Thomas West was born in England, the son of a baron. He served in the army. In 1602, his father died and he became the Baron De La Warr. A short time later, considering his enormous investments, the crown appointed him governor-for-life of the Colony of Virginia. A portly gentleman and a brute with dreams of conquest, he sported a snide smile, an elongated jaw, and beady, darting eyes.

  Jamestown was the capitol of Virginia at that time, but it actually lay within the territory of the Powhatan nation, ruled by Chief Wahunsenacawh. Jamestown lay surrounded by salt marshes, which impaired farming and bred malarial mosquitoes. Were it not for the leadership of Captain John Smith, President of the Council of Jamestown, the entire colony would have died of disease and starvation. His legendary leadership mainly consisted of forcing aristocrats to work.

  Chief Wahunsenacawh extended an offer of friendship to the English colonists. He offered to move them to Capahosick, a nearby Powhatan town, where he would give them food and protection. In return, they would craft metal tools for him. Smith declined the offer. Instead, he scouted the land with armed parties and formed new settlements. He built a fort at Jamestown, then built several more forts nearby. Most of the new settlements failed.

  Smith was injured in a gunpowder explosion and returned to England. Jamestown nearly starved again. Smith’s successor was the Baron De La Warr. He arrived with 150 soldiers and three ships, marched to the capitol of the Powhatan, and threatened to burn their villages. The war began in 1610. The Baron began by attacking a smaller nation, the Paspahegh, situated near Jamestown. He killed 60 or 70 civilians and took captives back to Jamestown. A few of them, who were children, he casually executed on his journey. The last captive was the wife of the nation’s chief. The Baron executed her personally.

  In 1611, the Baron fell ill with scurvy and malaria. He returned to England to recover, leaving the colony in the hands of a tyrannical man named Samuel Argall. An employee ghost-wrote the Baron’s memoir. The war continued until 1614. Argall captured Chief Powhatan’s ten-year-old daughter, Pocahontas, and held her hostage for years. Eventually, he used her to broker a peace treaty. This treaty included her marriage to John Rolfe, an English colonist. The Powhatan might have thought this marriage constituted a promise of equal and respectful treatment.

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  During the course of the First Anglo-Powhatan War, the Kicoughtan, Paspehegh, Arrohattoc, Quiockohannock nations all disappeared. Presumably, they either fled or were massacred. The Colony of Virginia gained control of key coastlines and rivers and established forts to defend its gains. In 1619, a privateer called the White Lion sold the first enslaved people to the colony at Jamestown.

  Peace lasted until 1622, when Opechancanough, the new chief of the Powhatan, launched a surprise attack against Jamestown. He failed to destroy it. In 1646, Governor William Berkeley attacked Opechancanough’s home village and captured all adult men. Opechancanough died in prison, murdered by guards. (The City of Berkeley, California, was not named for William Berkeley. It was named for George Berkeley, an Irish philosopher who argued that objects do not exist when they are not being perceived.) The victorious British forced Powhatan to sign the Treaty of 1646, which made them subjects of the king who would pay yearly tribute to the Governor of Virginia and established a border which neither the Powhatan nor the English could cross. This effectively granted England sovereignty over hundreds of miles of land.

  The State of Delaware and the Delaware River are named for Baron De La Warr.

  Meanwhile, the Lenape nation lived around present-day Delaware, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York. At first, they managed to contain the spread of Dutch settlements. The Lenape differed from many nations. They were ruled by women and their land was held by families. This made it difficult for Europeans to purchase their land or understand their politics. Settlers armed other nations nearby and the Lenape lost important wars against the Susquehannock and Iroquois. They also suffered greatly from smallpox. William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania on Lenape land. The expansion of this colony displaced the Lenape people.

  After Penn’s death, his successors produced fraudulent treaties, providing legal justification for settlers to displace the remaining Lenni Lenape, who resettled around Ohio. That relocation began in 1730 and ended by 1760. Over the next century, settlers forced them out of Ohio as well. They were forced to purchase land from the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. In 1898, the Curtis Act dissolved all tribal governments, distributed 160 acres to each household, and sold the rest of each reservation to settlers.

  Americans often refer to the Lenape and Powhatan as “Delaware Indians.”