“Divers Seats Or Houses”:
Powhatan’s Capital Towns

By Nancy Egloff, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Historian

Jamestown served as Virginia’s first permanent English capital for almost a century, until the capital was relocated in 1699 to Williamsburg, a healthier location with a larger population. It moved again near the end of the Revolutionary War to Richmond, to be located closer to the state’s center of population as people migrated to the west.

Just as Virginia’s English seat of power shifted twice, so did the capital of the paramount chief of Virginia’s Powhatan Indians. Wahunsenacawh, also known as Powhatan, was born in the town of Powhatan on the James River near present-day Richmond. After he inherited the role of paramount chief, he relocated his political seat of power to Werowocomoco, a more central location within his expanding chiefdom. This town on the north shore of the York River had served as a place of native political and sacred power for centuries. After the arrival of the English, Captains John Smith and Christopher Newport visited Powhatan at Werowocomoco several times. In recent years archaeologists and historians have determined Werowocomoco’s importance through the discovery of high-status artifacts and trade goods, as well as the location of specialized features on the landscape.

During the first two years of the English presence in Virginia, Anglo-Powhatan relations were tenuous but generally peaceful. However, a major seven-year drought in the area began to have an effect on interactions by late 1608. A growing number of English immigrants needed a larger food supply. The Powhatan people were reluctant to trade their limited supply of corn and game, and John Smith commanded the English to take food by force. In the winter of 1608-9 Smith traveled to Werowocomoco to obtain food from Powhatan. He then went up the Pamunkey River, seizing food from groups along the way. Heading back downriver, Smith stopped at Werowocomoco again and found the chief had moved his entire town: He [Powhatan] tooke so little pleasure in our neare neighbourhood, that [we] were able to visit him against his will in 6 or 7 houres, that he retired himself to a place in the deserts at the top of the river Chickamania . . . His habitation there is called Orapacks where he ordinarily now resideth. This town in the wildernesse was near the modern community of Bottoms Bridge at the headwaters of the Chickahominy River, a tributary of the James.

Orapaks became Powhatan’s new “seat of power.” John Smith wrote that Powhatan was attended by a guard of 40 or 50 of the tallest men his Country doth afford. Every night upon the 4 quarters of his house are 4 Sentinels . . . A mile away in a thicket of wood he [Powhatan] hath a principal house in which he keepeth his kind of Treasure, as skinnes, copper, pearle, and beades, which he storeth up against the time of his death and burial. Here also is his store of red paint for ointment, and bowes and arrows. English interpreter Henry Spelman, who lived with Powhatan at this time, wrote that the temple in Orapaks contained the beades or Crowne or Bedd which the King of England sent him and which Christopher Newport gave to Powhatan while the Indian leader still lived at Werowocomoco. When Powhatan moved his seat of power, he also moved his prized possessions.

Powhatan lived at Orapaks for about five years, during the first Anglo-Powhatan war. During this time his warriors raided the growing English settlements and took prisoners, tools and weapons. In retaliation the English kidnapped his daughter Pocahontas in 1613 to force him to stop the raids and to return the prisoners and stolen items. By March 1614, when Powhatan had not agreed to their terms, a large force of Englishmen planned to confront him and learned that he had moved his capital again.

Powhatan’s capital Matchcot is shown in the upper right corner of a 17th-century engraving in the collection of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. The engraving depicts Pocahontas, surrounded by Englishmen, meeting several of her brothers in March 1614.

Matchcot became Powhatan’s new chiefe habitation. Ralph Hamor described Matchcot as being three score miles distant from us, being seated at the head almost of Pamaunkie River. Powhatan probably moved there to be near the heavily populated Pamunkey region, which could offer him the best protection from the English. He still did not meet English demands but did consent to a marriage between Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Soon the war ended, and later that year Powhatan told Ralph Hamor that he was old, and would gladly end my days in peace, so as if the English offer me injury, my country is large enough, I will remove myself farther from you. In his old age, Powhatan began to relinquish his dealings with the English to his brother Opechancanough.

In 1616 the English recorded that Powhatan had gone Southwards (location unknown) and speculated that Opechancanough was conspiring against Powhatan for control of the chiefdom. While Powhatan tried to keep peaceful relations with the English,his brother stirred up the Indians with hopes of rebelling against the settlers. In 1618 Powhatan died. His power passed nominally to his weaker brother Opitchapam, chief of the Pamunkey people, but actually to his more forceful brother, Opechancanough, whose seat of power was in the upper Pamunkey River region.

Powhatan had placed Opechancanough as the chief of the Youghtanund people who lived up the Pamunkey River close to present-day Hanover. But due to the fluidity of tribal boundaries he sometimes resided with Opitchapam’s people at their stronghold at Menapucunt, just above today’s West Point. Because of his strong personality, Opechancanough may have controlled both regions simultaneously upon taking power at Powhatan’s death.