Pocahontas (18 page)

I have also included a list of the names of some places and actual Powhatan people of this period who appear in this book.

SELECTED WORDS

accowpret:
shears
Ahone:
creator and chief deity of the Powhatan world
amosens:
daughter
apasoum:
opossum
apone:
cornbread
apooke:
tobacco
arakun:
raccoon; literally, "the one who scratches with his hands"
assapanick
: flying squirrel
attasskuss:
reed, water weed
attawp:
bow
attone:
arrow
aumoughhogh:
shield
case:
how many?
Cattapeuk:
spring
chammy:
a close friend
chepsin:
land or earth
Cohattayough:
summer
Cohonk:
winter, probably from the sound of geese calling
copotone:
sturgeon
crenepo:
woman
hatto:
small village
Huskanaw:
rite of passage ceremony for boys
ka:
what
kator:
truly
kekaten:
to ted
kekughes:
life
Kefgawes:
sun
kwiokosuk:
minor deities
mache:
now, at present
macokos:
gourd
Mamanatowic:
paramount chief
mangoi:
large or great
Manguahaian:
Great Bear or the Big Dipper constellation
maracocks:
passion fruit
maraowanchesso:
boy
marrapough:
enemy
maskapow:
worst enemy
matah:
bad
matchcore:
skin or garment
matchqueon:
stone dust sprinkled onto body paint
mattasin:
copper; literally, "red stone"
mattoume:
large cane grass
mawchick chammay:
best of friends
messamines:
fox grape
mockasin:
shoe
monacock:
batonlike weapon, a wooden "sword"
mowchick:
I
musquaspenne:
bloodroot, dried root used as medicine or dye
muscascus:
muskrat
musses:
firewood, pieces of wood
nechaun:
child (my child)
neheigh:
to dwell
nemarough:
man
nepawweshowgh:
moon
Nepinough:
season of corn forming ears
nettoppew:
friend (my friend)
noughmass:
fish
ocoughtanamins:
chokecherry
Okeus:
stern god who governs human affairs on earth
osies:
heavens
pamesack:
knife
pausarowmena:
a dish made from boiled corn and beans; succotash
pawcorance:
an altar stone
pawpecone:
flute
pemmenaw:
thread made of grass fibers
pokatawe:
fire
poketawes:
corn
ponepope:
cornbread or corn pone
Popanow:
winter
puccahiccora:
drink made from hickory nuts
puccoon:
skin paint made from various plants such as bloodroot; literally "blood"
pummahumps:
star;
pummahumpal:
stars
pungwough:
powdered ashes of corn cobs, used as a seasoning
putchamins:
persimmon
quintans:
canoe;
quintansuk:
canoes quiyoughsokuk priest, also a term for a minor deity; literally means "upright ones" or "just ones"
rawcomenes:
gooseberry
rawcosowgh:
day
rawrenock
(roanoke): white-shed beads
righcomoughes:
death
sacahocan:
picture writing
sawwehone:
blood
shacquohocan:
a stone
suckahanna:
water
tamehakan:
tomahawk; literady, "chopper"
Taquitock:
autumn
Tassantassa:
newcomer or outsiders; Tassantassuk outsiders
tawnor:
where
tockahack:
pickax
tockawhough:
green arrow arum, tuckahoe
tomahak:
ax
toppquough:
night
tussan:
bed
ussawassin:
iron, silver, brass; literady, "yellow stone"
ustatahamen:
hominy
uttapitchewayne:
you he
utteke:
you go
vetchunquoyes:
bobcat
wassacan:
something that tastes spicy
waugh:
Powhatan word to express wonder, pronounced "wow!"
weanok:
sassafras
weghshaughes:
flesh or meat
werowance:
chief of a village; literally, "he is wealthy"
werowansqua:
female chief
wighwhip:
quickly
wingapo:
hello; literally, "good man"
wisakon or wighsakun:
medicine in general or a specific medicine made for "hurts and diseases" from milkweed
yihacan:
house
yowo:
this
yowrough:
far, far away

