Covers the ups and downs in the relationship between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatans, focusing on John Rolfe's marriage to Pocahontas and the three Anglo-Powhatan Wars.

1. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 1: Colonialism and Nationhood
Part 4: The Powhatans

2. SMITH AND THE
POWHATAN TRIBES
• In December 1607, Smith was
captured and taken to meet
Chief Powhatan. The chief
ordered Smith to be executed,
but it was later said by Smith
that the chief’s daughter,
Pocahontas, threw herself
across his body to save his life.
• Pocahontas may have saved
Smith a second time, in 1608,
by warning him that her father
planned to kill him during a brief
visit he made to her village.
• Smith left Virginia in late 1609
after he was injured by an
explosion of gunpowder.

3. FIRST ANGLO-
POWHATAN WAR
• Lasted from 1610 to 1614.
• Began when settlers killed the
queen of one of the tribes
under Powhatan’s leadership
and kidnapped her children.
• Skirmishes occurred between
settlers and Native Americans
until Pocahontas was captured
in December 1612.
• After a year of negotiations,
peace was struck when
Pocahontas was forcibly wed to
the settler John Rolfe in 1614.

4. TRANSITIONS OF
POWER IN VIRGINIA
• John Rolfe took Pocahontas
back to England, where she
was exhibited as a curiosity.
She died in England in 1617.
• Chief Powhatan died in 1618.
• Leadership of the Powhatan
Confederacy was assumed by
Opchanacanough, the younger
brother of Chief Powhatan.
• In 1619, an assembly of
churchgoers known as the
House of Burgesses began to
govern the Chesapeake Bay.

5. In 1619, about twenty African slaves were brought to
Jamestown to work on the settlement’s tobacco plantation.

6. SECOND ANGLO-
POWHATAN WAR
• Lasted from 1622 to 1632.
• Began with the Indian Massacre
of 1622, at which warriors loyal
to Opchanacanough attacked
settlers without warning and
slaughtered one third of the
population of Jamestown.
• Every year for the next decade,
settlers marched out to attack
the Powhatan tribes and
destroy their crops.
• After peace was made in 1632,
trading resumed between the
settlers and the tribes.

7. SECOND ANGLO-
POWHATAN WAR
• King James I revoked the First
Charter of Virginia in 1624.
• The Virginia Company lost the
land around Chesapeake Bay,
from which the King created the
Royal Colony of Virginia.
• The King retained sovereignty
over the colony, but the daily
government of colonial affairs
was divided between the House
of Burgesses that nominally
represented the people of the
colony and a Crown Governor
who represented the interests
of the reigning monarch.

8. THIRD ANGLO-
POWHATAN WAR
• Lasted from 1644 to 1646.
• When Opchanacanough tried to
expel the settlers from Virginia,
his warriors killed five hundred
Englishmen — but this was only
one tenth of their population.
• After the construction of three
military forts, the Chesapeake
Bay settlers captured and killed
Opchanacanough.
• In 1646, Opchanacanough’s
successor signed a peace
treaty that formalized the
boundaries of the settlement.

9. A SURVEY OF
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit 1: Colonialism and Nationhood
Part 4: The Powhatans