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That Properly Belongs
to Every Christian Man, 1708 | Virginia Indian Women
The social roles and political authority of women in Tsenacommacah,
as the Powhatans called what became Virginia, were in some respects
different than in England or in English Virginia, but when the first
colonists found that some Powhatan tribes were under the rule of
women, they did not think that was remarkable. It was only four
years since the death of their Queen Elizabeth. The colonists simply
applied the familiar term "queen" to those Native American rulers.
In Powhatan society, authority to rule descended through women. The
son of a chief, or king, did not inherit his father's office;
rather, the son of a chief's sister became the new chief.
Gabriel Archer employed the same masculine language of royalty that
Elizabeth had used about herself when he wrote about meeting
Opossunoquonuske, the Queen of Appomattac, on 26 May 1607. Compared
with the paramount chief, Powhatan, she arrived "rather wth more
majesty: she had an usher before her who brought her to the matt
prepared under a faire mulbery tree, where she satt her Downe by her
selfe wth a stayed Countenance. she would permitt none to stand or
sitt neere her: she is a fatt lustie manly woman: she had much
Copper about her neck, a Crownet of Copper upon her hed: she had
long black haire, wch hanged loose downe her back to her myddle. . .
. she is subject to Pawatah as the rest are; yet wthn herselfe of as
greate authority." ["A relatyon of the Discovery of our River, from
James Forte into the Maine," 21 May–21 June 1607, British Public
Record Office, Colonial Office 1/1, fol. 49v]
Petition of the Queen In behalf of her self and her Nation. 1
November 1718. Manuscript. RG 1, Colonial Papers Collection, folder
29, no. 12. In this petition to Alexander Spotswood,
lieutenant governor of Virginia, Ann “the Queen of Pamunky” “in
behalfe of her selfe & her Nation Of Pamunkey Indians” asked that
the Virginia government no longer give patents for land lying near
the Indian reservation and to preserve the rights of the Pamunkey to
their “Indian Town.”
Petition of the Queen and the
Great Men of Pamunkey Town. Ca. 1705–1706. Manuscript. RG 1,
Colonial Papers Collection, folder 17, no. 27. |