and their house is open to every Indian.” If a chief violated that custom, he
paid heavily, perhaps even with his life. When Pontiac, the great hero of the
revolt of 1763 by the Indian peoples of inner America against the British,
made the mistake of acting like an autocratic ruler, his followers killed him.
As Richard White has written, his assassination was “a monument to the
limits of chieftainship.”
Third, unlike European monarchs, werowances were not war leaders.
That role was vested in a man known on the Chesapeake as a cawcawaas-
soughor, as the English called him, a cockoroose. Among the Seneca he
was the “great war soldier” (Iroquoian,hos-gä-ä-geh’-da-go-wä). The attrib-
utes of the two positions of leadership shaped their holders: the war leaders
were expected to be violent, impulsive, brave, and occasionally cruel,
whereas the political leader was to be moderate and wise. Promotion from
war leader to political leader was expected to effect this transition. How
such men were chosen can be reasonably guessed. A successful hunter was
always sought out by the aged, the sick, and the indigent. Moreover, the less
capable tended to gravitate toward men with reputations as good shots and
skilled trackers. As Harold Driver commented, “This was the lowest level
of leadership and political organization.”
From time to time among the Indians, as among Europeans, a leader
arose who transcended these restraints. Such a man, if we can believe
William Strachey, was the first ruler encountered by the English, Powhatan.
“Powhatan” was probably not a given name but a title—the English often
referred to him as “the Powhatan,” as they were accustomed to refer to Irish
clan leaders. Both Strachey and Captain John Smith thought of him as an
emperor (Algonquian,mamantowick). Powhatan did, indeed, rule over
twenty-eight villages containing perhaps 13,000 people in an area about a
quarter the size of what became the state of Virginia. He was obviously
keen to impress the English, and he certainly did. They portrayed him as
the contemporary English imagined the Ottoman sultans, Persian shahs, or
Mughal emperors, inflicting “Oriental” tortures and having “as many
women as he will, and hath (as is supposed) many more than one hundred.
All which he doth not keepe, yet as the Turke in one Saraglia or howse.” If
Strachey’s portrait was accurate, Powhatan’s despotic government was cer-
tainly an exception among the East Coast Indians.
The Native Americans 17