MEMORIAL DAY'S FIRST WAR HERO

 

The Overlooked Opechancanough: An Indigenous Hero

powhatanmuseum.com 

Interestingly, his inherited domain included Arlington Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and a number of military establishments in the DMV. Yet, because American history only begins with the arrival of the English in 1607, he, as a formidable Indigenous leader is the true "Unknown Warrior" who was the primary leader to die for his country in the first battles of homeland security

(Above): This is an image of a Pamunkey descendant of Opechancanough and how he may have appeared wearing the traditional turkey feather headdress, freshwater pearls and symbolic body paint. He was the Algonquian leader (who succeeded his late brother Powhatan II or Wahunsennachaw) of a vast "empire" (The only one of its kind encountered by the English). The Powhatan Paramountcy, whose territory included large areas in the states of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia-- http://powhatanmuseum.com/Powhatan_Map.html--. Like his older brother, he would have also visited Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to caucus with surrounding nations.

  "He began in 1610 what the American Revolutionaries achieved in 1776"

It would seem that this man should be the first Native American to be called a hero and given those deserved rights and privileges, like the Civil Rights heroine, Rosa Parks.
Opechancanough was the architect of the First Anglo-Powhatan War that took place from 1610-13 in Virginia.
Never one to claim defeat as long as he lived, he rebounded with the Second Anglo-Powhatan War that took place from 1622-32. "In 1622 the English knew they were at war. On March 22 there was a massive [coordinated] assault on the English plantations on the James River. English trading vessels in the York River basin, and perhaps the Rappahannock area, were also attacked. About one-fourth of the English living in Virginia on that day; at least another fourth died within the year from Indian sniping, from the famine caused by English inability to plant crops under Indian fire."-- Powhatan Foreign Relations: 1500 - 1722, Edited by Helen C. Rountree, Pg. 190.

During the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644-46), Opechancanough, bercause of his advanced age (of 92 years old), was taken to the battlefront on a litter. He was later captured and martyred when shot in the back by an English colonist while imprisoned.

His descendants are Still Here!

Opechancanough's Descendants

(Top): Photograph of one of the youngest descendants of Opechancanough who bears his name, Naat'aani Opechan. He is with his Dine (Navajo) mother. Next to her is a non-Native Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro. Naat'aani's Pamunkey/Tauxenent father is on the right. In Dine, Naat'aani means "Leader". 

(Bottom): Family wisdom keeper and great-grandmother, Georgia Mills Jessup (Pamunkey), is just one of the many descendants of Opechancanough.

In reality the territorial and cultural histories of the United States of America began at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, with the establishment of the first successful permanent English settlement in North America. The American Revolution and Opechancanough's Wars share a similar quest, to rid the fledgling country of the English. The people who became "Americans" (through acculturation) were distinct from the English and had done so by first "going Native" and surviving off Powhatan II's generosity. During those early years, the English survived by trading or stealing Powhatan corn since they did not grow enough crops to feed themselves. The English were more interested in growing "brown gold" (tobacco) which was traded overseas as a major cash crop. Pocahontas' second husband, John Rolfe, previously had introduced a milder Taino tobacco to the American colony. The indigenous Caribbean Amerindian cash crop helped to finance the American Revolution. Americans became distinct from their colonial master, the English, by adopting Native American lifestyles and customs. For example, "historians, including Donald Grinde of the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, have claimed that the democratic ideals of the Gayanashagowa [the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois] provided a significant inspiration to Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and other framers of the United States Constitution"--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iroquois_Constitution). It seems fitting that the first hero of this pivotal founding of a country was the Native American, and a man named Opechcancanough (pronounced in English as Opi-can-canoe).

(Top): !980's photograph of Powhatan's Mantle viewed at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England by Rose Powhatan (Pamunkey/Tauxenent). 

(Bottom): Photo of the mantle showing a man between his two totems, a mountain lion and a deer. Surrounding them are circles representing 32-34 Algonquian nations in what the English termed a "kingdom", approximately between 18,700 to 19,250 square miles.

