Powhatan's Mantle

This episode was made possible by a grant from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture’s Commonwealth History Fund presented by Dominion Energy.

And by a grant from Virginia Humanities.

REBECCA HILL: Just a note before we begin. In this episode, most of the Algonquian words used are based on English pronunciations. Tribes in Virginia are beginning to awaken the regional Powhatan Algonquian language and pronunciations.

REBECCA HILL: On any given day, visitors eager to experience America’s first permanent English colony roam the Jamestown Settlement Museum.

As they take in the 1607 Jamestown, I wonder: Will they consider the land below their feet, where my ancestors once hunted?

Our voices, our stories, they weren’t always included here.

Today, with our help, the museum is telling the history of the Tribes in Virginia in our words.

Among its exhibits, there’s a single object enclosed in its own glass case.

It’s been called the “Royal robe of the Virginian King Powhatan.” And other labels.

A cape. A habit. A cloak. A wall hanging. And a map.

Today, we refer to it as Powhatan’s Mantle.

And it’s grand. Nearly eight feet tall by five feet wide.

The mantle evokes the history and culture of the powerful alliance of Tribes.

The people colonists encountered when they first arrived more than 400 years ago.

And it’s not just its size. It’s the mastery of construction. Four white-tailed deerskins carefully trimmed and sewn together and adorned with seaboard marginella shells, most likely found along the York and James Rivers. Their natural gloss made them look polished.

There are some 20,000 of those shells. Each pointed end had to be rubbed down by hand so the sinew thread could pass through and intricately sewn onto the skins. 

At the center of the deerskins is a human figure made of shell embroidery. From a distance, they appear as beads. For this, each shell had to be rounded.

On either side of the human figure are two different animals in profile facing the human. These two are also made of shell embroidery.

Then, as though flowing like rivers, up and down around the human and animal figures, are 34 spiral shell clusters. Each shell represents a town in the alliance. Visitors often linger and sit on a nearby bench.

ELENA: I just love the artistry of it because the needles that they used were so tiny and fine that the sinew that they were sewing the shells on to represent the different towns didn’t pierce the backside of the deerskin. I just think that’s incredible and a testament to the artistry of people then.

REBECCA HILL: That’s Elena, a visitor who used to work at the museum.

What most visitors don’t know is the history of the mantle.

But not this one.

This one is a replica, made painstakingly by members of the Mattaponi Tribe. It has its own story.

I’m talking about the real one. The one made more than 400 years ago by my ancestors and ancestors of other Tribes. Those people were here for tens of thousands of years before colonists arrived. They were part of that powerful alliance. Powhatan’s alliance.

The original mantle-- that belonged to Wahunsenacawh, Chief of the Powhatan. And it’s in a museum in Oxford, England.

How it got there, well that’s going to take this episode to tell you.

There are twists and turns all immersed in mystery. The kind of mystery that comes with looking back 420 years to times of treachery, diplomacy and acquiring other people’s things.

And, for the first time, you’re going to hear the story of Powhatan’s Mantle told by citizens from the Tribes once joined under Powhatan’s alliance.

I’m Rebecca Hill, a citizen of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, the same tribal affiliation of Wahunsenacawh, Chief of the Powhatan alliance.

This is Tribal Truths.

REBECCA HILL: Bumping around in a golf cart through the woods are three citizens from Tribes once allied under the Powhatan Chiefdom.

They’re navigating the place where Wahunsenacawh ruled more than 400 hundred years ago. And it may be where the mantle was made.

Driving the golf cart is Kalen Anderson. He’s a citizen of the Nansemond Indian Nation.

Kalen works for the National Park Service, which stewards these 264 acres in Gloucester, Virginia.

When they emerge into a field they can see the York River.

KALEN ANDERSON: This is basically downtown Werowocomoco.

So, if you look at this chart, a lot of the archaeology done. This shows the populace of artifacts, I think primarily ceramic and pottery.

This is all waterfront. You see the dissipation of artifacts as you work your way back. This was basically the hub, everyday life families. Imagine young men and boys coming off their dugout canoes coming up. Maybe women and children cooking, making succotash up here in their pots.

And today, we love waterfront property. All of our tribes were water people, river people living right on the water. So, we don't really change that much over time.

Pamela D'Angelo

REBECCA HILL: Werowocomoco is one of the most important and sacred places to the Algonquian Tribes that once belonged to the Powhatan alliance.

