Lesson video

Hi, and welcome to the first lesson in a series of four.

Looking at the question, who lived in British America? My name is Miss Cusworth, I'm a history teacher in Southeast London, and I'm really looking forward to teaching you these four lessons, looking at America when it was controlled by the British and the variety of different people who lived there.

So today we're going to be beginning with Pocahontas and the Powhatan peoples, and we're going to be looking at a couple of different groups.

So today we're really going to be focusing on a particular group of native Americans.

Then in later lessons, we're going to be having a look at colonists.

So people from Britain who moved over to America and set up colonies there, like settlements there.

And then we're also going to be looking at a group of people called indentured servants, who travelled again from England and from Britain actually from Britain over to America.

And then we're also going to be looking at enslaved people and their experiences in British America.

But just before we begin, I just want us to be really clear about what we kind of mean by America.

So if we're thinking about the place or the continent, about 15,000 years ago, there was really strong archaeological evidence of humans living there.

There was evidence before that, but it's not quite as strong.

And 5,000 years ago, so we're talking like a really, really long time ago.

People began to domesticate plants, so they start to farm things like corn and squash and some flowers.

And then we jumped forward a good thousand years, right? So we're talking about really big long history here, and farming communities, they begin to create villages and start to live together in villages.

To about 2000 years ago, we have bows and arrows invented on the plains in America.

And about 1000 years ago, Vikings began trading with coastal communities.

So we know that the Vikings, as well as coming to England, they also travelled to North America and traded with coastal communities up in the top of North America.

And at that time, so all of those different events we've just looked at a second ago, people wouldn't have referred to that place of in the world as America.

And in fact, it wasn't until 1507 that we have the first recorded use of the word America.

And it's actually not referring to, when I think of America, I think of now, like the United States and it's actually not referring to that, the first time it was used.

So it's used in this map here that was created by a German man.

And here can see Africa and you can see that they have a pretty good knowledge, it seems like they know a lot about North Africa, about other parts of Africa, about Asia, and about Europe, which is where the mapmaker was from.

And then you can see here, that the knowledge of America wasn't particularly strong and that's because America at this time was new to Europeans, they didn't have particularly good knowledge of it.

And you can see America is used down here, it's really small, so I've made it bigger, on this map here, America and it's used really to talk about what we would now call South America.

So the people who were living there at the time, they wouldn't have themselves referred to it as America.

But we talk about it now as America and we talk about that part of the world for a time as British America.

Now, here you have a map, you can see this is what we would call, what we now call Canada, would be now called the United States, Mexico and central America, the Caribbean, and then South America.

And at different points in time Britain controlled everything you can see in red.

Now it didn't go from Britain controlling nothing to suddenly Britain controlling all of that.

It was over a number of centuries and at times Britain controlled a lot and then it shrunk.

And that's something we're going to be having a look at over the next couple of lessons.

But I just want to be really clear about what I mean when I say British America.

So to give you like a really brief rundown of maybe some of the events that occurred, now there are so many right? Because it's such a big space and things were happening almost like really fast.

So there's not enough, I thought what I would do to narrow it down is I would maybe pick one year per, one story event and kind of yeah, per every a hundred years.

So we begin here at 1497 with John Cabot, as he's known.

He actually wasn't, didn't have initially at an English name.

And he became the first European since the North, so since the sort of Viking settlers to set foot on Newfoundland, so right at the top of North America.

Then that happened in 1497, so some way back.

Then in 1585, the English established a colony, so a settlement, when somebody goes over and they establish a settlement somewhere else in another country, that's not their own.

A colony was established at Roanoke.

Now this colony wasn't successful and you can maybe do a little bit of research, historians called Roanoke a really fascinating historical mystery, but what we kind of, for this purposes, what you need to know is that they establish a colony there, a settlement but it didn't stick, and you can find out about that mystery.

In 1607, a colony called Jamestown was established in a place then what was called, Virginia.

And that colony was successful, and what I mean by that is it continued.