We should make a commemorative statue to the American hero Opechancanough who was a  younger brother of  paramount chief Wahunsenacawh  (Powhatan II, the statesman who expanded the confederation of 8 Algonquian nations into one of 34 before he was 60 years old). As seen above, Opechancanough was  primarily known as the  nationalist war chief who masterminded the inter-tribal Indian rebellion  of 1622, and later 1644, until he was assassinated while held in captivity by  the English colonists in  Virginia in 1646. There are many theories about the true identity of Opechancanough as well as his rationale for instigating the ingeniously coordinated Virginia Indian rebellions. 

Some believe that Opechancanough may have been the captured Indian youth, initially taken to Mexico, where he was baptized and given the name "Don Luís" and educated by the Dominicans. He was later taken to Spain. During his two years in Spain, he met King Phillip II. While he was in Spain, he was generally assumed to be "the son of a Chief". He eventually left Spain for Havana, Cuba, in the company of Dominican missionaries. Don Luis carried on the Powhatan tradition of being a great speaker, and seems to have mastered the art of persuasion. He convinced the Dominicans to return with him to his homeland, under the pretense of helping them in their quest to "Christianize" his fellow tribesmen. Phillip II wanted to establish a missionary settlement in the Tidewater region of Virginia (then known as "Ajacan"). Some historians believe that Opechancanough was that unnamed captive, and his experiences among the Spanish may have influenced his deep distrust of European settlers in the "New World". He must have known that their plans for colonization would result in the cultural annihilation and displacement of his people by the Europeans.

The above caption under the illustration exhibits the writer's (Rountree) misgivings. First, the English concept of royalty allowed them to recognize "kings" and "queens" among the Native American leadership, especially because of the expanse of Powhatan II's territory. Second, Algonquians, who the 17th century English met, were considered to be extremely tall (e.g. Powhatan II was described as over six feet tall). In comparison, the average height of late 16th century Englishmen was 5 feet 6 inches.

 

Another theory about Opechancanough's distrust of Europeans can be found in the writing of John Smith. Smith boasted of having shamed the well-respected leader by holding a pistol to his breast while marching him in front of his assembled tribesmen. Smith, as seen in his memoirs of the Pocahontas Story (Pocahontas: Patron Saint of Colonial Miscegenation? by Kiros Auld --http://powhatanmuseum.com/Pocahontas.html), tended to exaggerate his power and stature. The Pamunkey warriors laid aside their weapons in an attempt to save the life of Opechancanough, not out of cowardice, but in solidarity of their love for him. Opechancanough was shown an egregious lack of respect by John Smith -- ibid http://powhatanmuseum.com/Opechancanough.html.

On March 22nd, some Eastern Woodlands Native Americans, in the know, will quietly celebrate Opechancanough's strategic attempts to rid his territory of the increasing number of English interlopers. Why not join Virginia Natives by including in your meal for that day, turkey or venison (or any Virginia game animal, i.e. raccoon, muskrat, etc.), plus vegetarian succotash and corn bread or pone (two Powhatan Algonquian words). Or, as a learning assignment, you may want to practice a few of their following American words:
"In addition to other current Algonquian dialects and dictionaries, the Powhatan's language is not dead. Algonquian is the language of the first indigenous Americans to intimately interact with the English. Their words below survive in the English language as Caucus -- from corcas. from caucauasu or "counselor". First recorded by Captain John Smith. Today, it is a political meeting, especially on Powhatan II's old territory where, according to an English chronicler, he liked to caucus with surrounding tribes (on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC) to make decisions. 

Opechancanough's descendants are Still Here!

NOTES: 

 