PHRASES

Casa cunncack, peya quagh acquintan uttasantasough?
In how many days will there come here any more English ships?
Ka katorawincs yowo?
What do you call this?
Kator neheigh mattagh neer uttapitchewayne.
Truly he is there, I do not lie.
Kekaten Pokahontas patiaquagh ningh tanks manotyens neer mowchick rawrenock audowgh.
Bid Pokohontas bring here two little baskets, and I will give her white beads for a necklace.
Mache, neheigh yowrough, Orapaks
.
Now he lives far away at Orapaks.
Mowchick woyawgh tawgh noetragh kaquere mecher?
I am very hungry, what shall I eat?
Spaughtynere keragh werowance Mawmarinough kekaten wawgh.
Run you to the werowance Mawmarynough and bid him come here.
Tawnor neheigh Powhatan?
Where lives Powhatan?
Uttapitchewayne anpechitchs nehawper werowocomoco.
You lie, he stays at Werowocomoco.
Utteke, e peya weyack wighwhip.
You go, and come again quickly.

NUMBERS

necut:
one
ningh:
two
nuss:
three
yowgh:
four
paranske:
five
comotinch:
six
toppawass:
seven
nusswash:
eight
kekatawgh:
nine
kaskeke:
ten

ninghsapooeksku:
twenty
nussapooeksku:
thirty
yowghapooeksku:
forty
parankestasspooesku:
fifty
comotinchtasspooesku:
sixty
toppawasstasspooesku:
seventy
nusswashtasspooesku:
eighty
kekatawghtasspooesku:
ninety
necuttoughtysinough:
one hundred
necuttweunquaough:
one thousand

PLACE NAMES

Chesepiock
: Chesapeake Bay
Chickahominy:
name of a river and also the Native people to the north of the Powhatans, not part of Powhatan's alliance
Kecoughtan:
village at the head of the Chesapeake Bay
Paspahegh:
Powhatan village on whose hunting lands Jamestown is built
Powhatan:
principal village of the Powhatans upriver on the "James River," near the falls, where the werowance is one of Powhatan's sons
Rasawrack
: literally, "in between" or "at the fork"; hunting camp where Smith is taken; also the name of the chief town of the Monacans
Werowocomoco:
Powhatan's town, about fifteen miles north of Jamestown

NATIVE PEOPLE

Amocis:
Powhatan man sent to observe the English
Naukaquawis:
Pocahontas's brother
Nauiraus:
Appamattuck man who guides Smith
Opechancanough:
youngest half brother of Powhatan
Opitchapam:
Younger, lame brother of Powhatan
Opposunoquonuske:
weroansqua of the Appamattucks
Pocahontas/Matoaka/Amonute:
favorite daughter of Powhatan
Powhatan/Wahunsonacock:
Mamanatowic (paramount chief) of the Powhatan people
Rawhunt:
elderly aide to Powhatan
Uttomatomakkin:
Powhatan priest
Wowinchopunck:
werowance of Paspahegh

I have tried to set the tone for each of the chapters by beginning them, in the case of John Smith, with a quote taken from a writer of the period, and, in the case of Pocahontas, with a Powhatan story. It is easy to indicate the sources of those quotes from the English (and one Spanish) chroniclers of the early seventeeth century. But where did I find the Powhatan stories?

I have reconstructed a series of tales by working from a combination of written documents, oral tradition, and intuition. John Smith's voluminous writings, of course, provide one source of such information, since he often describes Powhatan Indian customs and traditions with some accuracy—despite the fact that his interpretations are sometimes wrong. But other writers of the period also provide insights into Powhatan story-telling.

The History of Travel into Virginia Brittania
was completed by William Strachey in 1612. It then reposed in manuscript form in the British Library for 237 years before being published in 1849 by the Hakluyt Society. In Chapter 7 of that volume can be found a relatively detailed telling of the Great Hare creation story, as it was related to Captain Samuel Argall by Henry Spelman, a teenage English boy who had been sent to live
among the Indians and learn their language. (Spelman became a friend of Pocahontas's, and she saved his life on at least one occasion.) Certain other stories, which I have either read or heard in fragments, I have tried to reconstruct, keeping in mind the structure of Algonquin languages and the Powhatan worldview.

