Person:Wahunsenacawh (1)

Wauhunsenacawah "Powhatan"
  1. Catataugh
  2. Opitchapan
  3. Wauhunsenacawah "Powhatan"1547 - 1618
  1. Pocahontas1595 - 1617
m. 1590
  1. Nonoma "Cleopatra"1600 - 1680
Facts and Events
Name[4] Wauhunsenacawah "Powhatan"
Alt Name[1] Wahunsoncock
Alt Name[1] Ottaniack
Alt Name[1] Mannatowick
Alt Name[4] Chief Powhatan
Gender Male
Birth? 1547
Marriage 1590 Virginia, USA(Central Virginia)
to Winanuske Nonoma
Residence? 1607 Werowocomoco, Virginia, United Stateshis seat of power
Residence? 1609 New Kent, Virginia, United StatesOrapax Marker, approximate site of former Native Settlement
Residence? 1611 - 1614 King William, Virginia, United StatesMatchut (approximate) - He went further north, away a greater distance from the English to Matchut, near where his brother Opechancanough ruled at Youghtanund.
Death? 1618
Burial[2] Pamunkey Indian Reservation, King William, King William County, Virginia, USA

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Chief Powhatan (died 1618), whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh (sometimes spelled Wahunsonacock), was the paramount chief of Tsenacommacah, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia at the time English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Chief Powhatan. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Cridlin, William Broaddus. A history of colonial Virginia, the first permanent colony in America: to which is added the genealogy of the several shires and counties and population in Virginia from the first Spanish colony to the present. (Richmond [Virginia]: Williams Printing Co., c1923).

    In 1612 Pocahontas is said to have had living, twenty brothers, eleven sisters and eleven stepmothers. Her father's name was Wauhunsenacawah (Wahunsonacock) sometimes called Ottaniack, or Mannatowick, by his subjects, though we read of him only as Powhatan.

  2. Powhatan, in Find A Grave.
  3.   Campbell, Charles. History of the Colony and ancient Dominion of Virginia. (Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Co., 1965), 1860.

    "In April, 1618, Powhatan died, being upwards of seventy years of age. He was, perhaps, so called from one of his places of residence;[129:A] he was also sometimes styled Ottaniack, and sometimes Mamanatowick,[129:B] but his proper name was Wahunsonacock. The country subject to him was called Powhatan, as was likewise the chief river, and his subjects were called Powhatans. His hereditary domain consisted only of Powhatan, Arrohattox, Appamatuck, Youghtanund, Pamunkey, and Matapony, together with Werowocomoco and Kiskiack. All the rest were his conquests, and they consisted of the country on the James River and its branches, from its mouth to the falls, and thence across the country to the north, nearly as high as the falls of all the great rivers over the Potomac, as far as to the Patuxent in Maryland. Some nations on the Eastern Shore also owned subjection to this mighty werowance. In each of his several hereditary dominions he had houses built like arbors, thirty or forty feet long, and whenever he was about to visit one of these, it was supplied beforehand with provision for his entertainment. The English first met with him at a place of his own name, (which it still retains,) a short distance below the falls of James River, where now stands the picturesque City of Richmond.[129:C] His favorite residence was Werowocomoco, on the east [130]bank of what is now known as Timberneck Bay, on York River, in the County of Gloucester; but in his latter years, disrelishing the increasing proximity of the English, he withdrew himself to Orapakes, a hunting-town in the "desert," as it was called, more properly the wilderness, between the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey. It is not improbable that he died and was buried there, for a mile from Orapakes, in the midst of the woods, he had a house where he kept his treasure of furs, copper, pearl, and beads, "which he storeth up against the time of his death and burial."[130:A] This place is about twelve miles northeast from Richmond.

    At the time of the first settlement of the colony, Powhatan was usually attended, especially when asleep, by a body-guard of fifty tall warriors; he afterwards augmented the number to about two hundred. He had as many wives as he pleased, and when tired of any one of them, he bestowed her on some favorite. In the year 1608, by treachery, he surprised the Payanketanks, his own subjects, while asleep in their cabins, massacred twenty-four men, and made prisoners their werowance with the women and children, who were reduced to slavery. Captain Smith, himself a prisoner, saw at Werowocomoco the scalps of the slain suspended on a line between two trees. Powhatan caused certain malefactors to be bound hand and foot, then a great quantity of burning coals to be collected from a number of fires, and raked round in the form of a cock-pit, and the victims of his barbarity thrown in the midst and burnt to death.[130:B] He was not entirely destitute of some better qualities; in him some touches of princely magnanimity are curiously blended with huckstering cunning, and the tenderness of a doating father with the cruelty of an unrelenting despot.

    Powhatan was succeeded by his second brother, Opitchapan, sometimes called Itopatin, or Oeatan, who, upon his accession, again changed his name to Sasawpen; as Opechancanough, upon [131]the like occasion, changed his to Mangopeomen. Opitchapan being decrepid in body and inert in mind, was in a short time practically superseded in the government by his younger, bolder, and more ambitious brother, the famous Opechancanough; though for a time he was content to be styled the Werowance of Chickahominy. Both renewed the assurances of continued friendship with the English."

  4. 4.0 4.1 Chief Powhatan, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. (Online: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.).
  5.   Powhatan, in American National Biography Online.
  6.   Orapakes at
  7.   Strachey, WIlliam. The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia. (Hakluyt Society).

    The names of some of his [Powhatan's] women. Winganuske. Attosomiske. Ortoughnoiske. Ashetoiske. Ponnoiske. Oweroughwough. Amopotoiske. Appomosiscut. Ottermiske. Ottopomtacke. Appimmoiske. Memeoughquiske.

    I say they often reported unto us that Powhatan had then lyving twenty sonnes and ten daughters, besyde a young one by Winganuske, Machumps his sister, and a great darling of the king's; and besides, younge Pocohunta, a daughter of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymes past, nowe married to a private captaine, called Kocoum, some two yeares since.