Some of the Powhatan Algonquian words below survive in the English language as Caucus -- from corcas. from caucauasu or “counselor,” and was first recorded by Captain John Smith.  According to an English chronicler, he liked to caucus with surrounding tribes on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to make decisions. The chronicler also stated that "Powhatan never left his territory"; Chipmunk -- from chitmunk. Hominy -- corn; Honk-- from is from cohonk, the source of honk, honkey (or honkie), honky-tonk, from the cohonk, a noisy Canadian goose. It is associated with the sound made by the bird, or associated with winter or a year. The Powhatans called the "Potomac" River, called Cohonkarutan, "the River of the Cohonks" for the noise made by the yearly arrival of the geese there; Match coat -- from matchcores, skins or garment; Maypop -- from mahcawq, a vine with purple and white flowers that has an edible yellow fruit; Moccasin -- from mohkussin, a shoe; Muskrat -- from mussascns; Opossum -- also possum, from aposoum, or "white beast"; Papoose -- an infant or young child; Pecan -- a nut, from paccan; Persimmon -- a fruit; Poke weed -- from pak, or pakon, blood + weed; Pone (Corn Pone) -- from apan, "baked". Powwow -- from pawwaw, an Algonquian medicine man. A dance ceremony used to invoke divine aid in hunting, battle, or against disease. Now used as a Pan-Indian word for a social dance festival; Racoon -- from aroughcun; Susquehanna -- from suckahanna, water; Squaw --  from Werowansqua, a female chief associated now with a derogatory term for an Indian woman or a vagina, now obsolete; Terrapin -- a turtle, from toolepeiwa; Tomahawk -- from tamahaac, tamohake, a weapon. From temah- (to cut off by tool) + aakan (a noun suffix); Tump (tump line) -- a strap or string hung across the forehead or chest to support a load carried on the back. -- http://powhatanmuseum.com/Children_Corner.html "

WHERE ARE WASHINGTON, DC'S INDIANS?

Most Americans think that DC's Indigenous people are extinct.

However, not so. There are Washingtonian families whose history goes back before Captain John Smith's English arrival in 1607. These descendants have continued to be born in DC hospitals, gone to its schools and worked in both Federal and local governments. Yet, because they have been dismissed out of hand mostly by DC's relative newcommers, benign treatment of Native Americans, plus local ignorance of Amerindian history, they have become invisible. Our children deserve some clarity.

So, here is an insight into DC's indigenous history.

Presented by the PowhatanMuseum.com

THE DC AREA’S NATIVE AMERICAN MAP

Figure 1: Markers around the original ten square mile demarcation of Washington, DC, beginning on April 15, 1791 at Jones Point lighthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.

Arriving in Washington, DC in 1962, I have often wondered what became of the Indigenous People of the Metropolitan Area. So, I did my research. 

LOCAL NATIVE DC PATRIOTISM:

The Inside Scoop on the People Who Stayed

An indigenous Washington, DC Land Acknowledgement by a Native Wasingtonian. 

Figure 2: (L) Rose Powhatan (Pamunkey/Tauxenent) with the likeness of her ancestor, Tauxenent leader, "Keziah Powhatan: the Firewoman Warrior" traditionally based totem in her Northwest DC Tauxenent home, giving a Land Acknowledgement blessing, August, 2020. Keziah burned down the Fairfax County courthouse in 1752. Her Tauxenent/Dogue tribe's land was given to Lord Fairfax by his cousin the King of England.

(R) Rose on her Fulbright Foundation’s Teacher Exchange (1994-1995) in front of the original Pocahontas statue, St. Georges Church, Gravesend, London. Pocahontas was buried under the alter of the church. While at the St. Georges School, she assisted teacher Di Coleman as a consultant and costume designer in a traveling play on Pocahontas’ life.

 (1) Click on this first link to see a DC Land Acknowledgement video segment: :https://www.dropbox.com/s/bol8mzptzgs3bzv/Sankofa%20Land%20Accomplishments%20-2.MOV?dl=0

(2) Or see the Sankofa blessing on the opening of the beginning of Into Action on YouTube: https://youtu.be/T9zlVJvL1l4

Indigenous Washingtonians

Other than above photo, have you ever seen a real DC Indian?

Cherokees cannot identify as Navajo, neither can an Apache be a Miccosukee. Yet three related newly state recognized Maryland tribes located 22 miles away from Washington, DC are now trying to make such a name-changing move with Anacostia’s extinct Nochotank. They, against Native American tradition, want to be illegally installed as DC’s Indians. Anyone other than the Pamunkey or Tauxenent is as fake an indigenous Washingtonian as the Redskins football team. Native Americans from our area were dogmatic about tribal identity. These Algonquians even had identifying hair styles, unique feather adornment, a specifically designed bows and arrows, clothes and body tattoos. To steal the extinct Nochotank’s identity, as is a current move by outsiders, is ancestral sacrilege.

 

Figure 3: A Theodore de Bry (1528 – 1598) etching from John White’s watercolor of Secotan Algonquians of the Chesapeake Bay. John White cataloged the wearer with a tribal marking and other designs associated with Chesapeake Indians. In the Americas this totemic figure or entity design acknowledged tribal identity. All three DC Indian tribes had this practice.

