In that first year of the white man in Virginia, 1607, Powhatan had addressed a plea to John Smith that turned out to be prophetic. How authentic it is may be in doubt, but it is so much like so many Indian statements that it may be taken as, if not the rough letter of that first plea, the exact spirit of it:

 “I have seen two generations of my people die…I know the difference between peace and war better than any man in my country. I am now grown old, and must die soon; my authority must descend to my brothers, Opitchapan, Opechancanough and Catatough–then  to my two sisters, and then to my two daughters. I wish them to know as much as I do, and that your love to them may be like mine to you. Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?”

–from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United StatesContinue Reading