People were here more than 9,000 years ago, Before Wahunsenacawh took his place of political and spiritual power as supreme leader, or as we say Mamanatowick.

He inherited his power from his mother. And with that power he forged political alliances through marriage and the children he had with those wives. He established extensive trade networks and tribute systems, bringing 34 smaller chiefdoms under his leadership.

And if you remember, the mantle has 34 shell spirals. One for every town.

So, back in 2002, scientists confirmed what we already knew-- Werowocomoco’s location on a 300-acre former plantation along the York River. We knew because we’ve been here all along.

SAM MCGOWAN: You’d take clam rakes and rake them and put them in five-pound bucket. It was all shallow going out here.

REBECCA HILL: Only, to us, the river was the Pamunkey. And just below Werowocomoco was Allmondsville.

SAM MCGOWAN: The last name Allmond shows up in our communities. And right across the creek there is Allmond’s Wharf and that is where they are said to have come from.

REBECCA HILL: Sam McGowan is a citizen of the Mattaponi Tribe. He works for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation where he uses his expertise in making Indigenous tools, beading and recreating other examples of his culture to teach.

Like many Indigenous people here, he recalls his childhood, fishing off-shore here on the York River.

SAM MCGOWAN: We used to come up here where the shelf drops out there. That's where we used to do a lot of flounder fishing. Then, Red Bank is further down going towards, the Pamunkey Neck towards our way towards West Point. Which, West Point was a large trading hub at one point for our people Cinquoteck. And that's what Opecancanough and one of his homes were right situated above it.

REBECCA HILL: Opecancanough was Wahunsenacawh’s brother and another powerful leader. Now, his former home and trading hub is the site of the Westrock Paper Mill in West Point, Virginia.

Like Sam, most Indigenous people today, who fish off these shores, have been told by ancestors this is Werowocomoco.

And Werowocomoco may be where Powhatan’s Mantle was created.

The shell of the sea snail used for the mantle can be found today in tributaries like the York and along the shores around the Chesapeake Bay.

The golf cart emerges from the woods to the edge of a field. Ahead is the York River and the current home of the former owners of Werowocomoco. It’s been a National Park property since 2016.

Just to the left are bright orange traffic cones marking where the chief’s sacred long house may have once stood.

If you’ve ever seen Captain John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia the house is depicted in ceremony with Wahunsenacawh in the upper left corner. Smith also describes the house and location, which helped archaeologists determine this may be where it once stood.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: I actually dug here at the long house spot where we started uncovering the post-holes. Again, that would help us define that this was a structure and how large it was. So, yes, this was definitely an entire block of archaeological excavations that took place.

REBECCA HILL: That’s Ashley Spivey. She’s a citizen of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe and my cousin. She’s executive director of an anthropological consulting firm.

She’s worked as a part of the archeology team that discovered the location of the chief’s house. She’s continued that work with the National Park Service and Virginia Tribes.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: I have about 20 years of experience working out here at Werowocomoco. And it was one of the last, I think, field seasons that was funded and that we were, we didn't know if we were going to have another one.

So, I think it's also kind of serendipitous that it was uncovered in one of those last field seasons.

REBECCA HILL: As with the posts that supported the chief’s house, most of what was once here has gone back to nature. But hints of daily life centuries ago remain in pieces of pottery, stone tools, bone, shell, and trash pits.

There are also signs of trade with colonists from nearby Jamestown, like pieces of copper. Some of the finds are 10,000 years old. But farms are hard on artifacts.

SAM MCGOWAN: And, unfortunately, when they’d come through and deep plow, that really disturbed a lot of the artifacts that were in the ground. And misplaced them, because it was just pulling up earth and dragging it and mixing things together. It makes it a little more difficult.

REBECCA HILL: But there’s one artifact that’s mostly intact. It’s pretty incredible after four centuries Powhatan’s Mantle is only missing some of its shells. Likely, taken by tourists or scientists or lost in the years of being moved.

Until recently, no one at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England has invited our Tribes to give their interpretation of the meaning of the mantle.

When Sam was younger he said the shape looked like a turtle and related it to Turtle Island, a spiritual term used by Indigenous people in North America to refer to the continent.

