Early Virginia Colonization: Powhatan, Jamestown, and Slavery

Powhatan Indians

The Powhatan Indians were a group of Native American peoples living in the Tidewater region of Virginia when the English arrived in the early 1600s.

Mobile & Seasonal Nature of Life

Describes how many Native American societies moved between different locations throughout the year to follow food sources and seasonal resources.

Gendered Division of Labor

Refers to the practice of assigning different economic and social responsibilities to men and women within Native American societies.

Paramount Chiefdom

A political system in which a powerful chief controlled or influenced multiple communities and subordinate chiefs.

Powhatan

Wahunsonacock, the paramount chief who controlled a large alliance of Native communities in Virginia when Jamestown was founded in 1607.

Price Revolution

A period of significant inflation in Europe, particularly during the 1500s and early 1600s, caused partly by population growth and the influx of precious metals from the Americas.

Enclosure Movement

The process in England in which common lands were increasingly converted into privately controlled agricultural property.

Joint-Stock Company

A business organization in which investors pooled money to finance an expensive venture and shared its profits or losses.

Virginia Company of London

An English joint-stock company that received a charter to establish a colony in Virginia and founded Jamestown in 1607.

Nation-State

A political organization in which a centralized government rules over a defined territory and population that increasingly identifies with a common national identity.

Bloody Mary Tudor

Mary I ruled England from 1553 to 1558 and attempted to restore Roman Catholicism after the English Reformation.

Elizabeth I

Queen of England from 1558 to 1603 who established Protestantism as the dominant religion of England.

Spanish Armada (1588)

A large Spanish naval fleet sent to invade England in 1588.

English Sea Dogs

Privateers and sailors, including figures such as Sir Francis Drake, who attacked Spanish ships and settlements with English government support during the late 1500s.

Roanoke (1585)

An English colonial settlement established on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina beginning in 1585.

Jamestown (1607)

The first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London.

Captain John Smith

An English soldier and colonist who helped lead Jamestown during its difficult early years.

Starving Times (1609-1610)

The extremely difficult winter of 1609-1610 at Jamestown when disease, hunger, conflict, and inadequate supplies caused the colony's population to decline dramatically.

John Rolfe

An English colonist who successfully cultivated a profitable strain of tobacco in Virginia beginning around 1612.

Tobacco (1612)

Became a major cash crop in Virginia after John Rolfe successfully cultivated a marketable strain around 1612.

Headright System

A Virginia land policy that granted settlers land, often based on the number of people whose passage to the colony they financed.

House of Burgesses (1619)

An elected representative assembly established in Virginia in 1619.

Massacre of 1622

Occurred when Powhatan warriors attacked English settlements in Virginia, killing hundreds of colonists.

Royal Colony

An English colony placed under the direct authority of the Crown and governed by officials appointed by the king.

Plantation

A large agricultural estate that produced cash crops such as tobacco using a substantial labor force.

Indentured Servants

People who agreed to work for a fixed period, often several years, in exchange for transportation to America and other benefits.

Freedom Wage

Refers to the opportunity that laborers could eventually receive land, property, or economic independence after completing their period of indentured service.

Africans (1619)

In 1619, Africans arrived in Virginia and were sold or traded to English colonists.

Royal Africa Company

An English trading company established in 1672 that participated heavily in the Atlantic slave trade.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

An uprising in Virginia led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor William Berkeley in 1676.

Slave Codes

Laws created by colonial governments to define the status of enslaved people and restrict their rights and movement.