Powhatan

The Powhatan group includes the Eastern Algonquian peoples of the Chesapeake tidewater, among them the Powhatan, Rappahannock, Nansemond and Accawmacke. Their language, Virginia Algonquian, was never written down and is known mainly from word lists made by John Smith and William Strachey.

The paramount chief Wahunsenacawh, called Powhatan by the English, built a confederacy of more than thirty tribes, and he ruled from Werowocomoco when Jamestown was founded in 1607. After his death in 1618 his brother Opechancanough led risings in 1622 and 1644. The treaty of 1646 dissolved the confederacy, and in 1677 the survivors became tributaries on small reservations.