And, there’s the 34 embroidered spiraled-shell circles.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: I think of the circle, the imagery of the circle, and the meaning of the circle and the spiral. And, I also think about the way that village and town sites in the region from an archaeological standpoint, right, archaeological work that's been done at these places has uncovered a circular spatial footprint of all of these different sites across the Tidewater region that are contemporaneous with one another. What I mean by that, between probably around 1100, 1200 up until the time that the English arrived in the 1600s, you're seeing the circular spiral spatial layout in the actual architecture and footprints of the village sites.

And you see it here at Werowocomoco on a major, grand scale.

REBECCA HILL: Also important here are large semi-circular ditches found demarcating the town from the sacred site of the Chief’s house where religious ceremony likely took place. The long house was huge at 70 feet long by 30 feet wide, which you can see prominently marked on Captain John Smith’s map.

And those large semi-circular, double D-like shapes are marked clearly on a navigational chart provided to the King of Spain by Don Pedro de Zuñiga.

ASHLEY SPIVEY:  I see the imagery and the mantle. I see it in the archaeological footprint that our ancestors left. And, in other items like pottery and decorative treatments that I've seen and material culture. So, I just wanted to like riff on that a little bit because the circle was really important.

SAM MCGOWAN: Yeah those circles are in everything.

Look at your thumb. Yeah, you see them right there.

I mean you see them and wood you see them in shells.

And that's why a lot of these items were so important these specific materials because of that.

It was often they were often used more towards more the spiritual aspect of our culture.

REBECCA HILL: Sam is an expert in our cultures and carries on traditions of how our ancestors made things.

SAM MCGOWAN: Maybe he could have gotten his wives to sew one, because he had well over two dozen wives. That would make sense. That way he would have children in each community. So, it could be that. But again, it’s an educated guess.

It could be someone, maybe a werowance, a werowansquaw, could have had someone appointed to do it. Something maybe we could figure it out one day.

Our people believed in balance. One person’s job complimented the next.

REBECCA HILL: A weroance or weroansquaw are male and female leaders.

Sam learned much of what he knows from his mother, Shirley “Little Dove” Custalow-McGowan, who was a well-regarded historian and lecturer of Indigenous history in Virginia.

As a teenager, he and his mother saw Powhatan’s Mantle when it was on loan to the Jamestown Settlement Museum in 1990. They helped to make the replica mantle.

SAM MCGOWAN: What I like to do, I like to look at the construction of the hide and look at the symbolism of the man, the Mamanatoak, supreme ruler, supreme chief, Wahunsenacawh, Chief Powhatan. Then you have the deer and then you have the mountain lion or the cougar.

And I think we really need to look at what the cougar and what the deer represents.

I’m just thinking of some of our creation stories about how the creator created the earth and how he peopled the earth. He talked about the great deer that he created but the cannibals ate it and he made new spread from the hairs of the deer.

So I think that deer may represent subsistence. It provided our people with food, it’s very important.

Food, clothing, tools and then of course you think about the cougar. It represents strength, unity, protection.

And then you have all the spirals in the shells.

If you look not only with our communities but as Ashley said communities to the north, south and even to the west. All over the world actually it represents life, a continuancy.

And, personal growth and it makes sense and you have all these spirals 34 of them. And at the time that the English arrived here in Tsenacommacah, we know that Wahunsenacawh had over 30 major tribes under his leadership and over 200 communities spreading throughout the entire coastal plain region of Virginia.

So, definitely, it's showing you know his importance.

REBECCA HILL: Sam said, Tsenaco-MAH- cah. Or as some say, Tsenocah-mah-cah. That’s the word we use in the Algonquian language. It’s interpreted as the Virginia Tidewater lands we occupied.

That representation on the mantle.

All that beauty and artisanship crafted into spiritual and political representation, likely took a long time to make.

After it was completed it probably was kept in a prominent place inside the Chief’s house.

But how could it have ended up in a museum so far away from here?

REBECCA HILL: In the fall of 1608 there was a meeting of dignitaries - Wahunsenecawh, and English Captains John Smith and Christopher Newport from Jamestown. Both worked for the Virginia Company. Smith was an English explorer, soldier, and colonizer.

Smith already had established a relationship with Wahunsenacawh. He had even been through a special ceremony where he was accepted. Within a year, he would be stealing their food and destroying their towns.

Captain Newport was a privateer. One of the queen’s favorite pirates who stole from Spanish and Portuguese ships. He commanded the initial expedition that led to Jamestown and was on the first Council in Virginia. During those first years he was ferrying people and supplies to the new colony.

Pamela D'Angelo

On this day in 1608, he was on a mission for King James I to meet with the chief of the Powhatan, Washunsenacawh.