Two of the stories I attribute to the Powhatan people in this work of fiction are stories that, for a number of reasons, I believe were part of the Powhatan traditional canon of tales. These stories were known among Algonquin nations to the north and south of the Powhatans, and certain stories—such as that of the Great Bear or of Raccoon and his black mask—appear to have been almost universally known among the many Algonquin peoples. We come by stories in many ways—by listening to elders, by reading, by watching the natural world, and by hearing them on the wind. More than once I have told a tale that I thought had come to me purely from my imagination, only to find it was, indeed, a traditional story.

In short, all of the tellings in this book are in my own words, but they are firmly based on Powhatan and eastern Algonquin traditions.

The writing of this novel required a great deal of research and thought over many years. I have long been interested in the story of the Jamestown Colony and its impact on the lives of the Powhatan peoples, who both resisted and assisted those frequently wrongheaded first colonists. The real stories of John Smith and Pocahontas have seldom been fully told, much as they are a part of the popular imagination—even more since the highly distorted Disney movie a few years ago. To tell this story well, I thought, more than one voice and more than one point of view would be needed.

I then chose to look through the eyes of both the original Americans and the newcomers from England. I needed to see the same events from a European perspective at one moment and from an Indian one at the next. I found myself thankful for having studied the Elizabethan period while an undergraduate at Corned University and having maintained an interest in the poetry and drama of the early seventeenth century (including teaching and producing the plays of Shakespeare in Ghana, West Africa, where I was a volunteer teacher from 1966 to 1969). The many English chroniclers who wrote so wed and so much about this period from firsthand knowledge of the events
were much like Shakespeare in their love for and their intoxication with the English language. There is real music in the turns of phrase to be found in the journals of John Smith, the observations of George Percy and Gabriell Archer, and even in Edward Maria Wingfield's self-serving
A Discourse of Virginia.
For anyone wishing to gain a sense of that period as described by such chroniclers, I highly recommend Edward Wright Haile's marvelous 1998 compilation,
Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony.
Interested readers might then move on to Philip L. Barbour's quite amazing three-volume set,
The Complete Works of Captain John Smith.

Virginia has an incredibly rich history. Regular summer trips to visit my great-uncle Orvis Dunham in Warm Springs, Virginia, were an important part of my childhood and first sparked my interest in Jamestown. Back then, though, half a century ago, there was much less to see at Jamestown than there is now. The fifteen-hundred-acre island, which became part of the Colonial National Historical Park in 1933, is largely deserted, and the loop road that runs through the island passes through forests and marshes that look much as they did five centuries ago. However, there is now a National Parks Service visitors' center that shows a fine film about the hardships of the first years of Jamestown.

It was long thought that the James River, which shifted its banks over the centuries, had washed away all that remained of Jamestown. However, in the late 1980s, archaeologists found the site of the Jamestown settlement and, in 1996, the footprint of the first fort. Although a few memorials stand on the island (including awful statues of a massively heroic John Smith and a rather pathetic Pocahontas dressed like a Plains Indian), no one lives there today and a visitor can easily find enough solitude to
imagine what it was like when those first three ships swam into view.

To see those three ships, or at least accurate, seaworthy replicas of them, one only needs to drive back across the narrow bridge from Jamestown Island to visit the state-run living history museum of Jamestown Settlement. Tied up to the pier are brightly painted, fully functioning reproductions of the 116-foot-long
Susan Constant,
the
Godspeed\
and the
Discovery
(which is about the size of a school bus). The accurate (though, of course, sanitized) details of the stockaded fort and re-created Powhatan Indian village are further brought to life by the wed-informed people who work there, dressed in the clothing of the period and engaged in the everyday activities of the first decades of the settlement. A number of the surviving tribal nations of Virginia take an active part in the Jamestown Settlement Museum, not only as reenactors, but also in the annual Virginia Indian Heritage Festival, which takes place there every June and is cosponsored by the Virginia Indian Council. For more information and a listing of the many special events at Jamestown Settlement, visit its Web site at
www.nps.gov/colo
or cad (757) 229-1607.