Tsenacommacah: The Powhatan World and the Wars for Virginia, 1607-1646
By Marcus Hale Whitfield
Length4h 38m
About this audiobook
Weyanoke, Appamattuck, Kecoughtan, Paspahegh, Piankatank, Rappahannock: from towns all over the lower Chesapeake, emissaries came to Werowocomoco on the York River to settle boundaries and blood debts, arrange marriages, bring tribute and ask for corn. In the longhouse sat Wahunsenacawh, the paramount chief the English would call Powhatan, who had spent fifty years building Tsenacommacah out of marriages, obligations, threats and corn. Tribute came to him as deerskins, copper and pearls and went back down the rivers as gifts and food in lean years, because a chief's power lay in what he could give away.
In May 1607 three English ships came up the river they would name the James. The four decades that followed are told here from the Powhatan side: the island in the marshes where the colonists built their fort, Wahunsenacawh's daughter Matoaka, whom the colonists called Pocahontas, and the 1614 marriage that bought eight years of peace, the tobacco fields that swallowed the land, and the morning of March 22, 1622, when the Powhatan towns struck the settlements all along the river.
A war with no truce followed, and with it Opechancanough, Wahunsenacawh's brother, the chief who would not kneel, who led a second great assault in 1644 and died a prisoner at Jamestown two years later. It closes with the survivors and the Virginia they were left to live in.
The English never quite saw that a chief was measured by what he gave away. For forty years the misunderstanding was paid for in corn, land and lives.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length4 hrs 38 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 19, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1: The Town at the Falls
2Chapter 2: The Island in the Marshes
3Chapter 3: Matoaka
4Chapter 4: Peace of the Tobacco Road
5Chapter 5: The Land They Kept Their Eyes On
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6Chapter 6: The Morning of March 22
7Chapter 7: A War of No Truce
8Chapter 8: The Chief Who Would Not Kneel
9Chapter 9: The Survivors' Virginia
10Chapter 10: The Records They Kept
11Chapter 11: Down the River of the Four Winds
12Chapter 12: What the River Remembers
13About the Author
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