Relation of Virginia: A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and the Patawomecks transed. by Henry Spelman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Relation of Virginia: A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and the Patawomecks transed. by Henry Spelman Frederic W. Gleach (bio) Relation of Virginia: A Boy's Memoir of Life with the Powhatans and the Patawomecks henry spelman; transcribed, edited, and with an introduction by karen ordahl kupperman New York University Press, 2019 96 pp. Henry Spelman was one of two young Englishmen who went from England to Virginia in the early years of the Jamestown colony and ended up spending much of their time living in the local Native communities, effectively traded to the Powhatan Indians by the leaders of the colony. The likely intention, and consequence, of that arrangement was that they learned the local language and customs, and they served as translators and intermediaries between the colonizers and the Indigenous people. This volume presents a pair of transcriptions of a narrative written (or more likely dictated) by Spelman, probably when he was back in England in 1611–12, about three years after the events in question; there was a published transcription in the late nineteenth century, when the manuscript first resurfaced, but it is not widely accessible. This edition, newly transcribed by Karen Ordahl Kupperman, will be a valuable tool for scholars and students considering the early colonial period in Virginia. At age fourteen, Spelman was on the cusp of adulthood; having received some education and upbringing in English ways, but still young enough to be flexible in acquiring cultural norms. Beyond the pragmatic desires for intermediaries between the two cultures, there was considerable curiosity in England about the Native people in the colonial territories, and English intellectuals like Samuel Purchas interviewed and published the accounts of many who returned from travels about their experiences—including Henry Spelman (similar curiosity about the English was likely among the Powhatans, but that aspect is recorded only in passing references in the [End Page 621] English documents). The published Purchas interview is also included here, along with a passage about religious beliefs conveyed by Spelman to William Strachey, included in his Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (Strachey himself had returned from Virginia in 1612). Spelman's narrative provides many details of the daily lives, practices, and beliefs of the Powhatan and Potomac Indians, and the manuscript as transcribed and presented here gives some of our closest observations from the early period of English colonization in Virginia—including his clarifications and efforts to be as accurate as possible reflected in revisions to the manuscript, which are captured in the second, verbatim, transcription (the first transcription is "cleaned up" with modern spelling and punctuation, to be more readable). Nineteen pages of the manuscript are also reproduced in facsimile so that readers can see the original writing and editing. This provides a great opportunity for learning about the kinds of decisions made in transcription, and it is a good brief sampling of a (fairly legible) early seventeenth-century hand—a very useful aspect, as relatively few are able to study the original manuscripts of this period in person. The text also provides a good example of the sometimes infuriating difficulties of working with such primary documents. The details provided by Spelman have been very useful to scholars studying the period, but they must be taken with caveats. Even when giving Indigenous beliefs and practices, Spelman was seeing and hearing these and processing them through the mind of an Englishman. Such categories as "king," "god," and "priest" had meanings in the English worldview that almost certainly differed from the meanings of the positions and ideas being labeled with those terms. And there were almost certainly differences in the understandings and beliefs and practices between the "core" Powhatan groups and the Potomacs among whom Spelman spent much of his time (and even among the Powhatan groups themselves), but these are undifferentiated in the narrative; all of these ideas are presented as if they were universally held among the Native people of Virginia (if not even more broadly). Even these "primary" texts have to be seen as coming through a series of "lenses" that shaped the content and the way it was presented. Kupperman is among the most accomplished and capable...