Like the Iroquois League, this confederation of Algonquian-speaking peoples in what is now Virginia seems to have formed in response to the effects of the Little Ice Age. Oral testimony suggests that it began forming around 1550—the time that the climate reached its severest stage. Consisting initially of six villages in the area that is now Richmond, it expanded significantly toward the end of the sixteenth century under the influence of the dynamic leader Wahunsunacock, called the Powhatan. Over a twenty-year period, Powhatan drew in...

Bartolomé de Las Casas (ca. 1485–1566) was a Spaniard and a Dominican friar who advocated for the rights of American Indians. Las Casas spoke and wrote about Spanish cruelties perpetrated upon the Indians, convincing the Spanish Council of Valladolid to rule in behalf of humane treatment of the Indians in 1551, and publishing A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552.

Christopher Columbus was a sailor and navigator (ca. 1454–1514) born in the Republic of Genoa. He embarked early on a naval career and then, at the age of 21, entered a formal apprenticeship as a merchant/trader. Following the writings of the classical geographer Ptolemy, Columbus, like most of his generation, understood that the world was round, but like Ptolemy, Columbus believed that it was much smaller than it actually is. This error suggested to him that it would be possible to sail westward from Europe and arrive in Asia more easily...

Powhatan (unknown–1618), or Wahunsonakok, was a chief of the Powhatan people in what is now Virginia. Powhatan ruled over several Algonquian tribes during the English settlement of Jamestown. He negotiated and sometimes clashed with Jamestown colonists and John Smith. Though Powhatan at first cooperated with English colonists, he later cut off trade and became hostile to them. His daughter, Pocahontas, was captured by an English expedition in 1613, however, and Powhatan approved her...