In Capt. John Smith’s book, A True Relation, the meeting took place at Orapax. That’s where the mantle may have begun its long journey to the Ashmolean Museum.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: The location is thought to be Powhatan’s Hill, right off of the James River. It's adjacent to a part of the Fulton Hill neighborhood in the city of Richmond. It's a park now.

And actually our folks commemorated that park a hundred years ago. So, my great, great grandfather was there and I know Mattaponi folks were there.

That is where it's believed that this event took place, where the Powhatan's Mantle was being presented to Newport.

It was before any kind of official treaty negotiations were happening. And this was probably an event for that, for negotiation for discussion.

And at these types of meetings, even between tribes, there would have been objects presented and shared and exchanged.

SAM MCGOWAN: They were trying to get Powhatan to step down from his title and recognize King James as his king. They had to force Powhatan down because he would not bow to them.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: They were trying to basically force a mock coronation on Powhatan to demonstrate like, “Hey, you're in charge, but we really need you to bend the knee to the true sovereign, which is the king,” right?

And as Sam said, he was refusing to do that because bowing was not a part of our culture. And that's not that's not how you would have revered somebody.

And he was definitely not subservient.

REBECCA HILL: The account by Smith says Wahunsenacawh gave Newport his mantle. But Sam believes the mantle was stolen.

SAM MCGOWAN: Most of the other tribal citizens not just within Mattaponi, Pamunkey within the other communities here in Tsenacommacah, as well, believe it was taken by force. Yeah, this is something way too significant and I don’t believe he would have gifted or given that to him. He had too much pride for that.

REBECCA HILL: Smith also said Wahunsenacawh gave Newport a pair of old moccasins. If true, these didn’t make it to the museum. And, we don’t have knowledge of what those meant to our people. For colonists, shoes were a prestige item. So it could have been a show of wealth.

But if they were taken from the chief, that would be an insult, leaving him without shoes to protect his feet. The act would have been something a pirate might do.

Powhatan’s Mantle comes with many interpretations.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: So, maybe the item was an object of diplomacy for this meeting.

What it actually meant, not a hundred percent sure.

REBECCA HILL: There’s another Indigenous scholar who has her own interpretation of Powhatan’s Mantle. One Ashley finds intriguing.

REBECCA HILL: Today is opening day of the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in Washington, D.C.. This year it’s celebrating Indigenous people worldwide. It’s also the 20th anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian which is where we meet Gabrielle Tayac.

Gabrielle is a member of the Piscataway Beaver Clan, which occupies lands in Maryland, but once lived here as well. She’s a historian and scholar.

Pamela D'Angleo

GABRIELLE TAYAC: I have very strong ties to this place because first, it is on Piscataway traditional ancestral land, and also because I was brought in in 1999 to help the museum, even before it was opened understand the place where they sit and that is within the Chesapeake region, which includes Powhatan peoples, Monacan peoples, Piscataway, Nanticoke, all of us that have made our homes and lives along these waterways.

REBECCA HILL: Gabrielle was a historian and curator at the museum for 17 years. During that time, she went to England to look at historical documents and to study the Mantle.

GABRIELLE TAYAC: There's been different interpretations of what does the mantle say?

You know, what does it mean?

Is it, is it a map of Powhatan's territory?

Is it in fact a royal robe?

Is it a cosmological representation of clans?

Or would it be clan symbols of Powhatan being, maybe there's deer clan and panther clan?

So there's all, there's been all of these theories, um, and ideas about what, what these figures could represent, and I just had it tucked in the back of my mind, um, also that we would maybe try to figure this out.

Or can we ever, right?

Can we ever?

REBECCA HILL:  At Oxford University the mantle at the Ashmolean Museum kept drawing her back.

GABRIELLE TAYAC: I was spending time looking at the mantle, meeting with the conservators and curators and other departments at the university and just thinking through. I just really started to, I started to really fixate on this idea of what?

Who are you? Who are you? How can we know you?

REBECCA HILL: Then, on her very last day in England, with just four hours before her flight home, she and a colleague made an appointment with the British Museum's Special Collections room. They wanted to see the watercolors that were done in 1585 of the chiefs of Virginia and Roanoke by John White of Secotan.

GABRIELLE TAYAC: And most of what we see, it's often used to represent Powhatan peoples and Piscataway peoples and people throughout the Atlantic Sea Board of what the towns and houses and leaders look like.

