Relation of Virginia

Henry Spelman was a new arrival in England's Jamestown colony who, at age fourteen, was sent to live with the Powhatans, Pocahontas's people. Henry is unique among boys who lived with Native people because he wrote about his experiences, and his memoir is a major source on Chesapeake Algonquian life in the early days of English colonization. As he matured, he was caught between loyalties. Colonial authorities put him on trial for informing Opechancanough, the Powhatan chief, about changes in Jamestown, and he died at the age of twenty-eight in fighting between Natives and English.



Karen Ordahl Kupperman is Silver Professor of History Emerita at New York University. Her books include The Atlantic in World History (Oxford University Press), The Jamestown Project (Belknap Press), and Indians and English (Cornell University Press), Winner of the AHA Prize in Atlantic History.