Powhatan (c. 1550-1618)

Pamunkey Powhatan chief. He inherited the chieftainship of the so-called Powhatan Confederacy from his father, and greatly extended it until, by the arrival of the English (1607), it was an alliance of roughly 30 tribes, 100 villages, or 9,000 people. He was the first American Indian leader known to have contact with English settlers in North America, and proved to be inhospitable. He was the chief, who, according to the colonist John Smith's account, was about to execute Smith until his daughter Pocahontas interceded.

After Pocahontas married the English planter John Rolfe (1585-1622) in 1614, Powhatan made peace with the colonists, but soon after his death both the peace and his Confederacy disintegrated. He was born near present-day Richmond, Virginia.