 

Native Lives Matter and Land Acknowledgement narratives are in keeping with the inclusive movements of our times, as an honoring of our indigenous people, many of whom have become invisible. They suffer nationally from a spate of disappeared women; higher percentages of suicide, alcoholism, poverty and above numbers of devastating illnesses. Yet, Native Americans, including Rose Powhatan, her children, grandchildren, and other local Powhatan descended families who call DC home, have continued to survive in their ancestral Washington, DC homeland. This honoring of an Indigenous people in the spirit of a United Nations edict on indigeneity is necessary. It is an acknowledgement which makes a DC statement that all who are of Native descent can feel welcomed in a city which houses the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and other indigenous Federal and private sector workers as well as those transplants to our Nation's Capital. Native Lives will indeed matter.

 
NOTES

A LOCAL NATIVE HISTORY

Washington, DC was carved out of Indigenous Amerindian territory originally named Attan Akamik,  which turned into the Virginia Territory, then the states of Virginia, Maryland and other states as far north as New York. 

Earlier in the 1600s, Wahubsenachaw (publicly known as Powhatan) also provided life-saving corn during the harsh 1600s winters. Scientists have recently found that during this era the Americas became much colder, caused by planetary cooling. This was the result of the Amerindian Holocaust instigated by the droves of  European arrivals in this hemisphere. The pandemic and killings caused an estimated 90% demise of indigenous inhabitants in the Americas. 

The Powhatan people also made clothes for the Revolutionary War effort; Pamunkeys were persecuted for hiding out escaping enslaved African Americans on their Tidewater reservation (the first North American reservation); while cousins were marched off in chains by the Confederates and charged for helping the Union Army during the Civil War. Powhatan descended stone workers from the Tauxenent and Pamunkey, indigenous to the Washington Area’s families, mined rocks from local quarries which were built from their ancient ancestral stone mines. One example is Rock Creek’s 3,000 year old bluestone mine on Quarry Road, NW, on which the National Zoo was later built. This DC mine was active until 1885. The Amerindian antecedents had also knapped arrowheads, axes, hammers, and pecked out cooking utensils from the many sites along Rock Creek.  

 When other nearby indigenous people cowered, beginning in 1610 the Powhatan people fought in all of the wars since the homeland security Anglo-Powhatan Wars. During WWII, one DC mother of her city's Pamunkey children, repeatedly sneaked off her Federal job to go to a downtown movie theater. She serially watched her Pamunkey son riding on his US Army truck into Berlin as part of the US force to liberate that German city. Her son-in-law who was from a large local Tauxenent family survived the Pacific War Theater when his destroyer was shot out from under him. After the war, he defied the segregated bus system, when he told his young Pamunkey wife, "We are Indian, and we do not sit at the back of the bus."

Other sites which these Algonquian descendants helped to construct was the Washington, DC's iconic Exorcist movie steps in Georgetown. Bridges, canals, and other important buildings were constructed from the Seneca sandstone endemic to their Potomac River area. These rocks were used for backing the Washington Monument's marble facade, the Smithsonian Castle (between 1847-1857), as well as the Capitol floors and Rotunda door frames.

 

The Powhatan descendants are not to be just dismissed entities, but are living people who have continued to contribute, born, educated, work, die and buried in DC and its surrounding Metropolitan Area.

 

1.    The original “Washington County” (or DC) was mainly carved out of Montgomery County (Susquehannock tribal territory) to the city’s Northwest and Northeast, and Prince Georges County to the Southeast and Southwest DC. These western and southern counties were Algonquian. The city’s boundary was located in Virginia’s Arlington County, and still includes the Tauxenent’s Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River. Arlington County seceded back to Virginia so that voters could participate in the election of George Washington for whom the District of Columbia was also named.