And I went to look at them and they're absolutely beautiful and also very small.

REBECCA HILL: Then, the librarian asked if they’d like to see Capt. John Smith’s original map of New England. If you remember, Smith had done the famous 1608 map of Virginia.

GABRIELLE TAYAC:  So, I was like, "Okay, yeah, look at it.

It's a little bit slightly out of scope."

But I was like, "Yeah, okay, look at it. I'm here."

And I look at this map and it's very interesting to look at.

But what I notice in the corner of the map-- it's the Royal Coat of Arms and it has the crown in the center, a lion on the left-hand side and a unicorn, which is a hoofed animal on the right-hand side.

And it just something clicked and I thought about the mantle and it has a man of power in the center and a mountain lion on the left-hand side with five toes and a long tail and a hoofed animal, which is a deer on the right-hand side.

And I thought, "Wait a minute."

REBECCA HILL: And she called her colleague over.

GABRIELLE TAYAC: I was like, "Tell me if I've lost my mind. But do you think that the mantle could be the Royal Coat of Arms and Indigenous representation?”

I was like, "There's the man of power in the middle and the lion on one side and the hooves on the other."

And she looked at me and she said, "Ohhh, I don't know, maybe."

And we just looked at each other and I thought, "This is crazy."

REBECCA HILL: But it wasn’t because all her research was coming into focus.

GABRIELLE TAYAC: Powhatan is just a mighty man.

And not just as the person himself, but is also representing very powerful people. They're in their own space. They're at the height of their power and authority. They're exerting their determination.

This is a representation of the power of Powhatan. It's a representation of his sovereign authority. And this is what's being said over time.

The 34 spirals. This has already come up as a mapping possibility and it is partially a map.

But this is his domain, this is his reign, this is his place, right? If you want to use those English terms.

So, yeah, so really looking at the mantle itself as a piece that truly represents authority.

So, could this have been staying within the possession of the Powhatan, you know, to express that authority or to show it in some way?

I would say whether it was sent as a symbol or an assertion of power to the crown or if it was stolen from within Powhatan possession, the ownership of it, especially given the level of absolute ransacking. And this is all that is left.

REBECCA HILL: We don’t know when the mantle went to England. If it was given to Captain Christopher Newport for King James I, it may have been on his ship the Mary and Margaret when he left for England in December 1608. Ship manifests may not have objects like the mantle listed on them, but we would have to go to England for this research.

We also don’t know if the mantle was given to King James I.

The first documentation of the mantle or what is said to be the mantle shows up in England with a man named John Tradescant.

It’s 30 years after the mantle was supposedly gifted to King James I.

At the time it shows up, Tradescant is King Charles’ gardener. Charles was the son and successor of James.

What’s also of note here, Tradescant is friends with Captain John Smith and Captain Sam Argall. The same Captain Argall who kidnapped Wahunsenacawh’s daughter, Pocahontas.

To find out more about the life of the mantle in England, we talked with Katrina Marchant, a British scholar of literary material and cultural history, who specializes in this time period.

KATRINA MARCHANT: So, if we look at the Ashmolean Museum's website, they assert that this mantle is first recorded as being in the Tradescant collection in July of 1638.

They point out that how it gets there is not known, but quote, "the most widely accepted explanation is that it may be one of the gifts, in heavy inverted commas, potentially, presented by Powhatan in 1608 to Captain Newport for King James I.

REBECCA HILL: The mantle may have been important to colonists because they needed funding from investors of the Virginia Company of London, and the king.

Before James I took the throne, Queen Elizabeth was constantly being asked for financial support for various ventures.

KATRINA MARCHANT: Somebody like Christopher Newport or an individual who is working for one of these people, who is funding a voyage to do this stuff is going to want to bring something back that wets the whistle of the king.

You want that royal approval. You know, throughout Elizabeth's reign, they're constantly searching for it. They're trying to bring her back things, whether it's black rock that they are sure is full of gold or whether it's, you know, promises or people or whatever they're doing.

They want her to believe that this could be her new land, because I mean, particularly for Elizabeth, she is not keen on colonization or plantation. She is not in favor of that. Mostly because, I think, it's a risk of money and war. She recognizes that.

REBECCA HILL: And of course, people working for the royals have a backstory that’s best kept quiet. Like Captain Newport’s pirating Spanish and Portuguese ships.

