Paper Sovereigns. Jeffrey Glover
I] has given them licence and letters patent for planting their religion there, provided they do not plunder anyone, under pain of losing his protection if they do not obey,” Zúñiga writes.115 While James has widely publicized his rights and dominion in Virginia, Zúñiga views the crown’s legal justifications as mere propaganda intended to conceal sinister motives.
Zúñiga’s fear that the New World could be a site of conspiratorial alliance is reflective of the kind of paranoia that characterized correspondence from both English and Spanish spies. As Garrett Mattingly has shown in his account of early modern diplomacy, Protestant and Catholic diplomats depicted themselves as soldiers in a global war for religious and national supremacy.116 Zúñiga reads the colony’s accounts of Powhatan negotiations with the same kind of conspiratorial eye, viewing Indian treaties as a maneuver in a worldwide struggle. In a letter dated March 15, 1609, he describes intercepting the colony’s correspondence about Indian affairs and collecting information as to its real meaning. “I have also seen a letter written by a gentleman who is there in Virginia to a friend of his who is an acquaintance of mine, and he showed it to me,” Zúñiga reports. “It says that he will find out from Captain Newport, the bearer, just what is going on there.… He says also that they have deceived the King of that region [Powhatan] with an English boy whom they gave him, saying that he is the son of this King [James I], and he [Powhatan] makes much of him.”117 The letter was most likely a report that detailed the first meeting between Newport and Powhatan. The “English boy” was undoubtedly Thomas Savage.118 Zúñiga characterizes the whole exchange as a kind of geopolitical charade, a deceptive performance designed to make the Virginia Colony appear legitimate. Like the colony’s patents and legal documents, the exchange of boys gives an appearance of legality to a conspiracy against Spanish interests.
Zúñiga likewise portrays Namontack’s appearance in court as an act staged for international benefit. In a letter dated June 26, 1608, he describes Namontack’s debut in London society. “This Newport brought a lad who they say is the son of an emperor of those lands and they have coached him that when he sees the King he is not to take off his hat, and other things of this sort.”119 The English, Zúñiga concludes, are pretending that Namontack is a prince so they can cite treaties as evidence of their own possession. But Zúñiga also reveals what he believes to be the artifice behind such a strategy—the colonists have coached Namontack to decline to doff his hat before the king. In describing this gesture, Zúñiga was referencing hat honor, an important diplomatic protocol in early modern courts. Like bowing before the king, doffing one’s hat was a way of showing submission. Loyal subjects were expected to take off their hats in the presence of kings, or even before an empty throne.120 However, princes sometimes made a distinction between domestic subjects and visitors. Throughout his reign, James I insisted that foreign dignitaries keep their hats on as a way of recognizing their status as representatives of foreign powers. In 1614, the Russian secretary Alexis Ziuzin reported to Tsar Mikhail I that James had refused to allow Russian ambassadors to take off their hats in his presence. “King James said to the ambassadors that they should put on their hats, and he reminded them about it twice and three times, and by his royal word he strongly insisted on it.”121 In coaching Namontack to keep his hat on in the presence of the king, the company presents him as a visiting ambassador from a foreign power. Namontack’s hat, safe on his head, elevates him to the same status as European ambassadors. There is certainly a tragic irony here. By coaching Namontack to keep his hat on, the company seeks to give him the authority to welcome the English to his land.122 They give him rights so he can give them up. But this is not Zúñiga’s criticism. He does not attack the company out of respect for Namontack or Powhatan sovereignty. Instead, he claims that the wearing of the hat is a mere show intended to deceive onlookers into believing Jamestown has formed alliances with Powhatan leaders. In couching his criticism in this way, Zúñiga stops short of denying Native sovereignty or dominion outright. He does not comment on whether real Indian kings should keep their hats on. He claims instead that Namontack himself is something less than a prince and therefore not qualified to make a treaty.
Zúñiga’s silence on the true nature of Native sovereignty had a certain advantage. While the Spanish crown denied the rights of Native kings on the basis of their supposed heresy or lack of intellectual faculties, the Spanish also gained occasional diplomatic advantage from recognizing Native rights and employing arguments like those advanced by the English crown. In a letter of March 15, 1609, Zúñiga takes a page from the English book, voicing his concern for Powhatan welfare: “I understand that once they have fortified themselves well, they will manage to destroy that King [Powhatan] and the savages, so as to take possession of everything.”123 While the English frequently criticized what they believed to be the lawless violence of Spanish conquest, here, Zúñiga ironically applies the same criticism to the English, portraying them as violent conquerors bent on seizing land. Zúñiga’s remark illustrates the provisional nature of colonial arguments over Native rights. While the English frequently borrowed from Spanish texts in order to construct hybrid legal arguments, this traffic could occasionally run in the other direction, with Spanish diplomats adopting English frameworks. As the balance of power shifted, so did legal positions about Native rights.
According to Zúñiga, the farcical nature of the crowning of Powhatan boys undercuts the legal rationale of the English crown. Amusing though they may be, such performances provide a cover for mayhem, with the English plotting the murder of their Indian neighbors just as they plan assaults on Spain. With the same letter that describes the English conspiracy against Powhatan, Zúñiga encloses a map that shows English settlements and fortifications.124 Though the English crown has offered legal rationales for this expansion, Zúñiga warns that the English conquerors are threatening to engulf New Spain after they finish with the Indians. He offers the official recommendation that the colony should meet the same fate as the French Huguenot settlement at Fort Caroline, which had been destroyed by Spanish agents: “Your Majesty should command that this be summarily stopped,” Zúñiga urges darkly.125
Though Zúñiga pleads for Philip III to act, his letters implicitly concede the English colonists’ position on treaties. Unlike the Spanish ambassadors who negotiated the Treaty of London, Zúñiga does not deny the Powhatans’ standing. Rather, he seeks to prove that the English have staged treaty agreements and coached Native people into supplying words and gestures that establish English possession. The English are pacifying coastal people with offers of treaty only to spring violence on them later. By pulling back the curtain on Anglo-Powhatan treaty negotiations, Zúñiga seeks to furnish the Spanish crown with legal arguments for razing Jamestown. Philip III did not act on Zúñiga’s recommendations. Zúñiga was replaced by Alonso Velasco in 1610, but returned in 1612 in a failed attempt to arrange a royal marriage. Given Zúñiga’s interest in the protocol of hat honor and its meaning for diplomacy, his departure from London was accompanied by an irony. While Zúñiga was crossing Holborn Bridge, he doffed his hat to an approaching cavalier, who snatched it away and galloped off, much to the amusement of onlookers.126 While the colony struggled during its early years, they no longer had Zúñiga to worry about.
Powhatan’s bow, Ocanindge’s speech, Namontack’s refusal to remove his hat: colonists and diplomats recounted such words and acts in writing in order to support claims to territory. Debates about who had rights to the coast involved competing representations of Powhatan consent. None of the Europeans I have written about so far cared about recognizing the Powhatans in a way consistent with modern understandings of international law. Their letters and reports were entirely strategic, part of a violent struggle over land. The English and their rivals needed the bow, the chiefly oration, and the donning of the hat as support for their claims. But what of Powhatan himself? Somewhere, behind all the letters and printed pages, were the words and gestures that formed the basis for so many conflicting stories. Why did the Powhatan leader agree to make treaties with the English? Europeans made so much of their treaties with him, but what did he do with the objects he received from the newcomers? Can the writings of the colonizers provide an answer to that question?
Crowns and Manitou: Treaty Objects in Powhatan Politics
Powhatans and English people made treaties in many ways, offering promises,