Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Powhatans and other Woodland Indians as Travelers Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Helen C. Rountree # of Pages: 17 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

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Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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JO POWHATAN FOREIGN RELATIONS ropean question sums it up: “They will answer you, that they cannot live without War, which they have ever been used to; and that if Peace be made with the Indians they now war withal, they must find out some others to wage War against; for, for them to live in Peace, is to live out of their Element, War, Conquest, and Murder, being what they delight in, and value themselves for,” 12° For our purposes, we need only note that any improvements of weaponry on the part of enemies were keenly observed, before turning to an examination of the fate of prisoners taken on the warpath. These were all generally ill-treated on the trail.!2" But once they arrived at their captors’ town, their fates differed. Most men and some women were tortured to death, often after a period of living among their captors. The others—women, children, and a few men—were forcibly kept in the town and eventually resocialized and adopted into families.'?? The coming of Europeans intensified Indian warfare. As the years wore on and one tribe or another became depleted of its warriors, more male captives would be kept alive and adopted, or else an uneasy peace was made.'23 Whatever their fate, prisoners usually had a chance to communicate in some way with the people holding them. Prisoners who were adopted became permanent parts of the community, adding their knowledge as well as their genes to those of their new relatives. Thus some of the Creek Indians’ “most favorite songs and dances, they have from their enemy, the Chactaw.” '*4 Thus also when a peace was made, however temporary, the two sides often already had blood relatives, fluent in both languages, living among their former enemies. The practice of adopting war captives probably did as much as the trading relations to make the Eastern Woodlands a cosmopolitan place. Summary Woodland Indian people, probably including the Powharans, engaged in travel and war on a far-flung scale. They were hardy people, accustomed to prolonged physical activity on the trail or in a canoe, When they wanted something badly, like a rare trade commodity or revenge upon a distant enemy, they could and did go long distances at astonishing speed to accomplish their wishes. Their travel resulted, among other things, in genetic intermixing among peoples. Indian customs of hospitality encouraged sexual liaisons; ease of accepting congenial strangers promoted longer-term unions; and adoption of The Powhatans as Travelers 51 war captives more or less enforced them. We may therefore expect to see in the human biological record some patterns of interregional similarities as well as intraregional peculiarities. Prolonged contact with people of different linguistic backgrounds resulted in multilingual people. Traders, male or female, who stayed and married into customers’ communities were one example; adopted war captives were another. It was never difficult for European explorers to find someone in one town who spoke the language of the next town, even if the two languages were entirely different.'?5 People who regularly covered long distances would have become fluent in languages from three or more different linguistic families. The Algonquian-speaking Appamattuck guide hired by Edward Bland would have had easy access to learning Nottoway and Meherrin (lroquoian) and several Siouan dialects, just by traveling 100 miles from his home. Indian travels also resulted in the spread of goods and practical information like agricultural techniques. Archaeologists constantly map the distribution of preserved artifacts, with an eye to their origin; the Eastern Woodlands provide some fascinating patterns. And even perishable things can be shown to have diffused. For instance, wild tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) is Not native to any area within or east of the Appalachians,"?* and since the Indians stopped cultivating it, it has disappeared there. But when Europeans first came, all the Indians of the region grew it and used it for ceremonial purposes. The plant and the general idea of how to use it had come from elsewhere. Extensive contacts among Indian people had less desirable effects, such as the spread of diseases. This was true before the Europeans came; after their arrival it became pathetically plain. A “new” germ could arrive on the coast, thanks to a brief European visit, and then spread inland through Indian channels alone. However, for the mid-Atlantic region, Thomas Hariot indicated that the communities hardest hit were those who actually met the foreigners face-to-face, '27 Last but not least, Woodland people's intertribal contacts passed along information about the strangers who were crossing the Atlantic and probing into Indian country. Though the historical record seldom contains details of what was related, we do know that word of actual arrivals in people’s territory was often spread abroad, and that sometimes distant people also sent emissaries to inquire into rumors of such arrivals. When emissaries were lacking because of political barriers, then the rumors might be vague indeed. Thus the prophecy of Powhatan’s priests about a people coming to attack him from the east (Strachey words it as “Chesapeack Bay”) may have had its