A Brave and Cunning Prince

A new historical biography of Powhatan Confederacy paramount chief Opechancanough (ca. 1547–1646) and his leadership against the threat posed by English colonization in the Chesapeake Bay (present-day Virginia). Historian Horn (1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy) contends that relations between the Powhatan people, other Indigenous nations, and the English were constantly shifting. This book complicates centuries of mainstream historiography and the narrative that the Powhatan people helped early English colonies survive. In Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2006 Mayflower, the relationship between colonists and Indigenous peoples was described as at least somewhat more complex; based on mutual benefit, wariness, and antagonism. Horn argues that Opechancanough recognized the threat posed by English invaders because he had lived through attempts at colonization by the Spanish and the English. By consolidating Indigenous alliances against the English and adeptly leading strategic raids on the near-death Jamestown Colony, Opechancanough came “very close” to driving the English out of Virginia, Horn contends, but his efforts were ultimately thwarted, in part by rival tribes that allied with the colonists.