Powhatan
Americannoun
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a member of any of the Indian tribes belonging to the Powhatan Confederacy.
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the Eastern Algonquian language spoken by the Powhatan people.
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c1550–1618, North American Indian chief in Virginia, father of Pocahontas and founder of the Powhatan Confederacy.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Example Sentences
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I got scared on stage when I was nine years old when I was Powhatan in Pocahontas and I didn't know the lines.
From Salon ● Apr. 11, 2023
It happened around 7:40 p.m. on I-49 northbound near Powhatan, a village in the parish, the sheriff’s office said.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 7, 2022
This time, I took in the dig sites in which centuries of exposed strata held the relics of the Powhatan, the English, and clues to the first enslaved Africans at Jamestown.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 3, 2022
However, their ultimate defeat in this conflict forced the Powhatan to acknowledge King Charles I as their sovereign.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 30, 2014
Chief Powhatan ordered his tribes to stop trading with the settlers at James Town.
From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone
They spoke a different language from the more coastal Powhatans, the tribe that first had contact with the English at the Jamestown settlement, and they avoided European contact for years.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 16, 2022
A 1622 uprising by local Powhatans and drought-induced shortages of food contributed to the death toll, but most perished from disease.
From Salon ● May 3, 2020
Relations with the native residents were mixed, with the Powhatans providing food but also chafing under the demands of colonists, who died by the hundreds in the settlement’s early years.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 18, 2018
The Powhatans already knew about Europeans, for explorers’ vessels had occasionally entered the Chesapeake for several decades.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
When they went foraging in the woods, Powhatans often harassed them, and coexistence between the two groups was uneasy.
From "An Indigenous People’s History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
