Powhatan, real name Wa-Hun-Sen-A-Cawh or Wahunsonacook, father of the princess Pocahontas. According to legend, Powhatan was ready to kill the English settler John Smith when Pocahontas intervened and saved Smith's life.

Powhatan was the chief of the Powhatan confederacy of Algonquian tribes, in what is now Virginia, at the time the English first settled there in 1607. Fighting between the Native Americans and colonists arose when the new settlers began taking lands belonging to Powhatan and his people. In 1614, Pocahontas married John Rolfe, one of the settlers, and there began an eight-year peace between the Native Americans and colonists. Pocahontas and Rolfe sailed to England, where she died in 1617. Powhatan died the following year.

"Powhatan," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

History of Colonial America

Virginia was founded in 1607 as a trading outpost and became the first permanent English colony in the western hemisphere. King James I of England (1603-1625) granted the Virginia Company a corporate charter that gave authority over the colony to the company's shareholders and directors, who ruled through an appointed governor and a council of advisers. In 1618 the Virginia Company also created a representative assembly, the House of Burgesses, which was the first such assembly in colonial America. This step toward self-government was designed to encourage people who sought more freedom to migrate to the new colony. However, the company included a provision that limited the burgesses' power; the provision required the company to approve any laws that they enacted.

Virginia soon failed as a trading venture because the native people had no valuable crops or products to exchange for English goods, and so colonists turned to farming. They increasingly began to settle on lands belonging to local Algonquian people. In 1622 a revolt led by Opechancanough, chief of the alliance of several Algonquian groups called the Powhatan Confederation, nearly destroyed the colony.

from: "Colonial America, History of," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Please also visit: the Powhatan Renape Nation, an American Indian Nation located at the Rankokus Indian Reservation in Westampton Township, Burlington County, New Jersey.

Website: http://www.powhatan.org/