Authority and Ceremony

The Powhatan chiefdom was a powerful alliance of Native communities in eastern Virginia led by Wahunsenacawh, Chief Powhatan. The region had a number of towns where chiefs lived, which the English called Kings’ Houses, and Werowocomoco was the most important of them. Wahunsenacawh’s power came from his status as political and religious leader and from his control of Werowocomoco. He and Powhatan weroances, or chiefs, relied on the advice of quioccosuks, or priests. Born sometime around 1547 in the town of Powhatan near present-day Richmond, Wahunsenacawh later moved to Werowocomoco, which had already been an important ceremonial place. By 1607 the Powhatan chiefdom included 15,000 people in 32 tribes, each with its own weroance who paid tribute to Wahunsenacawh. Quioccosuks made sacrifices to spirits, including the god Okee, to maintain balance and keep dangerous outside forces in check, offering tobacco, blood, deer meat, and other items. After Nepinough, the start of the harvest season, and during Taquitock, the fall corn harvest, Powhatan people gathered in important towns and Kings’ Houses such as Werowocomoco for feasts and celebrations, during which quioccosuks wore deer antlers to symbolize their status. Kings’ Houses also hosted the Huskanaw, a rite of passage in which boys became men through ceremonies that included dancing around a large circular track, and those who completed it were believed to gain special wisdom from instruction in history and the natural world. Archaeological studies at Werowocomoco found a large curvilinear ditch that may have played a role in the Huskanaw ceremony. Powhatan’s Mantle, made of four white-tailed deer hides stitched together and decorated with intricate shell beadwork, dates to the first period of contact between Indigenous peoples and British colonists, and one interpretation holds that its central figure represents Powhatan while its circles represent settlements in the Powhatan Confederacy.

Virginia · United States