Pocahontas may be the most famous Native American who ever lived, but during the
settlement of Jamestown, and for two centuries afterward, the great chiefs Powhatan and
Opechancanough were the subjects of considerably more interest and historical documentation than the
young woman. It was Opechancanough who captured the foreign captain "Chawnzmit"--John
Smith. Smith gave Opechancanough a compass, described to him a spherical earth that revolved around
the sun, and wondered if his captor was a cannibal. Opechancanough, who was no cannibal and knew the
world was flat, presented Smith to his elder brother, the paramount chief Powhatan. The chief, who
took the name of his tribe as his throne name (his personal name was Wahunsenacawh), negotiated with
Smith over a lavish feast and opened the town to him, leading Smith to meet, among others,
Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas. Thinking he had made an ally, the chief finally released
Smith. Within a few decades, and against their will, his people would be subjects of the British
Crown.Despite their roles as senior politicians in these watershed
events, no biography of either Powhatan or Opechancanough exists. And while there are other
"biographies" of Pocahontas, they have for the most part elaborated on her legend more
than they have addressed the known facts of her remarkable life. As the 400th anniversary of
Jamestown's founding approaches, nationally renowned scholar of Native Americans, Helen
Rountree, provides in a single book the definitive biographies of these three important figures. In
their lives we see the whole arc of Indian experience with the English settlers - from the
wary initial encounters presided over by Powhatan, to the uneasy diplomacy characterized by the
marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, to the warfare and eventual loss of native sovereignty that
came during Opechancanough's reign.Writing from an ethnohistorical perspective that
looks as much to anthropology as the written records, Rountree draws a rich portrait of Powhatan
life in which the land and the seasons governed life and the English were seen not as heroes but as
Tassantassas (strangers), as invaders, even as squatters. The Powhatans were a nonliterate people,
so we have had to rely until now on the white settlers for our conceptions of the Jamestown
experiment. This important book at last reconstructs the other side of the story.