They had
but little religious belief, save that founded upon the
superstition that lies at the foundation of all uncivilized
intelligence, and though their customs show a certain strain of
cruelty in their nature, this was not a savage and vindictive
cruelty, but was, rather, the result of what was, from their way
of looking at things, an entirely justifiable understanding of
order and of law.
At the time of our story, certain of these Algonquin tribes of
Virginia were joined together in a sort of Indian republic,
composed of thirty tribes scattered through Central and Eastern
Virginia, and known to their neighbors as the Confederacy of the
Pow-ha-tans. This name was taken from the tribe that was at once
the strongest and the most energetic one in this tribal union,
and that had its fields and villages along the broad river known
to the Indians as the Pow-ha-tan, and to us as the James.
The principal chief of the Pow-ha-tans was Wa-bun-so-na-cook,
called by the white men Pow-hatan. He was a strongly built but
rather stern-faced old gentleman of about sixty, and possessed
such an influence over his tribesmen that he was regarded as the
head man (president, we might say), of their forest republic,
which comprised the thirty confederated tribes of Pow-ha-tan.
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