KATRINA MARCHANT: When Elizabeth gets involved with voyages to the new, in quotes, New World, that's her sort of personal kitty. It doesn't actually have what would be official royal backing, probably mostly because the blokes who are doing it are also doing a lot of piracy. I'm sorry, privateering. So, it can't actually have royal backing.

REBECCA HILL: So, even back then, as the British increased their empire, marketing was key.

KATRINA MARCHANT: It’s always been propagandized. People have put money, not just into the voyages, but into the report of the voyages. Into displaying the objects and people of the voyages, selling exploration and colonization as something that is good, not only for the Commonwealth, but also good for individuals to, in effect, speculate and gamble on.

REBECCA HILL: We don’t know if the mantle was a gift to the king or stolen and presented as such.

KATRINA MARCHANT: I think we can have various questions about how it's handed to the person who gives it to James. Is it a gift? Is it a gift in inverted commas, you know, with one hand being twisted behind a person's back? Or is it an outright theft?

I don't know the answer to that.

REBECCA HILL: Now, you have to know that during this period settlers were labeling our people as savages who needed civilizing. At the same time, it’s clear they viewed the mantle as a prize.

KATRINA MARCHANT: Why might somebody have suggested, coerced or stolen this mantle to give to King James? Because it makes it appear, or it could be made to make it appear, that this leader, this king of Virginia, however they want to spin it. This other king so respects the king in England that he is giving him his mantle.

How would James view a mantle like this? Well, his connection to mantles like that are, for example, coronation robes.

Now, why would somebody want to tell James that this other king has given him this?

REBECCA HILL: And again it goes back to money from the crown. Colonists had to get the King’s approval to keep their project going.

KATRINA MARCHANT: And if they are telling the king, well, we're going to see no resistance because their king basically has suborned himself to you already.

He sent you his ceremonial cape. So, chuck money at it. There's not going to be a war. They've rolled over and showed us their bellies.

REBECCA HILL: We don’t have evidence when the mantle arrived in England and if it was a gift. It could have been stolen at any time before it shows up in 1638.

Gabrielle Tayac suggests another theory. That Pocahontas may have brought the mantle as a gift to the king when she traveled to England in 1616.

Regardless of who delivered it, let’s assume the mantle went to King James I as a gift and then to his son King Charles. It may have then gone into storage for 30 years.

KATRINA MARCHANT: It may well at some point have gone into a royal wardrobe, one of many. And this is not your back bedroom Ikea jobbie. This is essentially like a big storage facility. Some of these wardrobes would be the equivalent of a city block in size.

REBECCA HILL: Kings get gifts all the time. Sometimes they are taken out for display or for a party. We don’t know if this was the case for the mantle.

So, now we return to John Tradescant and a lot of what ifs.

Along with his job as a royal gardener, Tradescant was a renowned botanist and collector with specimens from all over the world. His was considered the most comprehensive in England at the time. There’s even a plant he was given from Virginia. It’s called Tradescant’s Spiderwort.

We don’t know when, but at some point the mantle was given to him for his collection of rarities.

It could have been by one of his employers, the Duke of Buckingham, who was a favorite of King James I. Or it may have been given to him in 1630 by King Charles, when he was appointed Keeper of the Gardens Vines and Silkworms at Oatlands Palace.

KATRINA MARCHANT: This is around the time where he's setting up the thing that gets known as Tradescant's Ark. This is his home. It's a garden full of interesting plants that he has collected. It's also inside going to grow into a collection.

Some people refer to it as being the first museum because people can pay to enter.

REBECCA HILL: It’s referred to as cabinets of curiosity. 

KATRINA MARCHANT: With cabinet of curiosity, there is more of a kind of collage than a display. We don't know what Tradescant’s Ark looks like, but we do know what other cabinets of curiosity look like, and there's one Italian example where there is stuff all over the ceiling, shells stuck to the ceiling, stuffed alligator on the ceiling. There's cupboards or cabinets, unsurprisingly, all around the walls with like bits of stuff, bird sticking out of them. It's everywhere.

It is quantity, potentially over quality. They want weird stuff. They potentially want stuff that is not scientifically possible.

There are some which claim to have mermaid hands or mermaid bodies, which are probably, they're either something that they found or it's something that a charlatan has made. Like they've sewn bits of fish together with something else and they've gone, there you go. That looks like a mermaid, crack on.

So, this is what we're talking about. It is probably quite chaotic, but they seem to really love it.

