travelers who did not have the interest in law or diplomacy that animated Archer, Smith, or Zúñiga. Ironically, these observers may tell us something about Powhatan precisely because they saw no need to frame his words according to legal imperatives.
One such observer is Henry Spelman, an English interpreter who lived at Tsenacomoco from 1609 to 1611. On his return to England, Spelman drafted a narrative of his time among the Powhatans. An unimportant person from the perspective of the Virginia Colony’s government, Spelman was not present at the coronation in October 1608. However, when he arrived home he produced a written report that describes Powhatan’s incorporation of an English crown into tribal ceremonies. Spelman’s narrative certainly has its own kinds of bias. For example, he goes to great lengths to show that he has retained his Englishness while living among the Indians, whom he depicts as savage. However, though Spelman renders the Powhatans exotic in order to emphasize his difference from them, his account sheds light on the way they may have viewed the English crown and other objects they acquired during the course of treaty negotiations.
There are two mentions of a crown in Spelman’s narrative. Early on, in a section entitled “Of ther servis to their gods,” Spelman describes the brandishing of an English crown and bedstead in a religious display. “As with the great Pawetan,” Spelman writes, “he hath an Image called Cakeres which most comonly standeth at Yaughtawnoone [in one of the Kinges houses] or at Oropikes in a house for that purpose and with him are sett all the Kings goods and presents that are sent him, as the Cornne. But the beades or Crowne or Bedd which the Kinge of England sent him are in the gods house at Oropikes, and in their houses are all the Kinge ancesters and kindred commonly buried.”127 Spelman identifies the “Crowne” and “Bedd” as diplomatic presents from “the Kinge of England.” Powhatan keeps the items in a structure at Oropikes that is used to house an image or representation of a god and as a grave for his ancestors. In a section entitled “The manor of settinge ther corne with the gatheringe and Dressing,” Spelman describes the ceremonial use of these items during the planting of corn:
let me not altogither forgett the settinge of the Kings corne for which a day is apoynted wherin great part of the cuntry people meete who with such diligence worketh as for the most part all the Kinges corne is sett on a daye After which setting the Kinge takes the croune which the Kinge of England sent him beinge brought him by tow men, and setts it on his heade which dunn the people goeth about the corne in maner backwardes for they going before, and the king followinge ther faces are always toward the Kinge exspectinge when he should flinge sum beades amonge them which his custum is at that time to doe makinge thos which had wrought to scramble for them But to sume he favors he bids thos that carry his Beades to call such and such unto him unto whome he giveth beads into ther hande and this is the greatest curtesey he doth his people, when his corne is ripe the cuntry people cums to him againe and gathers drys and rubbes out all his corne for him, which is layd in howses apoynted for that purpose.128
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