Paspahegh

Last updated

Pasapahegh
Total population
Extinct as tribe
Regions with significant populations
Virginia, Charles City and James City counties
Languages
Algonquian
Religion
Native
Related ethnic groups
Powhatan Confederacy
Paspahegh historical marker erected in Charles City County along Virginia State Route 5 by the Department of Historic Resources, 2005 Paspahegh - historical marker, Oct. 2014.jpg
Paspahegh historical marker erected in Charles City County along Virginia State Route 5 by the Department of Historic Resources, 2005

The Paspahegh tribe was a Native American tributary to the Powhatan paramount chiefdom, incorporated into the chiefdom around 1596 or 1597. [1] The Paspahegh Indian tribe lived in present-day Charles City and James City counties, Virginia. The Powhatan Confederacy included Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands who spoke a related Eastern Algonquian languages.

Contents

The Paspehegh were among the earliest tribes interact with British colonists, who established their first permanent settlement in the Virginia Colony at Jamestown in their territory, beginning on May 14, 1607. Because of conflict with the colonists and likely exposure to infectious diseases, the Paspehegh appear to have been destroyed as a tribe by early 1611 and disappeared from the historical record.

Powhatan's paramount chiefdom

Indigenous tribes in the Tidewater Region of Virginia have often been mischaracterized by historians as the "Powhatan Confederacy". This group of allied Algonquian tribes was not, in fact, a confederacy, which is more or less a unification of entities which are superior in self-governance to the central point of power.[ citation needed ] Chief Powhatan's organization is more accurately described by anthropologists as a chiefdom, and he (as well as his several successors) were clearly the central ruler. During the period from 1607 until his death in 1618, these Native Americans are most correctly described as being of Powhatan's "paramount chiefdom".

Timeline of interaction with colonists

1607

1608

1609

1610

1611

Aftermath

The original capital of the Paspahegh Indians, present-day Sandy Point in Charles City County, was settled by English colonists in 1617, who called it Smith's Hundred. After 1619, they renamed it Southampton Hundred. St. Mary's Anglican Church was established there prior to the Indian Massacre of 1622, a series of surprise attacks on English settlements in Virginia that devastated the colonial population.[ citation needed ]

Archaeological site

Archaeologists are studying the archaeological site known as Paspahegh or Site 44JC308, near Jamestown, Virginia. It is located 6 miles (9.7 km) above the English fort at Jamestown. First identified in 1983 by surveyors from the College of William and Mary, the site is one of only a few Early Contact period archeological sites in Virginia. [7]

The James River Institute for Archeology (JRIA) conducted collections from a 31-acre (130,000 m2) site when it was threatened with development. More concentrated work was done in an area of 2.1 acres (8,500 m2). The site has remants of houses, mortuary structures, elite's houses, and other village structures and artifacts such as ceramics and copper items. [8]

Analysis of the site showed the rise in copper exchange and followed by a decline. English colonists quickly realized how highly the Powhatan peoples valued copper. As the English brought more copper into the colony over a nearly 20-year period, its value declined, and it never recovered the prestige it held at the time of English arrival. Copper was the most important metal in among Powhatan tribes, where it was a mark in life and death of the social hierarchy. The elite were buried with copper items to secure them passage in the spiritual world. [9]

English copper trade freed Chief Powhatan from relations with hostile Monacan and other tribes to the west. Similarly, the English hoped to use their colony to free themselves of dependence on other European nations for other goods. [9]

Other Paspahegh villages were located on the south bank of the Chickahominy River and on the north bank of the James River in Charles City County.

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References

  1. Charles M. Hudson; Carmen Chaves Tesser (1994). The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521–1704. University of Georgia Press. p. 359. ISBN   978-0-8203-1654-3.
  2. Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990, p. 30, citing Percy [1608]
  3. Rountree, p. 30, n. 16
  4. Smith, John. A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Hapned in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Colony, London, 1608
  5. Rountree, p. 55, 57, citing Strachey and Percy
  6. Rountree, p. 55 n., citing Dale 1611
  7. "Paspahegh", Virtual Jamestown, accessed April 19, 2010
  8. "Paspahegh Archaeology: Data Recovery Investigations of Site 44JC308 at the Governor's Land at Two Rivers, James City County, Virginia," ed. Mary Ellen Hodges and Charles Hodges, JRIA, 1994
  9. 1 2 Seth Mallios and Shane Emmett, "Demand, Supply, and Elasticity in the Copper Trade at Early Jamestown", The Journal of the Jamestown Rediscovery Center, Vol. 2, Jan. 2004, Historic Jamestowne, accessed April 19, 2010