When the English settled Jamestown in 1607, they encountered several very powerful and prosperous Native tribes, not all of whom were thrilled about these new strangers on their hunting range. The Natives were Algonquian-speaking. They lived in houses built of bent saplings with woven mats or bark, and practiced agriculture, maize being the staple crop. The men supplemented their diet with meat while the women were efficient gatherers and food preservers. Each palisaded village was under the control of a chief called in early accounts a wereowance, or even, if female as some of them were, a wereoansqua. These local leaders in turn owed tribute to a powerful leader, known as a king in European terms, named Powhatan. In fact, this paramount chief had a personal name, Wahunsunacawh. Powhatan was the corrupted name of his principal village, known in early records as Paquwachowng. Powhatan, or a corruption thereof also was applied to the largest river in the area, now known as the James.
As the colonists struggled to figure all this out, they came to understand that there were several distinct tribes in the area, each under leaders with varying degrees of power. Powhatan, c 1545-c1618, had used a great deal of personal leadership and skill to work these tribes together into a powerful alliance with himself as paramount chief. When the colonists arrived, he lead his confederacy from the village of Werewocomoco on the York River. And, a note about leading versus ruling. Unlike King James in Great Britain, whose word was law and who could commit anyone who disobeyed him to the Tower on a charge of treason, Powhatan, or Wahunsunacock, as the English also called him, had to use a great deal of cunning, leverage and persuasion as well as force of arms and intricate trading balances to keep his Confederacy together. When he died in 1618, he son, Opecanough, already a skilled leader and warrior, took his father's place.
The Settlers would blow this entire society apart in a series of wars beginning in 1622 and ending in 1648. These wars, known in history as the Powhatan Wars, began when the Settlers demanded foodstuffs for the colony and the Natives protested that they were hard put to it to feed their own people, let alone anyone else. Warfare and disease quickly eroded the bonds between the thirty tribes in Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia that made up the Powhatan Confederacy. Some tribes disappeared from the historical record altogether. Others migrated, some as far away as New Jersey to feel safe from the colonists. The surviving tribes in Virginia often found themselves the object of slave raids as epidemics also took their toll on imported Africans and local planters needed help to harvest their tobacco crops. Eventually, the Virginia House of Burgesses asserted the right to appoint leaders for the remaining Powhatan tribes.
The last remnants of the Powhatan Confederacy were destroyed by 1684, but that didn't mean that the Powhatan had vanished. The state/commonwealth of Virginia recognizes eight local tribes as being descended of the original Powhatan Confederacy. Two, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey, do retain some ancestral land in King William County. Strict racial laws in the 19th and 20th centuries classified any non-white person as black, even if the individual in question were Native or mixed-race, making it difficult for people to trace their heritage today. The Powhatan-descended tribes in Virginia are still in the process of seeking federal recognition.
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