In this history, Helen C. Roundtree traces events that shaped the lives of the Powhatan Indians of Virginia, from their first encounter with English colonists, in 1607, to their present-day way of life and relationship to the state of Virginia and the federal government.

Roundtree's examination of those four hundred years misses not a beat in the pulse of Powhatan life. Combining meticulous scholarship and sensitivity, the author explores the diversity always found among Powhatan people, and those people's relationships with the English, the government of the fledgling United States, the Union and the Confederacy, the U.S. Census Bureau, white supremacists, the U.S. Selective Service, and the civil rights movement.

Rountree, Helen C.

Helen C. Rountree is an ethnohistorian with degrees from the College of William and Mary, the University of Utah, and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her research and fieldwork for two decades have been among North American Indians in both Virginia and Nevada; she has worked both with historical documents and with living Indians and has written numerous journal articles. She is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Old Dominion University.