Among today's Powhatan nations, the belief is that the original records from which we draw as source material are themselves biased, making a full picture of the entire story of history nearly impossible. According to Chief Emeritus Oliver Perry of the Nansemonds, "We were not savages, barbarians, nor heathens." The problem is that "what was written in the history books was slanted and written from the viewpoint of the so-called 'conquerors'." He also believes that the history presented in most textbooks is inaccurate, largely because it is based on the writings of English eyewitnesses, such as Smith and Strachey, who were themselves biased. They do not provide a complete picture. He, of course, is not wrong. While today's historians and anthropologists are far more culturally accepting than in decades past, it certainly presents a challenge when faced with sources that only lend to an English perspective.

A living history of one of the last Indian reservations in Virginia. Oral histories by members of a unique Virginia tribe speak to the hardships and discrimination that a proud people have endured.

This volume represents the largest vocabulary ever collected of Powhatan -- approximately 1,000 entries compiled by William Strachey around 1612. This edition is based on Major's 1849 printing of the British Museum manuscript, with variant forms and extra words cited from the Bodleian manuscript. Two supplementary word-lists of Virginia Algonquian are also included: nine words from an anonymous relation of 1607 attributed to Gabriel Archer, and 29 words from Robert Beverley's 1705 History and Present State of Virginia. This edition also features an introduction by Powhatan scholar Frederic Gleach.

Incorporating recent events in the Native American community as well as additional information gleaned from publications and public resources, this newly redesigned and updated second edition of First People brings back to the fore this concise and highly readable narrative. Full of stories that represent the full diversity of Virginia's Indians, past and present, this popular book remains the essential introduction to the history of Virginia Indians from the earlier times to the present day.

The extraordinary story of the Powhatan chief who waged a lifelong struggle to drive European settlers from his homeland In the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish explorers in the Chesapeake Bay kidnapped an Indian child and took him back to Spain and subsequently to Mexico. The boy converted to Catholicism and after nearly a decade was able to return to his land with a group of Jesuits to establish a mission. Shortly after arriving, he organized a war party that killed them. In the years that followed, Opechancanough (as the English called him), helped establish the most powerful chiefdom in the mid-Atlantic region. When English settlers founded Virginia in 1607, he fought tirelessly to drive them away, leading to a series of wars that spanned the next forty years—the first Anglo-Indian wars in America— and came close to destroying the colony. A Brave and Cunning Prince is the first book to chronicle the life of this remarkable chief, exploring his early experiences of European society and his long struggle to save his people from conquest.

New from the Maryland Historical Society, the story of Southern Maryland’s Native people. Here at last is the story of Southern Maryland’s Native people, from the end of the Ice Age to the present. Intended for a general audience, it explains how they have been adapting to changing conditions—both climatic and human—for all of that time in a way that is jargon-free and readable. The authors, cultural anthropologists with long experience of modern Indian people, convincingly demonstrate that all through their history, Native people have behaved like rational adults, contrary to the common stereotype of Indians. Moreover, in the very early Contact Period at least, some English settlers respected them accordingly. Unfortunately, although they never went to war against the English, they were driven nearly out of existence. Yet some of them refused to leave, and, adapting yet again to a changing world, their descendants are living successfully in Indian communities today.

Southern Anthropological Society James Mooney Award As Native American history is primarily studied through the lens of European contact, the story of Virginia's Powhatans has traditionally focused on the English arrival in the Chesapeake. This has left a deeper indigenous history largely unexplored--a longer narrative beginning with the Algonquians' construction of places, communities, and the connections in between. The Powhatan Landscape breaks new ground by tracing Native placemaking in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival to the Powhatan's clashes with the English. Martin Gallivan details how Virginia Algonquians constructed riverine communities alongside fishing grounds and collective burials and later within horticultural towns. Ceremonial spaces, including earthwork enclosures within the center place of Werowocomoco, gathered people for centuries prior to 1607. Even after the violent ruptures of the colonial era, Native people returned to riverine towns for pilgrimages commemorating the enduring power of place. For today's American Indian communities in the Chesapeake, this reexamination of landscape and history represents a powerful basis from which to contest narratives and policies that have previously denied their existence. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson

In this history, Helen C. Roundtree traces events that shaped the lives of the Powhatan Indians of Virginia, from their first encounter with English colonists, in 1607, to their present-day way of life and relationship to the state of Virginia and the federal government. Roundtree’s examination of those four hundred years misses not a beat in the pulse of Powhatan life. Combining meticulous scholarship and sensitivity, the author explores the diversity always found among Powhatan people, and those people’s relationships with the English, the government of the fledgling United States, the Union and the Confederacy, the U.S. Census Bureau, white supremacists, the U.S. Selective Service, and the civil rights movement.

This vocabulary contains 109 entries in the Powhatan language of Virginia as collected on the 1606 voyage of Capt. John Smith. Alsoincludes word-lists from two otherwise unattested Virginia languages: 17 words of King William County Pamunkey collected in 1858, and six words of Nansemond collected from the last living speaker in 1907. This edition also features an introduction by Powhatan scholar Frederic Gleach.

The story of America's first permanent English settlement as told through its relationship with Virginia’s native peoples. Certificate of Commendation, American Association for State and Local History, 2003 Addressed to specialists and nonspecialists alike, Before and After Jamestown introduces the Powhatans--the Native Americans of Virginia's coastal plains, who played an integral part in the life of the Williamsburg and Jamestown settlements--in scenes that span 1,100 years, from just before their earliest contact with non-Indians to the present day. Synthesizing a wealth of documentary and archaeological data, the authors have produced a book at once thoroughly grounded in scholarship and accessible to the general reader. They have also extended the historical account through the native people's long-term adaptation to European immigrants and into the immediate present and their continuing efforts to gain greater recognition as Indians. Illustrated with more than 100 photographs, maps, and drawings, the book also includes an entire chapter, from the Powhatan perspective, on the original English fort at Jamestown. The authors provide suggestions for additional reading for both children and adults as well as a list of Indian-related sites to visit in Virginia.