2.    Some Maryland Pamunkey (whose capital in the 32-34 tribal  Powhatan Paramountcy, and its leading tribe, originated in Prince William County, Virginia) while some of their villages were located near other Algonquian tribes which lived in Prince Georges County (they as well had other villages in Charles and St. Mary’s Counties of Maryland). The only remaining presence of the Pamunky in Maryland is the township of Pomonkey in Charles County. They, along with the Tauxenent/Dogue were trade partners with the Piscataway, “a loosely knit smattering of tribes” (whose center was in Moyaone or Accockeek, with 1,000 souls) in Maryland where they existed “between the fourteen and seventeen century.” During the 17^th century upheavals brought on by encroaching European colonists, “from 1642 to 1685 leading to the destruction of Susquehannocks in 1676 [in Maryland] and the removal of the Piscataway in 1699 to Virginia where they melted in with local tribes. By 1711, the Piscataway no longer [existed] as a separate tribal community.” – chnm.gmu.edu. .

3.    So, what happened to Maryland’s Indians? In the case of the state’s indigenous history it shows that in the 1700s the state was left with a mélange of tribal remnants who intermarried with European and African arrivals, three newly state recognized tribes being called by sociologists “Tri-racial Isolates.”  There were three major tribes within DC’s Boundary Markers; they were the Tauxenent of Arlington County and Washington County, the Nochotank and Pamunkey in Washington and Prince Georges Counties. During the post European Colonial encroachment,  Amerindian history of Maryland and Virginia became horrific. Deaths by murder, wars and European pathogens caused most surviving tribes to remove themselves from ancestral lands. Native refugee patterns show that, in Maryland alone many of its indigenous populations who survived European diseases and attacks were routed and forced to leave the state, some crossing the Potomac River to join the powerful Powhatan Paramountcy who themselves were at constant war with the Jamestown invaders. Other indigenous Marylanders fled the fledgling European state to melt into eastern Virginian and northern tribal nations as far as New York and Ohio. Similar to the later 1838 Cherokee’s Trail of Tears, in the case of Marylanders some stopped along the way north to melt in with Algonquian Delaware, Iroquoian Pennsylvania and New York tribes. To see the turmoil of Amerindian relocation within the original counties of Maryland which bordered Washington, DC and beyond Maryland’s Historic Tribes is a state’s governmental document which describes all of that state’s historic tribes by county locations before and after European contact. https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/native/html/01native.html

4.    Then, what happened to Virginia’s Indians? After the First Anglo-Powhatan War in 1610, many kept their territories via the British introduced reservation system in 1658, even after the 1677 treaty of Middle Plantation with Cococoeske the Queen of Pamunkey and those Indians under her. The treaty was between her and Charles II, the King of England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Virginia. (http://powhatanmuseum.com/Historic_Documents.html) . The Pamunkey have the oldest reservation in America since theirs and the Mattaponi’s were established in 1658. Others lost theirs in the 18^th century. For example, the the Rappahannock and Chickahominy in 1718; the Nansemond sold theirs in 1792 after the American Revolution. Native Americans did not believe tyhat humans could own the Creator's land. So, the Manhattan "sale' of that island to the Dutch for beads, fits the Native concept thatat land belonged to  the Great Spirit. They must have thought that they got over on the stupid Dutch belief in owning segments of Mother Earth. After losing their reservations to encroaching colonists, “some landless Indigenous members in Virginia and Maryland intermarried with other ethnic groups and became assimilated. Others maintained ethnic and cultural identification despite intermarriage. In their maternal kinship systems, children of Indian mothers were considered born into her clan regardless of their fathers.’”—Wikipedia.   Only the Pamunkey and Mataponi held on to their reservations. Seven of Virginia’s 11 state recognized tribes are federally recognized.

 

THE LONGEST WALK, 43 YEARS LATER

An Indigenous Washingtonian Welcomes the 1978 Longest Walk

by the Powhatan Museum of Washington, DC, the first and only site dedicated to
the city's oririginal inhabitants and their descendants. -powhatanmuseum.com

Figure 1: A pensive Georgia Mills Jessup (Pamunkey) a DC teacher/artist/administrator in hot July, 1978 on 16th Street, NW the city of her birth. Number 13 of a centuries old DC family of 21 Native American siblings indigenous to DC, MD and Virginia, a part of her ancestral Powhatan Paramountcy, she came out of her DC home to support the hundreds of the Longest Walk participants.– Photo by her niece, Dr. Phoebe Farris (Powhatan Renape/Pamunkey).

