Monacan Millennium by Jeffrey L. Hantman

Author:Jeffrey L. Hantman [Hantman, Jeffrey L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology, History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9780813941486
Google: luhWDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2018-10-23T01:07:52+00:00

FOUR

Colonial Entanglements

Why Was Jamestown “Allowed” to Survive?

IN THIS CHAPTER I examine the engagement between the Powhatans and the English at Jamestown in 1607 and the role of the Piedmont Monacans in the events that transpired in that curious and critical moment. The boundaries of Monacan territory were changing and permeable in multiple directions. Yet, when asked by John Smith how many worlds he knew, the Piedmont Siouan Amoroleck answered that “he knew only three that were under the skie that covered him, which were the Powhatans, the Monacans and the Massawomecks.” Beyond that, he said, he knew nothing because “the woods were not burnt” (no one lived there) (Barbour 1986, II: 175–76.) The Monacans in this time were distinct from their neighbors and conceived as such by one of their own.

The seven centuries prior to European colonization were characterized by the formation of increasingly bounded polities across the Middle Atlantic region, a phenomenon with some evidence (e.g., pottery, language) extending back as early as A.D. 200. In the early colonial era, the apparent dialectic between the Powhatans and Monacans is enlightening. As explained in the introduction, my reading of the ethnohistoric literature of the early Jamestown era suggests that it is the opposition between the Powhatans and the Monacans that serves to define each polity in its internal sociopolitical and economic structure and in its foreign relations. Not only their enmity and their exchange relations but also their contested and shifting boundary at the falls of the rivers define each people at the moment of European settlement. Early English colonists believed this, too, offering almost as soon as they arrived in Virginia that they were here for the Powhatans, to defeat a common Monacan enemy. As detailed in chapter 1, based on some prior knowledge, the English concocted a story of Monacan aggression to persuade the Powhatans of that shared enemy immediately upon their entry into the Chesapeake Bay.

Understanding the history of this opposition, as well as English misunderstandings of the opposition’s fluidity over time, helps us address the puzzle of why 104 Englishmen were allowed to settle in the territory of some 14,000 Powhatans and establish a beachhead for the first permanent English colony in America. Addressing this particular question provides critical understandings of both Monacan and Powhatan cultures in this early colonial moment and establishes a foundation from which to understand the radical social transformations to come over the next four hundred years.

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