Podcasts about opechancanough

Many people are familiar with Powhatan, the Paramount Chief who ruled over a vast network of more than 30 tribes in the Chesapeake region when the English arrived in 1607. But it was Powhatan's brother, Opechancanough, who came closest to wiping out the English colony at Jamestown. Today, Lindsay is joined by Dr. James Horn, President of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. He's the author of A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America.Order your copy of the new American History Tellers book, The Hidden History of the White House, for behind-the-scenes stories of some of the most dramatic events in American history—set right inside the house where it happened.Listen to American History Tellers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. James Horn is President and Chief Officer of Jamestown Rediscovery (Preservation Virginia) at Historic Jamestowne.  Previously, he has served as Vice President of Research and Historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Saunders Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, and taught for twenty years at the University of Brighton, England.  He has been a Fulbright Scholar and held fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University, the College of William and Mary, and Harvard University.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.  A leading scholar of early Virginia and English America, Dr. Horn is the author and editor of numerous books and articles including three that we have leaned on extensively in this podcast, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America; 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy; and most recently A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. (I'll get a little tip if you buy them through the links above.) Our conversation focuses on the extraordinary life of Opechancanough, the fascinating man who twice led the Powhatan Confederacy in wars to expel English settlers from the James River and the Chesapeake.  As longstanding and attentive listeners know, Opechancanough may or may not have been the same man as Paquiquineo, taken by the Spanish in the Chesapeake in 1561, received in the court of Philip II, christened Don Luis de Velasco in Mexico City, and returned to his homeland in 1570. Jim persuades me that Opechancanough was, in fact, the same man.  Along the way I learn, a bit too late, how to pronounce various names properly. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast

It is early spring 1644, and Europeans are fighting Indians in New Netherland and Maryland. In Virginia, though, it is quiet. It has been twelve years since the Second Anglo-Powhatan war ended after a decade of fighting that began the day the sky fell, March 22, 1622.  On that date Opechancanough sprung his colony-wide ambush of the English settlements along the James.  Indian soldiers loyal to the Powhatan confederacy killed almost four hundred English and other European settlers on that day, and many more in the years that followed. But peace had come in 1632, and despite occasional crises that might have triggered war, the old chief had kept that peace.  We covered Opechancanough and the Second Anglo-Powhatan War in three episodes more than a year ago, “Who Was Opechancanough?,” “Opechancanough's War,” and “After the Sky Fell,” which are definitely useful background if you have not listened to them, or haven't listened to them in some time. The peace would end on April 18, 1644, and that is the story of this episode. X (Twitter): @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown Robert Beverley, The History & Present State of Virginia

When on April 9, 1865, Ulysses S Grant received the surrender of Robert E Lee, one of the staff officers who accompanied him was Ely S. Parker.  He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Union Army, an engineer, and a friend of Grants from Galena, Illinois. But he was also a member of the Wolf Clan of the Seneca, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee. And not only was he a member, but indeed the Sachem of the Six Nations. So it was that a man who was not actually a citizen of the United States drafte d the official copy of the terms of surrender which Grant and Lee signed. Parker was one in a lineage of people who shaped the modern conception of the Six Nations. He was preceded by his uncle Red Jacket, and succeeded by his friend and adopted Seneca tribe member Harriet Converse, and his nephew Arthur Parker.  All of them shaped a history of what Arthur Parker– in a ten-volume unpublished work–called “the amazing Iroquois “. John C. Winters describes their story in his new book The Amazing Iroquois and the Invention of the Empire State. He is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi.  For Further Investigation The most recent mention of the Haudenosaunee on the podcast was in my conversation with Dean Snow, an eminent archaeologist who has excavated numerous Haudenosaunee sites in New York State and beyond. An important conversation on reintegrating Native American history into a broader narrative was with Jim Horn, when we had a conversation about the great chieftain Opechancanough. And self-representation by native leaders was the focus of an old conversation with my colleague Jane Simonsen, way back in Episode 58: What Black Hawk Wore "Red Jacket's Peace Medal returned to Seneca Nation after 116 years at Buffalo museum" Seneca-Iroquois National Museum Arthur Parker, Seneca Myths and Folktales Letter from Ely S. Parker to Harriet Converse   Al: So throughout the book, you play around with this idea of Iroquois exceptionalism. If my old [00:02:00] professor, David Hollinger, was on the podcast, he would immediately protest that American exceptionalism is wrongly used. It was invented by Stalin or the head of the Communist Party or something like that. But we won't get into that. You're enjoying playing around with Iroquois versus American exceptionalism, but defining our terms, what is Iroquois exceptionalism? I trust that it's not that Iroquois lacked a feudal class so that therefore their approach to post capitalism or socialism is different. John: No. No, not quite. What at this notion of Iroquois exceptionalism is of course at the heart of the book, but it's an invented category though, similarly, so it is really Capturing the idea that the Iroquois have this unique place in American history. If you're walking down the street in New York City or you're moving through New York State and you ask people what do you know of the Iroquois? Or have you heard of the Iroquois? The responses that [00:03:00] often spring to mind are these exceptional things like the Skywalkers, right? The Iroquoian steel workers most of them Mohawks, who are building the Empire State Building, and basically New York City's skyline, not only using Iroquoian mussel, but also Iroquoian steel. Some of them who have more like anthropological interests and maybe political theoretical interests are really interested in this idea that the Iroquois in effect invented modern American women's. Rights because as a matrilineal society, the Iroquois had this or granted women this extraordinary and exceptional power. So during the mid 19th through the early 20th century, we see lots of these suffrage reformers turn to the, I Iroquois to say, if we America, the United States, this progressive white nation can't [00:04:00] even do the same thing that these unquote Savage Indian are. Na, sa quote unquote, Savage Indian neighbors are doing and granting women equal repres...

