BRAVE AND CUNNING PRINCE

'The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America' is the sub-title of this chronical of the life of a remarkable chief. In the mid16th century, Spanish explorers in the Chesapeake Bay kidnapped an Indian youth, took him back to Spain, and subsequently to Mexico. During this time the boy lived in Madrid, Seville, Havana and Mexico City, becoming a favourite of King Philip II, and converting to Catholicism. Eventually after nearly a decade, he returned to Virginia with a group of Jesuits to establish a mission. Shortly after his arrival however he abandoned his fellow missionaries, rejoined his family, and soon organised a war party that killed the Spaniards. In the years that followed, Opechancanough (as the English called him) 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 years - the first Anglo-Indian wars in America - and came close to destroying the colony. However the English settlers proved more resilient than the Spanish missionaries had been 40 years earlier. Additional soldiers, weapons, and provisions arrived from England, forcing Opechancanough to continue his offensive on for decades. He survived to be nearly a hundred years old and died as he lived, fighting the invaders. In most Native American histories, Opechancanough generally plays a brief part as a violent and tragic figure, but James Horn constructs a remarkable life story that spans one century. He was the older brother of the more famous man we know as Powhatan, and here cutting-edge scholarship and vivid prose transports us into the mind of this indefatigable chief, exploring his early experiences of European society and lifelong struggle to save his people from conquest. 296pp, maps and woodcut illustrations. 2021 US first edition.