 

In 1978, the "'LongestWalk' (below) drew attention to American Indian concerns. Several hundred American Indian activists and supporters marched for five months from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to protest threats to tribal lands and water rights. The Longest Walk is the last major event of the Red Power Movement."

 

Figure 2: The Longest Walk which ended here on DC’s Mall as the largest gathering of Native American tribal members in the city. If you were not in Washington, DC in !978, you missed it.

 

So, what has changed in the Nation’s Capital since then? With the Republican Senators blocking Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) from becoming the Secretary of the Interior and its  first Native American Cabinet member? Not much. Anti-Indian senators doing the bidding of the crude oil industry and other backers are questioning this indigenous woman of color’s “qualifications.” Not many disparaging genocidal views on Indigenous people have changed today. 

 

Figure 3: Representative Deb Haaland, Esq who at this writing is being rejected by immigrant descended anti-Native racists for a no-brainer post as steward of the land which is her people’s Indigenous tradition. Her New Mexican lineage goes back to over 40 generations, and thousands of years of Amerindian presence in America before her Capitol Hill colleagues who are fighting against her confirmation.

 

The irony is that Republicans on the Hill have a chance to redress the wrongs which were protested forty-three years ago by honoring a Native American (a woman of color) and begin to correct the continued atrocities against them and their sacred sites. But, they go in the opposite direction. Regardless of the historical acts of violence on Native Americans the issue continues to be that only money talks. 

Native Americans have long since buried the tomahawk in spite of broken one-sided treaties; given America its Constitution and a deliberative body via their caucus; and had American wealth wrested from their Turtle Island territories. America boasts to the world about its material richness gained from the bodies of its Amarindians, and speak glowingly about an unatained democracy. Yet, Native American reservations resemble internment camps ravaged by the Corona virus, alcoholism, diabetes, suicides, disappeared women and many poor country ills. Their plights when considered, makes the United States a country composed of a patchwork of third world sovereign nations within one of the richest "First World" countries on the planet. All because of endemic neglect, greed and racism.

 

True to the traditions of the dominant society's European origins, America is economically and politically run like a medieval society with a veneer of democracy which does not need a titled king and queen, royals or nobles over vassals. The Longest Walk highlighted the only added feature to America’s struggle with equality, a fight against the creation of an indigenous untouchable underclass. These truths we can see now playing out in the Senate’s hesitancy to confirm Representative Deb Haaland to a trusted position on President Joe Biden’s multiethnic cabinet. 

In spite of our president's efforts, the fight continues for equal rights and representation to higher offices by people of color. 

Confirm a Native American for the selected Cabinet post.

A Native Acknowledgement

By the PowhatanMuseum.com

THE NO-BRAINER NOMINATION

WELCOME AGAIN TO ATTAN AKAMIK (Our Fertile Country)

Continue to Walk in Beauty!

Figure 1: Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) welcoming DC's local indigenous Auld family to the US Capitol where Kiros' ancestral relative, Wahunsenachaw (Powhatan II) caucused during his 16th century lifetime.

L: Kiros Auld (Pamunkey/Tauxenent) represented the Indigenous Washingtonian presence of a Powhatan Paramountcy descendant to his ancestral Attan Akamik,(Our Fertile Country) and its city of Washington, DC, the Land Acknowledged “Place of the Caucus.” This was the location next to the Tiber Creek on Capitol Hill which was liked on caucus visits with surrounding aboriginal nations by the 16th to 17th century Wahunsenachaw (or Powhatan II), the Pamunkey Algonquian leader on whose Paramountcy's territory the US Capital was built. Kiros maternal descent is from the tribe of Wahunsenachaw and his daughter, Pocahontas whose portrait adorns the Capitol Rotunda. Kiros who was born in and attended  schooling through to Howard University's School of Law in the Nation's Capital, hails from the only two surviving of the three original District of Columbia and its Metro Area's Algonquian tribes, the Pamunkey and Tauxenent/Dogue. These local nations and its many living descendants are historically documented as living within the original Capital City’s boundary stones which came from ancient ancestral quarries which his 19th century DC Area relatives later mined. The third tribe of Naoctchtank who had a beaver pelt trading town next to the Anacostia River in Southeast DC became extinct after around 1668 when its last remnant was recorded as moving North to Ohio from a temporary stay on the Tauxenent's Roosevelt Island. The gap left by Southeast DC's extinct, distinctly named Algonquian Naoctchtank tribe is recently being questionably claimed by three new state recognized Iroquoian identified Maryland tribes whose names were never located within the Capital City.

