Paper Sovereigns. Jeffrey Glover
agreement. While some of these practices were unfamiliar to Europeans, it was easy for them to imagine analogies between Powhatan acts of tribute and their own rituals. The English shouted their respect for sovereigns, and bowed in the presence of princes, just as the Powhatans seemed to do. However, coastal diplomacy was different from its European counterpart in at least one significant way. While European politics involved many kinds of performances (not to mention a heated traffic in rumors), Europeans nevertheless viewed writing as the most powerful and permanent way of expressing political agreement. To many historians, this fact has seemed to leave Native people at a disadvantage when it comes to treaty negotiations. And there is much truth to this claim. While the speeches of Powhatan and other Indians fill the pages of Smith’s books, Powhatan could not read those books or respond to them. But as I will suggest now, this does not mean that he was a passive participant in the debates about territory and sovereignty that occupied Europeans. Nor does it mean that he was necessarily a victim of English treaties.
As I have argued so far, the English did not just establish possession by citing European legal authorities. They also looked to Native acts of consent, which could come in many forms. The English solicited some sign of agreement and then framed it in a way that supported their claims. For them, treaties were primarily about words, gestures, or other acts that showed agreement. As Smith’s Proceedings shows, however, for the Powhatans, treaties were primarily about acquiring trade goods, such as beads, metal tools, textiles, and decorative items. While the English recorded treaties in writing, the Powhatans symbolized them in objects.
To modern-day readers, these treaty objects have lost much of their legibility. Colonists like Archer cared about Powhatan expressions only to the extent that they confirmed particular visions of English power. They generally omitted any description of what treaties meant to Native people. Smith, for example, portrayed Powhatan as desiring blue beads purely out of a mindless fascination with decorative objects and a treacherous desire to conquer the English. But there are many accounts of treaties from travelers who did not have the interest in law or diplomacy that animated Archer, Smith, or Zúñiga. Ironically, these observers may tell us something about Powhatan precisely because they saw no need to frame his words according to legal imperatives.
One such observer is Henry Spelman, an English interpreter who lived at Tsenacomoco from 1609 to 1611. On his return to England, Spelman drafted a narrative of his time among the Powhatans. An unimportant person from the perspective of the Virginia Colony’s government, Spelman was not present at the coronation in October 1608. However, when he arrived home he produced a written report that describes Powhatan’s incorporation of an English crown into tribal ceremonies. Spelman’s narrative certainly has its own kinds of bias. For example, he goes to great lengths to show that he has retained his Englishness while living among the Indians, whom he depicts as savage. However, though Spelman renders the Powhatans exotic in order to emphasize his difference from them, his account sheds light on the way they may have viewed the English crown and other objects they acquired during the course of treaty negotiations.
There are two mentions of a crown in Spelman’s narrative. Early on, in a section entitled “Of ther servis to their gods,” Spelman describes the brandishing of an English crown and bedstead in a religious display. “As with the great Pawetan,” Spelman writes, “he hath an Image called Cakeres which most comonly standeth at Yaughtawnoone [in one of the Kinges houses] or at Oropikes in a house for that purpose and with him are sett all the Kings goods and presents that are sent him, as the Cornne. But the beades or Crowne or Bedd which the Kinge of England sent him are in the gods house at Oropikes, and in their houses are all the Kinge ancesters and kindred commonly buried.”127 Spelman identifies the “Crowne” and “Bedd” as diplomatic presents from “the Kinge of England.” Powhatan keeps the items in a structure at Oropikes that is used to house an image or representation of a god and as a grave for his ancestors. In a section entitled “The manor of settinge ther corne with the gatheringe and Dressing,” Spelman describes the ceremonial use of these items during the planting of corn:
let me not altogither forgett the settinge of the Kings corne for which a day is apoynted wherin great part of the cuntry people meete who with such diligence worketh as for the most part all the Kinges corne is sett on a daye After which setting the Kinge takes the croune which the Kinge of England sent him beinge brought him by tow men, and setts it on his heade which dunn the people goeth about the corne in maner backwardes for they going before, and the king followinge ther faces are always toward the Kinge exspectinge when he should flinge sum beades amonge them which his custum is at that time to doe makinge thos which had wrought to scramble for them But to sume he favors he bids thos that carry his Beades to call such and such unto him unto whome he giveth beads into ther hande and this is the greatest curtesey he doth his people, when his corne is ripe the cuntry people cums to him againe and gathers drys and rubbes out all his corne for him, which is layd in howses apoynted for that purpose.128
Unlike Archer or Smith, Spelman is not interested in the implications of the crown for treaties, or questions of consent. He notes its status as a gift from James I, but he describes its use in a corn-planting ritual that involves only Powhatan and his subjects. The description corroborates his view that the Powhatans are strange and barbaric savages who practice occult pagan ceremonies. But his focus is different from that of more powerful correspondents, and a different picture of Powhatan emerges. Spelman takes us beyond the spaces of cross-cultural diplomacy, and finds Powhatan using European objects to confirm his power over his own people.
In an account of power struggles in Tsenocomoco during the early years of colonization, James D. Rice has described Powhatan motives for collecting European objects. According to Rice, the foreign origins of chiefs were central to religious cosmology and political order, and collecting and deploying objects from different places was one way werowances consolidated and displayed power. As Rice puts it, “Chiefly lineages emphasized their foreign origins in order to demonstrate that they were part of a universal spiritual order rather than local parvenus.”129 If what Spelman writes is true, Powhatan and his subjects did not understand the concept of a foreign nation in the same way as Europeans. The crown does not simply represent the recognition of an external power, the way a diplomatic gift in Europe might. Rather, it is a key source of Powhatan’s own authority to demand the planting of corn from his subjects and to reward his favorites with gifts of beads. He incorporates the crown into his own story of coming to power. His might and command of resources flows from the object and the spiritual trajectory it represents.
Spelman’s story suggests that for Powhatan the crowning ceremony was only partly about reaching a settlement with the newcomers. Because of the importance of a distant lineage to his own power, he looked to the newcomers and their trade goods as a way of maintaining authority over his own subjects. Though this authority was spiritual in nature, it had political uses. While the exact nature of the ceremony and its meaning to Powhatan and his subjects may never be known, it should be remembered that, among the Powhatans as among the English, the significance of a ritual was never entirely predetermined by religion or custom. There is sometimes a tendency to view Natives as traditional, while thinking of colonists as modern. But like the English, who used natural law texts to stake land claims, Powhatan manipulated manitou and its embodiment in English goods to control his own subjects. That he used English material goods in these ceremonies may have suggested to his subjects that he had the crisis of English arrival under control, and that channels for distributing food and goods would continue to function reliably as long as he was in power.130 He may have been suggesting that the arrival of the newcomers had made him more, not less, powerful, and that a new kind of political order was emerging from his triumph over them.
Though many Europeans were keenly interested in Powhatan’s foreign policy, Spelman is one of the few to mention these ceremonies. One reason for their absence in other records may be that Powhatan did not want any of the more powerful newcomers to see them. One of the first things Powhatan did when he met the newcomers was to try and figure out who was in charge. Then he acted accordingly, receiving them according to their rank. But the corn ceremony was intended to confirm Powhatan’s own power, not to recognize that of others. And as a person without any real standing, Spelman was ironically in a position to observe and report things that major power players could not. Another reason Europeans