The founding of Maryland was contentious, because its territory falls within the original mandate of the Virginia Company.  Longstanding and attentive listeners may recall that the patent from James I in 1606 conferred the right to settle along the Atlantic coast between 34 and 40 degrees, or from roughly Wilmington, North Carolina to Seaside Heights, New Jersey.  The Crown revoked the Virginia Company's charter in 1624, after the catastrophe of Opechancanough's war, and thereafter it was a Crown Colony with a royal governor. On the one hand, that changed the legal rights of the colonists, as they would eventually find out. On the other, it seemed like a mere governance change, because in the revocation of the charter and the establishment of the Crown Colony, James wasn't very clear about the borders changing. That would become a problem when his son, Charles I, granted Cecil Calvert, the Second Lord Baltimore, the right to settle around the middle and northern Chesapeake for the annual rent of "two Indian arrows." Virginians, who were already there, were more than a little grumpy about that. Lawsuits would be filed, shots would be fired, and men would be hung. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode George Bancroft, History Of The United States Of America, Volume 1 Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645–1646 Manfred Jonas, "The Claiborne-Calvert Controversy: An Episode in the Colonization of North America," Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien, 1966. J. Herbert Claiborne, "William Claiborne of Kent Island," The William and Mary Quarterly, April 1921.

We are back in Virginia. Opechancanough's attack of March 22, 1622, the day the sky fell, has knocked the English back on their heels, but not out of Virginia. In this episode, the English react, both with domestic controversy and military force. The Virginia Company invents corporate "damage control." King James I gives the Company all the obsolete weapons in his armory. Within a year after sky fall, more than 900 English will have died from fighting or starvation. Indian deaths may well have been more. Opechancanough asks for a cease fire, and the English agree. Or do they? Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown

After some English killed one of Opechancanough's most celebrated warriors, Nemattanew, in the belief that he had killed an English trader, the great chief Opechancanough reassured Sir George Yeardley, the governor of the English in Virginia, that “the Sky should sooner fall than Peace be broken.” This was part of Opechancanough's extraordinarily disciplined eight year campaign to lull the overconfident English into complacency, and then ambush them. The sky would indeed fall on March 22, 1622, and the Powhatan Confederacy would kill 347 English, other Europeans, and Africans in an all-out push to eject the English from their lands. It almost succeeded. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Facebook: The History of the Americans Podcast Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown Jamestowne Society

Don Luis murders the Jesuits at Ajacan

On April 20, 2022, historian James Horn delivered the 2022 Stuart G. Christian, Jr. Lecture about his book, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. In 1561, an Indian youth was abducted from Virginia by Spanish explorers and taken to Spain. Called by the Spanish Paquiquineo and subsequently Don Luís, he was introduced to King Philip II in Madrid, as well as to influential Catholic prelates and courtiers, before being sent back to America to help with the conversion of Indian peoples. In Mexico City, he converted to Catholicism and after many years was eventually able to secure his return to his homeland on the York River as a guide to a small group of Jesuits. There, he quickly organized a war party to destroy the mission and everyone associated with it. During the remainder of the sixteenth century, he and his brother, Powhatan, built a massive chiefdom that stretched from the James River to the Potomac, and from the coast to the piedmont. When the English arrived in Virginia in 1607, he and his brother chief launched a series of attacks on the settlers in an attempt to drive them out. These wars, the first Anglo-Indian wars in North America, spanned the greater part of the next four decades. Known by the English as Opechancanough, he was ultimately unsuccessful but would come closer than any of his peers in early America to succeeding. He survived to be nearly 100 years old and died, as he lived, fighting European colonists. James Horn is the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation at Historic Jamestowne, the original site of the first permanent English settlement in America. He is author and editor of eight books on early America, including 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy and A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. His most recent book, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America, was published last November. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Opechancanough, paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, launches another surprise attack on Virginia. Check out the podcast website Check out Pax Britannica Merch! Facebook | Twitter | Patreon | Donate Check out Why Tho? A Personal Journey Through my Record Collection: https://pod.link/1581184036 For this episode, I found the following publications particularly useful: Pestana, Carla, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661, Harvard University Press, 2007 Pestana, Carla, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World Montgomery, Dennis. 1607: Jamestown and the New World, Billings, Warren M., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century : A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1700 Ronald L. Heinemann, John G. Kolp, Anthony S. Parent Jr., William G. Shade, Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607–2007 Adams, Lars C. '"The Battle of Weyanoke Creek": A Story of the Third Anglo-Powhatan War in Early Carolina.' Native South 6 (2013) Treaty Ending the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1646): https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/treaty-ending-the-third-anglo-powhatan-war-1646/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode we conclude John Smith's run at Jamestown -- he will depart on October 4, 1609 after a severe injury and, more relevantly, having been demoted after having lost corporate political battles inside the Virginia Company. Along the way we meet the first English women at Jamestown, consider the "coronation" of Powhatan, witness exciting exotic dancing, see Smith outwit both Powhatan and Opechancanough on the same trip for food, and be there when Pocahontas rescued Smith for the second time, or maybe only the first. Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Selected references for this episode James Horn, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation Star Trek, the "balance of power" exchange from "A Private Little War"

