Word: powhatans
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...Smith decreed. "He that will not work, shall not eat." Not too surprisingly, productivity soared. Anglo-American relations played to a draw. Strains were briefly managed, tensions largely contained. What followed, though, was a long and tortuous series of missed opportunities, conflict and outright betrayal that set Smith and Powhatan on a collision course. When the old chief got word that Smith had sacked yet another village and made off with half its provisions on the eve of a harsh winter, he summoned the white man to his lodge and offered to trade in peace...
Smith rejected it, falling back instead on insults and threats. "For your riches we have no use," Smith shrugged. And if Powhatan meant to challenge the colonists' superior firepower, bring it on, Smith taunted, for "in such wars consist our chiefest pleasure...
There ended the promise of friendship for Chief Powhatan and Captain John Smith, a tragic precursor to the bloodshed between Native Americans and Europeans that was to repeat itself for centuries to come. But for all his flaws and hidebound ways, Smith avoided all-out war with the natives during his tenure, believing, for the most part, that conflict could be managed with the right mix of bully and bluff...
Princess Matoaka--she was also called Amonute--was born around 1596. Daughter of Chief Powhatan, she had to be a bit of a spitfire to get Dad's attention. Powhatan had a hundred "wives" or, more accurately, women who bore him children. This child was special. He nicknamed her Pocahontas, or little capricious one, a tribute to her playful nature. She was also striking. She "much exceedeth any of the rest of his [Powhatan's] people," wrote Smith, "not only for feature, countenance and proportion...but for wit and spirit, the only Nonpareil of his country...
...prepared for life in Virginia and, at least initially, had no crops to harvest. So Kelso was not surprised to dig up the goods they offered the Indians in exchange for food. Among them: Venetian glass beads (blue ones were preferred), sheet copper (a commodity prized by the Powhatan, who wore pendants and other ornaments fashioned from the reddish metal), European coins (useless in Virginia) and metal tools (the Indians had ones made only from stone, wood, bone and shell). By the 1660s, when the English had established a number of settlements in the area, the Indians were even issued...