National Park Service LogoU.S. Department of the InteriorNational Park ServiceNational Park Service
National Park Service:  U.S. Department of the InteriorNational Park Service Arrowhead
Historic JamestowneMap of Jamestown and Yorktown
view map
text size:largestlargernormal
printer friendly
Historic Jamestowne
Powhatan Indian Bibliography

 

POWHATAN INDIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY


Beverley, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia (1705). Louis B. Wright, ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1947. (A description of the Virginia Indians at the end of the 17th century.)

Feest, Christian. "Virginia Algonquians" in Handbook of North American Indians: Northeast, Volume 15. Bruce Trigger, ed. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978.

Fritz, Jean. Double Life of Pocahontas. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1983. (An excellent children's book.)

Harriot, Thomas. Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. New York: Dover Publications, 1972. (Includes the 1590 Theodor de Bray engravings (Roanoke).

Hulton, Paul. America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

McCary, Ben C. Indians in Seventeenth-Century Virginia. Williamsburg, Virginia: Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, 1957.

Rountree, Helen C. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. (Good secondary source on Powhatan ethnography.)

Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. (Good secondary source on Powhatan history.)

Smith, John. "Map of Virginia" in Complete Works of Captain John Smith. Philip Barbour, ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. (Best primary source for Powhatan descriptions.)

Spelman, Henry. "Relation of Virginea" in Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Edward Arber, ed. Edinburgh: John Grant, 1910. 1:ci-cxiv. (Good primary source from one who lived with the Powhatan Indians.)

Strachey, William. Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612). Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund, eds. London: Hakluyl Society, 1953.

Now available online through the National Park Service is A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: THE FIRST CENTURY by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D.

Painting by Sidney King representing settlers searching for medicinal plants  

Did You Know?
The botanical sassafras was at one time worth its weight in gold as a medicinal plant. It was an early Jamestown export. In modern times it has been used to flavor root beer.

Last Updated: January 04, 2008 at 16:31 EST