A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America

A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America by James Horn

In the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish explorers in the Chesapeake Bay kidnapped an Indian youth, took him back to Spain, and subsequently to Mexico. During his time abroad, the boy lived in Madrid, Seville, Havana, and Mexico City, becoming a favorite of King Philip II and converting to Catholicism. Eventually, after nearly a decade, he returned to Virginia with a group of Jesuits to help establish a mission. Shortly after arriving, however, he abandoned his fellow missionaries, rejoined his family, and soon organized 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 forty years -- the first Anglo-Indian wars in America -- and came close to destroying the colony. But the English settlers proved more resilient than the Spanish missionaries had been forty years earlier. Additional soldiers, weapons, and provisions arrived from England, forcing Opechancanough to continue his offensive for decades. He survived to be nearly a hundred years old and died as he lived, fighting the invaders.

Deeply researched and brilliantly told, A Brave and Cunning Prince is the first book to chronicle the life of this remarkable chief, exploring his early experiences of European society and his lifelong struggle to save his people from conquest.

Basic Books, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2021