It is late May, 1607, and Jamestown has survived the first organized attack against the settlement, this time from an alliance of five tribes from the Powhatan Confederacy. Captain Christopher Newport and John Smith don't know this yet, because they have taken twenty-two men in their boat and were exploring up the James River. There they hear about a "paramount chief" for the first time, and the large tribal confederacy that confronts them. As the summer and fall of 1607 grinds on, disease, starvation, and Indian attacks afflict the colonists, and more than half will die before the end of the year. John Ratcliffe replaces Edward-Maria Wingfield as president of the colony, but John Smith is its chief operating officer, rallying the men to build houses an clear fields, and trading with the local tribes for food. While exploring upriver, he is captured by the military leader of the Powhatans, Opechancanough. Smith eventually meets the paramount chief Powhatan. The episode closes with a first look at the famous scene in which Pocahontas either saved John Smith's life, or didn't! Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2 Selected resources for this episode James Horn, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation

James Horn is a native of England who now resides in Virginia and works in Williamsburg, which makes sense if you know his scholarship. He has a new book out, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. His book examines the crucial early years of the English colonies, which involved starvation, warfare, disease, and even cannibalism. While Jamestown is the first permanent English colony in America, it came close to annihilation in the early 1600s. Opechancanough waged war against the English for decades, but he had a long relationship with European settlers. Born in the mid-16th century, his life spanned over 90s years. He was abducted and traveled to Mexico and Europe as a young man. He remained loyal to the native people of Virginia, however, and proved a fierce adversary of the English.  Colin also asks about Jim's upbringing in England, his early travels in America (involving a semester in Wisconsin and a memorable trip across country via Greyhound bus), and his eventual move to Richmond.   

1607, and in the wilderness of Virginia, a tiny, pallisaded fort containing some one hundred English settlers clings on grimly and awaits salvation and resupply. Beset by internal feuds and attacks by the local Indians, the outpost continues to endure.  Theirs is a tale of stoicism and woe.  A relentless period of endurance and fear.  Conditions become so terrible that some are driven to eat their own compatriots and the worst offenders are burnt at the stake by authorities desperate to maintain control.  Outside, the Indians prowl with their turkey spur arrowheads and bone spears.  Should the settlers fall into their hands, they face being jointed and flayed alive with sharpened mussels shells.  This is the story of the first European colony in North America.So it GoesTom Assheton & James Jackson Readings by David Hartley:'Cradle' by James Jackson See also:https://www.instagram.com/bloodyviolenthistory/https://www.jamesjacksonbooks.comhttps://www.tomtom.co.uk If you enjoy the podcast, would you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify or Google Podcast App? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really helps to spread the word See https://simplecast.com/privacy/ for privacy information

Berkeley returns from England to find the Powhatan War mismanaged.  Calvert returns from Virginia to reinstate Maryland's Proprietary government.  But ... the last remaining Royalist port, Bristol, falls, an event which spells trouble for all American colonies, not just Royalist ones.  Also, Opechancanough is murdered.  

In which continued English expansion beyond the James River brought the English into conflict with the Powhatan Tribes and to an extent themselves.

In which the fallout from Opechancanough's 1622 Massacre reaches England and brings the Virginia Company to her death.

In which the events leading up to and of the infamous 1622 Opechancanough led massacre are narrated.

In which Smith and his men endure a winter storm plagued journey to Werowocomoco, dodge death at Powhatan's hands, and then confront Opechancanough in a deadly standoff.

In which details about John Smith's early life are recounted as a segue into his early attempts to save Jamestown from collapse. Along the way, Opechancanough, Powhatan, and Pocahontas are met.

In which Virginia's History explodes into life through the events surrounding Don Luis and the Spanish Ajacan Mission.

In 1607 Indians of Virginia’s Tidewater discovered they had new neighbors on the James River. Their leaders, Powhatan and Opechancanough, countered the English threat in different ways.