Unlike the fur traders I discuss in the fourth chapter, Williams and Gorton were successful, securing royal charters that placed them on the same legal footing as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These legal contests over the meaning of Native purchase occurred at the same time as the English colonies were pursuing the military conquest of the Algonquinspeaking peoples of southern New England. I close the chapter by considering how Narragansett sachems used Williams and Gorton to make their own appeal for protection to the recently seated English Parliament, which had assumed authority over colonial affairs during the English Revolution. This appeal was spectacularly successful and changed the political relationships between the crown, its colonies, and coastal tribes, initiating a shift to direct royal control of New England that ended the transatlantic traffic in treaties.
The story I tell in this book spans several decades. It begins with the settlement of Virginia in the wake of the Treaty of London (1604), and concludes with the English crown’s direct assertion of authority over New England Indians in 1664, an event that led most English colonists to abandon the transatlantic publication of Native treaties. In the window of time between these two events, settlers frequently publicized treaties with Native peoples to show their possession of territory (and sometimes waters). Many scholarly accounts have viewed these treaties as documents of barbarism—not the kind of barbarism the English projected onto Native Americans, but the kind we now associate with those who violate human rights. This much is true. But this way of looking at things can conceal the many agendas that converged on treaties or later found expression in them. Native treaties were part of a centuries-long attempted genocide, but neither Europeans nor Native people knew what the future would hold. It is this uncertainty—about what treaties meant, about whether they would be broken, and about who would triumph if they were—that I take as my starting point.
Chapter 1
Heavy Heads: Crowning Kings in Early Virginia
On a placid morning in October 1608, Christopher Newport pushed off from the shore of the York River and pointed his boat toward Werowocomoco, the seat of the Powhatan chiefdom. It had been more than a year since his first journey inland, the one that had culminated in the great shout and the treaty with the river king. Since that time, much had happened. The English had traded with some Indians, fought with others, and established diplomatic relations with Powhatan, the paramount chief of the bay. Yet as Newport landed on the opposite shore of the river and his men began to unpack their barges, it immediately became clear that this was not a routine visit. Treading carefully so as not to lose their footing in the mud, they carried ashore a washbasin painted with the royal insignia of James I, a scarlet cloak made of wool, a decorative pitcher, an English bedstead, and finally a copper crown, burnished to a rosy shine.
A letter from London explained the purpose of this unusual cargo. On the king’s authority, it commanded Newport to recruit Powhatan into an alliance with the English crown. The plan included an elaborate protocol modeled on the ceremonies through which European lords created vassals, or feudal landholders.1 Newport was to stage a ritual coronation of Powhatan, deputizing him as a local authority while confirming his subjection to James I. The washbasin, bedstead, and cloak signified English goodwill. The crown, bestowed on the Indian king in a ceremony, would confirm his agreement in the matter.2
On paper, the mission seemed simple enough: awe the chief with gifts and induce him to kneel and receive the crown. But what happened next became the subject of a debate that extended far beyond the Chesapeake Bay. According to a written account published by the Virginia Company, the joint-stock venture that financed settlement, the ceremony was a success.3 Powhatan, the “Emperour” of the Powhatans, stooped and “received voluntarilie a crowne and a scepter,” a gesture that “licensed” the English “to negotiate among them, and to possesse their countrie with them.”4 But other observers came forward to challenge this version of events. Soldiers and secretaries scribbled their own accounts of the crowning on notepaper. These, too, made their way to London, and were eventually published in a compilation of reports entitled The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia (1612). This book described the coronation as a botched affair. Powhatan had refused to recognize the subject status conferred by the crown, instead interpreting the ceremony as English recognition of his power. The all-important stoop had been coerced; the English had resorted to leaning on his shoulders to place the crown on his head. Worse yet, a cannon fusillade meant to commemorate the peace had frightened the Indians, scattering Powhatan’s entourage and leading to shouted accusations of an ambush. The ceremony had been a catastrophe.
Still other accounts circulated through international channels. Frances Magnel, an Irish laborer living in Jamestown, also witnessed or heard about the coronation. He traveled to Madrid, where he gave a deposition to an Irish Catholic archbishop, who translated it into Castilian and secretly conveyed it to the Spanish crown.5 If the Virginia Company cited the bow to confirm English rights to rule New World territory, the uncertain outcome of the ceremony called into question the very legality of the settlement. Pedro de Zúñiga, a Spanish ambassador, was “amused” that the English were treating Indians like princes. He fiercely disputed the claim that they could establish rightful possession through such ceremonies. The colonists, he wrote in a letter to Philip III, were merely using negotiations with Indians to give an appearance of legality to attempts to “carry on piracy” against Spanish ships.6 As reports spread, Powhatan’s response took on increasing significance for international agreements with Spain.
In Powhatan’s stoop to receive the crown, Christopher Newport found confirmation of English power in the New World. In the chief’s scowls and angry words, Newport’s rivals at home and abroad saw an exposure of English weakness, even a challenge to the legal basis of English settlement. Newport’s attempted crowning of Powhatan was one of many treaty ceremonies conducted between colonists and Powhatans during the early years of Virginia colonization. And like other such ceremonies, it had consequences well beyond the coast. The crowning inspired clashing reports, stories, and rumors that spread throughout the bay, the colonial Atlantic, and the channels of diplomatic communication that connected European crowns.7 The transmission of these stories across space and time reflected complex alliances and agendas. English, Spanish, Irish, and Native people all retold the story in different ways in order to advance competing visions of political order. As Powhatan and Newport faced off over the crown, they were acutely aware that it was only the first engagement in a longer struggle over the meaning of the ceremony, one waged through stories as well as rituals.
This chapter considers political negotiations between English and Powhatan peoples in early Virginia. It examines how treaty ceremonies involving Native leaders influenced European debates about territorial possession. Existing scholarly accounts have examined how English colonists used written treaties to give an appearance of legality to the theft of Native land. These accounts have argued that the English disregarded indigenous political systems and sought to impose written forms of political documentation on Native peoples. This chapter sets out to revise that picture. The English crown financed colonial ventures in order to acquire control of territory. This meant claiming Indian lands. But as I will show here, this did not mean rejecting Natives’ right to speak for themselves. Indeed, according to many early modern understandings of the law of nations, Christian princes could acquire control over territory through the creation of treaty agreements with pagans. In order to establish claims in this way, the English needed to capture the voluntary consent of Native people according to consensus ad idem, a legal criterion deriving from Roman law. Consensus ad idem required that treaties should represent a “meeting of the minds,” or voluntary agreement between parties. To this end, the English crown instructed colonists to “entreate” Native people and send home written accounts of Native alliances.8 On some occasions, these treaties were formatted like European-style articles of agreement, but more often they came in the form of narratives and letters describing ritual performances, such as orations, exchanges
