The Starving Time

The English of these years spelled as they heard, and they heard the Powhatan language through English ears. Percy, Smith, Spelman and Hamor each wrote the same chief, town or river their own way, and none of them was consistent. In the narrative I have used one form for each person and place, usually the form most readers will meet in other books and on modern maps, and kept the forms used in the first book of this series. Inside quotation marks every source keeps its own spelling, so a name may appear one way in my sentence and another in the colonist's.

Powhatan. The word is the paramount chief's title and the name the English called him by; it was also the name of a town at the falls of the James and of the river itself. In this book Powhatan alone always means the man. His personal name, Wahunsenacah, appears once. The people of his chiefdom are "the Powhatans", and each people within it has its own name: the Paspaheghs, the Pamunkeys, the Kecoughtans, the Appamattucks, the Nansemonds and the rest. The chiefdom's own name for its country, Tsenacommacah, is given once. The chief at the falls, to whom Smith left Henry Spelman, appears in Spelman's pages as "the litell Powhatan", and here as the little Powhatan.

Pocahontas is the name the English knew her by, and the sources write it Pocahuntas, Pokahuntas and other ways. Her other names, Amonute and Matoaka, are given once. The English later called her Rebecca, but no document in this book gives that name, and it does not appear here.

Powhatan's brothers. Opechancanough is Dale's "Opochankano" and "Opocankano". Ralph Hamor names another brother, Apachamo, whom he calls Powhatan's successor; he is kept here as a separate man under Hamor's name (see the notes to Chapter 20).

Other Powhatan names. Japazaws, the Patawomeck man who was Argall's friend, is Hamor's "Iapazeus". Orapax, the town Powhatan withdrew to, is Spelman's "Orohpikes" and Smith's "orapaks". Matchcot, Powhatan's town on the Pamunkey River in 1614, is Smith's "Matchot". Passapatanzy, the Patawomeck town where Spelman lived, is his "Pasptanzie"; Nacotchtank, farther up the Potomac, is his "Nacottawtanke". Munetute appears in Percy as "Jacke of the feathers". The Chickahominies called the English, in Hamor's spelling, the Tossantessas; he also writes "Tassantasses".

Werowance is the Powhatan word for the chief of a town or district, man or woman. Two chiefs who matter here are known only by office: the Paspahegh werowance and the Patawomeck king. The English wrote down neither man's own name.

The settlement. The colonists called their fort James Towne or Iames towne, and Hamor says it stood at a place the Powhatans called Paspahae. In these years it was a palisade on a marshy island, and the narrative calls it what its people lived in: the fort, and the island. The name Jamestown belongs to the town it later became. Henrico is Dale's town upriver, which Percy calls "Henericas foarte". The fort at Point Comfort is Algernon's Fort, Percy's "Algernowns Foarte", named for his family. Bermuda is the islands where the Sea Venture was wrecked; the Bermudas, in Hamor's pages, are Dale's new settlement at Appamattuck, named for them.

The English. John Ratcliffe's enemies said his right name was Sicklemore, and Smith's 1624 book calls him so. Henry Spelman is "Harry" to the Patawomecks and "Henry Spilman" to Smith. Thomas Savage, the boy given to Powhatan, is "Sauage" in Spelman and "the English Boy" in Hamor; he is not Richard Savage of the earlier years. Captain Brewster is Percy's "Bruster", and Lord De La Warr is the Lord la Ware and De-La-Ware.

The Spaniards. Don Diego de Molina is Percy's "Diego Malinos". His companion, the ensign Antonio Perez, is Percy's "Anto: Pereos". Their pilot is Percy's Limbrecke; Tyler gives him as Francisco Lembri.

Offices. The heading of each chapter set in the English colony names who held authority at the time, in the titles the records give. Percy was president, the head of the council under the colony's first charter, and the last to hold that office. De La Warr was lord governor, the single ruler of the second charter; Percy was later his deputy governor. Dale came out as marshal, the officer of martial law, and became governor only when Gates sailed for England in 1614. Where the records give a man no title for a stretch of weeks, the heading gives none.

Words for the Powhatans. The colonists called the people they met "Salvages", "savages" and "Indians". Those words appear here only inside their quotations, where they show how the writers saw the people they wrote about.

Dates are given as the colonists gave them, in the English calendar of the time, which ran ten days behind the calendar used in Spain and most of Catholic Europe. Molina dated his letter by the Spanish reckoning; his date is given as he wrote it, with the English date beside it once. The English then began the year on March 25; this book begins every year on January 1.

Measures are the colonists' own. A can of meal was a drinking-can measure, about a pint or a little more. Corn went by the bushel, distances by the league of about three miles, and the Powhatans' shell money, roanoke, by the cubit, which Hamor valued at sixpence.