Virginia Vignettes

Opechancanough, a leading chief or werowance of the Pamunkey nation, was a maternal relative of Powhatan. Identified as one of Powhatan’s successors to the paramount chiefdom, he also acted as war chief or military leader for Powhatan. Opechancanough was leading the party of Indians who captured John Smith when Smith went on an exploratory venture up the Chickahominy River late in 1607.

It was Opechancanough who organized the attacks against the English colonists living outside of Jamestown in 1622, in an attempt to punish them for encroaching on lands that Powhatan had not granted them. The English interpreted these attacks as an attempt to oust them from Virginia, and the retaliated with hostilities against the Indians for several years.

Opechancanough became paramount chief in 1629, and he organized similar attacks in 1644. He was unable to walk and was carried on a hurdle to the ensuing skirmishes. Shortly thereafter, when he was nearly 100 years old, he was captured by the English and imprisoned at Jamestown, where he was killed when a prison guard shot him in the back.

Opechancanough is still revered today by Virginia Indians as a hero and early protector of our homelands.

This entry first appeared as a Virginia Vignette in August 2006 and was adapted for The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail, 2007, Karenne Wood (ed.), Charlottesville: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

For Further reading:

Gleach, Frederic W. 1997. Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Rountree, Helen C. 1990. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Rountree, Helen C., Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown: UVa Press.

Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia

Edward W. Haile, Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony

Virginia Council On Indians

Library of Virginia – Indians in Virginia

This Vignette Provided By

Karenne Wood, Director of the VA Indian Heritage Program at VFH and Deanna Beacham, Program Specialist, VA Council on Indians