Since the Presidential elections, much has been written in our leading national media outlets about Senator Kamala Harris. She has been introduced as a groundbreaking biracial woman of color’s ascendancy to the role of Vice President of the United States. On the other hand, our nation institutionalzed amnesia towards Indigenous Americans is about to change. Not surprisingly, almost nothing is yet popularly known about this country’s other first, a female descendant of indigenous custodians of Turtle Island (or the North American continent).

 Debra Anne Haaland is that Native which our city’s indigenous Powhatan Museum will here honor. She is a lawyer, Congresswoman from the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico with vast life experiences and an inherited ancient legacy concerning the role which she is about to play as the Secretary of the Interior.

 (Her live video congratulating President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris https://twitter.com/i/status/1351992670219087874)

 However, not surprisingly, as is ever true about national exclusion of Indigenous people from our history, there has been less press coverage about this other American first. The no-brainer elevation to the Presidental Cabinet is of a Native American descended from custodians of our Mother Earth, America’s indigenous Amerindians.

 

Figure 2: Politically and socially astute Secretary nominated Debra Anne Haaland, Esq. (Laguna Pueblo) with the seal of the US Department of the Interior whose design, for the first time reflects the aspirations of that Federal agency.

Honoring an Esteemed Native Leader

Optics is important and for the first time in our history there is no more appropriate form of American symbolism as the distinctly Native American images above.

 This Presidential season has probably provided American history with the most ground-breaking firsts in inclusively. It is right up there with the first female Vice President who is the also a uniquely tri-racial person of Asian Indian and Afro-Euro Jamaican ancestry in that leadership office. Added to the Presidential Cabinet makeup is Representative Debra Anne Haaland, Esq (Laguna Pueblo) a Native American woman. Also included in the lineup is young Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member. But, in our opinion the most groundbreaking decision is the inclusion of a Native American woman as the Secretary of the Interior. She is an indigenous New Mexican who is tribally enrolled in the historic Laguna Pueblo Nation, a people whose ancient legacy includes the second indigenous North American contact by the arriving 15th century Spanish. To them, her homeland was a second mystical set of Seven Golden Cities of Cibola. The other was the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" in Bimini or La Florida.

 Deb Haaland has known homelessness and poverty while struggling to attain her life's goals. Her life’s experiences have been one of overcoming the struggle of being a single mom while balancing the raising of an extremely talented daughter, and starting her first degree from the University of New Mexico, culminating with a law degree while balancing motherhood. Learning about her life’s expiries is inspirational since she has had a passion for helping people from a place of her own understanding of society’s historic neglect of its Native Americans whose people are ironically keepers of the land. This history places her in the right position as a caretaker of our planet since, as in Native traditions, how we treat our mother, the Earth is linked to our own survival as a specie. With this time where sensitivity to Mother Earth’s health is at a crucial juncture of a planetary climate change, Deb Halland’s role in America’s environmental path is no less prophetic as it is fitting of her heritage.

 We in Washington, DC know too well of the dismissive agenda of not honoring the city’s surviving indigenous Pamunkey and Tauxenent people of the historic Powhatan Paramountcy and the current attempts by outsiders to resurrect a dead tribe in threir own name. So, it is therefore easy for us at the Powhatan Museum of Washington, DC to welcome the Honorable Deb Haaland to our ancestral homeland of Attan Akamik, to share in the founding history of Our Fertile Country as an honored guest from the sacred West. Although she came as a Congresswoman we tribute her in her new caretaker role as our city’s highest ranking Native American. Her placement will directly impact on the lives and fortunes of living American Indians. As with America’s significant world position of planetary influence, she too, as it is with the Vice President Harris, provide a role model for all women and girls worldwide, whether Native or non-Native. Too often the Eurocentric tradition is to only honor European men and dead Indians. President Biden has broken yet again another racist mold.

