The Powhatan Mantle is an artefact that opens a door onto the history of some of First Peoples of North America.
Today, it is kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It was made in the early 17th century by Algonquian-speaking peoples from the Southern Chesapeake region, in Virginia.
(The name Chesapeake comes from an Algonquian language and may mean "great shellfish bay"/ "great water". Today Chesapeake refers to a large region on the eastern coast of North America around the Chesapeake Bay, including Virgina, Maryland, Delaware and Washington D.C.)
The mantle is associated with the Wahunsenacawh, whom the English called "Chief Powhatan". He was the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, the Powhatan Confederacy, a powerful Indigenous political organization in the Virginia region. He was also the father of Matoaka, better known as Pocahontas.
In colonial memory, Pocahontas has often been presented as a symbol of peaceful encounter between Indigenous peoples and British settlers. But other readings, Indigenous and critical ones, remind us that she was a very young girl who was taken away, Christianized, displaced, married to a cultural stranger (John Rolfe), and brought to England.
The mantle also introduces the story of Opechancanough, Wahunsenacawh's close relative, who became a major Powhatan figure of resistance. Face with English expansion, the stealing of food, the desire for Indigenous lands and the development of tabacco cultivation, he led major uprisings againt the Britsish settlers; in 1622 and 1644.
What touches me about this artefact is that it materializes some aspects of their cultural world : political organization, spirituality, material culture, skills, animas, beads, skins, signs and territories.
I find fascinating how this artefact allows us to move from one world to another : from Native American history to Europen colonial history and African American presence in Virginia. The first documented Africans were forcibly brought into the English colony of Virginia, at Point Comfort, today Fort Monroe in Hampton in 1619.