his view that the Powhatans are strange and barbaric savages who practice occult pagan ceremonies. But his focus is different from that of more powerful correspondents, and a different picture of Powhatan emerges. Spelman takes us beyond the spaces of cross-cultural diplomacy, and finds Powhatan using European objects to confirm his power over his own people.
In an account of power struggles in Tsenocomoco during the early years of colonization, James D. Rice has described Powhatan motives for collecting European objects. According to Rice, the foreign origins of chiefs were central to religious cosmology and political order, and collecting and deploying objects from different places was one way werowances consolidated and displayed power. As Rice puts it, “Chiefly lineages emphasized their foreign origins in order to demonstrate that they were part of a universal spiritual order rather than local parvenus.”129 If what Spelman writes is true, Powhatan and his subjects did not understand the concept of a foreign nation in the same way as Europeans. The crown does not simply represent the recognition of an external power, the way a diplomatic gift in Europe might. Rather, it is a key source of Powhatan’s own authority to demand the planting of corn from his subjects and to reward his favorites with gifts of beads. He incorporates the crown into his own story of coming to power. His might and command of resources flows from the object and the spiritual trajectory it represents.
Spelman’s story suggests that for Powhatan the crowning ceremony was only partly about reaching a settlement with the newcomers. Because of the importance of a distant lineage to his own power, he looked to the newcomers and their trade goods as a way of maintaining authority over his own subjects. Though this authority was spiritual in nature, it had political uses. While the exact nature of the ceremony and its meaning to Powhatan and his subjects may never be known, it should be remembered that, among the Powhatans as among the English, the significance of a ritual was never entirely predetermined by religion or custom. There is sometimes a tendency to view Natives as traditional, while thinking of colonists as modern. But like the English, who used natural law texts to stake land claims, Powhatan manipulated manitou and its embodiment in English goods to control his own subjects. That he used English material goods in these ceremonies may have suggested to his subjects that he had the crisis of English arrival under control, and that channels for distributing food and goods would continue to function reliably as long as he was in power.130 He may have been suggesting that the arrival of the newcomers had made him more, not less, powerful, and that a new kind of political order was emerging from his triumph over them.
Though many Europeans were keenly interested in Powhatan’s foreign policy, Spelman is one of the few to mention these ceremonies. One reason for their absence in other records may be that Powhatan did not want any of the more powerful newcomers to see them. One of the first things Powhatan did when he met the newcomers was to try and figure out who was in charge. Then he acted accordingly, receiving them according to their rank. But the corn ceremony was intended to confirm Powhatan’s own power, not to recognize that of others. And as a person without any real standing, Spelman was ironically in a position to observe and report things that major power players could not. Another reason Europeans may not have recorded such rituals was that they troubled claims of English possession. The incorporation of a crown into Powhatan ceremonies suggests continued Powhatan independence and sovereignty. It may also suggest control over the newcomers.131 Spelman, however, was not particularly concerned with questions of international law or possession. This left him in a position to record things higher-ranking English people either did not understand or did not want to publicize.
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