And we're going to be looking at that in a bit more detail today.

Then between those two dates, lots of colonies, well, in fact 13, started to establish themselves down the East Coast of what we now call the United States.

And increasingly people moved over from Britain and settled there.

Then as you might, may or may not know those colonies decided they didn't want to be controlled by Britain anymore and they fought for their independence, and in 1783, they became independent.

We also were going to be looking, I said at the beginning about the experiences of enslaved people and they play a really important role in British America, and in 1834, slavery was abolished in the British Empire.

So we're going to be looking briefly at that in a later lesson.

Skip forward just over a hundred years and Jamaica, an island in the Caribbean becomes independent.

So why all those colonies in the United States become independent in the 1700s.

It's not until the kind of middle of the 20th century, that places in the Caribbean start becoming independent from Britain.

And in fact there are some still some islands in the Caribbean and in sort of the Americas, which remain British overseas territories officially.

So there's still a strong history of, or a strong connection, I suppose, with Britain, with the Americas even though there aren't many colonies there anymore.

So we're going to be focusing today on a kind of group of people called the Powhatan Chiefdom, and they were Algonquian speakers.

And Algonquian is a series of languages, it's like a language group.

And you can see here where those like kind of, where those people who spoke that language where living.

So in what we would now call Canada down the coast of what is now the United States.

And there was some similarities in terms of the language that they spoke, but obviously over such a massive kind of land mass, there was obviously also a lot of differences and a lot of diversity, which is why are we going to focus on a particular group so we can be clear about their experiences and what their lives would have been like.

So if we're having a look at the Powhatan Chiefdom, it was a group of indigenous peoples.

Now indigenous means like people who are native to that place.

So there were different groups who lived here, in what is now called Virginia, and they sort of pay tribute to a lead chief.

So there was like a lead chief of these different groups and they would pay him tribute, they would give him items, food, gifts, and in return they would get like protection from him.

And it was estimated that there were about 14,000 to 21,000 Powhatan people in this area in 1607.

So in terms of what their kind of what their lives were like, they planted corn and squash, which is a vegetable and they planted beans and they also hunted for meat.

So that would have been their diet that might've been what lots of people maybe spend that day doing.

And you can see in this image here, and this is actually of a group of peoples who lived further South than the Powhatans, but I wanted to use this image because I thought it gave you maybe a sense of what their lives may have been like.

And one thing I really loved about this picture here was you can see there's someone here on this sort of like little platform looking out and protecting says here, the ripe corn.

And you can kind of get sense of like a farming system here.

People may be celebrating, dancing, people cooking some examples of houses.

So this might not have been exactly what it would've looked like for the Powhatans because it was for, this is an image of a group of people who lived a bit further South, but maybe it gives you a bit of an idea.

So they lived in homes called your yehakins, and they were made out of trees with like beautiful kind of maps that went over the top of them to kind of keep out the rain and the wind.

And they had a complex culture, lots of art and different beliefs and political organisations.

Remember I talked about how there were different tribes who came together sort of under a leader, so a complex culture.

And this is an example of a piece of art from that group.

So this beautiful piece here is know now as Powhatan's Mantle.

And so there's a bit of a, this one took me a little moment to get my head around.

So Powhatan was the name given to the leading chief, the head chief and he, we think here that name was maybe given to him by the English, but he was the kind of leader of the Powhatan peoples.

So Powhatan can refer to the leading chief, or it can also refer to the kind of people that he was leading.

And we don't know why this was made.

We think, or historians think it may have been given, by Powhatan the chief, it may have been given to the English as a gift for King James, almost like from one leader to another leader.

And it now is in the Ashmolean Museum, which is in Oxford.

And you can't 100% see on this image, but these are like all beautiful, kind of beautiful beads, and we're not 100% sure if this in the middle represents the chief or if it represents kind of a, like a god or deity, but its said it's a really fine intricate piece of kind of art, I suppose.

