Powahatan

The Powhatan people lived along the James River in Virginia's Tidewater and gave their name to a wider confederacy. Their own local leader, Parahunt, was the son of Wahunsenacawh, the paramount chief whom English colonists also called Powhatan. By the time Jamestown was founded in 1607, Wahunsenacawh ruled over more than thirty peoples, each with its own leaders.

English settlers sought food and land in Powhatan country, and relations soon turned to war. In 1609 John Smith arranged to acquire the fortified Powhatan town near the falls of the James, hoping to establish an English settlement there. Resistance frustrated the attempt. Conflict continued through the following decades, ending in a treaty in 1646 that imposed new boundaries on the Indigenous peoples of the region.

The later city of Richmond lies here.