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The Powhatan wars
The Powhatan confederacy was an association of some thirty nations in Virginia, held together by the leader Wahunsenacawh through kinship and tribute. The colony survived its first years only because the Powhatan chose to trade with it rather than destroy it — a choice later read as weakness rather than as policy. Pocahontas's story is almost entirely displaced by later retellings; she was a child when she met the colonists, was later held hostage, married John Rolfe who introduced tobacco, and died in England at twenty-one. After 1646 the Powhatan were subjected to tribute and fixed territories — the first reservations in British North America.
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