Now the leading chief had a daughter and her name was Matoaka, and she was the daughter of Powhatan, who was the leading chief of the Powhatan peoples.

And she was born around about 1596, and we tend to know her as Pocahontas.

So you may have heard a bit about her or her story before, and we think that Pocahontas would have been a nickname because it was relatively common for people in this kind of Powhatan peoples to have several names.

So we know her as Pocahontas, so that's what I'm mostly going to refer to her, as the name I'm mostly going to use for her.

So, before we move on, I want us to do a little pause and I've given you four sentences here.

And I would like you to in a moment, pause the video and write down whether you think each of these sentences is true or false.

So first one, Pocahontas was Matoaka's his real name.

I want you to write down if that's true or false.

Pocahontas/Matoaka was a Powhatan.

C, her father was the paramount chief of the Powhatan people, was he the leading chief? Is that true? Is that false? And the Powhatan people didn't have a complex culture.

So for each of those, I'd like you to now pause the video and write down if they're true or false.

Okay, let's go through some of the answers.

So Pocahontas was Matoaka his real name.

That's false, so in Algonquian culture people went by many names and we think that Pocahontas was a nickname, not her real, yeah, not that wasn't like her real name Matoaka/Pocahontas was a Powhatan.

That is true, Matoaka was a member of the Powhatan and she was the daughter of Powhatan, remember I said it can refer to the leading chief or to the people more generally.

So I might have given you a clue for this one.

So her father was the Paramount, the leading chief of the Powhatan people.

That is true, her father was the most powerful leader of the Powhatan and Powhatan expected tribute.

So kind of like gifts from around 60 different groups, Powhatan people didn't have a complex culture.

Maybe they didn't, this is asking like, did they have arts or beliefs or kind of political organisations? And the answer is they did, right.

They had complex beliefs, beautiful arts, political structures, agriculture, systems for farming, et cetera, et cetera.

So that final one D is false, okay.

So hopefully you've got a bit of a picture of Powhatan life, and that started to change with the arrival of the English in 1607.

So here we have a map and you can see this is sort of from the perspective now of the English.

So they named the area Virginia and they established a colony called Jamestown.

So in the year 1607, over 100 men and boys landed on the Powhatan shores.

They arrived on behalf of the Virginia Company and they had a hope of settling and establishing a colony.

So like a settlement, which was with people who had come over from England, were going to establish a settlement there.

And they set a place, a settlement up called Jamestown, and they called the area of Virginia.

Now the English relied really heavily on the Powhatan people for food and local knowledge because they were complete strangers to the area.

Remember I said they had tried to set up a colony before, and it hadn't been successful because the English weren't very good at feeding themselves.

So they relied really heavily on the Powhatan people for food and for local knowledge.

Now this information that I'm reading is going to be in the work.

So when you're answering the questions towards the end, you can go to the work on the website and get some of this information, here's a little summary here though.

Now Pocahontas, she was a regular video, a regular video, a regular visitor to Jamestown.

And she often went on behalf of her father.

Do you remember I said her father was the leading chief.

And accounts of the time, have her bringing furs and food and playing with the children who were in the Jamestown settlement.

The English moved out from their settlement in Jamestown out further into Powhatan territory in 1613, and violence occurred.

And in 1614 Pocahontas was kidnapped by the English, she was taken, and the idea was that this would force her father to accept peace.

So in English in accounts, Pocahontas decided during her captivity, so while she was kidnapped, she decided to convert to Christianity and to take on English ways of dressing.

But sources all the kind of oral history from the native American account.

So from the Powhatan people's accounts, was that there's try to tell a slightly different story, which was more that Pocahontas was forced to make these changes, forced to convert to Christianity, to maybe change the way that she was dressing.

Pocahontas was renamed Rebecca, and she married an English man called John Rolfe, and she travelled to England with him in 1616.

And when she arrived in England, and this is an engraving of her, as you can see that the kind of new name she was given Rebecca, and she's dressed up as a sort of English gentle woman in the fashions of the time.

