For forty years after Jamestown was founded in 1607, English settlers and Tsenacomoco, a political alliance of six core tribes and more than twenty smaller chiefdoms, were at intermittent war over scarce resources and territory.
The tribal alliance was already well-established by that time, as pressures from population growth and the Little Ice Age had increased conflicts with tribes from other regions who had moved south into what is now Virginia. When the conflicts with the English began, the alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians had about 15,000 members from the coast to the Piedmont and was led by Chief Powhatan. They were a formidable force.
There were three Anglo-Powhatan Wars, dating from 1609 to 1614, 1622 to 1632, and 1644 to 1646. In 1646, two of the Tsenacomoco alliance’s core tribes signed a peace treaty with the British, ending the Third Anglo-Powhatan War. Under this treaty, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi tribes became subject to English rule and the first reservations (tracts of land for indigenous people to live on as colonizers took over the region) were established. Those reservations, among the oldest in the nation, stand today. The treaty also exempted the tribes from state taxes, as long as they offered tributes to the governor each year. These gifts varied from beaver pelts to ducks, rockfish, deer, goose, and turkey.
Three hundred and seventy-seven years later, the two tribes still honor that treaty and deliver yearly tributes to the Governor’s Mansion. On the fourth Wednesday of November, the chiefs travel to Capitol Square to offer game in lieu of taxes. Last year, they offered Governor Glenn Youngkin two deer. The tradition also includes a drum dance and personal gifts, which in the past have included a command stick, pottery, jewelry, peace pipes, and rattles.
The Pamunkey tribe – four of its members are pictured here – offered their tribute to Governor John Dalton in 1979. Their chief, Tecumseh Deerfoot Cook, who led the Tribe from 1942 to 1984, dances at far left. The Pamunkeys were the largest and most powerful of the Powhatan Confederation when the British settlers arrived and still hold the 1200-acre King William County reservation established in the 1646 treaty. Researchers believe these indigenous people have been in this area for 12,000 years. In 2015, the Pamunkey became the first federally-recognized tribe in the Commonwealth of Virginia
