Powhatan

Powhatan, also called Virginia Algonquian, is an Eastern Algonquian language of the Algic family, formerly spoken by the Powhatan people of the Virginia tidewater around Chesapeake Bay. It had no writing system and is known almost entirely from two wordlists: John Smith recorded about fifty words between 1607 and 1609, and William Strachey about five hundred in 1610 and 1611.

English settlers who founded Jamestown in 1607 depended on the Powhatan for food and had to learn their language. English borrowed many words from Powhatan, including moccasin, tomahawk, raccoon and persimmon. After the uprising of 1622 and the colonial wars that followed, the Powhatan communities were dispersed, and their language gradually fell out of daily use.