Powhatan World View Essay

The Powhatan world view, including their views on social structure, religion, war, and trade are all different from the views of the English colonists at Jamestown. While the Powhatan people adapted and integrated parts of their culture with the English culture, their views remained distinct and were misunderstood by the English. Some cultural integration occurred, for example Powhatan children were taught English, largely with the hope they could convert others to Christianity. Overwhelmingly, the Powhatans took only what they felt was beneficial from English culture, like technology, and ignored or resisted cultural integration with the rest of it, including the colonists’ religious and political hierarchies.
As noted above, the English’s …show more content…
These leaders were peace chiefs who helped control Powhatan territory. Ginaps, or war chiefs, were lesser chiefs, though they could also be werowance. Ginaps were generally concerned with engagements with outsiders, while the werowance focused on the internal affairs of the village. This type of governmental duality did not immediately make much sense to the English. While Captain John Smith often wanted to meet with Powhatan, Powhatan thought of him as a ginap because he dealt with the outsiders and considered Captain Newport to be a werowance. Because the English world view was hierarchical, rather than dual, they tended to view Powhatan, the chief, as an emperor, rather than one leader with more power than the others who ruled with the advice of his council and maintained control because the people respected him. It is unlikely that this confusion alone contributed to the later conflicts between the Powhatan and the colonists, but the equally present concept of duality in Powhatan religion, and their unwillingness to convert, was likely a continued point of contention between both