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A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America
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68
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
44/100Critics
91/100Scholars
Author:
James Horn
Publisher:
Basic Books
Date:
November 16, 2021
A portrait of Indian Chief Opechancanough (as the English called him), who helped establish the most powerful chiefdom in the mid-Atlantic region. When English settlers founded Virginia in 1607, he fought tirelessly to drive them away, leading to a series of wars that spanned the next 40 yearsâthe first Anglo-Indian wars in Americaâand came close to destroying the colony.
What The Reviewers Say
... a detailed history of Virginia’s founding and early growth, which examines the socio-political interaction of indigenous peoples and English settlers.
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.
This book complicates centuries of mainstream historiography and the narrative that the Powhatan people helped early English colonies survive.
An accomplished work of scholarly detection that plays out against the background of the English colonization of Virginia.
