09/20/2021
Horn (1619), president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, delivers an immersive portrait of Opechancanough (c. 1547–1646), who helped build the powerful Powhatan chiefdom in America. Horn contends that Opechancanough was the same “princely young Indian” known as Paquiquineo who was kidnapped from the Chesapeake Bay region in 1561 and taken to Spain, where he was renamed Don Luís de Valasco. A Catholic convert, Don Luís traveled to Cuba, Florida, and Mexico before returning to the Chesapeake Bay to help establish a Jesuit mission in 1570. Shortly after his arrival, however, he left for his home village, where he organized a war party that killed the priests and destroyed the mission. He then helped his brother Chief Powhatan consolidate Native tribes along the East Coast to counter the European threat, and, in 1622, following a series of devastating raids on Jamestown, came “very close” to driving the English settlers—who knew him as Opechancanough—out of Virginia. Horn recounts Pocahontas’s marriage to John Rolfe and other famous events at Jamestown, and vividly describes brutal clashes between Powhatan warriors and English settlers before Opechancanough was captured and killed in 1646. Though Horn’s case that Paquiquineo/Don Luís and Opechancanough are the same person requires a good bit of speculation (he would have been close to 100 when killed), he builds a cogent narrative out of documentary fragments. Early American history buffs will be riveted. (Nov.)
Informative and engaging, A Brave and Cunning Prince challenges conventional wisdom about Pocahontas, Captain John Smith and, most important, the early encounters between the Indians and the English. And Horn reminds us that the outcome of their protracted conflict was by no means certain.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Horn’s story rivals any narrative — fact or fiction — and provides ample suspense and action to entertain the reader… A Brave and Cunning Prince joins the aforementioned previous Horn works in providing a complete and intriguing look at the early years of Virginia by questioning previous assumptions of other historians and providing highly detailed and well-researched accounts of these seminal events.”—Roanoke Times
“An accomplished work of scholarly detection... Swift, moving prose along a twisting storyline lends this brilliant book the feel of a mystery.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“A fascinating narrative of intrigue, shifting alliances, and betrayal. Horn’s detailed biography properly places Opechancanough in the context of history.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“An immersive portrait... Early American history buffs will be riveted.”—Publishers Weekly
“Like most Native people in early American history, Opechancanough generally plays a brief bit part as a violent and tragic figure. In contrast, James Horn constructs a remarkable life story that spanned a century. At a time when America is digging more deeply into its origins, this eye-opening narrative challenges well-worn tales of Pocahontas and congenial first encounters with a grim record of kidnapping, starvation, and total war.” —Colin G. Calloway, author of The Indian World of George Washington
“This book tells the story of one of the most fascinating figures in American history—the older brother of the more famous man we know as Powhatan. Most Americans probably have never heard of Opechancanough, but A Brave and Cunning Prince makes it clear that his name ought to ring in our mythology with the tragic names of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Sioux, the Apache’s Geronimo, and the Comanche’s Quanah Parker. Opechancanough’s experiences and travels rival those of John Smith, and his leadership was demonstrably more effective. Though eclipsed in the records by both Smith and his own brother, Opechancanough might have been the most important of the three. Opechancanough’s story is long overdue, and who better to tell the tale than our generation’s foremost authority.” —Joseph Kelly, author of Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin
“A Brave and Cunning Prince is brilliant, stunning, original, and un-put-downable. Horn’s gripping prose and remarkable detective skills transport the reader to the Chesapeake Bay, Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and London and into the mind of the talented, indefatigable Powhatan chief, Opechancanough. Upending the traditional Jamestown colonization narrative, Horn centers the Powhatan people, uncovering their priorities and their perceptions of the invaders who tried to colonize their land. Horn has crafted a magnificent, important biography, essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand early America.” —Lorri Glover, Saint Louis University
“James Horn combines cutting-edge scholarship with vivid, accessible prose in this sweeping narrative of Opechancanough's eventful and eye-opening life story.” —James Rice, author of Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America
“James Horn has produced the first full biography of Paquinquineo/Opechancanough, making a compelling case that these two important figures in the Indigenous history of Virginia were one and the same. This transatlantic biography will be of great value to anyone interested in the vast history of what in Horn’s hands becomes an Algonquian Atlantic.” —Michael Leroy Oberg, SUNY-Geneseo
“Few individuals, European or Native American, had as much impact on early America as the Pamunkey leader Opechancanough. In A Brave and Cunning Prince, the renowned historian of early Virginia James Horn offers a masterclass on historical reconstruction and narrative style, deeply informed by an unparalleled mastery of evidence and sensitivity to the nuances of lived experience. Horn takes us across a century and the entire Atlantic basin, enlightening at every unexpected twist and turn. Opechancanough, a monumental figure, comes to prominence again in this true-life page-turner of narrative history.” —Peter C. Mancall, author of The Trials of Thomas Morton
★ 11/01/2021
A new historical biography of Powhatan Confederacy paramount chief Opechancanough (ca. 1547–1646) and his leadership against the threat posed by English colonization in the Chesapeake Bay (present-day Virginia). Historian Horn (1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy) contends that relations between the Powhatan people, other Indigenous nations, and the English were constantly shifting. This book complicates centuries of mainstream historiography and the narrative that the Powhatan people helped early English colonies survive. In Nathaniel Philbrick's 2006 Mayflower, the relationship between colonists and Indigenous peoples was described as at least somewhat more complex; based on mutual benefit, wariness, and antagonism. Horn argues that Opechancanough recognized the threat posed by English invaders because he had lived through attempts at colonization by the Spanish and the English. By consolidating Indigenous alliances against the English and adeptly leading strategic raids on the near-death Jamestown Colony, Opechancanough came "very close" to driving the English out of Virginia, Horn contends, but his efforts were ultimately thwarted, in part by rival tribes that allied with the colonists. VERDICT A fascinating narrative of intrigue, shifting alliances, and betrayal. Horn's detailed biography properly places Opechancanough in the context of history.—Glen Edward Taul, formerly at Campbellsville Univ., KY
★ 2021-09-10
An accomplished work of scholarly detection that plays out against the background of the English colonization of Virginia.
Opechancanough, the center of Virginia historian Horn’s narrative, was abducted from his Chesapeake Bay homeland by Spanish sailors in the 1550s and taken to Mexico and Spain, where he met King Philip II. Recorded in the Spanish annals as Paquiquineo, a name simplified as Don Luis, he converted to Catholicism and promised to help the Spanish establish a colony on Powhatan lands, the site of a tight confederacy of Native nations. After returning there, however, he organized the massacre of Jesuit priests who had established a mission not far from present-day Richmond. The brother of the king, and in the line of royal succession, Opechancanough then mounted a long war of resistance against the English. Horn ventures two potentially controversial suggestions: first, that Don Luis and Opechancanough were one and the same, since some historians have argued that they were not; and second, that Opechancanough and his elite band of warriors were responsible for the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, long a matter of historical speculation. He provides convincing evidence for both assertions, building on a portrait of Virginia and its neighbors that, at the time of the European arrival, was the site of a sophisticated political and economic network whose participants were well aware of distant events and who coordinated to fight the newcomers. Some familiar figures appear, including John Smith and Pocahontas, on both of whom Horn sheds new light as players in a drama that would unfold over decades. He portrays Opechancanough as a man who, having seen the subjugation of Native peoples and the enslavement of Africans in Mexico, knew exactly what was coming on those English ships and fought to prevent their successful settlement—which, thanks to both the divisions of the English civil war and Opechancanough’s fierce fighting, almost didn’t happen.
Swift-moving prose along a twisting storyline lends this brilliant book the feel of a mystery.
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