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Show 164 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1600 known permanent villages being on the north side of the Harlem River. The next powerful aggregation of Algonquian ' stock appears in Virginia and was generally known as the- Eoadaaian confederacy. This organization controlled nearly all of tide- water Virginia, and included asits chief members thePowhatan, Pamunkey, Chickahominy, and Potomac tribes. Its fotmder and leader was Wahunsonacook, or Powhatan, as he was usually called from the name of his tribe. Upon his death in 1618 his successor, Opechancanough, organized a campaign of extermination against the whites, and brought on a conflict which lasted with intermissions for about thirty years and resulted most disastrously for the Indians- the confederacy was completely broken up and some of the constituent tribes practically annihilated. Curiously enough, the Pamunkey still survive as a tribe and retain their organization, though nearly if not quite all the members are mixed bloods. 1 The information regarding these Indians of Virginia is not very complete, but they probably did not differ very decidedly in habits from their Algonquian relatives farther north. They • were*' agricultural like their neighbors, and were organized on a clan system with inheritance in the female line. They seem to have developed special and elaborate religious ceremonials, and it is interesting to note that they used the wooden dug- out and not the bark canoe. 1 Pollard, The Pamunkey Indians of Virginia. |
