Dr. Ray L. Winstead
Professor of Biology (retired), Indiana University of Pennsylvania

        "The Nansemond people were among the Powhatan Confederacy, a loose confederacy of about 30 tribes, estimated to have numbered more than 20,000 people in the coastal area of what became Virginia. They paid fealty to a paramount chief, known as the Powhatan. They lived along the Nansemond River, an area they called Chuckatuck. In 1607, when English people arrived to settle at Jamestown on the north side of the James River, the Nansemond were initially wary. In 1608, the English raided one of the Nansemond towns, burning houses and destroying canoes to force the people to give corn to the settlers. Captain John Smith and his men demanded 400 bushels of corn or threatened to destroy the village, remaining canoes, and houses." "Relations between the English and the Nansemond deteriorated." John Basse, an early English settler in Virginia, married Elizabeth, the daughter of the King (or Chief) of the Nansemond Nation in 1638 after she was baptized into the established Anglican Church of the colony.