REBECCA HILL: And we don’t hear about Powhatan’s Mantle being in this collection until a German student visits in 1638 and describes it as “the robe of the king of Virginia.”

Not long after, Tradescant died, leaving everything to his son, who was also an avid collector and botanist.

KATRINA MARCHANT: The younger Tradescant, of course, inherits his father's house.

He inherits the business. And he is very keen on the, what he calls the rarities and curiosities collected. And he says that he continues in this diligence to collect and augment the Ark.

REBECCA HILL: Twelve years later, the younger John Tradescant met Elias Ashmole. The same Ashmole for which the museum in Oxford is named, and where the mantle is on exhibit today. Ashmole helped John catalogue his collection. Which included:

Virginian purses, embroidered with Roanoke

a Match-coat of Virginia made of Racoune-skins

a Virginian habit made of Bear-skin

a Match-coat from Virginia of feathers

bowes from Virginia and, 

Pohatan, king of Virginia’s habit all embroidered with shells, or Roanoke.

But Ashmole was no friend to Tradescant. He wanted to possess The Ark. And through some dirty dealing and a convenient death, he got it. But that’s another story.

The Tradescants wanted the collection to go to Oxford. And it did finally get there. But to a museum named for Ashmole not Tradescant.

And it’s only recently the museum is reaching out to Indigenous people to interpret their artifacts held there. Along with Powhatan’s Mantle, some of the Virginia artifacts in the catalogue are also there.

KATRINA MARCHANT: I hope, it moves us towards a kind of globalization and democratization of knowledge, that if we understand ourselves as a global curator of our shared but different histories, that it's not about possession.

It's actually about recognition of heritage and weaving the tapestry of our shared but diverse histories that goes back millennia. These pieces that go back before written words.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: And there's a hawk there too. We've got an eagle and a hawk.

REBECCA HILL: Back at Werowocomoco, Kalen, Ashley and Sam are nearly done with their time here.

There’s much to learn about this place and about Powhatan’s Mantle.

Even so, both remain of great historical and spiritual importance to the Tribes whose ancestors were a part of Powhatan’s empire.

And the mantle, it’s been back here in America only twice, once in 1919 for the New York World’s Fair and again in 1990 in Virginia.

It remains far away. The more than 3,600 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, makes it hard to relay its beauty and uniqueness to our children.

But lands once occupied by our ancestors, they matter the most. Some Tribes are buying back lands, some are being returned and some are being shared with co-stewardship.

But Werowocomoco is the land that can bring Tribes in Virginia together.

SAM MCGOWAN: It was honestly a paradise. Especially this spot because you had the two creeks and you think about you know you have marshes so, that has lots of food lots of medicine so it's a part there's lots of birds you know ducks geese things of that sort you know that will sustain you as well as all the different animals abundance of fish and shellfish so on top of a very sacred religious area spiritual area for us I mean yeah you had everything you need right here.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: There's many layers of history here. And what we're trying to do is really focus in our reconnecting, I feel like, again, this is my perspective, like, working to reconnect to the ancestral history of this place. We need that first. We need that to be healed first before we can move on.

Oh, and now we have a great blue heron flying across us overhead. All good signs, even though it’s a challenging conversation.

REBECCA HILL: As the three stand at the site of the chief’s house just outside the woods, leaves suddenly fall like snow on them. It isn’t windy.

Kalen puts his hands out and smiles.

And just as suddenly it stops.

It feels important.

ASHLEY SPIVEY: I think we're meant to be here today to have this conversation and to share, you know, this history and our perspectives on it.

But I truly believe that these are signs that we're heading in the right direction. There are some challenges that our tribes, I think, are facing with a federal agency owning this land, right?

But I am a big believer in that most things happen for a reason.

And we get signs along the way to kind of make us know that our ancestors are with us and they're helping guide us along that way.

And I think seeing the eagle and seeing the hawk and knowing my own personal experiences and the ones that you shared that we're heading in the right direction. It’s challenging now.

But it's going to change.

Mantle Blues was written especially for this episode and performed by Chief Kevin Brown of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe

Tribal Truths is reported, written and sound designed by Pamela D’Angelo. Kelley Libby is editor. Additional editing by David Seidel, Rebecca Hill, Sam McGowan and Ashley Spivey.

Support is provided by Virginia Humanities and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture’s Commonwealth History Fund presented by Dominion Energy. Additional support is by Radio IQ.

Additional music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions.