Virginia Vignettes

Virginia holds two claims to a day of thanksgiving predating the widely popularized “first Thanksgiving” at Plymouth in 1621. Upon arrival of much-needed supplies from England in the spring 1610, following the Jamestown settlement’s “starving time” – the winter famine in 1609-the settlers greeted Lord De la Warr on the James River with a service [...]

When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, Powhatan, whose informal name was Wahunsunacock, was the acknowledged paramount chief of more than 32 tribes, with more than 150 towns. These tribes ranged from the Potomac River in the north to just south of the James River in the south, and from the fall line of [...]

Cockacoeske was married to the Pamunkey chief Totopotomoy, who was killed in 1656 while fighting as an ally of the English, at what became known as the Battle of Bloody Run. Following his death, she became the chief, or weroansqua, of the tribe. She was known to the English as the Queen of the Pamunkey. [...]

During the 1980s eight Virginia Indian tribes obtained formal recognition from the Commonwealth, although the Pamunkey and Mattaponi had retained their reservations and had been observing their treaty relationship all along. The other tribes are Chickahominy, Chickahominy Eastern Division, Monacan, Nansemond, Rappahannock, and Upper Mattaponi. In recent decades, the tribes have worked hard to reclaim their [...]

Walter Plecker became the state registrar of the division of Vital Statistics in Richmond in 1912 and remained in his position until 1946. He was a staunch advocate for the eugenics movement, the pseudo-science of race. Plecker believed that there should be only two races of people in Virginia, white and “colored,” that white people [...]

The Paspahegh lived in several towns on the north side of the James River, to the east and west of the mouth of the Chickahominy. They were tributaries to the paramount chief Powhatan. When the English chose Jamestown as their colony site, they unwittingly moved into Paspahegh territory. The Paspahegh consistently resisted this incursion, and [...]

Opechancanough, a chief of the Pamunkey nation, was a maternal relative of the paramount chief 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 Captain John Smith when the latter went on an [...]

The term “Powhatan Indians” is used to encompass all of the tribes who were part of the leader Powhatan’s paramount chiefdom (see Powhatan vignette). These tribes are sometimes mistakenly called the “Powhatan nation” or “Powhatan tribe”, but there were more than thirty tribes paying tribute to the great paramount chief when the English arrived in [...]

Most modern historians do not think so. Although Smith in his 1624 memoirs credited eleven-year old Pocahontas with his reprieve from death at her father Powhatan’s hand in 1607, his account, replete with sexual fantasy, lacks collaboration and is considered myth. The ceremony that Smith described may have been an adoption ceremony that he did [...]

Pocahontas (1596?-1617) was a daughter of the head of the Powhatan chiefdom, Wahunsonacock or Powhatan. She had two other Indian names, Matoaka and Amonute. She reputedly saved the life of Captain John Smith. After this episode, Pocahontas often visited James Fort, serving as an intermediary and translator. In March 1613, during the ongoing war between [...]