![]() ![]() ![]() READ MORE: When the Jamestown Colony Placed Ads to Attract Brides The Indian Prince and the Jesuits But while he stands as one of the greatest military leaders in early America, his achievements remain almost completely unknown. And 50 years later, with his coordinated 1622 attack on Jamestown colony, he came close to ending English colonial ambitions in the region. ![]() A brilliant tactician and charismatic leader, he successfully thwarted Spanish efforts to establish a Chesapeake settlement. But “Paquiquineo,” as Spanish officials rendered the young man’s name later that year, would in time re-emerge as Opechancanough, the most formidable warrior chief encountered by Europeans in 16th and early 17th century Virginia.Īfter returning to his homeland, he helped build the greatest chiefdom along the mid-Atlantic and spent the rest of his life defending his peoples from European invaders, whose mindset and strategies he had studied at close range. The abduction itself wasn’t unusual, since the Spanish in America often trained Native youth to serve as interpreters, or pressed them for information about local peoples and perhaps the whereabouts of gold or silver. ![]() The kidnapping set off a chain of events that would alter the course of American colonial history. In the summer of 1561, Spanish explorers abducted a Powhatan Indian youth from the Chesapeake Bay tidewater region and brought him to the royal court of Spain. ![]()
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