The New York Company will have a discussion of the book A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America by James Horn, D. Phil. The book is readily available in hardcover or as an ebook. At the suggestion of Dana Gumb, a member of our Council, we will discuss this book by video conference on Thursday, March 10, 2022.

James Horn is the President of Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, which is affiliated with Preservation Virginia and supports the preservation, education and archeological investigation of Historic Jamestowne. The Jamestowne Society has provided meaningful financial support to these organizations over the past few years.

As explained in the Publishers Weekly Review below, Dr. Horn makes the case that Opechancanough and Paquiquineo/Don Luís Valasco are the same person. Many of us heard Dr. Camilla Townsend of Rutgers University speak about Paquiquineo at our meeting in November 2019 at Caffe dei Fiori in Manhattan.

From Publishers Weekly Editorial Review on 09/20/2021 (slightly edited):

James Horn, 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 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.

For further information about this discussion, please email us at jsny1607@gmail.com