And she became a celebrity in the core of King James the First.

So among the sort of leading people of the day, she became a bit of a celebrity.

And how her story was used as evidence of the sort of superiority of the English and of their culture.

And she was used to justify forcing English ways of living on to the Powhatan people, including kind of forcing them to become Christian or making them become Christian.

And sadly, she died in 1617, when she was still really quite young.

And she's buried in England in a place called Gravesend, which is in Kent, so she never got to return back to see her father and return back to America.

So like I said, this is on the kind of work on the website, and so when you're answering, going through these questions and trying to make your answers, obviously as detailed as possible, feel free to use the information there, or you can just remember what I've said and what we've been talking about when you're answering them.

So question number one, what was the Powhatan Chiefdom? Question number two, who was the paramount chief's daughter? So who was the daughter of the leading chief? What was her name? Question number three, what was Jamestown? Question number four, at first, what was the relationship between the English and the Powhatan? Think about maybe what the English relied on them for.

And then question number five, What happened to Pocahontas? So as usual, pause the video, answer the questions, try and do them with as much detail as possible and in full sentences and then when you finished play the video and we'll go through the answers together.

Okay, welcome back.

Well done for getting those questions done.

So what was the Powhatan Chiefdom? You might have put something like, it was a group of Native Americans, you may have been a bit more detailed and written it in a full sentence and said, it was a group of indigenous peoples who lived in what is now called Virginia.

And you might have also talked about the fact that it was several different tribes.

So several different groups formed the Powhatan Chiefdom, you might have said that then there was a leader, the leading chief or the paramount chief, anything that you can see around this, give yourself a nice big tick.

Who was the paramount chief's daughter? Who was the leading chief's daughter? Pocahontas, so give yourself a big tick if you put that or if you put her name as Matoaka 'cause we think Pocahontas was her nickname and it's often what she's known as in Britain, but she had several names.

So well done if you put anything that's sort of on the screen here, give yourself a tick.

What was Jamestown? It was a town that the English set up, we refer to it as being a colony because the English came over and they set it up in a different country.

So Jamestown was an English colony that was set up in 1607.

Give herself a big tick if you put anything similar to that.

At first, what was the relationship between the English and the Powhatan? The relationship was good to a large extent at the beginning and the English really relied on the indigenous people, the Powhatan people for food and Pocahontas often visited Jamestown, played with the children there and brought gifts.

So at first the relationship was good.

But as we talked about earlier, when the English kind of moved out of Jamestown and started to take land, understandably, the relationship got a lot worse.

So what happened to Pocahontas? If you put anything like she was kidnapped, and then she was taken to England to get yourself a tick.

You might have remembered what we said about the story of Pocahontas differs between the English accounts and the Powhatan accounts.

We know she was kidnapped, converted to Christianity, and was taken to England.

We don't know whether that was something that she decided to do willingly or whether she was kind of really forced to make that conversion.

We know that she suddenly died when she was young and that she's buried in England.

So extension activity, I strongly recommend having a go at this.

It is making just this kind of a table thinking about one side the Powhatan Chiefdom, on the other side, thinking about Jamestown, the English Colony that was set up.

And I've given you some suggestions of things you could put here.

So if you want to think about what who was English speaking, and you might put that in Jamestown, and then Matoaka, Pocahontas think about where you would put that Virginia Company where you would put that.

Now some could belong on either, so maybe you want to put them in the middle and you can maybe even do a little explanation of why you've put it in the middle, but this is an extension activity for you to do.

So if you fancy having a go at that, I recommend you do pause, copy out this table, add in as much detail as you can.

If you're not doing that, then now you can go on to the end of the lesson quiz to check your understanding.

And I really look forward to seeing you for our next lesson when we're going to be thinking in a little bit more detail about the experience of other groups of people who lived in Jamestown and in Virginia.

Thank you very much for watching this lesson today and for writing all of your lovely answers and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Bye.