A pronounced disruption

lewleadbeater.com

notes from the edge

Home

Email Me

				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
A pronounced disruption				August 13, 2011

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m here to tell you that the Confederacy of Toano has been rent asunder. Thanks to the latest redistricting debacle, those of us Toanoites who live west of Route 60, on the north side of Forge Road or in Chickahominy Haven can no longer look to our beloved historical Stone House for identity, unity and town comity.

Alas, we have been tossed out of Stonehouse District and are now slaves to the Confederacy of Powhatan.

While the Toano town center, with some of its historical buildings, still occupies its place on Route 60, the fact is that the Toano area has always been a well integrated mixture of businesses and the farmland and horse stables on Forge Road. In earlier years, those businesses and farms were well served by the C&O Railroad station in Toano, which was located at the end of what is still called Depot Street.

For the most part, we all were in Stonehouse District and voted either at the EOC building next to the fire station or, more recently, at Toano Middle School. And we all were represented by the same supervisor.

As far as I can tell, neither the Powhatan Confederacy nor Chief Powhatan played any part whatsoever in the historicity of Toano or the Toano area.

Yet, here we are in Powhatan’s district and very hard put to see any identifiable connection with this somewhat strange group of Native Americans who roamed about in Eastern Virginia.

One of the problems with identifying with this amalgam of tribes has to do with nomenclature. High school kids today have trouble spelling their own names, let alone trying to deal with a chief named Wahunsunacawh. It’s hard enough to spell his name. Pronouncing it is out of the question. Perhaps that’s why later he wisely changed his name to Powhatan.

But he was evidently the Big Chief who got several tribes together and forced them to pay tribute to him

The area over which he ruled was called Tsenacommacah, which is long tribalesque for Eastern Virginia. But can you imagine sending mail or smoke signals to Wahunsunacawh in Tsenacommacah? You could spend all day just writing out the address.

But it gets worse. Old Wahunsunacawh died in 1618 and was succeeded by his brother, whose name was – guess what? Opechancanough! That’s right.

And it was Opechancanough who virtually annihilated his own confederacy when he decided to mix it up with the British colonists.

Which brings me to my second point. Not only did these Powhatanites have unpronounceable names, but, unlike their successful, self-respecting Algonquin brothers, they were totally inept when it came to doing battle against weak English colonists with names like John and Sam.

In fact, by the time 1644 rolled around, the British had all but wiped out the Powhatan Confederacy, and this despite the fact that British slaves were deserting to Opechancanough in droves.

The only bright spot in all this was the marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe, and we all know how that turned out. But at least Pocahontas had a reasonably pronounceable name, which probably helped solidify the union.

Given all this, you have to wonder why on Earth the powers that be in James City County named one of their voting districts after Powhatan. Perhaps they figured that at some time James City was part of Tsenacommacah in the glory days of Wahunsunacawh and Opechancanough and that Powhatan deserved some recognition for the fact that his descendants were involved somehow with the British Jamestown crew. The fact that they were totally inadequate when it came to defending themselves and were completely self-destructive seems not to have been part of the reasoning equation.

Little wonder, then, that we in Toano who have been unceremoniously handed over to the Powhatan Confederacy are somewhat perturbed. Perhaps after the next census we can be returned to the more identifiable confines of our old Stone House.