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Powhatan Foreign Relations, 1500-1722

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The editor has collected nine essays from seven scholars on the subject of the Powhatan Indians, a proto-empire of Indian tribes that resided in the Tidewater region of Virginia. The Powhatans are best known as the people who met the Jamestown colonists in 1607 and gave the world the story of Pocahantas, surely as romantic a tale as can be found anywhere.

This is a typical academic book: 200 pages, unadorned, overpriced. Why couldn't books of this sort be published on the WWW to save paper? The authors would get wider readership -- and the royalties they would lose from a book that barely makes the top million in Amazon sales would be miniscule. Although the material is stretched a bit thin, this is also a competent academic survey of the Powhatans. I enjoyed the essay which described the Indians as long distance travelers by trail and boat. Another essay discussed the biology of the Indians. A chart detailing Indian mortality was illuminating. The Powhatan had an average life expectancy of only about 22 years as 35 percent died before the age of 5. Life had few long sunsets in those days -- for Indians or Whites.

Other chapters discuss the Powhatan's relationship with the almost-unknown Siouan tribes of interior Virginia and other tribes of the Chesapeake Bay area plus contacts of the Powhatans with Spaniards and Englishmen. A bit more speculation based on the impressive expertise of the authors would have been interesting -- but I guess that's not encouraged in scholarly papers.

All in all, a good compilation of information that you should read if you're interested in Virginia at the time of contact and before the White conquest of the Indians.

Smallchief