Rising From a Rich History

What makes Representative Haaland a perfect fit for her cabinet role as Secretary of the Interior is her unique history. Her's is not much different from Kamala Harris’ legacy who was born from the other ancient Asiatic civilization of the Hindus. Deb Haaland hails from another of the planet’s noteworthy ancient cultures with thousands of years honed in uniquely accomplished Amerindian hemisphere replete with multi-storied stone and adobe apartnents, large uniquely organized pyramid cities and temple topped mound builders, accomplished agronomists, mathematicians, scientists and sky-mapping astronomers. Both people are the confident beneficiaries of ancient Asiatic cultures, one the daughter of a “true” Indian immigrant and the other an Indigenous descendant of this soil. These Eurocentric termed “prehistoric” legacies are especially pertinent to the American Experiment. As Secretary Haaland, her role will be seen as a Native American “keeper of the land” with a connection to thousands of years in this hemisphere’s human development. Here, the optics of her role of land husbandry is more profound when one scratches her cultural surface.

 We are the sum total of our history on this planet. And as we see, Deb Haaland is the byproduct of a uniquely rich Amerindian legacy, the things that often shapes one’s world view. Yes, she is a contemporary Native woman steeped in the legacy of early Spanish survival and the imported laws of this land. So, let’s examine her Native roots.

Her ancestral legacy predates her people’s encounter with the gold-seeking Spanish Empire’s newly acquired Aztec Empire of Central Mexico in the 16th century. This was the time of the Zuni of Hawikuh, and her pueblo neighbor’s 1539 encounter with Mustafa Azemmouri. Called Estavanico (Little Stephen) he was a 1600 born multilingual enslaved Black (Moorish) adventurer/ambassador cooperatively seeking the mythological Las Siete Ciudades de Cibola (the seductive Seven Cities of Gold). This Mexican territory was later acquired in 1853 by equally encroaching English-American expansion.

 Deb Haaland’s mother was an ethnic Laguna Pueblo. Her Norwegian American father was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who is appropriately buried with full honors across the Potomac River’s in our land acknowledged Powhatan Paramountcy Territory located Arlington National Cemetery. However, the original name of Deb Haaland’s Pueblo people is Kawaik in their language. “Pueblo” means “Town or vilage” and “Laguna” (”Lake”) in the imported Spanish tongue, still used along with their indigenous Kres language group which has continued to be spoken. Their ethnic designation, “Pueblo” was derived from the multi-story type of indigenous structural town-like style of architectural settlements made of sandstone and adobe from which their villages were built. Their buildings, gleaming in the sunlight, were initially mistakenly believed by Estavanico as evidence of the existence of the mythical gold rich shining City of Cibola, and conveyed this information back to Mexico.  This myth which spurred the Spanish adventurer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, originated from an escaping Catholic monastery’s gold vestments and a raiding Islamic encounter event in Europe. Then, the Americas and Deb Haaland’s ancestral area were considered the location of some European tales. The 1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado scouting encounter ahead of that infamous Spanish expedition undiplomatically spearheaded by Estavanico, ended tragically as the scout was killed for insisting on extracting Zuni women from his hosts.

 Unfortunately, Americans are rarely taught the histories of past and living Native Americans and their leaders. From an area known for its uranium, undisputed ceramic beauty, turquoise and silver jewelry, and the fabled land of the Seven Cities of Gold to DC’s Shining City on the Hill, let us hope that Secretary Haaland’s welcomed role model presence encourages us all to discover more about our rich Amerindian hemisphere.

NOTES:

Related

1. Duties of the Secretary of the Interior include management and conservation of most federal landand natural resources, leading such agencies as the Bureau of Land Managementand natural resources, leading agencies as Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Geological Survey, and the National Park Service.
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1. Laguna Pueblo is a Spanish name from the first European contact, was established by the Ka-waik or "lake people" a traditionally self-governing agriculturalists community. It is the largest pueblo of the Keresan people, located off the famous Route 66, forty-five miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico along the San Jose River. It's people have resided in that area of the US since 3000 BCE. This pueblo is one of 100 which are still inhabited.

1. Cibola is both the recent name of one of thirty-three counties of New Mexico and an early mythological Seven Golden Cities of a fabled location from early Spanish tales.The story was believed by the arriving Spanish in Mexico as the location  be found in today's New Mexico.   See:Seven Cities of Gold - Wikipedia .

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